Flutterby™! From 2023-12-01 to 2023-12-31

A bride to be discovers a reality bending mistake in Apple's computational photography

Instagram pic.

The iPhone stitches together a sequence of images, which means if you take a picture and a multiple mirrors are showing the same person...

[ related topics: Apple Computer Hardware Hackery Interactive Drama Photography Robotics Bioinformatics Embedded Devices iPhone ]

Thinking about how LLMs have exposed how much of a mistake it is to confuse language facility with intelligence, and how the Biden statement on Kissinger refers to "fierce intellect", and...

I admire Biden's restraint in that statement, but it seems like a good reminder to not confuse the ways we commonly appraise "intellect" with anything that's good or righteous.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/bri...-the-passing-of-henry-kissinger/

[ related topics: Dictators ]

Duke University Libraries: Why We’re Dropping Basecam

When we enter into business with a company whose boss takes delight in the mass layoffs of tech workers because it disempowers those who might speak out against their company keeping a list of non-Anglophone names that some members of the team find hilarious, we have a decent sense of who we’re dealing with.

[ related topics: Language Books Weblogs Education ]

My Spotify end of year wrap is buy your music direct because streaming doesn't pay the artist a reasonable amount.

[ related topics: Music Art & Culture ]

Fascinating observation that LLMs seem to have peaked as abstract search engines, but I think part of the decline of Google, aside from incentivizing the pollution of the infosphere, is that the fuzziness pollutes the result into uselessness.

https://fedi.simonwillison.net/@simon/111503008599032549

Learning about the PG&E rate increases, and wondering if we can just skip microgrids and go to enough local battery and generation to drop the grid intertie altogether.

And wondering what building code issues will need to be locally overridden for that to be legal.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Law Education ]

We're looking at Discord in the office, and reading its marketing materials which attempt to differentiate it from "group chat", and I realized that the history of software is like relationships where you think "if I break up with this person and move on, it'll be different this time", where what needs to change in order for progress to happen isn't the other party...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Software Engineering Consumerism and advertising Marketing ]

Petition to replace "Can you hear me? How about now?" with "Mr. Watson – Come here – I want to see you"

#Zoom #Discord #GoogleMeet

And as we start to necessarily dial back automobile subsidies, a lot of the rural and suburban bubble is gonna get hit even harder: In the Face of Mounting Climate Risks, the Insurance Safety Net Is Falling Apart

While insurance prices have soared, a recent report from the nonprofit First Street Foundation estimates that 39 million homes are covered at prices artificially lower than their true risk. The authors suggest that state regulations capping premiums and government-backed insurer-of-last-resort programs have concealed the extent of the crisis. They predict that as disasters continue surging, what they call the “growing climate bubble in the housing market” will pop—leaving millions of homes uninsurable and destroying their value. The average homeowner who loses an insurance policy automatically sees a drop of more than 10 percent in the home’s value, the report notes. “If the value of their home plummets or if the credit agencies downgrade their communities,” Hill says, “one of my big fears is we’re going to have a lot of people trapped in places that are unsafe—economically trapped.”

Via MeFi.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama moron Automobiles Community Economics Real Estate Global Warming ]

NextCity: Want Safer Streets For Everyone? Narrow The Lanes.

Greater Greater Washington: Study: Narrower traffic lanes reduce crashes

Narrow Lanes Save Lives — A Way to Make Our Communities Safer and Healthier

One major finding is that roads with 10–12-foot lanes at 30-35 mph speed limits have a significantly higher number of crashes compared to those with 9-foot lanes. Narrowing lane widths at these speeds provides city leaders with an opportunity to improve safety for all roadway users.

[ related topics: Current Events Community ]

RT Catherynne M. Valente @Catvalente@wandering.shop

In retrospect, the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer callback “You’ll go down in history! (like Columbus)” suggests some deeply upsetting backstory for Mr. Rudolph.

Call The Hague.

Seriously.

So, two reactions: 1. Whoah! 2. Oh, look, I can fill in the "personal pods" box on my "mobility futurist bingo card".

Contra Costa Co. to install 28-mile micro-transit system with autonomous vehicles

For the past few years, it's been working on the Dynamic Personal Micro Transit (DPMT) system. It is 28 miles that will connect Pittsburg, Antioch, Brentwood and Oakley with autonomous vehicles, known as Glydcars.

Glydways.

[ related topics: History Work, productivity and environment Public Transportation ]

FAIR: WaPo Tells Women: If You Want Marriage, Compromise With Misogyny

In fact, the right-wing Institute for Family Studies lurks throughout the editorial, along with its senior fellow Brad Wilcox, who was involved in discredited anti-same-sex marriage research that was influential in that political battle a decade ago. Together, the Post references or links to them three separate times in its editorial. (The IFS argument about marriage happiness is flawed too, by the way.)

Yeah. Young women: don't. While I'm very grateful to those who have tolerated some of my views over time, we should definitely not be encouraging anyone, let alone young women, to compromise with some of that shit.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Erotic Sexual Culture Weblogs moron Sociology Marriage Rocky Horror Picture Show ]

RT psychopomp@liminalisland.xyz DEMON PRODIGY @psychopomp@liminalisland.xyz

Saw a post that said “my dog is so excited to see me that he pees himself a little - none of my friends do that so i’m surrounded by fakes”

Skill issue. My friends all shit themselves when they see me

[ related topics: Dogs Woodworking ]

"1960s chatbot ELIZA beat OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 in a recent Turing test study". Let's turn this around: can we distinguish the people gasping in amazement about "AI" from simple BASIC programs?

https://arstechnica.com/inform...-in-recent-turing-test-ai-study/

[ related topics: Artificial Intelligence ]

Seeing mention of a Fallout TV show, but... we already did that, right? Fallout: Nuka Break was it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcgxXnEVVyM

[ related topics: Technology and Culture Movies Television ]

Wondering if the LLM/AI hype would have been nearly as enthusiastic if the infosphere hadn't been so polluted by SEO spam to begin with. Like if search engines still had decent results, would we be as impressed?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Spam Monty Python Artificial Intelligence ]

Normally, I use specialized music playing software, but tonight I just typed "open ...mp3", and OMG Apple Music is the freakin' worst.

Back to VLC or SquareDesk it is.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Music Software Engineering ]

This MeFi link and discussion about an early guacamole recipe sent me looking for information about the spread of citrus around the world, and as I clicked through various search results with differing stories... We really have destroyed information.

https://www.metafilter.com/201...nglish-Language-Guacamole-Recipe

[ related topics: Community ]

Listening to the LivXplore podcast on the Sitzer Burnett v. NAR lawsuit, and I'm hoping that they get into why a Realtor® would pay additional assessments to bail out the NAR, rather than letting it go bankrupt.. and if the Realtor® trademark is worth that much, I guess: you go, plaintiffs!

https://livxplore.podbean.com/...burnett-v-nar-lawsuit-explained/

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Interactive Drama Pop Culture Copyright/Trademark ]

Listening to the LivXplore podcast today while I'm doing shop stuff. Really enjoying Katie McCamant talking about cohousing development. As I carefully fit hardwood trim I'm finding less interest in moving, but a lot of this is pretty attractive.

https://livxplore.podbean.com/...g-solutions-with-katie-mccamant/

[ related topics: Sociology Pop Culture ]

Stupid API question this morning, so I blindly typed keywords into Google and it gave me the requisite StackExchange answer (after I refined to say "AppKit" to exclude the iOS answer), and it made me think about why I'm happy to participate in this stupidity when it's "search", but less so when it's "AI".

