Mastodon Feed: Posts

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

Hey, I'm going to be mostly offline for the next week, so until then, just remember:

If you're anti-trans, anti-queer, sexist, racist or other flavor of bigoted, antisemitic or anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-science, anti-books-and-libraries, pro-fascism, pro-authoritarianism, pro-poorly-thought-out-wars of choice, still somehow pro-grifty felons who rape kids, or any of combination of the above:

Go fuck yourself. Sideways.

For everyone else, here's a picture of a cat.

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

I think Apple is going all in. The MacBook Neo is a signal that they're attacking this from both ends. While everyone else is focused on data centers, Apple uses a $600 MacBook to gain market share. Maybe even eat at some of Chromebook's slice of the pie.

On the other end, the MB Ultra shows the world that the future of computing is still local.

*Pulls out voice recorder* "Sticker idea: Keep Compute Local"

Boosted by glyph ("Glyph"):
xgranade@wandering.shop ("Cassandra is only carbon now") wrote:

1. never start discourse
2. especially never start discourse from a device that does not have a physical keyboard
3. never join discourse
4. especially never join discourse from a device that does not have a physical keyboard

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

Apple is a hardware company. But their biggest competitor isn't other hardware companies, it's the cloud. It's centralized compute.

If AI does in fact become even a fraction of the game changer other companies claim, then Apple can't afford to let the cloud eat its lunch. Though, I don't think Apple is completely sold on this AI future.

So Apple has a conundrum here. Sit it out, risk more momentum towards cloud compute. Or go all in, risk solidifying something that otherwise would die.

dysfun@treehouse.systems ("gaytabase") wrote:

peanut butter chicken

Gargron ("Eugen Rochko") wrote:

#TheDearHunter's new album, Sunya, is out now. May need to wait until after midnight depending on your timezone, or trick time with a VPN.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2Cwqv1IobE

#NP #NowPlaying #TDH

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

If this move by Apple is as obvious as I think it is, then the other tech giants are already planning their countermove.

And, idk, man. If my business relied on wood pulp, and there was a way to make hemp, my number 1 competitor, completely illegal, maybe I try that?

And maybe I take my shot *before* my competitor goes to market.

dysfun@treehouse.systems ("gaytabase") wrote:

i bought the one with the highest rating but it only had 2 stars

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

So, this is where it gets sticky, right? Let's say I'm even half correct. That Apple comes out with hardware optimized for local AI models.

That potentially could be a significant blow to the cloud-tethered business model virtually every other giant is chasing.

If it were up to Google, we'd all be on chromebooks. Everyone is hyping AI, none of them are attempting to be the defacto AI hardware.

Because the money is in the residuals baby! Gotta collect those rents!

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

All these loose AI models popping up and going viral every so often now have a device to optimize for and an audience to target.

Oohhhh they'd resist at first. But if that MB Ultra becomes the defacto AI hardware for both/either consumer and business, then theyll eventually play along.

AGAIN, not wishing, speculating. I feel a tomato at my head at any moment. lol.

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

This is where maybe my speculation goes off the rails. And again, not wishing for all this to happen, just speculating.

At first I thought maybe Apple would release its own LLM/Agentic model. But that's exactly what they've been resisting. They don't like AI's spontaneity.

So what do they fill this new M6 enclave with, if not a proprietary model? Other companies' AI.

Apple launches an AI App Store for localized AI products.

Boosted by glyph ("Glyph"):
mttaggart@infosec.exchange ("Taggart") wrote:

I'm really struggling with the idea that the responsibility to correct for corporate evil resides with individuals, and that failing to do so constitutes some form of evil itself.

It would seem tantamount to castigating individuals for not recycling "enough" when the true cause of pollution lies with industry.

It would seem a way for capital to coerce the pro-human and anti-capital to tear each other apart, causing nothing but self-inflicted wounds.

Then again, blithe oblivion to whence one's resources come also seems irresponsible.

But like, I have work to do that is more important than choosing the least impure tool every goddamn day.

Boosted by glyph ("Glyph"):
ubernostrum@infosec.exchange ("James Bennett") wrote:

RE: https://infosec.exchange/@ubernostrum/116184516972371923

I’m still looking for resources here if you know of any (tl;dr a company threatening debt collection over an account they admit is not mine).

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
index@this.weekinsecurity.com ("~this week in security~") wrote:

Papers, please: Age verification laws threaten everyone's online security and privacy

Laws that require adults to upload their driver's licenses or passports to access apps, websites, and VPNs will make the entire web less safe.

https://this.weekinsecurity.com/papers-please-age-verification-laws-threaten-everyones-online-security-and-privacy/

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
verge ("The Verge") wrote:

Marc Andreessen is a philosophical zombie https://www.theverge.com/tldr/897566/marc-andreessen-is-a-philosophical-zombie

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

I can hear the keynote now. Tim Cook on stage proclaiming that Apple talked to power users and what they really want are private, secure models that run locally.

