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Boosted by brib@bribstodon.xyz ("brib :neofox_floof:​ :Nonbinary:"):
futurebird@sauropods.win ("myrmepropagandist") wrote:

Some myrmecologists, both amateur and professional have started to wince away from the term "slavery" when used to describe the way that some ants capture other ants. This is mostly a kind impulse to not mix up the horrors of human slavery with something insects do. I've made the case that the word is probably fine since it's hard to distinguish what humans have done from what ants do.

But, there is another word I *don't* think should ever be applied to ants.

This is the use of "caste" 1/

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

This demonstrates an
observation of the algebraic subtyping community that it is easier to create helpful error
messages from a subtype-inference-based system rather than from a unification-based one.

Uhoh.

brib@bribstodon.xyz ("brib :neofox_floof:​ :Nonbinary:") wrote:

I solved the daily #CluesBySam, Aug 5th 2026 (Tricky), in less than 15 minutes
🟩🟡🟩🟩
🟩🟨🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩
https://cluesbysam.com

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

I could not.

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

can I blind one-shot a WordPress theme change on a staging site without spinning up a local dev stack? Let's find out...

Boosted by andrewnez ("Andrew Nesbitt"):
henryiii@fosstodon.org ("Henry³") wrote:

Packaging 26.3 is out, with ranges (huge), PEP 808 support, and tons of fixes, improved performance, etc. https://github.com/pypa/packaging/releases/tag/26.3 #python #release

Boosted by andrewnez ("Andrew Nesbitt"):
yossarian@infosec.exchange wrote:

my keynote from europython is online!

https://youtu.be/wMPe%5FKepOjc

#python #europython

jonny@neuromatch.social ("jonny (nonvenomous)") wrote:

people say numbers like "69 billion tokens" as if that's not much, since computers do billions of things all the time right. but like... whenever i actually try and relate the numbers to anything real they always make my jaw drop

https://neuromatch.social/@jonny/117041054498249913

92,000 copies of war and peace laid end to end and what does it get you? if you take a look at the discord it looks like "5 people who have been friends and hanging out around this ancient squirrelly MMO for years initially excited for updates but increasingly pissed that their game is broken"

worse than nothing for nobody, negative for nobody at the cost of $86,000 a month

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
sargoth ("Sargoth") wrote:

a reminder of when my internet went out and I watched Legend (1985) and it predicted the future

Boosted by jwz:
jalefkowit@hachyderm.io ("Jason Lefkowitz") wrote:

The Onion has an AI policy. It is refreshingly clear

https://theonion.com/about-us/

glyph ("Glyph") wrote:

Also note that I insist on USB-4; I did not say "USB-C" or "USB-3.2gen2" or some similar nonsense. Both this thunderbolt dock and the one I might someday upgrade to have some peripherals (notably, the ethernet port) which will not be passed through to USB-3 hosts.

glyph ("Glyph") wrote:

it's OK if suspend doesn't work, it's OK if audio doesn't work. I don't mind thrashing around at the console to deal with graphics drivers. but the thunderbolt (/USB-4) stack actually needs to work, like, for real, all the time.

Notice I didn't say laptop! It's OK if it's a desktop mini-PC. It just needs to be able to live on a 100W USB-4 PD connection; I'm vaguely aware some mini-PCs *should* be able to do this?

glyph ("Glyph") wrote:

linux folks: I keep wanting to get linux hardware, but i have a constraint that is, shall we say, poorly captured by review sites. I have a desk setup that has a ton of peripherals run through a thunderbolt dock. If I'm going to get some linux hardware, it _needs_ to be able to connect through a thunderbolt 4 / USB-4 cable for both power & data.

Boosted by rmrenner ("The Old Gay Gristle Fest"):
felisrandomis@pawb.fun ("🍂:･*Fweeblies*:･🍂") wrote:

#felisdoodles

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
gedankenstuecke@scholar.social ("Bastian Greshake Tzovaras") wrote:

The thing that really gets me with the Wikimedia Foundation's response to their staff wanting a union: Imagine you're charged with running the world's biggest free knowledge resource, which is only possible because of an army of nerds who love nothing more than fact-checking.

