Flutterby™! From 2024-08-01 to 2024-08-31

WSU Insider: Using the term ‘artificial intelligence’ in product descriptions reduces purchase intentions

“When AI is mentioned, it tends to lower emotional trust, which in turn decreases purchase intentions,” he said. “We found emotional trust plays a critical role in how consumers perceive AI-powered products.”

Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management: Adverse impacts of revealing the presence of “Artificial Intelligence (AI)” technology in product and service descriptions on purchase intentions: the mediating role of emotional trust and the moderating role of perceived risk

Findings further suggested that the negative mediating effect of emotional trust on the impact of AI term on purchase intention was stronger for high-risk products, compared to low-risk products.

Via

[ related topics: Current Events Consumerism and advertising Marketing Artificial Intelligence ]

Observation regarding that post two days ago that describing a product as "AI" turns off customers, Baldur Bjarnason @baldur@toot.cafe observes:

This doesn’t come as a surprise to most, but it definitely is surprising to many managers and consultants, but generative models—what’s being marketed as ‘AI’—are contraindications of quality and value

That is, anything those models do well is likely bullshit, so doing it more and better will make the product worse

The tasks and features generative models excel at were almost always bad ideas to begin with, and anything labelled as “AI” will have more of it

And mcc @mcc@mastodon.social notes

What's amazing to me about this article/study is that after discovering mentions of "AI" make people less interested in products, their recommendation is "so you should not call attention to the AI in your marketing". The idea of simply *not doing* the thing that people don't want is apparently never considered. We cannot conceive of a way of constructing software other than "develop for the investors" hhttps://xoxo.zone/@vwampage/112881383051537497

[ related topics: Current Events Consumerism and advertising Artificial Intelligence Archival ]

RT Rob Ricci @ricci@discuss.systems

This place is a place of honor... some great shit is commemorated here... this place slaps.

What is here was dope af to us. This message is hype about swag.

It's such a banger that it is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.

The form of the rizz is an emanation of vibes.

RT Rob Ricci @ricci

This place is a place of cringe... no s-tier content is commemorated here... lowkey weak shit is here.

TL;DR what is here was meh and mid to us. This toot is a CW about 💩.

ICYMI we cringed so hard that it's still present, in your time, as it was in ours.

FYI the form of the cringe is an emanation of shitpost.

KTHXBYE

Ref

Wikipedia: AI Washing

AI washing is a deceptive marketing tactic that consists of promoting a product or a service by exaggerating the role of artificial intelligence (AI) integration in it.

Samsung Electronics Rolls Out New Washing Machine Lineup Offering High Energy-Efficiency and Advanced AI Features

[ related topics: Current Events Consumerism and advertising Marketing Education Artificial Intelligence ]

Back when I worked in the city, occasionally on the way home I'd stop with a friend at the Ferry Building and we'd have a couple of oysters. Ya know, 3, maybe 6.

Anyway, a neighbor dropped by and asked if I liked oysters, and I said "yes", and they dropped a container on me and... I've eaten 6 so far, and this is tasty, but I think I'm gonna figure out if they last 'til tomorrow, 'cause I am *full*.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Public Transportation ]

Sports, the Olympics particularly, are a social construct meant to reinforce cultural norms. And gender segregation in sports even more so. So it's no surprise at all that the "what is a woman?" crowd is demonstrating that they're ignorant of biology, and that bullies are gonna move the goal posts if you give them one damned inch.

Anyway, a few random links this morning: One is professional boxer Patricio Manuel, who happens to be transgender. Pat's web site notes:

In 2013, he began medically transitioning under a doctor’s supervision, following USA Boxing and International Olympic Committee guidelines. He stepped back into the ring on May 5, 2016 – in the amateur male division – and won.

Pat successfully won his first bout as a pro boxer on Dec. 8, 2018.

