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pzmyers@freethought.online ("pzmyers 🕷") wrote:

Yay! Syllabus, first two weeks of lecture, and first week's lab all prepped for the start of genetics next week.

Now to work on my other class.

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
saraislet@infosec.exchange ("Insecurity Princess 🌈💖🔥") wrote:

This article by @anildash squarely hits in the feels, names and articulates what's happening in the tech industry, and points towards pragmatic things we can do.

Notably — and I cannot sufficiently underscore how crucial this is — Anil spells out that power by its very definition is fundamentally requisite to enact any influence on the direction of tech. We cannot change the past, we cannot change everything, but we can change SOME things. And that requires power. Power isn't exclusively money or positions or authority: power is the ability to influence.

A single electron cannot do anything. But a million electrons aligned in the same direction? That sure amps things up.
https://me.dm/@anildash/115844846912829876

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

Dems have to decide *this week* that they will not agree to a CR on funding unless the admin stops Venezuela actions, forswear other invasions, and stop murdering on the high seas. This can be a rider to the healthcare stuff, with joined-up message of "nobody voted for this".

joeri_s@mstdn.social ("Joeri Sebrechts") wrote:

Just unsubscribed from ChatGPT. Had I heard earlier about Greg Brockman’s record donation to Trump I would have done it sooner.

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:

Anyway, as I was saying, Mastodon is great because it doesn't have the same corporate algorithms that influence people to behave like their in a market, and --

😅😅

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

If this is real, it's Russian shit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/law/comments/1q5h4az/jessica%5Fplichta%5Fa%5F22yearold%5Fantiwar%5Fprotester%5Fwas/

Boosted by jwz:
cstross@wandering.shop ("Charlie Stross") wrote:

@davidgerard He did nazi that coming!

Boosted by jwz:
iso7010@hacksrus.xyz ("ISO7010 pictogram of the day") wrote:

W061 — Quicksand or mud/deep mud or silt

Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ISO%5F7010%5FW061%5Fwarning;%5Fquicksand,%5Fmud,%5Fdeep%5Fmud,%5For%5Fsilt.svg
Author: Wikimedia Commons user Repeater-reclaim
CC0 (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en)

Boosted by jwz:
nocontexttrek ("Star Trek Minus Context") wrote:

#StarTrek

jwz wrote:

Car Brain.

There's a lot of stupid in the world, but here's some more. For those of you not in San Francisco: we have an old freeway running right past the ocean. It is falling into the ocean, and for decades had been closed like 20% of the time as...
https://jwz.org/b/yk1T

Boosted by joeri_s@mstdn.social ("Joeri Sebrechts"):
sssjorsss@masto.nu wrote:

https://blog.logrocket.com/anti-frameworkism-native-web-apis?utm%5Fsource=tldrdev

Interesting blogpost about native html / js development.

Boosted by jwz:
virtualbri@mastodon.online ("Brian Tatosky") wrote:

"Howard the Duck will return in Avengers: Doomsday" you cowards.

Boosted by jwz:
kenwhite.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy ("We’re Going To Keep The Popehat") wrote:

/2 Put another way, say what you want about the tenets of national socialism, at least it’s an ethos. But some people have the souls of Nazis — a reflexive race and religion-based hatred — but lack the character to stand up and say “this is who I am.” They lack the character EVEN TO BE A NAZI.

Boosted by jwz:
zzt@mas.to ("[object Object]") wrote:

@firefoxwebdevs also, I just gotta ask: was the prompt for this quiz “hey ChatGPT come up with an ai use case that’ll stump the haters! do not hallucinate do not use emojis” or did this ooze out of your human brain after the LLM psychosis fried it?

Boosted by jwz:
sil ("Stuart Langridge") wrote:

@firefoxwebdevs it would be nice if the "AI kill switch" had:
a list of each of the models used, what for, and whether they're trained on open data, each having a "disable this" switch
a thing right at the top of the list which says "I don't care, kill all this AI stuff"

but that would require putting a list of all the different things that Firefox is now using AI for and whether each is using fair models or not, which I suspect a lot of management won't want to document clearly to users

Boosted by jwz:
zzt@mas.to ("[object Object]") wrote:

@firefoxwebdevs neither translations nor any LLM feature have any business being built into Firefox. they should all be add-ons, at best. preferably add-ons developed by any other company than Mozilla. nobody wanted their donations to go to this crap.

like with translations, anyone who feels like they need LLM horseshit in their browser is very likely already using an implementation other than the one built into Firefox.