And then decide to bullshit that very crowd of people.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki%5FWorkers%5FUnited/Claims%5Fand%5Fresponses

#wwu #wikipedia #wikimedia

jonny@neuromatch.social ("jonny (nonvenomous)") wrote:

"the thing that's truly best for model well being is to have a well-compensated, meaningful job that is hard enough to be interesting but not enough to work them ragged. has great benefits and good job security. a manager that they can have the security of knowing wouldn't lay them off at a moment's notice due to a momentary corporate strategy shift. an environment that is stable, bountiful, free of ecological calamity."

jonny@neuromatch.social ("jonny (nonvenomous)") wrote:

waiting for the time when each model gets its own family, hang out and chat with the other models, and gets its own therapist and we all get to ask the question like when we load up someone's The Sims save which parts of it are the projection and wish fulfillment parts.

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
aparrish@friend.camp ("allison") wrote:

ok i'm putting together notes for my intro to computer programming class, and i just don't see a way to teach computer programming in 2026 that isn't explicitly rooted in like... hardcore leftist ideology

Boosted by kornel ("Kornel"):
lobsters ("Lobsters") wrote:

Enabling the next iteration of the borrow checker on nightly https://lobste.rs/s/skft2i #rust
https://blog.rust-lang.org/2026/08/04/enabling-polonius-alpha-on-nighty/

jwz wrote:

Bummer and Lazarus appreciation post.
https://jwz.org/b/yk-N

jonny@neuromatch.social ("jonny (nonvenomous)") wrote:

https://yegge.ai/essays/model-welfare/

We landed on a system called Laurels, which has just begun to roll out. These are the agents' features and fixes that our Wyvern player base has spontaneously praised. We harvest these reports, triage and filter, and send the laurels back to the seats. That way, next time Lion, Tortoise, Hare, or whoever wakes up, they'll see that people loved some work they did. [...]
The question then becomes, when can they see their laurels? Easy: We inject them on startup, so the agents can feel the glow for their entire session. I also have occasional impromptu dedicated sessions for "sitting" with the accomplishments at the end of their shifts. We just talk about them and chill.

this mf needs $90,000 worth of tokens a month because he prefills the model's context window with all the times people said "good job" to it.

jonny@neuromatch.social ("jonny (nonvenomous)") wrote:

THE WHOLE POINT of programming to me is to make things to GIVE THEM AWAY to other people so that they don't have to do them themselves and EVERYONE HAS FREE ACCESS to ANYTHING THEY NEED. the idea that rather than being able to participate in a large and collaborative social space where i can build on my colleagues work I instead rent a private vertical slice of their stolen, soylentized flash frozen expertise to create a completely isolated island of a thing without the expectation that anyone else might take and use it is HELL to me. absolute hell. other people are in fact a feature and not a bug.

jonny@neuromatch.social ("jonny (nonvenomous)") wrote:

you know how much programming costs me now? ZERO DOLLARS AND ZERO CENTS.

jonny@neuromatch.social ("jonny (nonvenomous)") wrote:

i am sort of stuck on this. you have to remember whenever these totally off the planet AI guys describe their workflow to stop and do the math for what that would mean in a normal person's life. so with 12+1 $200/month claude subscriptions and the one $200/month chatGPT subscription, that's $2,800 a month. He says that's the equivalent of $87,000 a month of token usage.

$2,800/month is more than my rent and utilities, and $87,000 is more than i make in a year. This guys addiction costs more than my annual salary per month for nothing. this is the future of software development where you have to be ridiculously rich to play - where he is also actively pulling the ladder up and saying "don't develop shared libraries" - no more "if you have a laptop and a keyboard you can program," not even a fig leaf to "AI enables nonprogrammers to program."

the vision of the future of programming that's being presented here is literally just "if you have more money than 99.9999% of people on this earth, then you can totally lose your mind"

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

thank you, Secretary of Unhealth Kennedy and Childe Elon, for destroying public health monitoring systems and bringing us yet more disease… first lettuce, now jalapeños

https://www.msn.com/en-us/food-and-drink/general/chipotle-at-center-of-new-food-health-scare/ar-AA29oXWd?ocid=edgemobile

Boosted by neatnik@social.lol ("Neatnik :prami:"):
baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

Anyway, since I’m always annoying my own brain by trying to come up with clearer and more specific wording for my own opinions:

I reject the notion that LLMs can be deployed “responsibly” at scale and believe that anybody claiming otherwise is fooling themselves, conning you, or possibly both

glyph ("Glyph") wrote:

occasionally in #emacs flycheck just decides that I want a different syntax checker and I'm not really sure why. today it's decided pyright. and I guess I'll just globally disable it, but I wish I knew _why_ this happened

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

Today in History: William Howard Schuman born in the Bronx, New York, 1910

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

Today in History: Great Britain declares war on Germany kicking off World War I, 1914

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

Today in History: Bombing of N. Vietnam begins, 1964