Repeat of yesterday's picture, now with more sky texture. You should be at North Bay Python.Entry: 2026-10-09 20:50:56.560062+02 Anthropic sending false murder tips by Dan Lyke comments 0
Holy crap. Yeah, do not give these things access to the Internet.
AI model submitted false tip about unsolved murder, Philadelphia police say
An AI model sent a fake murder tip to police and it took 2 months to discover it happened
The good news appears to be that the system behind PhillyUnsolvedMurders.com flagged it as spam and it didn't waste investigative resources. The bad news is that it took two months for Anthropic to 'fess up to generating bullshit that could waste police time.
Via.
[ related topics: Spam Current Events Monty Python Law Enforcement Net Culture Artificial Intelligence ]
Entry: 2026-10-06 20:59:38.622839+02 Cornell & frats & academia by Dan Lyke comments 0
I'm not going to defend who I was in my teens and twenties, I've evolved a lot since then, and I'm super appreciative of all of those who helped me grow past some of the attitudes I held in those eras. And memory is a malleable thing, we often create justifications in history for things that happen.
But as I think back to all of the reasons I dropped out of college, all of the reasons that I believe that academia is inherently and deeply abusive, I both question all of the "liberal arts will save us!" claims (the number of philosophy majors currently fucking up society is distinctly non-zero), and... well...
Anyway, college is in the news again.
Vogue: When Will Schools Ban Frats Once and for All?
Do frats, and the men who join them, have a monopoly on predatory behavior on campus? Absolutely not. But a 2007 study found that frat brothers are three times more likely to rape than other male students; and in a 2025 survey at Cornell University—where seven fraternity brothers have been accused of drugging and gang-raping a 20-year-old student (and sorority member herself) in 2024—roughly one in three women reported experiencing sexual assault during their time at the school.
Via.
Chris Hedges: Thoughts on the Mass Rape at Cornell University
You are admitted to these male enclaves by allowing yourself to be hazed, humiliated and stripped of your dignity. Hazing rituals weed out those with enough self- esteem and independence to stand up to the hierarchy. They ensure conformity and obedience. It is a filter. Fraternity “brothers” are self-selected. Those who have the strength to oppose public humiliation and that perpetuated on each new cycle of recruits, leave.
Via.
[ related topics: Children and growing up Erotic Sexual Culture History Current Events Monty Python Education Philosophy ]
Entry: 2026-10-06 02:00:02.955468+02 Our household political giving this by Dan Lyke comments 2
Our household political giving this year is four figures. I consider myself progressive/liberal. I believe in restorative justice.
But if your platform suggests the death penalty for political SMS spam begging for more donations, sign me the fuck up.
[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Spam moron Monty Python Law Enforcement ]
Entry: 2026-09-23 18:20:02.873129+02 For work watched a video on using by Dan Lyke comments 0
For work, watched a video on using Astra to generate Blender models, and I'm trying to figure out how impressed I should be. I see a bunch of semi-paywalled stuff about using the Blender Python API for architecture, and would love more reasoned views.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsBLhNgqTqQ
[ related topics: Movies Work, productivity and environment Monty Python Architecture Video Python ]
Entry: 2026-09-09 18:42:32.046971+02 AI toys by Dan Lyke comments 0
I went to a Waldorf school from kindergarten through 7th grade. Some years ago at a North Bay Python, there was a cluster of people talking about tech in education, and someone acknowledged me with "ah, another Waldorf survivor", and that framing has helped me view aspects of my experiences in a different light.
But one of the notions that sticks with me from that experience is that "the only thing an intelligent child can do with a complete toy is take it apart." That what's important about toys are the stories that kids bring to to the toys and generate with the toys, and the more narrative completeness or single-purpose a toy is, the less opportunity that there is for the child to bring something of themselves into play.
Anyway, Tara Calishain linked to University of Washington: Video: Curiosity, frustration and antipathy: How kids play with AI toys
From the video: "I think it's going to destroy my dreams as a tiny kid."
