Tuesday May 19th, 2026
Fascinating read on the politics of Christo's "Running Fence" installation in Sonoma County https://petalumahistorian.com/christos-trojan-horse/
mirrored (likely with paywall) at https://www.petalumanews.com/2...ing-fence-changed-sonoma-county/
Fits on a Floppy, an awareness campaign with logo for small software.
Software should be as small as it can be. Not as a gimmick, but as a discipline. The floppy disk is the measuring stick: 1.44 MB. If the software that ran entire businesses could fit in that space, then a modern, focused, single-purpose tool certainly can.
Via.
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.
Monday May 18th, 2026
Yesterday afternoon we went down to Copperfield's to see Mac Barnett in conversation with Jon Scieszka about Mac's new book Make Believe: On Telling Stories To Children. Two funny people talking very thoughtfully about relating to children. If you have the opportunity to hear 'em talk, do.
Love me a good takedown of.... investments of dubious quality, especially since I ran into the "EM thruster" stuff back when I was doing the transporation consulting: Ars Technica: Casimir force co-opted to generate free energy, midichlorians not included
This week, a company called Casimir Inc. emerged from “stealth mode” to announce that it had raised significant funding from venture capitalists willing to roll the dice on free energy. That’s right: a startup has gotten serious backing to develop sources of perpetual free energy. The people behind this fantastic new energy generator also brought us the wildly successful
WTF thrusterEM-drive that could supposedly directly convert electricity into a propulsive force.
Essentially, "AI" discovered bugs/security holes are public, and should be treated as such, rather than being managed in privileged spaces without disclosure.
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.
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...
Saturday May 16th, 2026
Reading the Suisun Expansion Specific Plan ("California Forever"), and mostly it's a look at how we could have beautiful things in our own cities if we could balance out the voices of the older NIMBY automobile violence advocates.
And maybe allow a little less emphasis on the voices of people who live in sprawl outside the city...
Took Charlene for some medical tests, while she was in with the tech the people behind the desk were talking about "what's cool with the kids". One mentioned a Hacky Sack, another asked "What's a Hacky Sack?"
I just had to interject: "Some of you spent the '90s sober, and it shows."
Friday May 15th, 2026
Baldur Bjarnason: The old world of tech is dying and the new cannot be born
If you have two economies of equal size and productivity, one has a massive financial sector and billionaires while the other does not, the financialised economy will have less left over to invest in research, education, infrastructure, and healthcare. Over time, it will inevitably fall behind the country with a smaller financial sector because it’s the other things that drive the economy and productivity, not stock market growth.
Went to Santa Rosa YIMBY this evening, came home with a book. Two or three of you are going "oooh, cool", the rest are like "WTF, Dan? This is geekier than when you're on your computer stuff..."
Thursday May 14th, 2026
Santa Clara County Sues Meta for Making Billions from ‘Scam Ads’ on Facebook and Instagram
The complaint alleges that Meta tracks up to 15 billion scam ads shown to users every day across its platforms, generating $7 billion in revenue. The county said in its complaint that Meta’s own systems flag ads that are likely scams but, instead of stopping them, charges scammers a premium price.
Nature Human Behavior: The political polarization of health outcomes in the USA
Using individual-level medical data and death records, this study shows that conservative Americans experienced worsening health and higher mortality than liberals during the 2010s. Here we find evidence consistent with two potential mechanisms. First, demographic realignment within political coalitions brought less healthy individuals into the conservative camp. Yet by the 2020s, demographic change, public policy and COVID-19 do not fully account for the widening gap in mortality rates. Public opinion data are consistent with a second mechanism: declining trust in medical professionals among right- leaning individuals, including lower willingness to seek care, follow clinical advice or believe in medication effectiveness, even for issues unrelated to COVID-19.
He was told to sign a non-disclosure agreement, furnish a copy of his identification card, and was issued with a "letter of guarantee" for reimbursement within 15 business days
Via.
If, like our household, you are hooked on the Hallmark series "The Way Home", someone has pieced together the song "Breathe" and recorded it.
You Can't Spell @cantspell@mastodon.social
You can't spell artificial intelligence without a lie citing interface
This thread: Caitlin G. DeAngelis @caitlindeangelis.bsky.social
Recently, FamilySearch digitized and uploaded tons of microfilmed records, including many from 18th-century Massachsuetts. They're using some sort of AI to transcribe/summarize the handwritten documents.
I've noticed that the AI strips out references to race and enslavement in 18thc documents.
Wait, so basic functionality in MacOS has been broken for at least two and a half years?
Sigh.
Wednesday May 13th, 2026
The transcripts. Holy shit. “Will I be OK?” Teen died after ChatGPT pushed deadly mix of drugs, lawsuit says
Via.
Oh, you mean the complaints about remote learning not working were largely bullshit, and the children's happiness at not being forced into bullying situations was seen as a downside? Golly, who might have thought that the advocates for violence against non- conforming children might be willing to draw false conclusions?
Kids' test scores began declining way before COVID. These schools are making gains
The pandemic-era backslide in math and reading scores for students across the U.S. was not a sudden catastrophe but the continuation of a brutal, decade-long "learning recession" that began years before COVID-19's arrival. That's according to the latest Education Scorecard, an annual deep-dive into student data from The Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University and Harvard University's Center for Education Policy Research.
Tuesday May 12th, 2026
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.
Monday May 11th, 2026
Rick Gualtieri @rickgualtieri.com
AI Bros always want credit for how tough it is to come with their prompts.