Another is a reminder that the whole XX/XY thing is based on severely insufficient data and XY people give birth way more often than anyone suspects, just occasionally something is out of the norm enough that people check: Report of Fertility in a Woman with a Predominantly 46,XY Karyotype in a Family with Multiple Disorders of Sexual Development:

Results: Evaluation of the Y chromosome in the daughter and both parents revealed that the daughter inherited her Y chromosome from her father. Molecular analysis of the genes SOX9, SF1, DMRT1, DMRT3, TSPYL, BPESC1, DHH, WNT4, SRY, and DAX1 revealed normal male coding sequences in both the mother and daughter. An extensive family pedigree across four generations revealed multiple other family members with ambiguous genitalia and infertility in both phenotypic males and females, and the mode of inheritance of the phenotype was strongly suggestive of X-linkage.

Anyway, support your local Roller Derby squad.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Erotic Sexual Culture Health tolkien Software Engineering Bioinformatics Sociology Sports ]

I've been poking around Petaluma using onX Hunt, an app designed to tell you who owns what properties for hunting access, but it's also quite interesting for showing patterns of ownership of blighted lots. And it's quite a bit faster and cheaper to scroll around this vs paying a buck a whack for data from the county. There may be some data quality issues, with the Sonoma Brewing recreation area centered on Washington in front of the Golden Eagle shopping center.

[ related topics: Photography Dan & Charlene's July 2003 San Juan Trip ]

RT Zorro Notorious MEB 🪷🪷🪷 @AlgoCompSynth@mastodon.social

US Politics, satire

Did RFK Jr. just trigger a bear market?

#Curmudgeonry

[ related topics: Politics Economics ]

RT Alex Feinman @afeinman@wandering.shop

#writerscoffeeclub 5 Aug:If AI created a genuinely good story, would you read it?

This one is starting to have strong energy of "But what if I was the last man on Earth? Would you have sex with me then, huh?"

So, I'm not going to answer it.

A friend's offspring has written a story, and used a modern synthesizer to do a narrated version. I've been trying to get into it, and the synth sounds amazingly real in small sentence fragments, but listening to a longer bit, it's just not workable. I've run into this previously where someone used one of these things to narrate a YouTube video, and the different pronunciations of the same word leaped out, but this time it's an overwhelming sameness, even though a single sentence sounds animated.

I'd rather have an old style C64 synth, frankly, because I wouldn't be sloshing through that uncanny valley.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Erotic Sexual Culture Animation Pop Culture Guns Artificial Intelligence Video ]

Cyberattack knocks Mobile Guardian MDM offline and wipes thousands of student devices

Mobile Guardian Security Incident August 2024 (but, ya know, the month is still young):

Currently our investigation indicates that Mobile Guardian experienced a security incident that affected users globally, including on the North America, European, and Singapore instances.

This resulted in a small percentage of devices to be unenrolled from Mobile Guardian and their devices wiped remotely. ...

The rest are apparently temporarily locked out of their devices.

Via

People have told me that "the West" will maintain dominance because of ASML and TSMC, that China can't recreate the necessary supply chains independently, but I'm starting to wonder if blowing all of these resources on LLMs and "AI" is gonna make the differences moot.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Artificial Intelligence ]

Need a new wall clock for the bedroom. Somebody stop me from buying an eink display that I can hang off a Raspberry Pi or something and also hitting NOAA occasionally to put a weather forecast up there along with the time...

(or, you know, being an enabler and giving me a suggestion for a programmable eink+wifi device that I don't have to do a lot of mucking around with to make work...)

[ related topics: Invention and Design Global Warming ]

Elon Musk’s Twitter/X Sues Advertisers for Not Advertising on Elon Musk’s Twitter/X:

In her own Xitter video statement, CEO Linda Yaccarino alleged that a “group of companies organized a systematic, illegal boycott of X.” She added that advertisers leaving Twitter “puts your global town square, the one place that you can express yourself freely and openly, at long-term risk.” Her separate statement claims that “The illegal behavior of these organizations and their executives cost X billions of dollars.”

Waiting for the letter about my no longer posting there...

[ related topics: Consumerism and advertising Video ]

Nice summary: RT Kemotep @kemotep@mastodo.neoliber.al

Bitcoin is effectively the opposite of everything it set out to be.