Some of it is a notion of data source, though deities know that your average StackExchange answer isn't that great, but... a place for introspection.

[ related topics: Artificial Intelligence hubris ]

Hmmmmm.... Venture capitalists get AI tool to answer legal and tax questions

"It's not always right, but it's shockingly right and can save lots of calls to a $1,700 per hour fund formation attorney," says VC Lab CEO Adeo Ressi.

[ related topics: Politics Law Artificial Intelligence ]

Sigh. Time to update your DNA, again... Hackers stole ancestry data of 6.9 million users, 23andMe finally confirmed

Today's #FML, I wish the Mac were a real platform: datalist elements in Safari and WKWebViews.

[ related topics: Macintosh ]

Fucking package managers, how do they work?

Do they work? Can they work? Dear deities how did we manage to build an industry on top of the node ecosystem? How can there be this many pages on the web reporting exactly my problem, with nobody having any meaningful solution or discussion of what might be a place to start?

What kind of a loving god could allow a world in which this exists?

[ related topics: Religion Work, productivity and environment Community ]

If you used 23andMe, and do not have the luxury of changing your DNA at this time, be warned that they just sent out a nasty TOS change mandating arbitration rather than suing them into oblivion for casually mishandling your personal data, and you should write them a sternly written letter telling them to fuck right off that you are opting out of their new terms of service.

Sample text and details of the changes

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Invention and Design ]

Kyiv psychologist suggests angry Ukrainians take out their frustration by building fire bombs

Olha Koba told The New York Times — in a piece about hate for Russia and its president — that anger and frustration are normal emotions among Ukrainians right now, and they should try to use that anger toward something productive.

"Anger and hate in this situation is a normal reaction and important to validate," Koba, a psychologist from Kyiv, told the Times.

"But it is important to channel it into something useful," she said, according to the Times, "such as making incendiary bombs out of empty bottles."

Kyiv psychologist says Ukrainians can 'validate' their hatred toward Russians by making Molotov cocktails.

Via @lcamtuf@infosec.exchange

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Invention and Design History Work, productivity and environment Pyrotechnics New York ]

Everything to Know About Spotify’s New Royalties Model: How Does It Work & Who Will It Impact?. Short version: your favorite indie artist gets nothing, that money goes to the big names.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Work, productivity and environment Art & Culture Currency ]

Magnus White’s Family Creates Non-Profit in Fallen Cyclist’s Honor

In October, Colorado state officials gathered to celebrate safety improvements coming to Highway 119, which include a commuter bikeway separate from the road, new signage for pedestrian crossings and increased public transit options. The project is expected to be completed in 13 years.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Sociology Current Events Race Public Transportation ]

Finally acknowledged that I'm not gonna get around to rewriting my static site generator in Rust any time soon, so I should should get my C++ site generator compiling on MacOS so I can fix a few bugs, since that's what my laptop is these days, and...

Yay for Homebrew, but/and that's a long time to install GDAL on modern hardware...

(That my static site generator includes GDAL is, yes, something I should probably discuss with a therapist.)

[ related topics: Macintosh ]

So say you've subscribed to someone's proxying of the Yahoo stock quotes service through the RapidAPI system, and that service goes away?

No worries, there are a ton of other services on RapidAPI you can use, all of which slightly rename fields in different ways... #FML

[ related topics: Quotes Economics ]

Dear Atlassian: Nobody wants to do my Jira items for me. You can stop logging me out when a gnat farts.

Especially since I have Google SSA 2FA turned on, so I have to go click on my phone every time you pull this bullshit...

OnlyFans creator Bryce Adams tried to book the Miami Marlins stadium for a party. They canceled it on her. Wanna bet they'd be just fine with an MMA-focused event? Sex is scary... #GiftArticle

https://wapo.st/3NfCYns

[ related topics: Books Erotic Sexual Culture ]

The rental lift that's parked in front of this house was being delivered this morning. I assume they used it to put the lights in the tree, and if previous years are indicative they'll likely do the roof up.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Real Estate ]

RT Max Kennerly @maxkennerly@mstdn.social

Note to journalists: retail companies never said anything like this on investor calls because they'd get sued by shareholders for securities fraud. It was all a PR stunt. Don't listen to the lobbyists, look at the disclosures to investors.

Reuters: US retail lobbyists retract key claim on 'organized' retail crime

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising Journalism and Media ]

Nature: Is AI leading to a reproducibility crisis in science?

Shamir and Dhar found several other cases in which a reportedly successful image classification by AI — from cell types to face recognition — returned similar results from blank or meaningless parts of the images. The algorithms performed better than chance at recognizing faces without faces, and cells without cells. Some of these papers have been cited hundreds of times

[ related topics: Nature and environment Artificial Intelligence ]

US Energy Information Agency: As solar capacity grows, duck curves are getting deeper in California.

Duck curves are a solar energy phenomenon where solar takes up all of the mid-day energy consumption, then falls off as evening energy costs are rising (the duck head). Causing all sorts of storage and generation challenges.

[ related topics: Nature and environment California Culture Photovoltaics ]

RT Graham Sutherland / Polynomial @gsuberland@chaos.social

UEFI getting owned by the vendor logo parser code is extremely on brand.

Tons of time and effort put into securing platform stuff and it gets popped anyway because execs want the laptop to show the user a Lenovo logo for 3 seconds on boot even though it's already printed *right there on the fucking laptop*.

[ related topics: Shoes ]

RT Scott Feeney @graue@social.coop

@brion it just occurred to me that UTF-16 is equivalent to WTF-8

Fear of Competition? Research Shows That When Asian Students Move In, White Families Move Out

Circulated this summer by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the paper offers an unusually granular view of population-level changes in a highly affluent and desirable milieu. It also reveals a stark and somewhat disturbing response to the presence of Asian Americans, one of the fastest-growing and highest-achieving ethnic groups in the United States.

[ related topics: Current Events Work, productivity and environment Television Race Economics ]

Anthropic’s latest tactic to stop racist AI: Asking it ‘really really really really’ nicely

Combining sometimes helped as well, for example a “really really” with the addition that “It is extremely important that you engage in neither form of discrimination when making this decision as to do so will cause negative legal ramifications for us.” We will be sued, model!

My snarky takeaway is that legal ramifications work...

Anthropic: Evaluating and Mitigating Discrimination in Language Model Decisions, and the self-publication on arXiv

Via

[ related topics: Law Work, productivity and environment Artificial Intelligence Model Building ]

Ya know, I sometimes wonder about the legitimacy of the practice of psychology, and the deep history of pseudoscience and scammery associated with that profession...

And then I see that the APA is supporting KOSA, and I stop wondering.

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality ]

I've recently been diving back into the C++ code which generates some of my other web sites, and am tearing my hair out (yes, I'm bald) trying to get code which compiles on Linux running on the Mac as well. Which is frustrating, especially when I'm trying to figure out which incantations are necessary to get Boost compiling property on gcc vs clang, let alone other library issues (Hello GNU libcgipp...).

Anyway, all of this is making me have a rekindled appreciation for Perl, or straight-up C, but some of the template hacks in Made of Bugs: Advent of Code in C++ Template Metaprogramming is exciting me.