They spend 20 minutes talking about some custom enclave for AI to run. Trusted Execution Environments (TEE) is a new buzzword, so, something like that.

Then, Apple talks software

Attachments:

• gifv: Tim Cook walking on stage "good morning!"

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

The new MacBook Ultra has a beefy baseline to help justify RAM prices. Touchscreen 16in, 128gb memory, 1TB storage, M6 Ultra (or Pro), stock. Big fuss on efficiency.

Besides the Touchscreen, updated design. More "coffeeshop rugged." Think Apple Watch Ultra.

But what makes the MB Ultra different is the target demo—AI "power users," a different kind of pro, if you can stomach it.

ratatui_rs@fosstodon.org ("Ratatui") wrote:

We've just surpassed 20 million downloads on crates.io! 🎉🦀🥳

https://crates.io/crates/ratatui

#rustlang #ratatui

dysfun@treehouse.systems ("gaytabase") wrote:

i don't believe this for a second, but the rumours are that zen6 performs faster at 2ghz than zen5 at 5ghz

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

So, Apple goes all out in typical Apple fashion. First, and perhaps least obvious, is a touchscreen.

Not super important to my overall point but we're speculating and having fun.

Apples been doing R&D on AI that can make UIs on the fly—designing the best interface for the task you give it, or the task it's showing you how to complete. The Liquid Glass concepts starts making a bit more sense here, too. Liquid Glass for a "liquid" interface.

https://venturebeat.com/ai/apple-researchers-develop-ai-that-can-see-and-understand-screen-context

Boosted by glyph ("Glyph"):
xgranade@wandering.shop ("Cassandra is only carbon now") wrote:

@glyph Onion's "worst person in the world made a point" headline and dril's "you don't got to hand it to them," now on stage together for just one night!

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

The next few years are going to be interesting.

Let's say Apple releases an M6 MacBook Ultra that targets AI power users.

Now, forget for a moment your distain for the term "AI power user," lol, and perhaps for Apple, and speculate with me.

Because we have a big war of competing interests. Microsoft/OpenAI, Anthropic are pushing for centralized compute and proprietary cloud-based AI. Meta for cloud, too, but "open source" AI. Out of the giants, only Apple, really, are pushing for on-device AI

glyph ("Glyph") wrote:

we live in a world where Jonathan Haidt and Thomas Chatterton-Williams are both still broadly taken seriously as intellectuals, there's no way we are getting sensible regulation of social media any time this century

glyph ("Glyph") wrote:

like I have a young child and nothing would please me more than to put their birthday into the OS and then let them go nuts on the internet doing whatever they want, but my values (no child should be allowed to access a chatbot under any circumstances, roblox should be a crime, but children should be allowed to read wikipedia pages about human anatomy if they want) are just not reflected in our social fabric because all age-related internet stuff is just a series of very frustrating moral panics

glyph ("Glyph") wrote:

while I have a level of sympathy for the california/colorado style of age-verification law, and I think many reactions against it are overheated, at the end of the day we still have to oppose stuff like this because society's ideas of what ought to be age-gated are just wrong on the merits. the goal is to ban access to perfectly normal healthy things like queer communities and still allow kids access to fucked-up dangerous adults-only stuff like catholicism and the president of the united states

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

These UMM students are brilliant and can cross flies like pros.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/03/19/kudos-to-my-2026-genetics-students/

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

RE: https://mastodon.social/@verge/116257260071112037

The media are too in love with the "AI is a sentient being" story hook to ever give it up, I fear.

Whether they care or not, the framing of these types of stories by tech news blogs is priming us Americans to one day demand more things be taken from us.

We're one brown guy pictured near a set of daisy-chained Mac Minis away from politicians openly asking whether or not local computational power is too dangerous for the average American to own privately.

Boosted by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷"):
seanm@infosec.exchange ("Sean") wrote:

RE: https://mastodon.social/@verge/116257260071112037

More accurate title: Human Meta developer caused security incident by following GenAI advice and lack of secure Meta development controls

This was not a "rogue AI" that misbehaved. The GenAI bot was performing as expected: providing believable, yet garbage and dangerous output.

More importantly, it was a human that performed the actual changes by acting on inaccurate GenAI information and lack of technical controls and policies by Meta. It should be clear by now that GenAI output is not to be trusted, yet this human followed the GenAI output without properly understanding or validating the provided information. Additionally, Meta's development controls and security tools failed to stop the harmful changes from being made by the human.

#AiSlop #GenAI #LLM #Meta #Facebook

Boosted by glyph ("Glyph"):
grimalkina ("Cat Hicks") wrote:

I Am Not a Vending Machine for Trauma I am trying to take care of my family and future just like anybody

Boosted by glyph ("Glyph"):
grimalkina ("Cat Hicks") wrote:

A lot of people in tech want me to produce more work but get upset if I talk about what it costs me to produce work, I really hope eventually we can get a little bit better at accepting that social, cultural, psychological work is real work