It isn’t sound monetary policy, it isn’t anonymous, it isn’t fast, it isn’t cheap, and it doesn’t solve anything.

I thought there was some potential future in Humane's projector and hand gesture recognition interface, but apparently purchasers aren't feeling it: Humane’s daily returns are outpacing sales / The company is scrambling to stabilize as it hits $1 million in total returns against $9 million in sales.

Once a Humane Pin is returned, the company has no way to refurbish it, sources with knowledge of the return process confirmed. The Pin becomes e-waste, and Humane doesn’t have the opportunity to reclaim the revenue by selling it again. The core issue is that there is a T-Mobile limitation that makes it impossible (for now) for Humane to reassign a Pin to a new user once it’s been assigned to someone. One source said they don’t believe Humane has disposed of the old Pins because “they’re still hopeful they can solve this problem eventually.” T-Mobile declined to comment and referred us to Humane.

The, uh, "Cradle to Cradle" book came out in 2002, and companies still aren't taking lifecycle of their products into any sort of account...

[ related topics: Books Invention and Design Artificial Intelligence ]

Major shifts at OpenAI spark skepticism about impending AGI timelines

The moves have led some to wonder just how close OpenAI is to a long-rumored breakthrough of some kind of reasoning artificial intelligence if high-profile employees are jumping ship (or taking long breaks, in the case of Brockman) so easily. As AI developer Benjamin De Kraker put it on X, "If OpenAI is right on the verge of AGI, why do prominent people keep leaving?"

There's certainly been no evidence of anything approaching AGI, I'm not sure why people might think it's gonna spontaneously occur somehow given the current directions.

Pivot To AI: OpenAI loses more founders, it'll be fine

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Law Work, productivity and environment Machinery Artificial Intelligence ]

Dear Ohm Connect: first off, why does the default behavior for relay status keep getting switched off.

Second, why did you switch off my refrigerator this morning at 3:51, and not switch it back on?

[ related topics: Photography ]

Reconciling with our past — The WashU & Slavery Project is uncovering hard truths about how Washington University’s past intersects with slavery and racial injustice.

Via

[ related topics: History Education ]

Awwwww. Oh Joy Sex Toy: Healing Joy by Sara Nutter is just sooo wholesome and cute.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Open Access book: Gear Acquisition Syndrome: Consumption of Instruments and Technology in Popular Music

I need a better ebook reader for PDFs...

[ related topics: Language Books Music ]

Oh, look, more "fucking just get out of my way and let me do my damned work already". macOS Sequoia adds weekly permission prompt for screenshot and screen recording apps

[ related topics: Privacy Work, productivity and environment Macintosh ]

I still haven't got the tuits to sit down and really learn Rust, but I've read through the tutorials a few times, and as always start to struggle with "this seems kinda basic" and "where's the detail at?".

Don't write Rust like Java starts to dive into the idioms that make it feel more like thinking in the language, rather than trying to writing code that happens to translate to the language.

[ related topics: Software Engineering Writing ]

Giggle: McSweeney's: X Sends a Cease and Desist Letter to a Former User by Randal Cooper

(Just so I can find this in the future: the social media disaster formerly known as Twitter)

[ related topics: Humor Journalism and Media ]

I'm response to some driver's whining about kids on ebikes, I went and looked at our Telraam data, which I've been ignoring. In the past 10 days, a full third of all drivers on our 25MPH residential neighborhood street are exceeding the speed limit within 150' of the stop sign.

I would be louder about this, but that risks the speed limit being raised under the 85th percentile rule.

Fuck these automobile wielding terrorists.

[ related topics: Children and growing up History Automobiles ]

Was wondering how long it would be before 50 Shades of Grey showed up in our little library...