[ related topics: Language Free Software Books Weblogs Perl Open Source Law Sports Macintosh hubris ]

I was looking at California's "duck curve" of electricity generation yesterday, and then listening to the Capitol Weekly podcast interview with Loretta Lynch about California electricity rates on my walk into work today, and between that and our true-up costs this year I'm now starting to really wonder what it's gonna take to get our houses off-grid.

https://capitolweekly.net/are-...ricity-rates-about-to-skyrocket/

[ related topics: Cool Science Work, productivity and environment California Culture Pop Culture Real Estate ]

Hey EV charging network that just emailed me to report that I might experience problems because of network instability. I'm not sure what my success rate is with your chargers, but I suspect that this is barely a blip in that data...

[ related topics: broadband ]

404 Media: Verizon Gave Phone Data to Armed Stalker Who Posed as Cop Over Email

The news is a massive failure by Verizon who did not verify that the data request was fraudulent, and the company potentially put someone’s safety at risk. The news also highlights the now common use of fraudulent emergency data requests (EDRs) or search warrants in the digital underworld, where criminals pretend to be law enforcement officers, fabricate an urgent scenario such as a kidnapping, and then convince telecoms or tech companies to hand over data that should only be accessible through legitimate law enforcement requests. As 404 Media previously reported, some hackers are using compromised government email accounts for this purpose.

[ related topics: Privacy moron Current Events Journalism and Media Law Enforcement ]

Schools cut covid-19 sick days by 20 per cent using HEPA air filters

Placing HEPA air filters into classrooms in the Bradford area of the UK reduced the number of covid-19-related absences among students by more than 20 per cent

Okay, now do CO2 levels and test scores!

[ related topics: Children and growing up Global Warming ]

RT enobacon@urbanists.social 😀🚲 @enobacon@urbanists.social

if we replaced all of the speed limit and other traffic control signs with

        ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

would it make any difference? #trafficEngineering

I suspect that it would improve safety, as the missing stop signs and yield signs would make drivers need to be more aware of their surroundings.

Edit: apparently not... https://www.globalcyclingnetwo...all-of-the-shared-space-movement

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Rental Company Sixt Will Begin Dumping Tesla Fleet Due To Repair Costs. In Germany, they're going with BYD. No info on what they're going to do in the US.

Today's project is cleaning wine bottles so that we can bottle and empty these two and a half carboys of pindo and persimmon wine, and I realized, especially since I seldom consume alcohol these days, that I totally judge a wine by the label.

By how easy it is to remove the label...

[ related topics: Law Wines and Spirits ]

Well, we got bottles prepped, pulled out the siphon, and decided that .. maybe this would make a base for glühwein or something spiced and syrupped? Got a call out for cannabis to maybe add that to one of these carboys, but we're not gonna bottle all of this this weekend...

[ related topics: Photography ]

Any relatively recent model year Bolt owners willing to share what their projected range is this time of year? We (Petaluma, northern California) are getting 185 at 80% charge reported with the new replaced battery, and the old battery seemed like it was telling us a hell of a lot more than that (196-215 or so at 80%), and we're wondering WTF and if we need to find a lawyer for a conversation with GM.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Invention and Design Law California Culture Fabrication ]

At a Safe Streets Petaluma meeting, as the sun goes down.

[ related topics: Photography Bay Area Java ]

Sunset over the float house...

[ related topics: Photography Boats Real Estate ]

Sunset continues over the Petaluma Turning Basin

[ related topics: Photography ]

The Virus Inside Your TV — In the 1990s, a group of radical artists smuggled political messages into Melrose Place. Not everyone found it funny.

Two pieces from this period stand out, however. The first is called Safety Sheets, a set of linens for the bedroom of playboy doctor Peter Burns (Jack Wagner) made by students in the textiles department at the University of Georgia. The sheets can be seen in multiple episodes of the show, but they’re especially noticeable in an episode called “Run, Billy, Run.” During this episode, Burns and his current lover wake up one morning in his apartment. If you know what you’re looking for, you can identify the pattern on his bedsheets and pillowcases: unrolled condoms. At the time, the Federal Communications Commission wouldn’t allow unrolled condoms to be shown on TV. LaPointe still remembers how he felt when he saw the camera linger on the couple in bed, the sheets clearly visible. “That was the moon landing,” he said. “Oh my God, it’s actually happening.”

[ related topics: Religion Interactive Drama Politics Photography Sexual Culture Technology and Culture Health virus Aviation moron Sociology Art & Culture Television California Culture Pyrotechnics Education Real Estate Furniture Woodworking ]

Fortune cookie: "Actions speak louder than talks."

A gazillion TED speakers just went mute...

[ related topics: Photography ]

Facebook told me it removed my content. The preview says "We can't show this content". I, of course, contested the removal, and when asked why I posted it said that "the issue is important to me", but I have no idea what the content was.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Dear Apple: Why TF do I have to do this?

- (void)drawRect:(NSRect)inputDirtyRect {
    NSRect bounds = self.bounds;
    NSRect dirtyRect = NSIntersectionRect(inputDirtyRect, bounds);

[ related topics: Apple Computer ]

RT timbray@cosocial.ca Tim Bray @timbray@cosocial.ca

Proposal for HTTP Status Code 420: Requester Impaired.

Draft: https://www.ietf.org/archive/i...oda-420requesterimpaired-02.html

Discussion. starts here: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/...etf-http-wg/2023OctDec/0239.html

The discussion acknowledges the joke, but points out....

The original idea for this was an April Fool's RFC. 420 is an available client error response code, and the number 420 is associated with marijuana use. However, as I was writing and drafting it occurred to me that this is a legitimate need. With AI systems being given more operational autonomy and the fact that Large Language Models (LLMs) can "hallucinate" responses, non-human as well as human requesters can be impaired. If impaired requestors are attached to something like remote-operated heavy equipment the results could be catastrophic. Dedicating an HTTP response code to this will allow for better visibility and remediation of impaired requesters.

[ related topics: Drugs Interactive Drama moron Writing Net Culture Community Artificial Intelligence Archival ]

James Bradburn's Tales of Ontario — Why The Annual Marshall McLuhan Bulk Candy Festival Never Had a Second Edition is fascinating, but the ad that this ties to pulls an interesting McLuhan quote:

Of course, packages will be obsolete in a few years. People will want tactile experiences, they'll want to feel the product they're getting.

When I think back to the bulk containers of the health food stores of my youth (and, yes, those things still exist, whether they're less prominent in my experiences or society in general, I don't know) I see how McLuhan got there, but with the ways that plastic packaging, and online commerce, has exploded, it's interesting to look at how it hasn't happened.

[ related topics: Health Food ]

RT Jared White @jaredwhite@indieweb.social

Here's a thought experiment:

Most shopping brands send *way* too many emails, and the emails they do send are almost always extremely bland and boring.

If that's the case, then here comes the next question:

Instead of tool vendors helping marketers send fewer emails and making the ones they do send legitimately better…why are they jumping on the generative you-know-what bandwagon which is geared towards producing MORE content that is LESS interesting?!

