Mastodon Feed
Boosted by NfNitLoop ("Cody Casterline 🏳️🌈"):
pfriedma@pfedi.pfriedma.org wrote:
There’s a certain … cassandra-esque irony in people getting frustrated with LLMs not “doing what they tell them”, and are now, undestanding-by-fire why domain-specific formal languages were developed in the first place.
If you want to skip straight to the part where the computer does (mostly) exactly what you tell it to do, might I recommend a programming language.
Mastodon FeedBoosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
dan@discuss.systems ("Dan Ports") wrote:
I missed this news earlier, but legendary early OS and computer architecture researcher Jack Dennis died in March.
He was at MIT from 1949 -- before their first computer! -- until retirement and beyond, and did pioneering work on hardware support for time-sharing on the PDP-1 and on the memory and protection architecture of Multics.
Some of the many things he introduced include:
* segmented virtual memory
* capability-based security
* dataflow computation and architectures
* starting the SOSP conference
* probably being the first person to name a variable 'foo' (!)https://news.mit.edu/2026/jack-dennis-pioneering-developer-dataflow-models-of-computation-dies-0410
Mastodon Feedaredridel@kolektiva.social ("Mx. Aria Stewart") wrote:
Welp. Slop article from Open Culture about Dunning-Kruger, by an author whose site is a dead link. I hate how every niche media institution becomes a hall of mirrors reflecting their readers most banal interests. No idea if it was generated or written, but it doesn't matter since the relevant piece is the incentives: A media property, left to follow its metrics or the money, will turn sloppy. It's so cheap to churn out articles that will get likes and views from an audience with coherent demographics that it just becomes a little bubble of nothing interesting.
Mastodon FeedBoosted by glyph ("Glyph"):
cthos@mastodon.cthos.dev ("cthos 🐱") wrote:
@glyph But I'll also plug my book here: https://thearcanist.net/books/the-weight-of-a-torch/
Mastodon FeedDespite having the sense that I've read a thousand of these, finding solid examples of "writers saying AI is bad for writing" and "artists saying AI is bad for art" is hard? lots of them _saying_ it, but in the course of some other point, or weirdly hedging, or it's just some random reddit post and not a writer or artist anyone's heard of.
WGA settlement is one data point, but that's 2023, and easy to spin as "they're worried it's GOOD".
What are your go-to examples of this, if you have any?
Mastodon Feedagreeing with this is far more upsetting than any other bit of AI research that I have found and disagreed with https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/opinion/artificial-intelligence-ai-writing.html
Mastodon Feedchipotle@mstdn.social ("Watts Martin") wrote:
I migrated off 1Password last year when they raised their prices, and I continue to not regret it.
Mastodon Feedjsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:
in a Monk mood
https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/at-carnegie-hall/pl.u-l1esllJE3
Mastodon FeedRE: https://social.coop/@cwebber/117192411213952388
say it again, louder now: YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO KEEP UP
Mastodon FeedSo, that's what _not_ to do. But what *to* do, when you find out about something bad?
1. If you're _not_ using it yet, now you know, and you can avoid adopting it.
2. Make the signal legible to the corporation. If you're going to cancel your subscription, make sure that you tell them why. Simply stopping your subscription will read as regular churn to most companies and they will not think anything of it.
3. *If* you have time and energy, *prepare resources* to help others with switching.
Mastodon FeedSecond, and more importantly, finding a suitable alternative for yourself and organizing an actual boycott are massive costs *to you*. It's not free. Your own time, energy, and headspace is valuable. It's got to actually be _worth it_ to migrate your use to something else. That of your community is also valuable; it's even more important to not go off half-cocked insisting that everybody else ALSO immediately drop whatever product is implicated.
Mastodon FeedFirst, corporations do shitty things all the time. If you use, like, energy, or medicine, you're almost certainly giving money to a much worse corporation than whatever the latest tech outrage is. Just because it's *new*, just because it's *worth being aware of*, doesn't mean it should be the most important thing.
Mastodon FeedWhen someone (including me) shares a bad thing a corporation did, this really emphatically does NOT mean you need to immediately drop everything and boycott that corporation. Do not be a victim of availability heuristic.
Mastodon Feedpzmyers@freethought.online ("pzmyers 🕷") wrote:
OMG. I was feeling adventurous and tried some midwestern grocery store sushi.
What brain-damaged criminal monster made this slimy crap? It's like gelid styrofoam with a nauseating aftertaste. It's another war crime committed against Japan.
Mastodon FeedBoosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org ("Chris Trottier") wrote:
Some Enchanted Evening by Blue Öyster Cult.
Now THIS was a killer flea market find. $2. Into my hands it went.
Blue Öyster Cult is one of those bands that modern metalheads will swear up and down isn’t metal, which is funny because people spent most of the band’s existence calling them exactly that.
And if BÖC isn’t metal, then metal has been picking their pockets for decades: the occult imagery, the symbols, the weird lyrical stuff. Hell, even the damn umlaut.
I think the reason Blue Öyster Cult never got quite the same legendary status as Black Sabbath is that their heaviness works differently. Sabbath hits like iron. BÖC is lead. Heavy, poisonous, but soft enough to bend.
And hey, their hook-and-cross logo is actually the alchemical symbol for lead. The metaphor fits!
That softness of BÖC can start almost cozy. The song creeps along, everything feels comfortable, then the guitars start getting hotter and the whole thing swells until… GOD DAMN—this rocks.
Some Enchanted Evening is a live album built from their early material, including songs that predated their album releases, plus covers. And if anybody still doubts these guys can rock, the opening track is “R U Ready 2 Rock.”
Perfect title for a perfect opener.
They come out swinging hard enough to stand beside AC/DC or Led Zeppelin without looking skinny.