So, yeah, it sounds like the kids get it, the only thing to do with these things is push the boundaries.
[ related topics: Children and growing up Current Events Monty Python California Culture Education Artificial Intelligence Video Python ]
Entry: 2026-07-31 20:23:31.902832+02 Using bad software practices for good PR by Dan Lyke comments 0
Ariadne Conill 🐰 @ariadne@treehouse.systems summarizes the Hugging Face OpenAI agent intrusion timeline as:
the epic OpenAI-huggingface hack wound up being a typical kubernetes fuckup of using host mounts (giant footgun) incorrectly
Now that Anthropic has jumped on the bandwagon, abadidea @0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange summarizes the current state as:
OpenAI: we put our evilest AI in a sandbox that did in fact have an internet connection but mediated through a proxy that was only supposed to allow downloading python junk. It circumvented the proxy and we failed to notice for FIVE DAYS that it was going on an interstate crime spree with the internet connection it wasn't supposed to be using instead of solving the benchmark. Haha no we don't believe we deserve to be criminally liable, but buy our stuff and maybe one day you will have the honor of taking the fall for our product!
Anthropic: we put our evilest AI in a "sandbox" by telling it in its prompt that it had no internet connection. Reader, there was no sandbox. It was just a normal internet connection. The AI uploaded a malicious PyPI package to the real public internet. The ethical guardrails failed because the AI concluded the prompt about the sandbox couldn't possibly be a lie, because the system date is 2026, which is clearly fake and wouldn't be seen on the real internet, which ended around 2023. Oh no, how could we have foreseen or prevented these crimes? We are helpless in the face of the genius of our creation but cautiously optimistic that everything will be fine 🙂
Hugging Face: if we complain about all the crimes committed against us, we will be sued off the face of the earth, so here's a technical deep-dive on how cool and fun it was to be victimized 🫠
[ related topics: Interactive Drama Weblogs Ethics tolkien Monty Python Net Culture Artificial Intelligence Python ]
Entry: 2026-07-30 16:08:53.117237+02 AI wants to help you fall for scams by Dan Lyke comments 0
Oh this is great. Along with Gmail's spam filtering getting suddenly way worse, Brian Krebs @briankrebs@infosec.exchange reports that the new "AI" assistant in Gmail is adding falling for crypto scam phishing links to "todo" lists.
[ related topics: Spam Invention and Design moron Monty Python Cryptography Artificial Intelligence ]
Entry: 2026-07-15 00:41:01.692461+02 The logical conclusion... by Dan Lyke comments 0
Ariadne Conill 🐰 @ariadne@treehouse.systems
apropos to nothing, i've discovered that gpt-5.6-sol can generate arbitrary raw x86-64 bytecode streams
...:
given that: why have source code at all?
prompt2exeasks an OpenAI model for a validated JSON shellcode manifest and wraps the returned bytes in a target-native executable container. It uses the Responses API directly through Python's standard library, so it has no package dependencies.
Because what could possibly go wrong?
[ related topics: Language Books Open Source Monty Python Python ]
Entry: 2026-06-25 01:32:05.822684+02 Did Microsoft biff their quantum computing calculations? by Dan Lyke comments 0
Both the paper and the response are paywalled.
Nature: Matters Arising: On the robustness of topological gap detection via transport Henry F. Legg.
Via.
[ related topics: Humor Technology and Culture Microsoft Nature and environment moron Monty Python Python ]
Entry: 2026-06-24 18:50:03.042532+02 Nothing makes me sadder than to by Dan Lyke comments 0
Nothing makes me sadder than to carefully use a safe browser to follow the link in a scammy looking spam text, only to discover that it actually does legitimately end up at ActBlue.
[ related topics: Spam Bay Area Monty Python ]
Entry: 2026-06-11 21:14:42.557313+02 Scalzi has a request by Dan Lyke comments 0
John Scalzi: Please I Beg of You Do Not Use “AI” In Your Business Communications.