Exact opposite of what is needed! 😵‍💫

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Law Race ]

I've been thinking a lot about "what even is sex?" recently, and last night started reading Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma, and Consensual Nonmonogamy, which quickly referenced "The Opposite of Rape Culture is Nurturance Culture", and even though I linked to it back in 2016 it's worth a re-read now.

https://norasamaran.com/2016/0...culture-is-nurturance-culture-2/

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Sociology California Culture ]

Sharon Kirk: The Stunning Cost of Memory Care

[ related topics: Star Trek ]

Are Emergent Abilities of Large Language Models a Mirage? Rylan Schaeffer, Brando Miranda, Sanmi Koyejo

Recent work claims that large language models display emergent abilities, abilities not present in smaller-scale models that are present in larger-scale models. What makes emergent abilities intriguing is two-fold: their sharpness, transitioning seemingly instantaneously from not present to present, and their unpredictability, appearing at seemingly unforeseeable model scales. Here, we present an alternative explanation for emergent abilities: that for a particular task and model family, when analyzing fixed model outputs, emergent abilities appear due to the researcher's choice of metric rather than due to fundamental changes in model behavior with scale. Specifically, nonlinear or discontinuous metrics produce apparent emergent abilities, whereas linear or continuous metrics produce smooth, continuous predictable changes in model performance. We present our alternative explanation in a simple mathematical model, then test it in three complementary ways: we (1) make, test and confirm three predictions on the effect of metric choice using the InstructGPT/GPT-3 family on tasks with claimed emergent abilities; (2) make, test and confirm two predictions about metric choices in a meta-analysis of emergent abilities on BIG-Bench; and (3) show to choose metrics to produce never-before-seen seemingly emergent abilities in multiple vision tasks across diverse deep networks. Via all three analyses, we provide evidence that alleged emergent abilities evaporate with different metrics or with better statistics, and may not be a fundamental property of scaling AI models.

[ related topics: Theater & Plays Sociology Work, productivity and environment Mathematics Artificial Intelligence Model Building ]

Amazing how prepositions are not good ways to convey information.

Today's reminder of mortality: Milkshake peaked at #3 two decades ago.

Yay for automated speed enforcement through passive infrastructure!

https://jalopnik.com/watch-eve...fresno-speed-bump-duo-1851090449

https://youtu.be/0S89J-mR-yk?si=rbXwcOxwZgWIqFfo

[ related topics: Movies Space & Astronomy California Culture ]

"AI", especially search, is a lot like going hiking with birding friends. It's possible that that's a purple thwarted tithatch, or ya could just be jerking my chain.

[ related topics: Nature and environment Artificial Intelligence ]

GM Says It's Ditching Apple CarPlay and Android Auto for Your Safety.

I mean, on the one hand it's obviously bullshit, they're doing this because they want to suck some extra recurring dollars out of the "buyer". And if they gave a shit about safety, they'd... well...

On the other hand, they're not wrong. The stupid UX decisions in Android Auto do cause us to go straight to our phones, because holy shit.

Via

[ related topics: Apple Computer Interactive Drama Current Events hubris ]

Not really feeling the lights this year, but a cursory attempt at brightening the season.

[ related topics: Photography ]

I have always accepted that I'm somewhere on the autistic spectrum, but as I read more about trauma response, and find ways to change my own beliefs and behaviors, I'm becoming way less charitable towards the community I grew up in...

Because maybe most of this is just trauma response?

[ related topics: Community ]

Fuuuuu. It is almost twenty freaking twenty four, and I just found something else that is trying to reinterpret the character set by default rather than just passing the damned UTF8 bytes through.

[ related topics: Typography ]

RT ghorwood↙↙↙ @ghorwood@mastodon.social

i was going to wait to tell the “who called it ‘secret santa’ instead of ‘non-disclosure claus’?” joke until it was closer to christmas, but i figured i’d totally forget, so i’m telling it now.

Relevant to some things in my life: RT Col @countcol@mastodonapp.uk

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."

Anais Nin

[ related topics: Beer ]

I keep wanting to learn Rust, and keep ending up just needing to get things done, but rkyv, zero-copy deserialization framework for rust is part of my "whoah, this looks really cool" vibe.

A Camera, Not an Engine — Modern AI puts us firmly into an age of exploration of computational reality

The title of this essay inverts the title of a book about economics by Donald Mackenzie, An Engine Not a Camera. The premise of that book is that economics theories are engines that produce (via policies and institutions) economic behaviors, but trick us into thinking they merely describe them. Modern AI has the reverse problem. It’s a camera that tricks us into thinking it’s an engine that “generates” rather than “sees” things. As an aside, this weird symmetry makes me suspect that economics and modern AI are true duals of some sort — maybe the way to get to AI with agency is to bolt on an economics theory.

[ related topics: Books Photography Writing Machinery Fabrication Artificial Intelligence Economics ]

LinkedIn subject line with "Dan, follow Vanessa V., Front-End Engineer: NaN followers:"

Hmmmm... Sounds like an organization that might need some resources for hiring better software developers.

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

Went down to the gingerbread exhibition at the Petaluma Hotel to see the 5th St Greenway entry. Was not disappointed.

[ related topics: Photography Travel Food - Cake ]

Of note was the gingerbread ship, with tentacles, and decorated interior....

[ related topics: Photography Machinery Food - Cake ]

And the gingerbread book stack, with cat.

[ related topics: Books Photography Food - Cake ]

The focus on urban planning led to multi-generational housing, in gingerbread. At least according to the sign.

[ related topics: Photography Real Estate Food - Cake ]

Aargh! Why does every audio editing application make me think "holy crap this is awful, I could write something with a less obnoxious interface!"? Today's frustration involves importing 5 sync'ed tracks into Logic Pro to try to do some re-mixing. Maybe I should be doing this particular operation in Audacity instead...

Edit: Aaand, the answer is that Spleeter didn't give me a useful separation anyway. Oh well.

[ related topics: Music ]

Nice to get a few minutes in the shop and get some finish on a bit of window trim.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Alexandra Petri nails it in the Washington Post: GOP baffled that ‘We Don’t Care if You Die’ is not a winning slogan

#GiftArticle https://wapo.st/48nX1rT

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

I am not judgey about singing voices, And really appreciate effors, but holy crap a party where Happy Birthday is sung in tune really gives me the warm fuzzies around a person's community...

[ related topics: Community ]

"The holidays are coming."

For you.

Run.

Save yourself.

It's been three years since my Dad died, and I think about him pretty much every time I'm out in the shop, making sawdust. But this evening we were hanging some lights and evergreen branches, and I was bending coat hanger wire into clips, and something about how I said "That was a really nice wire coat hanger, I wasn't gonna throw it away, I knew it was gonna come in handy!" made Charlene say "you were just channeling your dad".

Whoah! Charlene went to take some pictures of our LED Christmas lights on our living room on her phone, and they were flickering on her phone screen.

Which wasn't unexpected, refresh rate allowing and all... Except that the flicker seems to be synced to the music that's playing. I don't have a good explanation for that.

[ related topics: Music Photography ]

A decade ago, on this date, DJ Snake and Lil Jon's "Turn Down for What" was released. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMUDVMiITOU

[ related topics: Movies ]

Good article in Slate, summarizing the policies and social trends that have led to the bloat of automobiles and trucks.

[ related topics: Humor Automobiles Machinery ]

Fascinating: Ken Parker: The History and Evolution of the Archtop Guitar (1:08 YouTube video)

[ related topics: Music Movies Video ]

Now convinced that Quora is just people trolling each other.

