Entry: 2026-06-25 17:46:57.19618+02 Happiness For Everyone Through ASI by Dan Lyke comments 0
Softbank Group 2026 Shareholder's Meeting slides have the most unhinged "AI" generated "Golden Goose" slides. Presentation on Internet Archive.
Dev @dev@discuss.systems, MeFi thread.
This is leading to creativity. Jef Poskanzer @jef@mastodon.social
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “71 shiny eggs of gold
Stand in the desert... near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, an exhausted goose lies, whose frown,
and broken-down golden egg factory,
Tell that its investors did not value goose."
phooky suggests "Entitled Goose Game" (ref).
SnoopJ @SnoopJ@hachyderm.ioM.a<
ATTN #GooseValue posters:
There is a recording of Masayoshi SON presenting this slide deck, via a translator.
in quote tooting https://youtu.be/DtM0Cjb0dEU?t=3407
[ related topics: Games Journalism and Media Net Culture Artificial Intelligence Real Estate ]
Entry: 2026-06-24 18:34:14.96028+02 NYT's evolving coverage of trans people by Dan Lyke comments 0
The Dissident: How The New York Times Changed Its Coverage of Trans People
Via.
[ related topics: Invention and Design Current Events Journalism and Media New York ]
Entry: 2026-06-22 19:07:09.807878+02 Getting up to change the music by Dan Lyke comments 0
When I was in my late teens, or perhaps very early 20s, there was a used book store along Hixson Pike in Chattanooga, and I read and read and read, trying to catch up with all of the culture I'd felt like I missed. One of those was B.F. Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity. At the time I was in my Objectivist phase, so when I got to the last page, and read:
A scientific view of man offers exciting possibilities. We have not yet seen what man can make of man.
I hated it. The notion that we not only could, but should as society engineer the future of people felt horrendously dystopian.
But years passed, I moved across the country, and then a friend came back from Burning Man with a baggy of 'shrooms left over, and offered them to me. I was, at the time, an incredible control freak, so I set up the environment for the trip carefully, lighting, visible art, picked a series of CDs for the 5 CD changer(!) to carefully control the mood, made sure there was sufficient water and whatnot available, and settled in for the trip.
The colored fringes along the shadows were amazing, the joy in the details of the room made me conscious of elements I'd never taken time to observe, and the CD player switched over to Marcus Robert's album Alone With Three Giants. I was overcome with this immense sense of lethargy. My trip partner and I talked about how we had no energy, how sitting there was like swimming in molasses, and then I realized: I could get up and change the music.
I realize that, as life changing epiphanies go, "I can get up and change the music" doesn't sound earth-shaking, but it's a moment that sticks with me. It is also not just "I can get up and change the music", it's "I need to be actively monitoring and guiding what I expose myself to", so that I know when to get up and change the music.
Relatedly, A phrase from S.L.A. Marshall's Men Against Fire sticks with me: "more than life itself, we value the approval of our peers".
It's easy to dismiss statements like this: "I don't care what anyone thinks, I'm my own person." And, yes, I know that Marshall's history and scholarship is problematic. However, that realization that I could be influenced to destroy myself based on the approval of those around me made me conscious that I should work to surround myself with good people. Perhaps not conscious enough, but, heck, I'll be second-guessing decisions for the rest of my life.
A few years ago, as Twitter/X was going completely to hell, I got on to the Fediverse. Beyond the ability to just show posts from the people you follow in reverse chronological order, Mastodon has the ability to filter out words, and put words behind content warnings, so I created the obvious filter sets, "Democrats", "Republicans", etc (One of those filters now has "ICE", and I'm amused at how infrequently it catches "ice cream" or discussions of winter weather).
It was amazing how my sense of well-being improved when I had to consciously say "okay, I'm going to have to click to expose myself to outrage-bait".
To have the control to get up and change the music.
And then this past weekend, I listened the Game Studies Study Buddies episode on Natasha Dow Schüll's Addiction By Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas. I'm... not sure that my mental health can take actually reading the book... but...
