Mastodon Feed: Posts

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

One weird Swedish philosopher has become prominent by stealing ideas that titillate rich people.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/07/27/all-of-elon-musks-heroes-are-frauds/

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
futurebird@sauropods.win ("myrmepropagandist") wrote:

A country will be less able to mobilize their people to make the dreaded nuclear bomb were they participating in a global economy that tied their success, the jobs of 100,000s of their citizens and every aspect of their economy to the success and continued stability of the rest of the world. An isolated and persecuted nation can rally its people to fight back.

Does anyone sincerely think the overblown "threat of nuclear Iran" was really worse under the now destroyed peace?

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
fleuron@mas.to ("Green Fleuron") wrote:

I really liked the patterns of this flower. It's probably a wild carrot. the thing in the middle is part of the flower, not an insect

#bloomscrolling

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

if you need an overview of the issues they are addressing, read this piece (and maybe the referenced article): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic%5Fparrot

https://retro.pizza/@uncoolmouse/116990273632287396

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
uncoolmouse@retro.pizza ("Uncool mouse") wrote:

@hex every time I see an article like this lately it makes me wanna shake the author and be like "yeah no shit! Us computer folk been talking about data bias way before ChatGPT was a thing. There have literally been protests about this at a few tech companies in the last decade.

And if you missed any of the influential books about algorithmic and data bias in the late 2010s, or thought LLMs were going to be magic, there was literally a review paper that predicted this stuff about LLMs that became subject of pretty major news even outside of tech circles because Google fired the women who tried to publish it.

FYI it also has racist, sexist, and transmisic implications in policing (and military!) applications that have been public for a while, just in case that was news to you.".

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
alex@dair-community.social ("Alex Hanna") wrote:

AI has no place in 911 calls. From Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000’s latest episode “State of Emergency”.

(with @emilymbender)

Attachments:

• video: Two people are speaking with each other on a vertically split screen, looking at a news article, also shown in the middle. Emily is a white cis woman with curly brown hair, wearing glasses, and a blue and black scarf with a dark red blouse. Alex is a brown trans woman with short curly black hair, wearing a white t-shirt and black headphones. Occasionally, her cat’s head pops up on-screen as she asks for pets.

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
thegreenpagesBC@mstdn.social ("Cindy") wrote:

“We are experiencing exactly what the climate models in the 1990s said we should experience now...

... more frequent, more severe #heatwaves, bigger temperature anomalies, more humidity, higher overnight temperatures... all part and parcel of the climate story" ~ #ClimateCentral org

The 3rd major #HeatDome in a month is set to hit southern & central U.S.. Temperatures of 95-105F (35-40C) are expected -- potentially reaching 120F (48C) in some areas.

#ClimateChange

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/25/scorching-us-heat-wave

Boosted by jakedel@mamot.fr ("S. Delafond"):
freexian@hachyderm.io ("Freexian :debian:") wrote:

48 #Debian LTS advisories were released in June fixing 231 CVEs for various packages. These include notable security updates for apache2, asterisk, chromium, firefox-esr, havaged, libinput, nginx, thunderbird, tomcat9 and many more.

In June, Debian 12 (#bookworm) was handed over to the LTS team and the relevant tools and documentation were updated. Debian LTS contributors also prepared updates for more recent releases, Debian 13 (#trixie) and Debian unstable.

Read the full report: https://www.freexian.com/blog/debian-lts-report-2026-06/?utm%5Fsource=mastodon&utm%5Fmedium=social

This work is funded by Freexian's Debian LTS offering. Become a sponsor of Debian LTS (https://www.freexian.com/lts/debian/?utm%5Fsource=mastodon&utm%5Fmedium=social) and enjoy the benefits (https://www.freexian.com/lts/debian/details/#benefits).

Debian 11 will reach the end of LTS period on August 31 and for continued security support after that, you can subscribe to Freexian's ELTS offer (https://www.freexian.com/lts/extended/?utm%5Fsource=mastodon&utm%5Fmedium=social).

#debianlts #freexian #asterisk #chromium #nginx #thunderbird

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
davidgerard@circumstances.run ("David Gerard") wrote:

Timnit Gebru puts Casey Newton back in his box (thread)

https://bsky.app/profile/timnitgebru.blacksky.app/post/3mrl4lukgrk2v

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

Our money, media, and activism is lined up behind 'no' on the referendum. And since that is a vote for the status quo (nobody's leaving the EEA) it's going to be the default position of many

Even though I'm voting 'yes' (our only other major ally is the US, so seeing what the EU can offer makes sense) I don't expect it to win. People seem convinced that even negotiating a potential entry would directly forfeit our independence, which is nonsense, but nonsense plays strong in modern politics

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

But what seems to unite Icelandic labour movement and our oligarchs is a belief that their position would be weaker in the EU

The oligarchs are right. They are small fry compared the EU's oligarchs and would be eaten alive in direct competition. Same applies to our banks and retailers. The EEA was already a body blow (currently Boozt is eating our retailer's lunch)

The left's antipathy stems from seeing the EU as a fundamentally capitalist project. (Not wrong, but also not that simple)

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

There’s also the fact that the EU seems to be deliberately pissing us off lately. They put tariffs on some of our metal exports, which we thought was illegal under the EEA. And the whole border entry fiasco has hit our tourism industry harder than we thought at first.

