Mastodon Feed: Posts

db@social.lol ("David Bushell ☕") wrote:

reading: It’s hard to justify Tahoe icons

https://tonsky.me/blog/tahoe-icons/

I don't like Apple's new icon fetish, but I never realised how poorly implemented they were! #neverUpdating

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
stefano@bsd.cafe ("Stefano Marinelli") wrote:

AI models don’t really 'get' the BSDs. As a result, they often provide incomplete, imprecise, or flat-out wrong answers by defaulting to Linux paradigms. When it comes to illumos-based systems, they just completely lose the plot.

This is becoming a serious issue for the BSDs and illumos ecosystems. We are seeing entire websites flooded with AI-generated tutorials and guides that are totally incorrect. Most people don't realize this; they follow the instructions, fail, and then assume that the BSDs doesn't work well or are 'unstable' because they have supposedly changed since the guide was written.

Luckily, some people eventually find my blog, reach out, and finally understand what's actually going on. Others, unfortunately, end up on major social sites or comments, claiming that these systems are broken.

In 2026, one of our greatest challenges will be teaching people how to vet their sources and filter information.
And I see this as a very, very uphill battle.

#IT #SysAdmin #FreeBSD #NetBSD #OpenBSD #illumos #News #UnderstandingText #Disinformation

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

I've completely lost interest in debating generative models or how big tech has almost completely transitioned into an authoritarian political project. These days what I try to do is just mentally flip the bozo bit on anybody still defending this shit and then do my best to move on.

(Bozo bit, in case you didn't know https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bozo%5Fbit)

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
xgranade@wandering.shop ("Cassandra is only carbon now") wrote:

RE: https://mastodon.social/@glyph/115841015208847446

These are good rules. They are not my rules, but I'm thinking mine should be closer to these rules than not.

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
brucelawson@vivaldi.net ("Bruce Lawson ✅ ♫ ♿ ✌️♂️✊") wrote:

"42% of Danes want to try new alternatives to Big Tech. 68% would like to reduce their screen time … Danmark Skifter [Denmark shifts] is a national campaign where thousands of Danes take back control of their digital lives – not alone, but together.

The campaign runs from January 1 to March 20, 2026. It starts with digital New Year's resolutions in January and culminates with The Big Shift Day on March 20, when all of Denmark shifts together." https://danmarkskifter.dk/en/

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
glyph ("Glyph") wrote:

I have been hesitating to say this but the pattern is now so consistent I just have to share the observation: LLM users don't just behave like addicts, not even like gambling addicts. They specifically behave like kratom addicts. "Sure, it can be dangerous. Sure, it has risks. But I'm not like those other users. I can handle it. I have a system. It really helps me be productive. It helps with my ADHD so much."

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
glyph ("Glyph") wrote:

@mttaggart my suspicion is that when this happens we are going to find out that there is a huge predisposition component. there will be people who say "ah well. guess I'm a little rusty writing unit tests now, but time to get back at it" and we will have people who will go to sleep crying tears of frustration for the rest of their lives as they struggle to reclaim the feeling of being predictably productive again

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
glyph ("Glyph") wrote:

I'm still open to being wrong, and there are still plenty of people who still exhibit critical judgement in other areas despite my disagreements with them on LLM use. Kratom has a much more straightforward biochemical mechanism which we know is bad for specific and impossible-to-avoid reasons. Maybe there really are safe techniques for LLM use and I sure hope we figure out what they are. But way, way too many tech leaders have started using these tools and then had their brains publicly cooked

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
glyph ("Glyph") wrote:

As with kratom addicts, there is even a period of time when they're correct, so it's hard to challenge. The *first* time a person with executive function challenges uses kratom, maybe even the first few months, it really *does* improve their mood, their executive function, etc. But then the secondary cumulative effects start to gradually erode their cognitive abilities so slowly they don't notice.

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
mawhrin@circumstances.run ("flere-imsaho 🇺🇦") wrote:

@jonny the confabulation machine promoters always forget to mention that the person randomly mentioning the great results of the specific confabulation machine is, by complete happenstance, a person who is the principal enginer tasked with development of said confabulation machine or a person tasked with advertising that autoconfabulator.

i've yet to see stories that aren't promotional materials.

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
jasongorman@mastodon.cloud ("Jason Gorman") wrote:

The concluding post in my AI-Ready Software Developer series ties all the threads together.

Far from "changing the game", AI coding assistants have just added another layer of uncertainty to an already very uncertain process.

Same game, different dice.

https://codemanship.wordpress.com/2026/01/05/the-ai-ready-software-developer-conclusion-same-game-different-dice/

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

"Voters Were Right About the Economy. The Data Was Wrong."

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/02/11/democrats-tricked-strong-economy-00203464

> In other words, nearly one of every four workers is functionally unemployed in America today — hardly something to celebrate.

and

> Our alternative indicator reveals that, since 2001, the cost of living for Americans with modest incomes has risen 35 percent faster than the CPI.

Boosted by jwz:
cmconseils ("Laura Manach :bongoCat:") wrote:

#Meme #Humour

Boosted by jwz:
drahardja@sfba.social ("Dave Rahardja") wrote:

“Billionaires will leave if you tax them”:

1. No they won’t
2. They leave even when you don’t tax them
3. Things get better for most people when they leave
4. They say this so you won’t tax them

#billionaires #taxTheRich

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
jonny@neuromatch.social ("jonny (good kind)") wrote:

the old way of "approach the throne of the benevolent dictator" sucked, but i never for one second thought that people would flock to "approach the hall of mirrors where everything is real, nothing matters, nobody is in charge, and the firmament mocks you in an always more distant echo" as an alternative.