From Duncan J. Watts' book Everything Is Obvious: Once You Know The Answer through modern dynamic/context pricing, to all of the comparisons with LLMs and slot machines (previously 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and bonus observation about NYT journalism), it's obvious that we have automated the exploit of human perceptions and behavior, and are doing so in a way that's going to be building on itself, in many cases with minimal human intervention.
We have become the cogs. We are seeing what machines can do with man.
And with the social pressures to use LLMs in coding, and the flood of ads, I am losing control of the music. I am suddenly conscious that I am in the club and it's too loud.
Anyway, I have removed the Meta apps from my phone, which means it's difficult to send and receive Facebook Messenger messages, and though I mean to check back in there occasionally because of my square dancing community and a few other folks I want to keep up with, if you're interested in interacting with me on social media we should find other venues. Independent venues, in which the content isn't filtered and rearranged to maximize "engagement".
And I'm looking for career directions which involve interacting with LLMs less. At least until this bubble goes pop.
Now to tune some ad blocking.
[ related topics: Burning Man Interactive Drama Politics Objectivism Books Music Privacy Games Health Nature and environment Invention and Design Software Engineering History Sociology Journalism and Media Work, productivity and environment Art & Culture Civil Liberties California Culture Chattanooga Travel Pyrotechnics Graphic Design Community Gambling Economics Archival Government ]
Entry: 2026-06-18 18:50:02.691923+02 Vacancy Project has some media coverage by Dan Lyke comments 0
The Vacancy Project has some media coverage in Petaluma Voice, including mention of next week's meeting! https://www.petalumavoice.org/fenced-lots-and-empty-storefronts/
[ related topics: Journalism and Media ]
Entry: 2026-06-18 18:39:44.100551+02 Net effect of age restrictions by Dan Lyke comments 0
Naomi Alderman @naomialderman.bsky.social
My main worry is that we’re banning social media for kids but not AI. So you can’t speak to real people online anymore, kids, but you sure can talk to your fake artificial friend who weirdly loves to talk about taking your own life!
[ related topics: Children and growing up Journalism and Media Artificial Intelligence ]
Entry: 2026-06-16 18:11:32.628716+02 Peter Thiel's Dialog service leaks member list by Dan Lyke comments 0
maia arson crimew 🏴 @crimew.gay
SCOOP: So remember Dialog, Peter Thiel's private society that doesn't have a public website and no public list of members?
I (along with a number of other journalists) have just been tipped off that embedded in the code of their closed off website there IS what seems to be a list of some members.
Via Chest er Christmas @imemptyplshalp.bsky.social
Oh of fucking course Larry Summers, Sam Harris, and Stephen Pinker are on here. The unholy Trinity of people considered smart despite being wrong about literally everything they've ever written.
But, yeah, it's got strong overlap with the Epstein files list, and has all the hallmarks of being a vibe-coded React thing. Of course the list of names hardcoded in source could be a red herring of some sort...
Edit: AmyFou 🕊️ @amyfou@lingo.lol, and Random Geek @randomgeek@masto.hackers.town.
[ related topics: Business Sexual Culture New Economy Robotics Journalism and Media Embedded Devices ]
Entry: 2026-06-16 18:05:15.147275+02 Commodore Callback by Dan Lyke comments 0
Commodore Callback flip phone: Welcome to the Internot. A Sailfish based flip-phone that doesn't run social media apps, by design.
Via so many places, but 1, 2, 3, 4.
[ related topics: Journalism and Media Graphic Design ]
Entry: 2026-06-15 15:20:22.577491+02 Australia sanctions AmEx by Dan Lyke comments 0
Australian Privacy Commissioner orders American Express Australia Limited to compensate complainant following interference in privacy. It takes a couple of clicks to get to the actual report, but it's summarized by Dissent Doe :cupofcoffee: @PogoWasRight@infosec.exchange (who also links to a paywalled news report):
American Express ordered to fix security gaps after a customer complained about improper employee access.
It seems that a customer reported a privacy concern and fought AmEx for 4 years to get them to implement stronger access controls or monitoring of employee access to data.