So, all in all, unless the EU goes on a charm offensive instead of their current “entitlement offensive” I expect the odds of “yes” winning to be just under 50%. Still a solid chance, but not the likeliest

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

The only reason this referendum is happening is because the left greens betrayed their base by collaborating with Iceland's main right wing party, which serves at the beck and call of our oligopolies, and left-wing voters subsequently united behind the social democrats specifically to keep the right out of power. The social democrats saw this as their last opportunity to push for EU membership

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

I see English-language media is covering the upcoming referendum in Iceland—“do you want to reopen talks to join the EU"—without much context. This is understandable as Icelanders generally deliberately withhold that context to manage Iceland's image

So...

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
levork@graphics.social ("Julian Fong") wrote:

Semi-annual blathering about AI:

I still don't use any AI code in my work, but I have to review more and more of it these days. One of the things bothering me about that these days is just how lacking in personality that code is.

RenderMan is a code base which is now over forty years old. It is a collection of idiosyncratic styles written by equally idiosyncratic people.

(1/10)

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
levork@graphics.social ("Julian Fong") wrote:

I think that's plenty unhinged ranting for now.

I'm sure someone years from now will point out that I wrote the most boring code, but man, did I write long commit logs, sometimes full of snark. Maybe that's the only artistic footprint I'll leave behind on a decades old code base. I hope at least it's an immediately recognizable footprint.

(11/10, oops)

Boosted by rmrenner ("The Old Gay Gristle Fest"):
moshboy wrote:

bad street brawler, screenshot, nes (1989) https://www.mobygames.com/game/291/bad-street-brawler/screenshots/nes/42375/

Boosted by brib@bribstodon.xyz ("brib :neofox_floof:​ :Nonbinary:"):
MastodonEngineering ("Mastodon Engineering") wrote:

We are planning to release new Mastodon security updates for versions 4.4, 4.5, 4.6 and nightly this Monday, Jul 27, at around 14:00 UTC.

It solves two major security issues.

We encourage server administrators to plan for an update in the hours following the release to ensure their instance is protected. These versions will not require database migrations.

#mastoadmin

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

If you’re looking for inspiring content to help you break free from materialism, I recommend The Minimalists’ website. There you’ll find podcasts, books, e-books and a full-length documentary.

It’s a far cry from the more radical #lowtech movement, but it could be a crucial step if you’re deeply trapped in materialism and suffer from compulsive shopping.

#theminimalists is the tag to follow on social networks

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
runasand ("Runa Sandvik") wrote:

While reading this Forbidden Stories report on Morocco's use of the Pegasus spyware, remember that Morocco in early 2023 organized an in-person hearing to "disprove" years of research by @AmnestyTech and @citizenlab. https://forbiddenstories.org/codename-morgan-a-look-back-at-moroccos-acquisition-of-pegasus-involving-israel-and-the-united-arab-emirates/

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

I'm back to Sublime Text and I'm not missing any "developer experience"

finally, peace

Boosted by ChrisWere@toot.wales ("Chris Were ⁂🐧🌱☕"):
Wen@mastodon.scot wrote:

Voting in the UK.

Rumour has it that Labour are keen to introduce compulsory voting, with an option of ‘none of the above’ and a £10 fine for non compliance. I know that Australia uses a similar system. What do UK voters think of it (please boost for coverage)

#Voting #Democracy #WouldBeNice #UKPol

Boosted by brib@bribstodon.xyz ("brib :neofox_floof:​ :Nonbinary:"):
Pepijn@mastodon.online wrote:

If you want a real informative map, with all data these satellites provide instead of LLM slop (like currentwildfires.com) there's the excellent NASA website (link to the Wildberries fire https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#d:24hrs;@30.521,59.873,13.908z) or a variety of ESA Copernicus offers, like this showing genuine informative accurate historical and current burn areas https://forest-fire.emergency.copernicus.eu/apps/effis.csv/?c=1046806.73,5255362.83&z=13.904401072235014&t=sentinel2&tiles=&forecastActive=false&sourceId=ecmwf&indexId=fdf.ecmwf007.fwi&forecastDate=2026-07-27&rdaFrom=2026-07-26&rdaTo=2026-07-27&rdaDateRange=today&fire=572362&layerInfoPoint&fdcPoint&fdcDate

But mostly: check actual relevant journalism ;-)

#Climatediary #climatechange #wildfires

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

IDK who needs to hear this, but you shouldn't buy promises of utopian futures with abundance and UBI from dudes who spend a considerable fraction of their time figuring out how not to pay their taxes.

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

go on then, I'll give this Monday thing a try

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

...and a jolly "up yours!" to Squarespace who make exporting original image and video assets impossible from blogs:

https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/206542377-Managing-and-reusing-images-and-videos#h%5F01JEVAYHK4PF3P2MKZHJXYCTR6

jwz wrote:

Wait, *which* one of these bottle blonde dirtbags is Igor the Carpathian?
https://jwz.org/b/yk98

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

@zachleat @cassidoo Apologies to the author in case it *isn't* mostly AI generated, but boy howdy, the tells...they're everywhere.

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

It's funny how you could (and @zachleat does) keep writing this post every year in various forms and it will never get old and never be wrong, and it's so easy to write that apparently someone slop'd up another instance of it:

https://tech-insider.org/astro-vs-nextjs-2026/

And it should go without mentioning that *any* SSG worth its salt is 0-JS by default (see: 11ty, Hugo, Jekyll, etc.).

/via @cassidoo

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

This is very cool:

https://www.aleksandrhovhannisyan.com/blog/local-code-embeds/