Then there’s “Kick Out the Jams.” Yep, the legendary MC5 song. And BÖC absolutely tears into it. No manners or polishing the furniture. They put everything into it and leave scorch marks.
“Godzilla” is, of course, a monster. And I don’t think even the most purist metalhead can hear that thing stomping out of the speakers and deny it’s metal. Hell, even by modern standards, it’s pretty damn metal.
But the prize is “Don’t Fear the Reaper.”
I already love the studio version, but hearing it live, it’s bigger, meaner, and heavier. The whole song keeps tightening until that guitar solo finally rips loose.
What a moment.
One warning: don’t play this album through cheap little speakers and then complain that it sounds thin. The mids are where the sound lives. Give it a proper HiFi system or put on decent headphones and let the guitars, bass, and drums actually have some body.
For $2, this thing is a beautiful snapshot of early metal before everybody started building fences around the genre.
Metalheads can argue about the label but I’m turning it up.
Mastodon FeedBoosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
evan@cosocial.ca ("Evan Prodromou 🇨🇦🇺🇸🇬🇷🇵🇸") wrote:
Tech professionals: would you work on software and hardware even if it weren't your job?
Mastodon Feedpzmyers@freethought.online ("pzmyers 🕷") wrote:
I've now seen two whole episodes of Primeval, and caught two massive, unforgiveable scientific gaffes. Is it worth continuing?
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/08/31/is-primeval-worth-watching/
Mastodon Feedjsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:
Mastodon Feedsoatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker") wrote:
Since the seasons are reversed in the Southern Hemisphere, I kinda feel like they should get their own analogue to April Fools Day in the Northern Hemisphere's autumn months.
Mastodon FeedBoosted by cwebber@social.coop ("Christine Lemmer-Webber"):
Alrecenk@peoplemaking.games wrote:
Chains are pretty hard for a #physicsengine , right? Today, I've been cleaning up issues to make this work. #WorldFabric
Mastodon FeedBoosted by cwebber@social.coop ("Christine Lemmer-Webber"):
djsundog@fedi.reclaim.technology ("DJ Sundog from the *new* toot-lab") wrote:
@cwebber not at this time but I am teachable
Mastodon Feedcwebber@social.coop ("Christine Lemmer-Webber") wrote:
can u make computer out of tin can
Mastodon FeedBoosted by cwebber@social.coop ("Christine Lemmer-Webber"):
civodul@toot.aquilenet.fr ("Ludovic Courtès") wrote:
The pretty amazing feat that comes with GNOME 49 in #Guix is the gnome-session replacement implemented as a layer above the 🐑 Shepherd:
https://gitlab.gnome.org/noe/gnome-session-shepherdKudos to @baleine for pulling it off!
It successfully disentangles this part of GNOME from systemd, and it’s a creative use of the Shepherd!
Mastodon FeedBoosted by cwebber@social.coop ("Christine Lemmer-Webber"):
acp@sdf.land ("Andrew Paulin") wrote:
@cwebber I expected to eventually become the Greybeard* That Knows How It All Worked if I live that long, I did not consider that it might happen before 40 and because of things our industry did to itself by choice
Mastodon FeedBoosted by andrewnez ("Andrew Nesbitt"):
sunnydeveloper ("Emma Irwin") wrote:
Policy is one engine through which OSS communities can influence model builders and the AI economy. Collectively stating and enforcing values has huge potential to shift the power balance.
CHAOSS AI Alignment Working Group has an early set of metrics for Open Source Communities. I decided to test the 'use policy specificity' metric against 39 different OSS project policies, and policy rationale - here's what I learned.
Mastodon Feedcwebber@social.coop ("Christine Lemmer-Webber") wrote:
I don't think you can put all else aside, but even just focusing on the maintainability of code itself...
Using these tools to uncover bugs, sure. Using them to generate code that nobody in your community fully understands... well...
And I know, you say, you'll be responsible about it.
But you won't be able to keep up, justifying keeping up with that level of review won't happen. So you'll slip. And you'll eventually embrace not knowing. And so is everyone else around you.
And so, decades of work are knotting up and the foundations are ensaring beneath our feet.
And we could have, collectively, organizationally, taken a stand, and we didn't.
Mastodon Feedtaking a moment to revisit the most popular thing I've ever done https://stackoverflow.com/a/25943045/13564
Mastodon Feedcwebber@social.coop ("Christine Lemmer-Webber") wrote:
I really feel like we had several prominent FOSS organizations fail us by not saying "hey hold on, don't use generative AI in FOSS projects, we're not sure what the legal, community, environmental implications of this are but there are serious problems and we have a history of taking a stand" and I worry that maybe we lost our moment to be principled, except in niche spaces, and the walls are closing in
And... I'm really sad about it. I think we're underestimating the amount of damage that's happening. :\
Mastodon FeedBoosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
Unixbigot@aus.social ("Kit Bashir") wrote:
“*YOU* Are the Chosen One?!”
“Hahaha no.”
“I thou—“
“I’m just *a* chosen girl. There’s hundreds of us, you know. Big planet; takes a lot of saving”
“Where’s your enchanted sword, then?”
“Melted it”
“You *what*!”
“Swords are flashy, but impractical. So I made an enchanted multitool”
“You are shitting me!”
“And these enchanted screwdrivers. Plus all the other tools in the go bag. Sword goes a long way once you realise you can just braze an enchanted tip onto a regular tool”
“And now you save people by the roadside?”
“Yep. Hey pass me the enchanted multimeter from the left side pocket, will ya”
Mastodon Feeddysfun@treehouse.systems ("gaytabase") wrote:
the equivalent of hundreds of horsepower
hundreds of horses?