Now, the AU govt has ordered AmEx to rectify security flaws in five of its data systems to guard against “insider threats” and to restrict employee access to specific customer information to protect vulnerable and high-profile customers.
From reading through the report, this was a stalking/domestic abuse violation, and AmEx didn't even have access logging, and lacked policy for any sort of reaction to stalking.
[ related topics: Privacy Current Events Journalism and Media Work, productivity and environment ]
Entry: 2026-06-10 17:16:23.642453+02 Flock abuse by Dan Lyke comments 0
404 Media: Cops Keep Getting Arrested for Using Flock to Stalk People. A good rundown of Flock license plate reader tracking abuse.
Via.
[ related topics: Journalism and Media Law Enforcement ]
Entry: 2026-06-04 17:38:23.214364+02 A/B tested for compulsion by Dan Lyke comments 0
Thomas Fuchs @thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io
Steve Jobs: “Computers are a bicycle for your mind.”
Satya Nadella: “Computers are heroin for your mind.”
Futurism: In Leaked Document, Microsoft Plots How to Get People “Addicted” to Its AI.
[ related topics: Apple Computer Humor Microsoft Invention and Design moron Journalism and Media Artificial Intelligence Pedal Power Bicycling ]
Entry: 2026-06-01 20:10:17.600296+02 steal Meta accounts via the AI support agent by Dan Lyke comments 0
Give tools to your AI support bots. What could go wrong? 404 Media: Hackers Simply Asked Meta AI to Give Them Access to High-Profile Instagram Accounts. It Worked. (Among other places, via Tara Calishain).
Related, and I missed the source, but I saw a reference to one of the code assistant chatbots writing to root-owned files by using the fact that they were in the "docker" group, and that they could create external mounts to docker containers, and then running the process overwriting the files as root inside the container.
I didn't track down the full source, and I don't pretend to understand Docker configs, but it sure seems like giving these things access to tools is fraught...
[ related topics: Writing Journalism and Media Sports Artificial Intelligence Woodworking ]
Entry: 2026-05-27 17:32:05.112032+02 It's not progress, and we can stop it by Dan Lyke comments 0
Karen Hao's Empire of AI – Inside the Reckless Race for Total Domination has been sitting on a table on my living room since I finished it, trying to figure out where it should go next.
Lots of good stuff in this interview: The Nerve: ‘It’s not progress, and we can stop it’: journalist Karen Hao on big tech, protest and the preventable AI future.
[ related topics: Books Erotic History Current Events Journalism and Media Civil Liberties Artificial Intelligence Furniture ]
Entry: 2026-05-27 17:29:50.056349+02 Social media as bad as smoking by Dan Lyke comments 0
funnymonkey @funnymonkey@freeradical.zone
The thing EVERY conversation about social media bans for youth misses -- completely and absolutely: social media is bad for adults too.
Algorithmically driven social media is a smokescreen for data collection and surveillance -- for adtech and other uses.
It's bad for all ages.
BBC: Social media as bad for young people as smoking, top doctors say
The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges says doctors should routinely check on screen time and social media use when seeing younger patients.
[ related topics: Drugs Current Events Journalism and Media Monty Python Education ]
Entry: 2026-05-27 17:23:14.474499+02 Brooke Vibber leaving Wikimedia by Dan Lyke comments 0
The lack of tech industry news coverage of Brooke Vibber leaving the Wikimedia Foundation (Fediverse post of screencap from the wikitech-l mailing list) shows how we don't really have news for this field any more.
(The general sentiment is that this is fallout from union busting as the new CEO for the Wikimedia Foundation brings experience and culture from J.P. Morgan and Lehman Brothers into the non-profit field.)
[ related topics: Invention and Design Sociology Current Events Journalism and Media Television California Culture ]
Entry: 2026-05-27 00:18:41.689236+02 Don’t Call It Kids’ Safety if Kids Aren’t Safe by Dan Lyke comments 0
OAKLAND — California Attorney General Rob Bonta today joined a bipartisan coalition of 44 attorneys general in sending a letter to Congress opposing the passage of the Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act (KIDS Act). The KIDS Act would broadly preempt state laws governing major online safety and technology issues — including online obscenity and regulation of artificial intelligence chatbots — while replacing them with ineffective federal standards. The letter argues that passage of the KIDS Act would threaten the progress states across the country have made in addressing the harms social media platforms pose to children, both by suing some of these platforms for acting illegally and by enacting landmark legislation designed to address the same harms targeted by the KIDS Act.