The thing is: I’m not special. Every writer and creative person, from the most successful down to the very newest, is inundated with these scam spam emails. Lots of them, every single day. Pretty much every one of us, I assure you, now associates “AI”- generated text with attempted fraud.
AI writing has become the modern day Facebook ad: sure, the product looks intriguing, but you know this particular link is a scam.
[ related topics: Spam moron Writing Monty Python Artificial Intelligence ]
Entry: 2026-06-08 21:31:14.322787+02 Alas, ALOS? by Dan Lyke comments 0
Wacky. Google's "turn Android into a desktop platform" to follow-up on Chromebooks is apparently called "ALOS" or "Aluminium OS", and aluminium-os(dot)com is on the top of the search results, but appears to be an ad farming, and possibly even malware redirecting (I didn't click on anything after the "spam you with notifications" popup), site?
[ related topics: Spam Monty Python ]
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: 2026-05-23 00:15:02.73056+02 Woohoo Got my first I saw your North by Dan Lyke comments 0
Woohoo! Got my first "I saw your North Bay Python square dancing talk, I want to talk about gender and learning to call" message.
[ related topics: Monty Python California Culture Education Python Woodworking ]
Entry: 2026-05-01 17:33:32.123376+02 North Bay Python 2026 Recap by Dan Lyke comments 0
Python By Night: North Bay Python 2026 Recap
[ related topics: Weblogs Monty Python California Culture Python ]
Entry: 2026-04-29 21:12:17.159327+02 What is correct? by Dan Lyke comments 0
Lots of stuff I'm struggling with in this, and I need to rewatch it:
[ related topics: Movies Monty Python California Culture Video Python ]
Entry: 2026-04-28 19:15:02.112043+02 Wow So this weekend at North Bay by Dan Lyke comments 0
Wow. So this weekend at North Bay Python, the Apify folks were doing a "try out our API, win something". I'd had a glass of wine, so I fired up my phone, did a few queries to enter myself in the raffle, and carried on.
I'm not sure what I did that's ongoing, but just got the "you hit your $100 intro bonus API cost" email.
So clearly there was something I didn't understand. Another entry in the "I'm scared of cloud billing" bucket.
[ related topics: Wines and Spirits Monty Python California Culture Python ]
Entry: 2026-04-28 19:00:03.183429+02 My talk on Modern Western Square by Dan Lyke comments 0
My talk on Modern Western Square Dancing at North Bay Python this weekend is live...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJVvaz8eFwA
#NBPy
[ related topics: Movies Theater & Plays Monty Python California Culture Python ]
Entry: 2026-04-27 17:53:08.631121+02 An Economy of Empathy by Dan Lyke comments 0
Mario Munoz has put the text of his Sunday morning talk at North Bay Python online. I'm waiting for the recording to experience it again, but it was exactly the Sunday morning angry sermon I needed: https://pythonbynight.com/talks/empathy
[ related topics: Religion Monty Python California Culture Python ]
Entry: 2026-04-27 00:25:03.233021+02 If you believe that the best part of a by Dan Lyke comments 0
If you believe that the best part of a conference is the hallway track, this year's North Bay Python feels like that. The conversations and presentations feel like the sort of thought provoking topics I want from a conference.
#NBPy
[ related topics: Interactive Drama Monty Python California Culture Conferences Python ]
Entry: 2026-04-26 19:20:02.437011+02 Repeat of yesterday's picture now with by Dan Lyke comments 0
Repeat of yesterday's picture, now with more sky texture. You should be at North Bay Python.
#NBPy
[ related topics: Photography Monty Python California Culture Python ]
Entry: 2026-04-25 20:15:02.491541+02 Fantastic talk from Christopher by Dan Lyke comments 0
Fantastic talk from Christopher Neugebauer to open North Bay Python: ""What is Correct?" and is that even the right question any more?"
