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

The folks at Time Magazine asked me what tech innovation I think defins modern life today, and my answer is anchoring a list that includes contributions from Tim Cook, Tracy Chou, Gabrielle Zevin and Ray Kurtzweil, among others.

https://time.com/collection/our-america-250/2026/tech-innovations-that-define-america/

Boosted by isagalaev ("Ivan Sagalaev :flag_wbw:"):
MostlyHarmless@thecanadian.social wrote:

Attachments:

• video: 9d41f8500ab3b197.mp4

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

A few more words about my weekend project adding config editing to my tool, nfp.

https://softwaremaniacs.org/blog/2026/05/05/nfp-e/en/

aredridel@kolektiva.social ("Mx. Aria Stewart") wrote:

RE: https://social.coop/@cwebber/116522460096356366

This. I hope the college resists well. Ideally to the point of being like "That's nice dear" to the feds and managing to ignoring them.

Boosted by dysfun@treehouse.systems ("gaytabase"):
amy@types.pl ("Amélia Liao") wrote:

We're announcing Mikan: a proof assistant for cubical type theory, forked from the Agda codebase.

Note: you can also read this announcement as a Gist.

The Agda developers have recently proposed codifying their official stance on LLM-generated contributions: they are "concerned about the negative effects of large language models (LLMs) on many individuals, our society, and our planet", but refuse to take any concrete action to address their own contribution to these. They have judged the hypothetical future usefulness of the slop generators as outweighing the present, very real harm being caused by the AI industry.

We understand that, over its 20 years of Git history, Agda's implementation has evolved to cater to subsets of its user-base with very diverse, and often conflicting, needs. However, the attempts to bridge these divides (e.g. --without-K vs. --cubical-compatible) present a significant maintainership cost, and are often resented by both camps, since they present one camp with substantial performance costs, while offering the other camp no clear benefit, since code across the divide is written with very different formalisation sensibilities.

Other extensions to the type theory are kept despite known inconsistencies (sized types), or being impossible to adopt without complete vertical buy-in (cumulativity, erased cubical), or simply for backwards compatibility (--guarded/@lock). In the best cases, these features are championed by a single maintainer, and keeping them well-tested against the continuous adoption of new features is a struggle when very little code uses them.

Our plan is to focus on exactly one variant of the language ("full --cubical"), and to drop support for all the language features which are explicitly deprecated, inconsistent, or simply ill-understood in conjunction with this fragment. This will give us a solid base from which we can work to improve the experience of working on the Mikan codebase, to attack the existing correctness and usability issues with features like termination and positivity checking, and to pursue breaking improvements to the core type theory and its user interface.

Signed:

• Amélia Liao (@amy)
• Naïm Favier (@ncf)
• Reed Mullanix (@totbwf)

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
MarkHoltom@mastodonapp.uk ("Mark Holtom (aka Kingbeard)") wrote:

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

Or maybe he's always been this way, and I've just been projecting an illusion of intelligence on him?

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

I would appreciate it if everyone on the internet would stop talking about Richard Dawkins so that I don't have to see what an embarrassing gormless twit he has become. Thank you.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/05/05/oh-goddawkins-said-what-now/

Boosted by kornel ("Kornel"):
sheepfilms ("Dave") wrote:

Here's my no expense spared filming rig. Don't obsess over cameras, magic arms are the most fun filming kit you can buy. That and a tripod IMHO

Boosted by kornel ("Kornel"):
DXMacGuffin@metalhead.club ("Deus Ex MacGuffin :damnified:") wrote:

what? WHAT?!?!?

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

there was a time when "not writing everything from scratch" meant using libraries.

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

specifically "Use AI development tooling as your primary workflow - directing and evaluating agent-produced code, not writing everything from scratch"

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

good news: ex-coworker appeared out of the blue to sell me on a job

bad news: they want me to vibe code everything.

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

My terrible secret: I have been placing curses on inanimate objects. Today I lift the damnatio.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/05/05/the-curse-is-hereby-lifted/

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

hey look! that thing Google wants to standardise as a web platform API made the news!

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/may/05/canadian-ashley-macisaac-fiddler-musician-singer-songwriter-sues-google-ai-sex-offender-ntwnfb

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

Just realised that most pesticides are basically petrochemicals.