(Bonus for cool use of the character!)
[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Politics Sexual Culture Bay Area Law Current Events Journalism and Media California Culture Net Culture Artificial Intelligence Government ]
Entry: 2026-05-19 23:38:57.035302+02 AI is eating itself by Dan Lyke comments 3
Jason Kottke has a whole big list of current directions in AI-ness, including excerpts from New York Times: Book on Truth in the Age of A.I. Contains Quotes Made Up by A.I. and TechCrunch: Google Search as you know it is over and more...
[ related topics: Quotes Books Invention and Design Journalism and Media Artificial Intelligence New York ]
Entry: 2026-05-19 01:05:13.453949+02 Yeah, Telegram is readable by the FSB by Dan Lyke comments 0
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 @rysiek@mstdn.social
Independent audit confirms my analysis of Telegram's protocol from last year: https://istories.media/en/stor...endent-review-confirms-critical- telegram-vulnerability/
The audit was ordered by one of the main characters of IStories' investigation into Telegram's network infrastructure, man called Vedeneev. My analysis was done in connection with that journalistic investigation.
Presumably, Vedeneev ordered the audit in order to discredit my analysis and Istories' investigation. Instead, the report confirms my findings.
and Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 @rysiek@mstdn.social
You can find my original analysis here:
https://rys.io/en/179.htmltl;dr: for every device, Telegram generates a long-term identifier, auth_key_id, that is then prepended *cleartext* (or at best, trivially obfuscated) to every encrypted packet; this allows anyone with sufficient visibility into global Telegram traffic to spy on its users.
IStories reporting from last year.
[ related topics: broadband Journalism and Media Cryptography ]
Entry: 2026-05-18 18:35:46.061826+02 locking kids in boxes by Dan Lyke comments 0
Over the years I've read with horror the various things that state schools have done to native and indigenous children and families, but often assuaged that sense with the notion that this was all in the past, or in Canada, historical harms, and surely we were more civilized now...
NPR: Native kids with disabilities were held in wooden boxes. Sweeping reforms are coming
FORT COVINGTON, N.Y. — Rumors spread on social media over the winter: School kids with disabilities in the Salmon River Central School District, including Akwesasne Mohawk children, were being confined by special education teachers in wooden boxes. Sarah Konwahahawi Herne was devastated.
[ related topics: Children and growing up History Journalism and Media Education ]
Entry: 2026-05-18 18:32:11.401235+02 arXive clamps down on slop papers by Dan Lyke comments 0
Large language models (LLMs) are known to generate plausible but false information across a wide range of contexts, yet the real-world magnitude and consequences of this hallucination problem remain poorly understood. Here we leverage a uniquely verifiable object - scientific citations - to audit 111 million references across 2.5 million papers in arXiv, bioRxiv, SSRN, and PubMed Central. We find a sharp rise in non- existent references following widespread LLM adoption, with a conservative estimate of 146,932 hallucinated citations in 2025 alone. These errors are diffusely embedded across many papers but especially pronounced in fields with rapid AI uptake, in manuscripts with linguistic signatures of AI-assisted writing, and among small and early-career author teams. At the same time, hallucinated references disproportionately assign credit to already prominent and male scholars, suggesting that LLM-generated errors may reinforce existing inequities in scientific recognition. Preprint moderation and journal publication processes capture only a fraction of these errors, suggesting that the spread of hallucinated content has outpaced existing safeguards. Together, these findings demonstrate that LLM hallucinations are infiltrating knowledge production at scale, threatening both the reliability and equity of future scientific discovery as human and AI systems draw on the existing literature.
Which brings us to: Fuck yeah! Tech Crunch: Research repository ArXiv will ban authors for a year if they let AI do all the work.