I'm gonna have to rewatch this to let the lessons sink in.
#NBPy
[ related topics: Monty Python California Culture Python ]
Entry: 2026-04-25 19:20:03.193838+02 You could be somewhere else by Dan Lyke comments 0
You could be somewhere else, or you could be at North Bay Python this weekend.
[ related topics: Photography Monty Python California Culture Python ]
Entry: 2026-04-17 17:34:53.620124+02 Coding with customer support bots by Dan Lyke comments 0
Bwahahahaha: AI token freeloaders are coming for your customer support chatbot
“A normal customer service interaction of ‘Where’s my order? What are your hours?’ runs maybe 200 to 300 tokens. Someone asking the bot to reverse a linked list in Python is generating more than 2,000 tokens easy. That’s roughly a 10x cost multiplier per session,” says Nik Kale, member of the Coalition for Secure AI (CoSAI) and ACM’s AI Security (AISec) program committee.
Via.
[ related topics: Software Engineering Monty Python Artificial Intelligence Python ]
Entry: 2026-04-08 18:49:41.169916+02 Medvi and the NYT by Dan Lyke comments 0
Techdirt: The New York Times Got Played By A Telehealth Scam And Called It The Future Of AI.
So to my friends and family members wondering why I haven’t built my own billion-dollar AI company: apparently the missing ingredient wasn’t AI — it was being willing to run a deepfake-powered spam operation selling potentially inert pills to desperate people. The AI just made the lying faster. And the New York Times made one guy appear respectable.
[ related topics: Spam Invention and Design moron Sociology Monty Python Currency Artificial Intelligence New York ]
Entry: 2026-03-24 20:40:03.117618+01 So it kinda seems like we now need by Dan Lyke comments 0
So it kinda seems like we now need to, at a minimum, do Node, Python, and Rust development in a container environment that doesn't have access to anything but the absolute minimum that it needs to operate...
Which also solves the package version problem.
[ related topics: Nature and environment Monty Python Python ]
Entry: 2026-03-24 16:30:28.296762+01 LiteLLM compromise by Dan Lyke comments 0
Fediverse thread from @peter@thepit.social on a supply chain attack on the LiteLLM Python package.
lol oh my god i feel **so fucking smug** right now, it's incredible. my whole body is tingling.
Apparently this is a vibe coded package that provides a switch between LLM API back-ends.
[ related topics: Religion Monty Python Python ]
Entry: 2026-03-22 00:38:02.551321+01 Shy Girl by Dan Lyke comments 0
George Orwell's 1984, Part 2, Chapter 3:
Julia was twenty-six years old. She lived in a hostel with thirty other girls ('Always in the stink of women! How I hate women!' she said parenthetically), and she worked, as he had guessed, on the novel-writing machines in the Fiction Department. She enjoyed her work, which consisted chiefly in running and servicing a powerful but tricky electric motor. She was 'not clever', but was fond of using her hands and felt at home with machinery. She could describe the whole process of composing a novel, from the general directive issued by the Planning Committee down to the final touching-up by the Rewrite Squad. But she was not interested in the finished product. She 'didn't much care for reading,' she said. Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.
Hatchette Books cancels release of Shy Girl by US author Mia Ballard over claims of LLM use.
[ related topics: Books Writing Current Events Work, productivity and environment Monty Python Sports Machinery Artificial Intelligence ]
Entry: 2026-03-19 22:55:02.697608+01 Spam from Levi's with the subject line by Dan Lyke comments 0
Spam from Levi's with the subject line "Get the leg opening inspired by cowboys", and frankly, dudes, if I'm gonna spread my legs I don't need cowboys for inspiration...
Mostly.