I'm guessing they're the same people who hold up the line at McDonald's agonizing over medium or large fries.
Which, yes, but/and... I think there's a lot of "who's responsible for the product of labor" here that, just as in art, we as a society are going to have to do a lot of unpacking on.
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.
The demise of the French ‘tabac’: How bar closures are fuelling Le Pen’s far right
Nathan Domon on European Correspondent: Close a bar, gain a far-right voter
Subtil described bar-tabacs as “third spaces”: places outside the home and workplace where people from different backgrounds mix. When those places disappear, people socialise within a narrower circle of like-minded friends and family. “That, over time, erodes the social fabric and weakens in-person ties,” he said.
Via Dave Rahardja @drahardja@sfba.social, though the original post he was quoting has blocked him or been removed or something.
This was all over a few days ago, and I figure I should at least put one story in the thread: Ars Technica: Influential study touting ChatGPT in education retracted over red flags
Reddit thread in /r/Petaluma in which a commenter offers an "AI"/LLM generated analysis of the city budget proposal, and I push back, gently pointing out that it's making claims that, in fact, are flat-out false.
OpenAI sued over ChatGPT’s alleged role in guiding FSU shooter
At one point, the lawsuit alleges, ChatGPT said that it’s much more likely for a shooting to gain national attention “if children are involved, even 2-3 victims can draw more attention.” Later, on the day of the shooting, the lawsuit says, Ikner asked about what “the legal process, sentencing, and incarceration outlook” would be.
Via Joshua Erlich @joshuaerlich.bsky.social:
we need a strict liability regime for AI. that’ll sort this stuff right out.
Manisha Sinha @profmsinha.bsky.social
Historian of abolition here, history tells us how we got here, to put it succinctly “John Brown was hanged for treason and Robert E. Lee was not.”
Science Alert: Air Purifiers Could Boost Your Brain Function, Study Suggests
Participants 40 years or older with HEPA filtration completed Part B 12% significantly faster than participants who had sham filtration in the preceding month (54.0 versus 61.4 s, ratio of means = 0.88, p = 0.02). No significant reduction in completion time was observed for participants < 40 years old. Among older healthy adults, there was an improvement in cognition following one month of in-home HEPA filtration. Further research is needed on the short-term effects of air pollution among individuals with some level of cognitive impairment.
PsyPost: Brain scans reveal how people with autistic traits connect differently
People with similar levels of autistic traits show greater social attraction to one another, and their brains synchronize in unique ways during active conversation. A recent experiment published in Biological Psychiatry suggests that social difficulties related to autism might be a problem of mismatched communication styles rather than an inherent social deficit.
The "Results" section of the paper says:
Individuals with similar autistic traits reported higher interpersonal attraction when sharing consistent opinions. Neural analyses revealed context-dependent interbrain coupling patterns: During passive story listening, low-autistic-trait dyads exhibited higher intersubject correlation compared with high-autistic-trait dyads. In contrast, during active communication, low-autistic-trait dyads exhibited higher interbrain synchronization (IBS) in the right temporoparietal junction, while high- autistic-trait dyads showed higher IBS in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, suggesting distinct neural mechanisms underlying social interaction across autistic trait levels.
Rob Ricci @ricci@discuss.systems's thread on Utah datacenters, including the proposed 9GW Stratos Project, which seems to be slated for the Military Installation Development Authority Stratos Project Area as referenced by the Utah Governor's FAQ (PDF).
While the entire project area encompasses 40,000 acres, most of the acres will remain undeveloped. The different types of power generation contemplated for the data center have different footprints. For example, solar will require a larger footprint than natural gas. The actual data center footprint will be a fraction of the size of the MIDA project area.
So the 62.5 square miles isn't projected to be entirely building.
Utah used 34,688GWh in 2024, so assuming you could smooth out demand roughly 4GW continuous.
A good comprehensive What's Wrong with AI, Via, which includes the Hacker News link.
Because I'm gonna be faced with some text search stuff in the not too distant future: Replacing a 3 GB SQLite database with a 10 MB FST (finite state transducer) binary
Sunday May 10th, 2026
Just to mark it: Got a Rowin Loop Station looper pedal for $20 off of AliExpress. Still playing with the "remove a loop layer" (double click), but click and hold to clear, click to record, mic in, into a powered speaker, and for the price it's amazing.
Apparently you can use USB to download audio.
Wanted a key for the garage door. Ace Hardware wanted $44.something for a key switch. AliExpress wanted $1.09 for an ignition lock.
Work has a domain name that's reminiscent of a hobbyist product. We gate downloads through a form that asks for a "why you're interested in our product" with lots of "we are not hobbyist project, or even like it" text.
The number of multi-paragraph messages talking about interest in said project...
triz of online @triz@normal.style
the number one thing that should give anyone pause in re ai for businesses is this:
alice sells widgets. bob has the magic do-anything box. bob wants to sell it to alice so she can save labour costs when designing, manufacturing, shipping and selling her widgets.
if the magic do-anything box even works,
why is bob not already using it to sell widgets and eat alice's absolutely fucking lunch?
Heard someone describe a facility as "ADHD compliant", and... they're wrong, in soooo many ways.
Saturday May 9th, 2026
Anyone know who's running PetalumaCivic(dot)org? It appears to have some pretty misleading AI generated slop, and I'm wondering what the motivations behind it are.
Facebook Marketplace rarely disappoints...