Boosted by jwz:
zzt@mas.to ("[object Object]") wrote:

@firefoxwebdevs jonah, I hate to break it to you and the LLM shaped like a product manager that’s setting the agenda for your meetings, but the only time I hear about Firefox translations in any context is when Mozilla PMs try to hold it up as an example of an ethical, low-resource, useful AI feature so they can convince to be a fan of the worthless LLM shit they’re actually there to push

the reason why I don’t hear about translations otherwise is simple: it’s shit

Boosted by jwz:
inthehands@hachyderm.io ("Paul Cantrell") wrote:

The vibe is not even the sort of “excessive show of force” vibe you get when militarized law enforcement goes off the rails and starts rioting. (I live in Minneapolis. I’m quite familiar with what •that• looks like.)

This is more like…hundreds of high school gym bullies get all hopped up on Red Bull and decided to take daddy’s SUV on a joy ride to randomly kidnap the first brown person they can corner…but only if nobody’s watching.

5/

Boosted by jwz:
inthehands@hachyderm.io ("Paul Cantrell") wrote:

What do I want you to know, watching from far away?

I want you to know that if you are not hearing about ICE swarming all the hell over my city, you are not hearing the actual news.

I want you to know that if all you see is video of ICE marching off Very Dangerous Criminals in an orderly and authoritative way, you are not hearing the actual news.

I want you to know that these turds act tough, but run away • every • time • they think too many people are watching or there might be video.

4/

Boosted by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻"):
gwynnion ("Nowhere Girl") wrote:

The corruption, the bipartisan complicity, the imperialist greed, the bigotry and xenophobia. The massive inequality that lets the wealthy own everything. The hollowing out of journalism and education. The surveillance, the lack of privacy. Oil companies in charge of foreign policy. Out of control cops and police budgets. Fucking genocide. Pogroms against vulnerable people. There was a literal pedophilia and sex trafficking ring connected to people at the highest levels of power!

Boosted by jwz:
BenCotterill ("ʙᴇɴ ᴄᴏᴛᴛᴇяɪʟʟ") wrote:

UK urged to cut out US Big Tech for sake of digi sovereignty • The Register https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/06/uk%5Furged%5Fto%5Funplug%5Ffrom/

Boosted by ChrisWere@toot.wales ("Chris Were ⁂🐧🌱☕"):
hacknorris@mstdn.social wrote:

honestly. what is better?

#gameDev #ai

ChrisWere@toot.wales ("Chris Were ⁂🐧🌱☕") wrote:

Another voice not from yours truly. More thoughts and responses from listeners about quitting #YouTube.

View them all at
https://chriswere.wales/voicenotes

Attachments:

• audio: A voice not, where I chat about quitting Youtube.

pzmyers@freethought.online ("pzmyers 🕷") wrote:

We're all being held hostage by this demented maniac.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/01/06/a-stupid-person-is-in-control-of-the-us/

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:

The future of news is happening where no one is looking » Nieman Journalism Lab:

"I spend a lot of time in Haitian and immigrant communities across the United States. In Brooklyn, Miami, Chicago, and the Midwest, I keep seeing the same thing: the people keeping their communities informed aren’t reporters. They’re the pastor who delivers immigration updates before the sermon. The barber who streams local politics on Facebook ... https://micro.fromjason.xyz/2026/01/06/the-future-of-news-is.html

isagalaev ("Ivan Sagalaev :flag_wbw:") wrote:

"the chatbot itself apologized while its maker, xAI, remained silent" — this is nonsense. The chatbot is a product and a tool of its maker, it doesn't have agency. The output it produces is legally produced by the maker.

Journalists subconsciously (or consciously!) anthropomorphizing chatbots are helping to remove this accountability.

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

As opposed to being a new "industrialisation", it really looks like we're dealing with a wholesale looting of an economy, end-to-end, from schools to the office. The bubble is a convenient mechanism for this but might not be necessary as you can still suck education and healthcare dry after the pop

So, I don't think the "AI" Bubble and the world's current political woes can be separated. They are two sides of the same project and I don't think you can beat one without also beating the other.

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

I've been hesitant to predict the end of the "AI" financial bubble because I'm not convinced that a bubble pop will even slow down the push for "AI"

The US gov's "AI" efforts provide cover for dismantling education and science and funnel all that money to cronies and oligarchs

"AI" is a convenient story that lets them, effectively, turn education and science into a money hose for oligarchs while at the same time destroying the infrastructure of inconvenience that are schools and universities.

jscalzi@threads.net ("John Scalzi") wrote:

Happy All Traitors to the US Constitution Can Fuck Off Into the Sun Day, I hope it is a blessed day for you

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

“Code is a liability (not an asset)”

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/06/1000x-liability/

Maybe if Cory says it people will listen

> Meanwhile, "software engineering" is a discipline that subsumes "writing code," but with a focus on the long-term operations of the system the code is part of

Writing code forces you to pay some attention to the practice of software engineering. Delegating that to a statistical model lets your software engineering skills degrade until they have the substance and integrity of a wet fart