404 Media: ArXiv to Ban Researchers for a Year if They Submit AI Slop
One of the amazing things about this is the number of people who are whining that it's unfair that they've actually read the work they're citing, or are creating other hypotheticals. This doofucs on the Fediverse is, for instance, willing to lay the blame on his co-authors in order to take the credit.
It gets worse if you head over to X/Twitter, which... I'm not gonna link to individually, you can find your own list off of Thomas G. Dietterich @tdietterich's announcement of the policy there, but honestly, people if these are the arguments y'all are making in good faith, academia is irretrievably broken.
Which I've long contented anyway, but... damn...
[ related topics: Interactive Drama Robotics Invention and Design Theater & Plays Writing Journalism and Media Work, productivity and environment Embedded Devices Artificial Intelligence Model Building ]
Entry: 2026-05-12 18:55:03.183427+02 Back in the early naughts I had an by Dan Lyke comments 2
Back in the early naughts I had an elderly friend who hung out at the same coffee shop as me. Journalist with many cool experiences.
He became convinced that he'd finally figured out a mechanism for betting on horses.
This is also a post about conversations with people on how they use LLMs.
[ related topics: Journalism and Media ]
Entry: 2026-05-11 21:20:14.496017+02 Wrong audience by Dan Lyke comments 0
The Independent @Independent@flipboard.com
Commencement speaker shocked by graduating class’s visceral reaction to AI
this graduation speech moment is notable, and her amazed shock at having failed to read the room feels instructive.
when you’re inside the bubble, you think everybody else is. but everybody isn’t.
Jed Brown @jedbrown@hachyderm.io
It is truly heartwarming to watch the pro-oligarch/pro-AI bubble slam into the cold reality of an auditorium full of students booing their commencement keynote.
The schadenfreude at this bootlicker stammering is surpassed only by the sheer joy when the camera pans to the students.
Every university administrator needs to watch this clip of the University of Central Florida commencement speaker Gloria Caulfield.
Reddit thread, including Anto-bisbi31's comment
I was part of the class graduating. Mind you this happened during the ARTS AND HUMANITIES - School of communication and MEDIA ceremony. So majors like game design, film, and the arts in general, this majors feel a treat to find jobs due to AI, and we are taught to deal with this huge human disconnection, and how beneficial yet damaging it can become in our topics of study. It was a very out of touch and controversial topic to speak about. And let me also add that she started the speech talking about Jeff bezos and praising him.
[ related topics: Children and growing up Photography Games Movies Journalism and Media Graphic Design Education Douglas Adams Artificial Intelligence ]
Entry: 2026-05-05 18:48:21.001488+02 Critiquing Ghorayshi by Dan Lyke comments 0
With the Pulitzer Prize nomination of Azeen Ghorayshi and Austin Mitchell of The New York Times, a lot of people are pointing out how horrible the reporting was. A good look in Assigned Media: “You Betrayed Us, Azeen”
A story on the allegations of former St. Louis gender clinic staffer Jamie Reed left parents who spoke with NYT reporter Azeen Ghorayshi crushed.
[ related topics: Invention and Design Current Events Journalism and Media New York ]
Entry: 2026-05-05 17:25:16.603256+02 hooked on guessing by Dan Lyke comments 0
Good breakdown of "whole word" and phonics method vs "three-cuing" and "Meaning/Sentence/Visual" (MSV) and "whole language" method, and how a predictive/contextual approach to teaching reading may have set us up for the whole "LLMs are so smart" current situation.
[ related topics: Children and growing up Journalism and Media ]
Entry: 2026-05-04 22:27:53.706668+02 Gone. All my history. by Dan Lyke comments 0
Coyote Media: How Did An AI-Generated Mural Wind Up in This Vallejo Alley? Even the sign printer who did the vinyl got caught up in the fiasco:
"I wish I could,” he said. “But two months ago I listened to AI when it was instructing me on changing out my email server. It spoke to me so reassuringly, and then gave me a command that I followed, that deleted all my old emails from forever ago. Gone. All my history."