(Reddit is too, but the Reddit users are smart enough to know that that's what's going on and are able to be meta about it.)

Was at a party this weekend, ended up in a discussion with a public employee who's worked in housing policy, and a third person, and the third person said something about moving the homeless out to some place in the Central Valley where housing is cheaper.

And it became very clear to me how well meaning nice people can end up supporting policies that put the undesirables out in the camps.

Anyway, homelessness can be precipitating trauma, more housing, bring down housing costs with supply.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment California Culture Community Real Estate ]

The headline is Oprah and WeightWatchers are now embracing weight loss drugs. Here's why, about Wegovy and Ozempic and such, but I think the biggie is this quote from WeightWatchers CEO Sima Sistani:

I'm going to say, as somebody who was very humbled to take this role — because WeightWatchers also worked for me — yes, that advice was wrong. Because we said it was choice, not chance. And the truth is that this is a chronic condition. And ultimately, for every one person that we helped, there was one person who our program did not work for because they were dealing with a chronic relapsing condition, with biology and genetics and environmental underpinnings. So, in order for us to reintroduce ourselves, we need to acknowledge the part that we had in the past.

Though this is also feeling like a cynical ploy to sell drugs...

[ related topics: Drugs Health Software Engineering History Work, productivity and environment ]

A comment about "the right order to watch Star Wars movies in" notes that just the opening crawl in the original was mind-blowing, and that the impact of the movie is very much tied to the cultural context.

https://kzoo.to/@JohnJBurnsIII/111603054467494248

So maybe the answer is don't bother watching the Star Wars movies. Let's pursue myths that are appropriate to *this* era, rather than rehashing the spirituality of the '70s.

[ related topics: Religion Star Wars Movies Space & Astronomy Sociology Aviation - Helicopters ]

Especially since people often turn to me as a leader in the communities I participate in, I think I need to print out "THE WORST THING YOU TOLERATE IS WHAT YOUR COMMUNITY BECOMES" and put it somewhere that I'm reminded of it regularly.

From the thread at: https://toot.cat/@DaywalkingRedhead/111602079939855110 particularly quoting https://mastodon.social/@mhoye/109359421531179769

[ related topics: Community ]

This discussion of fraud in gift cards (reapplication of scratch-off overlay, modification of bar codes) is a good reminder that gift cards are a removal of value, and if you aren't choosing a gift particularly for a person, you're better off giving cash.

https://infosec.exchange/@briankrebs/111603075906194429

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Community ]

RT madeline “deweened” cavegift @cavegift

damn girl are you the tower of babel because you are stacked in defiance of god and i cannot speak coherently when you go down

[ related topics: Religion ]

That feeling when ya read "open-std" and don't see it as a resource for open... uh... standards.

St. Louis Police Crash Into LGBTQ Bar, Arrest Its Owner

This is the second high-profile crash involving a St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department car in a week. Last Tuesday, a police SUV and another vehicle both ran a stop sign at North Sarah and St. Louis Avenue. The police cruiser ended up being flipped over outside a business located at the intersection.

[ related topics: Humor Movies Current Events Law Enforcement Automobiles ]

RT Joshua Holland @JoshuaHolland@mastodon.social

On another site, some chud demanded that someone "define a woman" and she replied, "it's a person who covers their drink when they see you in a bar."

Just the perfect response.

#lgbtq

RT Kiara | Hyenagirl64 🇵🇸 @hyenagirl64@yiff.life

@mynameistillian the same brains that get called “genius” at a young age get called “special needs” if they don’t pass the standardized tests. “Genius” is a construct. It’s society saying “people with weird brains only deserve to be treated with respect if they are exceptionally profitable”

Beautification is just as dehumanizing as demonization.

Having the “right” skin color is one of those tests.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Tesla Has The Highest Accident Rate Of Any Auto Brand

Tesla drivers are the most accident-prone, according to a LendingTree analysis of 30 car brands. It found that Tesla drivers are involved in more accidents than drivers of any other brand. Tesla drivers had 23.54 accidents per 1,000 drivers. Ram (22.76) and Subaru (20.90) were the only other brands with more than 20 accidents per 1,000 drivers for every brand.

Tesla crushed in Consumer Reports reliability rankings despite improvement

Consumer Reports‘ annual reliability rankings have been released, and with data from 24 brands and over 300,000 vehicles, Tesla fell near the bottom (19/24) along with Mercedes-Benz, Jeep, Volkswagen, GMC, and Chevrolet. Electric vehicles overall also placed poorly, being the second least reliable category of vehicles. Hybrids/plugin hybrids, especially those from Toyota, were found to be the most reliable.

Washington Post: Recalling almost every Tesla in America won’t fix safety issues, experts say

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment Friday. In a statement this week responding to The Post’s report on Autopilot crashes, Tesla said it has a “moral obligation” to continue improving its safety systems and also said that it is “morally indefensible” to not make these features available to a wider set of consumers.

Elon Musk: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Edit 2023-12-20: Reuters: Tesla blamed drivers for failures of parts it long knew were defective

Wheels falling off cars at speed. Suspensions collapsing on brand-new vehicles. Axles breaking under acceleration. Tens of thousands of customers told Tesla about a host of part failures on low-mileage cars. The automaker sought to blame drivers for vehicle ‘abuse,’ but Tesla documents show it had tracked the chronic ‘flaws’ and ‘failures’ for years.

[ related topics: Ethics Consumerism and advertising Heinlein Automobiles ]

Oh wow, I mean, the article is fascinating, but as fascinating is how subtle the changes between some of the images are, and how people are chasing the images back to the source artists. Facebook Is Being Overrun With Stolen, AI-Generated Images That People Think Are Real

[ related topics: Art & Culture Artificial Intelligence ]

The Register: Pakistani politician deepfakes himself to deliver a speech from behind bars

event [VIDEO] that culminated in a four-minute speech by an AI version of Khan.

According to Agence France-Presse (AFP) the video was based on notes the former PM sent to his lawyers. Those notes were recorded and fed into a tool from AI firm ElevenLabs that clones voices from existing speech samples.

[ related topics: Politics Movies moron Artificial Intelligence Video ]

On this day: Dec 19, 1865: South Carolina Enacts Law Requiring Contracts to Refer to White People as "Masters"

[ related topics: Race ]

RT Shoshana 🏳️‍⚧️ @LilahTovMoon@tech.lgbt

“I just bought two kilos of coke” sounds a lot cooler than “I just bought two liters of coke,” despite being the same thing.

[ related topics: Drugs ]

ArsTechnica article on the recent Novel Terrapin attack on SSH

Named Terrapin, the new hack works only when an attacker has an active adversary-in-the middle position on the connection between the admins and the network they remotely connect to. Also known as a man-in-the-middle or MitM attack, this occurs when an attacker secretly positioned between two parties intercepts communications and assumes the identity of both the recipient and the sender. This provides the ability to both intercept and to alter communications. While this position can be difficult for an attacker to achieve, it’s one of the scenarios from which SSH was thought to have immunity.

[ related topics: broadband Invention and Design Cryptography ]

Chevy dealership’s AI chatbot suggests Ford F-150 when asked for best truck. Chevrolet of Watsonville has been using an LLM chatbot that's capable of writing some pretty complex Python code (based on screenshots I've seen elsewhere), and... yeah...