Fertiliser shortages, diesel shortages, pesticide shortages, herbicide shortages, and El Niño are going to make for a very rough few years for us all.

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

I mean, reasonable and I hope he wins

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/may/05/canadian-ashley-macisaac-fiddler-musician-singer-songwriter-sues-google-ai-sex-offender-ntwnfb

Boosted by dysfun@treehouse.systems ("gaytabase"):
gsuberland@chaos.social ("Graham Sutherland / Polynomial") wrote:

it's 5:55am and 55 seconds, on 5/5, and I'm wishing a happy 55th birthday to the 555 timer.

Boosted by ChrisWere@toot.wales ("Chris Were ⁂🐧🌱☕"):
greyduck@wellduck.me ("Karel P Kerezman") wrote:

@ami_angelwings Kylo Ren is a fascinating idea of a character and it's a damned shame that he was part of that weird, frustrating tug-of-war that the sequel trilogy was born from. Much as I'm on record as a middle-installment enjoyer, I don't think *either* creative lead really knew what to do with him. More's the pity.

Boosted by jwz:
heidilifeldman ("Heidi Li Feldman") wrote:

Remember: tonight’s order from the Roberts Court makes it almost impossible to reverse or stop the Governor of Louisiana from cancelling an ongoing election. Doesn’t get much more authoritarian than cancelling elections. But when done in service to white supremacist, patriarchal Republican Fascism - a palpably anti-democratic, authoritarian program - the Roberts Court is all for it. 15/

Boosted by jwz:
heidilifeldman ("Heidi Li Feldman") wrote:

Alito simply cannot stand that Jackson has spoken as his equal and professional peer and questioned his ethics, integrity, practice of the craft of adjudication. He’s set off, in a way that most women I know will recognize. 12/

Boosted by jwz:
heidilifeldman ("Heidi Li Feldman") wrote:

But Sam Alito just cannot handle a dissent from Brown that explains that he and the other Roberts Court judges who went along with him are nakedly using their privilege and authority to advantage the Republican Fascist Party and its white supremacist agenda. 7/

Boosted by jwz:
heidilifeldman ("Heidi Li Feldman") wrote:

All of this has happened on the shadow docket. So the Roberts Court has ok’d election cancellation without merits briefing, oral argument, etc.

This would be extraordinary and pernicious enough. But because Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented and pointed out how exceptional and dangerous the Court’s order is, Alito, joined by Gorsuch and Thomas, wrote an opinion basically calling her uppity. 4/

Boosted by jwz:
glyph ("Glyph") wrote:

@webframp it's so jarring at the end of every movie because there's just this scalding critique of their sclerotic fecklessness and their intentional resistance to obvious truths, and then the movie ends and it's like "yaaaay they wooooon". the text is at war with itself

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

it's unclear if he ever got that tea, but again that's a very strange thing to prioritise

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

how do you know you've got 'everything'? well for that you're going to need to fall back on your extensive domain experience in the sort of security sensitive code you're writing.

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

here is how you write a security critical library:

• carefully
• thinking through everything that could go wrong
• and mitigating it

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

RE: https://social.treehouse.systems/@mgorny/116520304537792349

i see we're on to vibecoding cryptography libraries. it's fine because it's rust, apparently 😬

glyph ("Glyph") wrote:

the jedi are such obvious doofuses and their entire religion is so ridiculously stupid and anti-human (you're not allowed to *love* anyone? what?) that the text seems constantly just about to complete the critique, and in TLJ they finally, almost, kinda realized that that's what the entire theme of the series is, Rey has the dramatic scene at the cave, an explicit subversion of Luke's experience on Dagobah. explicit rejection of the false Jedi religion. And then… bam. No more Star Wars movies

glyph ("Glyph") wrote:

as an erstwhile dabbler in taoism I found the whole series to be a sort of accidentally taoist parable. every character, even the "good guys", is constantly making themselves and their friends and family miserable and pathetic in search of self-actualization because both the jedi and the sith are constantly placing one side of the force above the other, seeking the obliteration of the other half and causing calamitous disharmony even when they "win"