[ related topics: Journalism and Media Artificial Intelligence ]
Entry: 2026-05-01 19:27:45.044886+02 The UK kids are alright by Dan Lyke comments 0
Some children are drawing on fake moustaches to bypass online age checks, report finds
A third of children in the UK have bypassed age verification gates, research from Internet Matters suggests
Internet Matters Online Safety Act Report May 2026 (PDF):
Mum of boy, 12 "I did catch my son using an eyebrow pencil to draw a moustache on his face, and it verified him as 15 years old."
[ related topics: Children and growing up moron Current Events Journalism and Media Net Culture ]
Entry: 2026-04-29 20:28:10.452998+02 KDE “30 for 30” challenge by Dan Lyke comments 0
KDE contributor Farid inspired us to take on the “30 for 30” challenge: for our 30th birthday, we are asking you to do something to help the environment and make the planet a nicer place to live in. Farid is planting 30 trees and we want you to come up with something similar.
Film you and your crew carrying out your effort and we will promote your project on social media.
Here are some more ideas:
- Rescue 30 computers (or more!) from ending up in a landfill
- Upcycle 30 phones with a free mobile operating system
- Clean up 30 hectares of woodland
- Convert 30 people to a free operating system
- Take 30 techbros to court so they stop building AI datacenters
Via.
[ related topics: Nature and environment Theater & Plays Space & Astronomy Journalism and Media Artificial Intelligence Gardening ]
Entry: 2026-04-27 18:01:57.273168+02 That could have been a child by Dan Lyke comments 0
Fox 35: VIDEO: Truck runs over 250K Lamborghini in parking lot
By way of ReindeR Rustema @rrustema020@mastodon.nl
@notjustbikes about SUVs that are too dangerous.
In Orlando a lady in a huge monster truck drove her machine on top of a Lamborghini sports car in the parking lot of Crunch Fitness. Because she couldn't see the car.
Not fake, confirmed by journalists. https://www.nu.nl/325970/video...peperdure-lamborghini-in-vs.html
Another angle: https://youtu.be/mR1ojA5tlSs?si=zT_HHZ
[ related topics: Journalism and Media Automobiles Machinery Fashion Video ]
Entry: 2026-04-16 16:59:53.945066+02 AI Uber budget by Dan Lyke comments 0
AI Media House: Uber Let AI Write the Code. It Blew the Budget
Uber exhausted its annual budget for AI coding tools within the first months of 2026 as internal adoption scaled faster than expected, according to a report by The Information.
[ related topics: Software Engineering Journalism and Media Television Artificial Intelligence Real Estate ]
Entry: 2026-04-08 20:43:14.051932+02 The New York Times has had its moments by Dan Lyke comments 0
"The New York Times has had its moments of good journalism, but…"
Thinking a lot about slot machine analogies recently.
[ related topics: Invention and Design Journalism and Media New York Gambling ]
Entry: 2026-04-06 17:59:05.677405+02 Artemis IT disasters by Dan Lyke comments 0
You've probably seen the stuff from the Artemis II mission about Bluetooth pairing issues and Microsoft Outlook ... well ... there's no way to put those words together without some sort of "clusterfuck" semantics. Anyway, Becca Royal- Gordon @beccadax@soincredibly.gay
Hot take: The Artemis livestream is a damning indictment of modern computing devices. It seems like half the radio chatter is troubleshooting email delivery problems, confusing user interfaces, or devices not booting or connecting. Literal astronauts with years of training can’t make our stuff work.
wendy cloudberry @wendycloudberry.com
Pine would never
Numerous social media folks are also making "Thunderbird" comments... I think this is a reminder that it's time for me to get back on Claws.
[ related topics: Humor Wireless Sexual Culture Microsoft moron Journalism and Media Work, productivity and environment ]
Entry: 2026-04-03 18:22:07.572069+02 Nota plagiarism by Dan Lyke comments 0
Because better solutions for local (and, yes, national and international) news are on my radar: An AI company set out to fix news deserts. Instead, it copied local journalists’ work
Nota shut down its news sites after Axios and Poynter found dozens of plagiarized quotes, phrases and photos
I mean, it's an AI company, so of course it didn't actuall "set out to fix news deserts", it set out to exploit a human desire to fix news deserts, and of course it fucked over the actual reporters.