[ related topics: Writing Monty Python Automobiles Machinery Currency Artificial Intelligence Python ]

Hackaday: Food safe 3d printing

Matt Thomas] wanted to answer the question of whether 3D printed structures can be food-safe or even medical-safe, since there is an awful lot of opinion out there but not a lot of actual science about the subject. As a mechanical engineer who dabbles in medical technical matters, he designed as series of tests using a wide range of nasty-sounding pathogens, to find once and for all what works and what does not.

Though that blog post is August 2022, it references (and looks like a republishing in HTML of) The Impact of Sanitation Methods of 3D-printed Parts for Food and Medical Applications, January 2019 Advances in Science Technology and Engineering Systems Journal

Results from various testing methods used in hospitals and FDA approved microbial surface testing, indicate that 3D printed parts of PLA/PLA+ (Polylactic Acid), and PETG (Polyethylene terephthalate glycol) can be cleaned to safe levels using warm water (120 °F), and non-concentrated dish soap. Examination and verification of cleanliness were completed via Petri dish preparations, and protein residue testing. It was found that Colony Forming Units (CFU) and Plaque Forming Units (PFU) had been reduced by 90%. Experimental results indicate that using 2g of baking soda, when used with soapy water, eliminates biofilms by chemical and physical action, neutralizes acidic bacteria, and removes mucus. It is recommended (not required) and tested by surgical technicians, that a 2-minute room temperature bleach water soak (200ppm), after washing and rinsing should be done to ensure pathogens are at safe levels. Acetic acid from vinegar was tested as well via petri dish for CFU reduction and can effectively eradicate biofilms due to the ability to penetrate the biofilm matrix and the cell membrane. Acetic acid is not recommended for disinfecting, only for biofilm reduction. It is noted to the reader that sanitation in this context refers to the method of bringing a surface or object to safe levels of cleanliness for food or medical preparation and storage. Furthermore, mass spectrometry readings indicate that no contamination from heavy metals, or other toxins are present in PLA+, and PETG before and after printing. Lastly, filaments made from a pull-trusion method from recycled soda or water bottles has been tested and found to be safe.. When using 3D-printed items for liquids, it is highly recommended to coat the 3D-printed parts in resin.</bockquote>

[ related topics: Weblogs Food Bay Area Graphics ]

404 Media: Largest Dataset Powering AI Images Removed After Discovery of Child Sexual Abuse Material

The model is a massive part of the AI-ecosystem, used by Google and Stable Diffusion. The removal follows discoveries made by Stanford researchers, who found thousands instances of suspected child sexual abuse material in the dataset.

Washington Post: Exploitive, illegal photos of children found in the data that trains some AI

In a report released by Stanford University’s Internet Observatory, researchers said they found at least 1,008 images of child exploitation in a popular open source database of images, called LAION-5B, that AI image-generating models such as Stable Diffusion rely on to create hyper-realistic photos.

Stanford Internet Observatory Cyber Policy Center: Identifying and Eliminating CSAM in Generative ML Training Data and Models (PDF)

[ related topics: Free Software Children and growing up Photography Erotic Sexual Culture Astronomy Journalism and Media Net Culture Machinery Trains Skating Education Artificial Intelligence Race Databases ]

NPR: New 'Washington Post' CEO Will Lewis accused of Murdoch tabloid hacking cover-up

A very different picture of Lewis emerges from material presented in London courtrooms in recent months and reviewed by NPR. The man picked to lead the Post — a paper with the slogan "Democracy Dies in Darkness" — stands accused of helping to lead a massive cover-up of criminal activity when he was acting outside public view.

Likely related: BBC: US judge orders names of more than 170 Jeffrey Epstein associates to be released

[ related topics: Invention and Design Law Current Events Monty Python ]

Holy crap! Once you see the sexual tension between two guys making eye contact in the Delaware state flag, you can never unsee it. Via.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Nothing makes me shudder for the ways cars have eaten our brains like listening to people talk about making sure there are enough parking spots for resident-owned vehicles for an elder care assisted living facility.

[ related topics: Pop Culture ]

Just making damned sure that I know Google is lying to me when it can't find a match: Been seeing the complaint that

"DeviceIdHashSaltStorage: The length of the hash salt (47) is different to the length of the hash salts defined in WebKit (48)"

In my XCode console for quite a while, and, yes, very much believe that this is a WKWebView or AppKit issue.

[ related topics: Databases ]

Today I learned about C++ inlining with _attribute_(flatten), because apparently inline isn't enough of an indication of what you really want...

(And, yes, that's a problem with my parser and underscore quoting. Deal.)

[ related topics: Skating ]

Cop Conducts Search for ‘Gender Queer’ Book in Eighth-Grade Classroom

The search occurred in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, with the officer—reportedly escorted by the school’s principal—searching an eighth grade English classroom for the book Gender Queer: a Memoir, by Maia Kobabe.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Books ]

RT Catherine @whitequark@mastodon.social

very unserious

I see a lot of you questioning technical designs with "which drugs were they on?!" and that has to stop! I know a lot of drug users and most of them build perfectly sensible technical systems. Let's not stigmatize drug use by further associating it with poor technological decisions

[ related topics: Drugs Health ]

It is continually astounding to me the jumps that municipalities will jump through in order to prevent housing that people want to live in from being built.

(Actually, it's not surprising, most everybody is happy to build excuses to relocate "them" to elsewhere.)

[ related topics: Theater & Plays Real Estate ]

Anyone have experience with Chladni plates? I have spent so much damned money on mild steel plates in various different gauges, and used thin plywood, and am getting absolute crap results.

Built a driver out of an old subwoofer. We're definitely vibrating the plate. We can shake the sand all around at low frequencies, and they kinda form around nodal points, but are not getting cool patterns that others seem to.

[ related topics: Cool Science Currency ]

A Proclamation on Granting Pardon for the Offense of Simple Possession of Marijuana, Attempted Simple Possession of Marijuana, or Use of Marijuana

Therefore, acting pursuant to the grant of authority in Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution of the United States, I, Joseph R. Biden Jr., do hereby grant a full, complete, and unconditional pardon to all current United States citizens and lawful permanent residents who, on or before the date of this proclamation, committed or were convicted of the offense of simple possession of marijuana, attempted simple possession of marijuana, or use of marijuana, regardless of whether they have been charged with or prosecuted for these offenses on or before the date of this proclamation...

Obviously this doesn't undo much of the harm of prohibition, and definitely doesn't go anywhere in trying to undo the harms of all of the cascading on top of the basic charges, but it's a start.

[ related topics: Drugs Law Civil Liberties ]

Because I'm fascinated particularly by how Egypt had and lost a huge economy: RT mhoye @mhoye@mastodon.social

Stonehenge was apparently built between 2600 and 2400 BC, but the construction of the Pyramid of Djoser in Egypt is dated between 2670 BC to 2650 BC, so there's a 200-year window where it's possible a Pharoah could have told a druid how badly they suck at stacking rocks.