The problem with "AI" is that it's fundamentally anti-human and that translates very neatly into the most toxic social spaces you can imagine.

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
jonny@neuromatch.social ("jonny (good kind)") wrote:

the hard parts of code are fucking TALKING TO PEOPLE and the LLMs make that problem A MILLION TIMES WORSE

Boosted by jwz:
mcc wrote:

Okay for a couple decades I thought the first line of "I'm Afraid of Americans" is saying "Low tax at the wheel" and I occasionally ponder this haiku-like attempt to condense America into five words. That's not what he's saying. He's saying "Lo-Teks". Like from William Gibson. At one point an early version "I'm Afraid of Americans" was being workshopped as potentially going on the Johnny Mnemonic soundtrack, that didn't happen, but this permanent reference to Lo-Teks is in there as an artifact

jwz wrote:

ACAB includes Motoko Kusanagi

Boosted by keul@fosstodon.org ("Luca Fabbri"):
silvanomarioni@mastodon.uno ("Silvano Marioni") wrote:

Meta ha creato delle regole interne per gestire le pubblicità-truffa su Facebook e Instagram per renderle meno visibili alle autorità di controllo, con lo scopo di proteggere i ricavi pubblicitari piuttosto che eliminare le frodi.
@tecnologia
https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-created-playbook-fend-off-pressure-crack-down-scammers-documents-show-2025-12-31/

db@social.lol ("David Bushell ☕") wrote:

I am back! hello 2026

30 minutes reclamping my monitor arm to jury-rig it one inch lower

now I realise if I pushed at the right angle it was way more adjustable than I thought 🤦

adele@social.pollux.casa ("Adële 🐁") wrote:

I have to repost it:

What if the U.S. cut off Big Tech from Europe? A nightmare for many European firms | Adële's blog
https://adele.pages.casa/md/blog/what-if-us-cut-off-big-tech-from-europe.md

Boosted by jwz:
jwz wrote:

@mwichary The "analogtv" module in XScreenSaver almost does that; it's a circuit-level simulation of NTSC and its various faults, so it's at the "analog logic" layer rather than the "physics" layer.

https://github.com/Zygo/xscreensaver/blob/master/hacks/analogtv.c

You can see the effect in action on most of the images posted on the @dnalounge account.

Boosted by jwz:
mwichary@mastodon.online ("Marcin Wichary") wrote:

Sort of curious about something. We’ve been seeing all of these cool shaders approximate old CRT displays by adding scanlines, distortions, etc. But did anyone ever write a CRT *simulator*? Like actually simulating the electron gun running and hitting the mask etc.?

This would be sort of an equivalent of raytracing or doing emulation via FPGA. It would definitely be a lot more costly, of course, but I’m curious if we have enough performance already and whether the results would be interesting.

Boosted by jwz:
Gurre@mastodon.nu ("Gurre Vildskägg") wrote:

woah!
Apparently Farscape is all on Youtube. Official channel has all the episodes. Did not expect that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJQlHnZwToU&list=PLcBQS2xdzwLA5tv8kP2lODaP%5Fnfh8siNn&index=1

#Farscape #SciFi #Youtube

Boosted by jwz:
stefan@stefanbohacek.online ("Stefan Bohacek") wrote:

I know this is already on Mastodon team's radar, but I do want to stress how important this feature is.

https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/14762

We won't get rid of the racism and the mansplaining on the fediverse overnight, but giving people control over their replies would significantly improve everyone's experience, and make this place a lot more inviting.

#mastodon #fediverse #SocialMedia

Boosted by jwz:
Green_Footballs ("Charles Johnson") wrote:

Here we go again.

Boosted by jwz:
robpike@hachyderm.io ("rob pike") wrote:

A thread about my use of AI in coding through 2025. Expecting similar results in 2026.

Boosted by jwz:
skinnylatte@hachyderm.io ("Adrianna Tan") wrote:

I was demonstrating the power of the Singaporean surveillance state to my wife (who lived there many years, but it’s still shocking to her). I was like wanna see my exam results from when I was 16???

I pulled out my national app, it scanned my face, and I show her all my exam results from when I was 16, 18. She was like who the fuck wants to know your O level math results. Why is this a thing. Why do they have it!!

Boosted by jwz:
markmetz@sfba.social ("Mr.Mark "The Sharpie King"") wrote:

Mmm hmm.

Boosted by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻"):
liztai@hachyderm.io ("Elizabeth Tai | 戴秀铃 🇲🇾") wrote:

When people say that messing around with #PKM and #Obsidian can be a hobby, many are confused.

I find it fun and pleasurable to think ways to organize the information in my vault or coming up with pkm systems, so I think of my activity around Obsidian not just something utilitarian but also a passion and hobby.

Most of the time all this is busywork. A simple system would do for most people, and many people consider these activities tedious or painful and would prefer simpler UI/UX platforms like Notion to do the job.

Because I don't know what sane person finds the idea of going through the vault , cleaning it up, organizing it with tags and bases as thrilling as I do 😆