[ related topics: Quotes Photography Ethics Current Events Journalism and Media Work, productivity and environment Artificial Intelligence ]
Entry: 2026-03-24 16:17:04.195361+01 make puritanism cringe by Dan Lyke comments 0
emily pathetic 🫀 🪚 @incision.site
we support the writer's barely disguised fetish in a climate where adults on social media are mortified at the idea of consuming something that made someone horny
Alicia Pendragon @aliciapendragon.bsky.social
Puritanism is cringe and fascistic.
[ related topics: Writing Journalism and Media Global Warming ]
Entry: 2026-03-23 17:11:36.252207+01 Five Excuses for Academic Misconduct by Dan Lyke comments 0
Dr Dorothea Baur: Hallucinated References: Five Excuses for Academic Misconduct
This discussion was revealing – not because it changed my position, but because it exposes fundamental patterns in the AI debate.
Defensive deflection, TINA rhetoric, resignation, victim mentality, nihilism. These aren’t fringe phenomena, but precisely the arguments we must contend with, again and again, whenever we talk about AI.
Via.
[ related topics: Journalism and Media Community Artificial Intelligence ]
Entry: 2026-03-20 17:23:53.344997+01 a woman math major at the University of Chicago circa 2004 by Dan Lyke comments 0
Megan Wachspress: A Fuller Statement About My Bluesky Posts
The fuller version of Megan Wachspress @meganwachspress.bsky.social
If he's going to get a national profile on the strength of a younger woman's campaign, I'm going to come out and say it: during his short-lived tenure as a math professor, Biss had an inappropriate romantic relationship with one of his undergraduate students. I was that student.
about NPR: A race for a safe blue seat tests how far left Democrats want new leaders to go that includes coverage of Evanston Illinois mayor Daniel Biss in the run for the state's 9th congressional district.
[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Invention and Design Bay Area Journalism and Media Mathematics ]
Entry: 2026-03-20 17:09:24.57107+01 Turn off those notifications by Dan Lyke comments 0
New psychology research reveals the cognitive cost of smartphone notifications.
The researchers found that a single notification slowed down a participant’s cognitive processing for approximately seven seconds. The delay happened across all groups but was most pronounced in the personal-notification group. This pattern suggests that distraction is driven by a combination of the visual pop-up, learned associations with the phone, and the personal meaning of the alert.
[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Invention and Design Journalism and Media ]
Entry: 2026-03-20 00:46:58.928435+01 Journalist gotten by trusting LLMs by Dan Lyke comments 0
In twenty fucking twenty six, someone is "trusting [LLMs] were accurate"? Mediahaus (publisher of the Irish Independent and Sunday Independent) suspends senior journalist for using fabricated quotes produced by AI
Peter Vandermeersch said he relied on summaries produced by LLMs, ‘trusting they were accurate’.
But it's clear that he still doesn't get it. His mea culpa on Substack:
Even I—with all my years of experience and knowledge—fell into the trap of hallucinations. I summarised reports using AI tools and worked from those summaries, trusting they were accurate. In doing so, I wrongly put words into people’s mouths, when I should have presented them as paraphrases. In some cases, it reflected my interpretation of their words. That was not just careless—it was wrong.
Emphasis is mine, because, no, even if the LLM tells you it's a paraphrase, we know damned well that LLMs do not summarize, at best they elide.
Via.
[ related topics: Quotes Interactive Drama Journalism and Media Artificial Intelligence ]
Entry: 2026-03-11 20:16:58.23136+01 Let's get together and sing! by Dan Lyke comments 0
We've been singing with various local community song circle groups for a while, Marv Zauderer's group down in Marin, Janice Hardy's group here in Petaluma with Janice Hardy (I've been collecting those songs here).
I mentioned that Marv's hosting Riomas was super powerful, and we came home and immediately pre-ordered Gather Your Resilience: Medicine for Liberation by Riomas.