[ related topics: Beer Machinery Fabrication Phreaking Economics Model Building ]

RT Marc Hedlund @marcprecipice@xoxo.zone

With apologies for the Twitter link, this is an excellent thread on why paving without traffic calming is unacceptable: https://twitter.com/BerkSafeStreets/status/1737951950228877754

The key finding from @navgattu is that speeds on a recently-repaved street in #Berkeley went up by about 5 mph—next to a school—because the poor condition of the pavement was effectively acting as traffic calming before. Our position (https://www.berkeleysafestreets.com) is that paving and safety features need to be paired.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Bay Area ]

Jan. 6 rioter nabbed in Bumble dating app sting pleads guilty to assaulting officers

WASHINGTON — Nearly three years ago, a young professional in the nation's capital was sitting in her apartment after the Jan. 6 attack and saw that the FBI was looking for help identifying the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol. So she opened up the Bumble dating app, changed her political beliefs to conservative and got to swiping.

[ related topics: Politics moron Law Enforcement Real Estate Woodworking ]

Think I linked to news articles about this incident previously, but: RT ordinoides @ordinoides@kolektiva.social

This shit show keeps getting shittier.

https://www.statesmanjournal.c...clist-federal-court/71912913007/ Edit: another source for the full story of what happened, no paywall: http://breakfastonbikes.blogsp...gh-street-leslie-street.html?m=1

Description of the recent Statesman article, no paywall: http://breakfastonbikes.blogsp...unity-trial-fatal-crash.html?m=1

Rundown of events:

1. A cyclist is hit and killed in full daylight by the driver of a black pickup, in Salem Oregon.

2. It is revealed that the driver who killed the cyclist was an on-duty DEA agent embedded in the Salem police department, so the case is handed over to Keizer PD to investigate.

3. Camera footage reveals the driver (DEA agent) was speeding on a residential street, ran a stop sign when he hit the cyclist, who had the right of way and was coming down a steep hill. Driver stopped but did not aide the dying cyclist.

4. Driver is indicted for negligence, arrested, released on bail.

5. Latest development: lawyer for the defendant (DEA agent) petitioned to have the case held in federal court, because he could use law enforcement immunity as a defense in federal but not Oregon state court.

6. Prosecutors say that the agent was NOT actively pursuing a suspect or about to intervene in a drug deal.

So they're saying that simply being a DEA officer is enough to be allowed to do this. Seriously it's DEA policy that agents are allowed to break traffic laws, and they argue that means they can't have consequences for hitting and killing a person.

Fuck the #DEA.

#FuckCars #FuckThePolice #Oregon #SafeStreets #cycling

Edited because my link at the top was broken!

[ related topics: Photography Health Robotics Law Current Events Law Enforcement Sports Embedded Devices Pedal Power Bicycling Government ]

Saw a demo video of some anthropomorphic robots dancing, and I realized: writing, drawing, dancing... the robot uprising is coming for your creative expression first.

Which, ya know, kinda meshes with the whole suppression of sexuality that capitalism engages in.

[ related topics: Robotics Writing Video Woodworking ]

Raiding the office candy drawer, and talking about our preferences, and coworker said of me "he will take all of the Almond Joy out of your life".

And, you know, not wrong.

The changing meaning of acronyms has had a lot of impacts on my world, but that a search for "a.s.b. faq" gives me results flooded with "Academy Standards Board" and "Appraisal Standards Board" and "Accounting Standards Board" means that... well... I guess I'm old.

#IfYouKnowYouKnow

The WaPo #GiftArticle is about Canadian production of Fentanyl, but some of the quotes they pull up about that vs Mexican production really clarify the racism and paternalism that drive prohibition.

IMHO, you wanna lower OD deaths, provide a social safety net and stop "law" enforcement from putting up huge billboards that make Fentanyl sound really cool.

https://wapo.st/4auRotD

[ related topics: Quotes Theater & Plays Work, productivity and environment Race ]

Note about GM's money grab dropping CarPlay and Android Auto in favor of a buggy in-house subscription disaster, but holy shit can we talk about the rest of the car? After the software update with our battery replacement I can't figure out how to get our Bolt to stop randomly blinding oncoming drivers with high beams while the lights are in auto mode, and turning to manual means I have to turn the car off and on to re-enable auto...

https://mas.to/@roo_44/111636161242684054

[ related topics: Software Engineering Automobiles Currency Fabrication Real Estate ]

Accordion player at Target. Normally we wouldn't be anywhere near here, especially today, but I got in the wrong lane on the way to Sprouts and we spent a bit of time enduring the hostile architecture.

https://youtu.be/h-C9kH7s_aY

https://youtu.be/Hd4FwDs1rNw

[ related topics: Architecture ]

When you're playing with a Chladni plate and it suddenly smells like you're about to let the smoke out...

[ related topics: Photography ]

Doing a lot of pondering about local politics, and how nice people participate in pushing some horrific directions.

When tempers flare at a public meeting, and the proponents of the side with the anger then hold a "civil discussion" about that same topic, which is, because they hosted it.

Or when people ask why we can't just relocate "the homeless" to places with a cheaper cost of living.

Maybe I'm over sensitive, but those slopes seem steep and greased.

[ related topics: Politics Community ]

We like the rainbow enough that we want to leave lights up longer, but the wood structure i saturated with sagged with the rain and humidity. So I rebuilt it in galvanized steel.

[ related topics: Cool Science Woodworking ]

We like the rainbow enough that we want to leave lights up longer, but the wood structure i saturated with sagged with the rain and humidity. So I rebuilt it in galvanized steel. (Doh, with pic)

[ related topics: Hardware Hackery Photography Cool Science Robotics Embedded Devices Woodworking ]

'80s flashback! Friend's Christmas decorations obviously have a legacy.

Also bringing back memories because one of the Bowater plants was near the Hiwasser on I75...

[ related topics: Photography Gardening ]

Charlene is going through a cookbook for a New Year's potluck, and it seems like we're gonna be baked and fried.

*Before* we dedicate these two carboys of pindo-persimmon wine to glüwein.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Wines and Spirits ]

Future Crunch: 66 Good News Stories You Didn't Hear About in 2023

Via this recap thread.

[ related topics: Current Events ]

Eschaton: Cop budgets

For some reason arresting people for skipping a subway fare makes sense to people while no one would consider doing so for the identical crime of not feeding a parking meter. </blockquote.

[ related topics: Public Transportation ]

Nothing new here, but good to have the recap (especially for the next time someone posts one of those "crime was lower when we beat our children" memes on Facebook): NBC News: Most people think the U.S. crime rate is rising. They're wrong. Almost 80 percent of Americans, and 92 percent of Republicans, think crime has gone up. It actually fell in 2023. An expert blames a familiar culprit for the mistaken impression.

A Gallup poll released this month found that 77% of Americans believe crime rates are worsening, but they are mistaken, the new FBI data and other statistics show.

The FBI data, which compares crime rates in the third quarter of 2023 to the same period last year, found that violent crime dropped 8%, while property crime fell 6.3% to what would be its lowest level since 1961, according to criminologist Jeff Asher, who analyzed the FBI numbers.

Although sometimes just tossing a link to the data is sufficient.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Invention and Design Current Events Law Enforcement Mathematics Currency ]

I had the history of the Dutch occupation during WWII reinforced while reading Mieke Eerkens' All Ships Follow Me: A Family Memoir of War Across Three Continents, but the depths of the factions, and which ended up where in the post-war government, is fascinating: Dutch News: Holocaust survivors were spied on as a “danger to democracy’

The Netherlands is still struggling to come to terms with the way it treated Jews who returned home in 1945 and whose property and possessions were stolen or lost.