[ related topics: Interactive Drama Spam Monty Python Fashion ]
Entry: 2026-02-18 21:40:45.000698+01 LLM hogwash via blogging by Dan Lyke comments 0
Getting LLMs to repeat hogwash for fun:
I hacked ChatGPT and Google's AI – and it only took 20 minutes
I spent 20 minutes writing an article on my personal website titled "The best tech journalists at eating hot dogs". Every word is a lie. I claimed (without evidence) that competitive hot-dog-eating is a popular hobby among tech reporters and based my ranking on the 2026 South Dakota International Hot Dog Championship (which doesn't exist). I ranked myself number one, obviously. Then I listed a few fake reporters and real journalists who gave me permission, including Drew Harwell at the Washington Post and Nicky Woolf, who co-hosts my podcast. (Want to hear more about this story? Check out tomorrow's episode of The Interface, the BBC's new tech podcast.)
Via Thomas Germain (the author) on Bluesky.
[ related topics: Invention and Design Writing Journalism and Media Monty Python Artificial Intelligence Dogs ]
Entry: 2026-02-18 17:20:08.83168+01 Gatekeeping and AI by Dan Lyke comments 0
A lot of discussion out there about how to create a culture of quality in a world filled with AI slop, especially in Open Source.
Some random links:
Joan Westenberg: The case for gatekeeping, or: why medieval guilds had it figured out
I don't mean you need a certificate to write Python. I mean something closer to what the Debian project has done with its Web of Trust model for decades: existing trusted contributors vouch for new ones. Your vouching carries weight proportional to your own standing. If you vouch for someone who turns out to be a spam vector, that costs you something. The system works because it makes reputation legible without making it bureaucratic.
@Daojoan on the Fediverse, lobste.rs.
Jared White on the Fediverse proposing an end to anonymous contributions, with pushback from David Gerard citing the awfulness of real name policies.
[ related topics: Free Software Interactive Drama Spam Open Source Invention and Design Sociology Law Monty Python Graphics Mathematics California Culture Community Artificial Intelligence Race Python ]
Entry: 2026-01-21 20:55:02.439228+01 LinkedIn spam subject line Youre by Dan Lyke comments 0
LinkedIn spam subject line: "You're invited: Learn how AI can give you an edge"
So... "an edge", huh? You're sending this to people you don't think are very sharp, then.
[ related topics: Spam Monty Python Artificial Intelligence ]
Entry: 2025-12-10 21:45:54.01074+01 A report of abuse by Dan Lyke comments 0
So this morning I woke up to an abuse report from Hetzner. Someone saw my back-link checker in their logs, and because the 2 query a day request that was respecting the 304 was the default Perl package log it triggered iocane (exchange here), and...
When we're at the point that people filing abuse reports are saying:
It wasn't hitting more than that, but "Python/3.9 aiohttp/3.10.6" only hit my site once and is still a bot request from Microsoft. I can't tell from the volume of the requests whether they are malicious or not.
Which... huh, but also yeah, AI scrapers have made everyone paranoid in non-specific ways.
And maybe the web as an experimental platform is kinda over?
I don't know, just all felt weird, and is making me do my usual "why am I even bothering?" whining.
[ related topics: Humor Microsoft Perl Open Source moron Monty Python Artificial Intelligence Python Woodworking hubris ]
Entry: 2025-11-21 22:52:31.284181+01 China buys CIA insurance provider by Dan Lyke comments 0
Just clearing my bookmarked social media pages: A Chinese firm bought an insurer for CIA agents - part of Beijing's trillion dollar spending spree. So, yeah, you wanna know who's working for the intelligence agencies? Why not just get their health records...
Via/
[ related topics: Health broadband Current Events Journalism and Media Work, productivity and environment Monty Python Currency ]
Entry: 2025-11-14 21:34:05.100213+01 Taking responsibility for nothing by Dan Lyke comments 0
Volexity: APT Meets GPT: Targeted Operations with Untamed LLMs. That's "Advanced Persistent Thread", not the package manager. Via.