We've seen this movement blossom with the media coverage of the singing resistance in Minneapolis, there's gonna be a lot of song at the next No Kings rally, and seems like in a lot of other places.
Anyway, as awesome as it is to have all of this modern music flowing through song leaders, it's useful to keep track of the history: Elaine Kolb's 1981 Let's Get Together has been published, with her agreement, on Archive.org.
[ related topics: Music Bay Area Journalism and Media Community Archival ]
Entry: 2026-03-11 17:19:19.775372+01 Grammarly co-opting reputation by Dan Lyke comments 0
Grammarly introduced "Expert Review", in which they co-opted the good names of prominent people as editorial styles:
Note: References to experts in Expert Review are for informational purposes only and do not indicate any affiliation with Grammarly or endorsement by those individuals or entities.
Leading to many of those experts saying "eeew, gross".
Casey Newton: Grammarly turned me into an AI editor against my will and I hate it (Via).
Ingrid Burrington @lifewinning.com
A little offended Grammarly didn't make a sloppelganger of me
jennifer uncoolidge @histoftech.bsky.social
So apparently grammarly stole my fuckin identity
Laura Hazard Owen at Nieman Lab: A lot of journalism folks are offering editing advice as Grammarly’s AI “experts” (Via)
Maureen Ryan: An open letter to Grammarly and other plagiarists, thieves and slop merchants (Via Chuck Wendig)
Strongly encourage all academics, novelists, reporters, bloggers, whatever to just email this account and state that you want to opt out of this idiocy.
Overload them with emails and make them regret they ever tried this shit.
Addendum: PRF Law: Class Action Alleges That Grammarly Misappropriated the Names of Journalists and Authors Through its “Expert Review” That Lets Users Get Feedback on Writing From Experts. Go get 'em, Peter Romer-Friedman!
[ related topics: Current Events Journalism and Media Douglas Adams Artificial Intelligence ]
Entry: 2026-03-03 00:19:08.080072+01 The fight against anonymity by Dan Lyke comments 0
Since there's currently an orchestrated push to destroy anonymity on the Internet: Politico: Resist ‘dangerous and socially unacceptable’ age checks for social media, scientists warn
The warning comes as countries around the world move to bar children from social media, which requires some way of checking users’ ages to decide if they can access online services. In an open letter, 371 security and privacy academics across 29 countries said the technologies being rolled out are not effective and carry significant risks.
California Assembly Bill 1043: AB-1043 Age verification signals: software applications and online services. apparently makes it illegal to configure an operating system without confirming the user's age, similarly for Colorado Senate Bill SB 26-051: AGE ATTESTATION ON COMPUTING DEVICES
Taylor Lorenz in The Guardian: The world wants to ban children from social media, but there will be grave consequences for us all, in response to the toot linking to that Alan @metaphase@toot.community asked
@taylorlorenz Who is paying for the lobbyists for this seemingly worldwide campaign for the legislation to install identity surveillance everywhere "for the children"?
And why, even in blue states, are the politicians always so eager to enable tools so easily abused by authoritarian, fascist governments
[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Politics Privacy Software Engineering Journalism and Media California Culture Net Culture Community ]
Entry: 2026-03-02 15:25:28.002824+01 by Dan Lyke comments 0
On Saturday evening, Charlene and I were sitting out on our front patio eating dinner and watching drivers run the Mission & Mountain View stop signs (spending some more time gathering video of this in order to make a montage to post to Facebook and NextDoor titled "those fucking bicyclists" is a fantasy project).
The social media comments on the news of two recent killings of cyclists on rural roads around Petaluma are filled with "yeah, that road isn't safe for bicycles, I don't know what they were doing there".
We hear that the city has over 200 requests for traffic calming and safety improvements in their barely funded safe streets programs.
But here we have an example of where a metropolitan region of 1.5 million people has decided that killing people for convenience is not acceptable.
Helsinki just went a full year without a single traffic death.
[ related topics: Erotic Bay Area Current Events Journalism and Media Video Bicycling ]
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