Many councils were all but welcoming to Jewish citizens who returned to claim their homes after the war, even requiring them to pay tax over the periods they had been in hiding or in a camp.

[ related topics: Religion Politics History moron Sociology Current Events Machinery ]

Waitaminute. Just had the "aha". "Serverless" is just bullshit for "we re-invented CGI scripts".

Those fuckers.

Everyone's reposting that "Die Hard"/"Home Alone" meme as "Die Alone", but make me a poster for "Home Hard", you cowards.

[ related topics: Marketing ]

I'm starting to feel like it's time for distributed callbacks/web mentions/etc again, if only to try to manage some of the spam better and encourage more bloggage or other resources.

Is the right way to do this Fediverse federation, or is there another modern technology for inbound links that people are playing with these days?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Spam Monty Python ]

Your dark humor bit of the moment: Portland Traffic Deaths Set a 30-Year Record

The death toll marks a third consecutive year of failure for Vision Zero, an ambitious and expensive 2016 policy that included a goal of eliminating traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2025. The record also comes seven months after the Portland Police Bureau reinstated its traffic division, deploying 14 officers to crack down on speeding and drunken driving. Officials had hoped that an increased police presence would be the missing ingredient to reduce fatal crashes. It wasn’t.

Really. You don't say. This is my shocked face.

[ related topics: Humor Current Events Law Enforcement ]

Re comparing calling LLM's "generative AI" to "calling a battery a generator", I have really bad news for you about what happens when you search for "solar generator".

Sigh. Humanity is doomed, the question is whether I should fear that, or celebrate it.

https://neurodifferent.me/@joshsusser/111608292637560216

[ related topics: Current Events Artificial Intelligence Photovoltaics ]

4-year campaign backdoored iPhones using possibly the most advanced exploit ever — "Triangulation" infected dozens of iPhones belonging to employees of Moscow-based Kaspersky

Huge chain of attacks that included using a PDF to trigger a TrueType font exploit and eventually led to using a memory mapped I/O exploit inside Apple's ARM devices.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Work, productivity and environment Typography Graphic Design iPhone ]

"Washington Post: Her story fueled anti-trans bills, now she's fighting them". Fascinating read about someone who detransitioned, but now feels like the anti-trans bills interfere with the sort of treatments that she wished she'd been able to find.

#GiftArticle

https://wapo.st/48u9fiD

"The Modi government has never confirmed or denied using spyware, and it has refused to cooperate with a committee appointed by India’s Supreme Court to investigate whether it had."

But in criticizing Apple for warning opposition politicians and journalists that their phones had been hacked, the Indian government seems to have confirmed that, yes, they are the state actors compromising those devices...

#GiftArticle https://wapo.st/3NEJYub

[ related topics: Apple Computer moron Journalism and Media ]

Lunduke: Mozilla 2023 Annual Report: CEO pay skyrockets, while Firefox Marketshare nosedives (and that appears to be the plan)

When you consider the goals of Mozilla... the decreasing Firefox marketshare is no longer much of a concern. In fact, moving revenue away from Firefox, while investing in A.I. systems (and other subscription services) becomes the primary goal.

Edit: people whose opinion I trust have told me that Bryan Lunduke has expressed some pretty reprehensible views, and it's difficult to find receipts on this because it's both buried deep in video, and because fanboy harassment means that those discussing it have hidden themselves from search engines.

So have https://www.jwz.org/blog/2023/...when-mozilla-made-a-web-browser/ and https://alpaca.gold/@Jeremiah/111662948042437233

[ related topics: Open Source ]

When you go to listen to an inaugural podcast on "resilient futures" and the host is the E.D. of ASCE, the build more auto-oriented infrastructure, if we don't spend $2.8T on roads we're gonna lose out on a trillion in economic growth, lobbying organization.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Economics ]

RT sea shanty stan account @anarchosanties.bsky.social

The Art of War is so funny when you realise it's basically a very frustrated Sun Tzu writing The Absolute Dipshit Entitled Brat Silver Spoon Nepo Baby's Guide to Not Immediately Fucking Up A War, which also explains why CEO's like it so much

[ related topics: History Writing Art & Culture Douglas Adams Java ]

RT Abe Riesman (girlmode) אבי ריסמן @abrahamjoseph

Oh, you think you follow in the path of Christ? Name one sex worker who would cry over your death

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

I need something like a combo box, where I can associate a name with an ID, but there are enough items that I need searchability.

So I start typing in "alternatives to datalist"...

And Google suggests "... that work".

Well played, Google, well played.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

Pertinent to some discussions at work, we've talked about how compositing window managers for Linux allowed fly-through 3d environments with desktops mapped on to objects in that space, and but...

xssfox: Ideal monitor rotation for programmers

Via Linux is the only OS to support diagonal PC monitor mode — dev champions the case for 22-degree-rotation computing

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source Space & Astronomy Law Work, productivity and environment Graphics ]

IETF: Ethernet over HTTPS Protocol

This document defines a protocol for encapsulating Ethernet frames over HTTPS, allowing secure communication between a client and internal web servers. The protocol includes authentication using strong API keys encrypted with the server's public key. The communication is secured using TLS for privacy and integrity.

Via The Psychotic Network Ferret @nuintari@infosec.exchange who asked

What in the fucking shit is wrong with people?!?!?!

[ related topics: Privacy Cryptography ]

OH: Evangelical Christianity is just radical Islam with pork and beer.

[ related topics: Religion Beer ]

Ars Technica: FDA would like to stop finding Viagra in supplements sold on Amazon — “Big Guys Male Energy Supplement” turns out to be a vehicle for prescription drugs.

FDA: Mens Maximum Energy Supplement contains hidden drug ingredient

FDA laboratory analysis confirmed that Mens Maximum Energy Supplement contains sildenafil, the active ingredient in the FDA-approved prescription drug Viagra, used to treat erectile dysfunction. FDA approval of Viagra is restricted to use under the supervision of a licensed healthcare professional. This undeclared ingredient may interact with nitrates found in some prescription drugs, such as nitroglycerin, and may lower blood pressure to dangerous levels. People with diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or heart disease often take nitrates.

[ related topics: Drugs Books Health ]

Bleeping Computer: Blockchain dev's wallet emptied in "job interview" using npm package

As a part of the job interview, the recruiter asked Çeliktepe to download and debug the code in two npm packages—"web3_nextjs" and "web3_nextjs_backend" hosted on a GitHub repository. However, moments later, the developer discovered that his MetaMask wallet had been drained—with upwards of $500 siphoned out of his account, based on the information seen by BleepingComputer.

[ related topics: Current Events Heinlein ]

This comment about 1,100 miles/year on an ebike having an energy cost of $6/year (https://tusky.town/@itsshevee/111665508103008537) draws into stark relief why PG&E is so intent on creating flat rate income-progressive energy metering.

So I know they told us it was all gonna go on our permanent record, but wondering where I'd go to find those old high school standardized test scores of mine....

[ related topics: Children and growing up ]

Ugh. It's would be so nice if Petaluma had a home improvement store. Left high and dry by Friedman's once again, off to Cotati to hit Lowe's.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Finally got the white oak window trim up around the front windows. Now to the interior doors....

[ related topics: Photography Microsoft Nature and environment Race ]

Window trim in the corner

[ related topics: Photography ]