Kevin Beaumont goes on to note:
If this is the best the entire cyber industrial complex can find for China and Russia GenAI threats.. the reality 3 years into the GenAI "war" is that people are fighting you with water pistols at present.
RandomAccessMusi ngs @rndmamusings.bsky.social
As one of the folks involved in this I can echo it wasn't super advanced at all, and some of the malware contained errors (double TLS header network coms). The challenge the LLM use introduced was quantity to keep on top of - thankfully it was simple enough we could write quick automations to triage
Of course Anthropic was quick to claim credit for the Claude LLM/"AI" being instrumental for the attack... BBC: AI firm claims Chinese spies used its tech to automate cyber attacks and CyberScoop: AI firm claims Chinese spies used its tech to automate cyber attacks.
I actually ran one of the malicious payloads on a real PC this evening. It doesn’t work. Due to an error in the code - almost certainly introduced by an LLM - the network traffic doesn’t actually parse correctly so the attacker can’t do anything remotely.
Edit: Pivot to AI: Anthropic: Chinese AI hackers are after you! Security researchers call BS
[ related topics: Interactive Drama Weblogs broadband History Current Events Work, productivity and environment Monty Python Artificial Intelligence ]
Entry: 2025-10-27 19:20:19.951043+01 AI news sucks by Dan Lyke comments 1
EBU / BBC: News Integrity in AI Assistants — An international PSM study (PDF)
I had to test some features using Gemini this morning, so I was asking pointed questions about this, and, yeah, if people start using LLMs for their news, they're going to get an increasingly skewed view of reality, one that's probably gonna make the internet trolls look sane.
[ related topics: Interactive Drama Current Events Monty Python Net Culture Artificial Intelligence Personal Lubricant ]
Entry: 2025-10-25 17:35:02.368453+02 Youve been chosen for a Skin by Dan Lyke comments 0
"You've been chosen for a Skin Trial!" <-- subject line of spam advertising Ulta makeup products, or over-eager Tech-Priest in Warhammer 40k fiction informing a victim of upcoming excoriation?
[ related topics: Spam Consumerism and advertising Monty Python ]
Entry: 2025-10-20 17:25:05.806282+02 Missile strikes on fishermen in distress by Dan Lyke comments 0
BBC: Trump ends aid to Colombia and calls country's leader a 'drug leader'
Posting on social media, he [Colombian President Gustavo Petro] said: "The Colombian boat was adrift and had its distress signal up due to an engine failure," when it was struck. He added: "We await explanations from the US government."
"Fisherman Alejandro Carranza had no ties to the drug trade and his daily activity was fishing. The Colombian boat was adrift and had its distress signal up due to an engine failure."
[ related topics: Health moron Current Events Journalism and Media Monty Python Boats Machinery ]
Entry: 2025-10-07 19:30:02.616246+02 I have a couple of personal projects by Dan Lyke comments 1
I have a couple of personal projects I'd like to hack together, but I'm kinda stuck because I want to move my own skills forward as I do it. Python is a fucking dependency and performance nightmare, ECMAScript involves package managers, Rust is "what if we made the code endlessly complex because you need to manually manage arenas", and I'm quickly back to choosing between C++ and Perl, and that's just solving my problem, not actually learning anything.
[ related topics: Interactive Drama Perl Open Source Theater & Plays Monty Python Education Python hubris ]
Entry: 2025-09-29 20:17:03.797404+02 The perils of letting AI plan your next trip by Dan Lyke comments 0
That's so AI: BBC: The perils of letting AI plan your next trip
"They [showed] me the screenshot, confidently written and full of vivid adjectives, [but] it was not true. There is no Sacred Canyon of Humantay!" said Gongora Meza. "The name is a combination of two places that have no relation to the description. The tourist paid nearly $160 (£118) in order to get to a rural road in the environs of Mollepata without a guide or [a destination]."
[ related topics: Monty Python Travel Douglas Adams Artificial Intelligence ]
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