[ related topics: Language Books Photography ]

We went up to Healdsburg to hang out with Dori and see if we could find what people were talking about in Petaluma when they say "we don't want to end up like Healdsburg". Didn't find it, but looked at the David Baker Architects designed buildings, walked around The Randall and the Mill District, didn't get to River House, but up at Enso saw these cool compact parking car carousels.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Automobiles Architecture Real Estate Woodworking ]

I've been writing Python for more than 20 years now. It's a very versatile language but I'm currently stumped by something that should be simple:

I am trying to read out-of-order packets from a socket, reorder them and write them to a file. I am seeing one, if not two problems:

1. socket.recv doesn't have a good way to ensure you have all the data. Data length in python is always len(data). But Len(data) counts bytes to the first NUL (0x00). I think recv is only delivering truncated packets.
2. file.write(data) on a binary file only writes to the first NUL (0x00).

I don't have time to write a custom C/C++ module to handle these situations. Which seems to be that "standard" answer or use a third party module which is also not an option.

On a related note, why does GoLang exist when Rust is at least a little faster, been around longer, and has built-in testing capability (not unlike pytest)?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Writing Monty Python Python ]

The O.MG Cable. Choose your ends. Keylogger. Keystroke injection. Mobile device payload delivery. Particular attention paid to making it look like a regular cable.

The O.MG Cable is a hand made USB cable with an advanced implant hidden inside. It is designed to allow your Red Team to emulate attack scenarios of sophisticated adversaries. Until now, a cable like this would cost $20,000 (ex: COTTONMOUTH-I). These cables will allow you to test new detection opportunities for your defense teams. They are also extremely impactful tools for teaching and training.

Via

[ related topics: Invention and Design ]

The Financial Consequences of Legalized Sports Gambling Brett Hollenbeck, Poet Larsen, Davide Proserpio (pre-pub)

Following a 2018 ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court, 38 states have legalized sports gambling. We study how this policy has impacted consumer financial health using the state-by-state rollout of legal sports gambling and a large and comprehensive dataset on consumer financial outcomes. Our main finding is that overall, consumers' financial health is modestly deteriorating as the average credit score in states that legalize sports gambling decreases by roughly 0.3%. The decline in credit score is associated with changes in indicators of excessive debt. We find a substantial increase in bankruptcy rates, debt collections, debt consolidation loans, and auto loan delinquencies. We also find that financial institutions respond to the reduced creditworthiness of consumers by restricting access to credit. These results are stronger for states that allow sports gambling online compared to states that restrict access to in-person betting and larger for young men in low-income counties. Together, these results indicate that the ease of access to sports gambling is harming consumer financial health by increasing their level of debt.

[ related topics: Health Law Consumerism and advertising Gambling ]

It's happened: "AI" and MLM have joined forces.

[ related topics: Photography Artificial Intelligence ]

Google: Keeping your Android device safe from text message fraud, in which we learn that cell site simulators (usually driven around, or carried around in a backpack) are being used to send SMS spam.

The method is straightforward and replicates known techniques to trick mobile devices to an attacker-controlled 2G network. SMS Blasters expose a fake LTE or 5G network which executes a single function: downgrading the user’s connection to a legacy 2G protocol. The same device also exposes a fake 2G network, which lures all the devices to connect to it. At this point, attackers abuse the well known lack of mutual authentication in 2G and force connections to be unencrypted, which enables a complete Person-in-the-Middle (PitM) position to inject SMS payloads.

[ related topics: Politics Spam broadband Bay Area Monty Python Mathematics ]

So this whole Apple/Patreon your subscriptions are going to cost more if you use the iOS app to subscribe raises the question: WTF does Patreon need a freakin' app for? Why can't we just use the web site?

[ related topics: Apple Computer Interactive Drama ]

Ugh. Chrome. Manually typing in a URL to inspect a Firebase object. Get the "~2f" as lower case. Firebase doesn't find the object. Attempt to correct, there appears to be no bloody way to get Chrome to try with the case corrected URL, it keeps going to the lowercase version. Eventually got there from the next level up with find, but... ugh.

[ related topics: Law ]

The Australian breaking scene and the Olympic Games: The possibilities and politics of sportification Rachael Gunn and Lucas Marie

Here, breaking is a space for those ‘othered’ by Australian institutions to express themselves and engage in new hierarchies of respect. We argue that breaking’s institutionalization via the Olympics will place breaking more firmly within this sporting nation’s hegemonic settler-colonial structures that rely upon racialized and gendered hierarchies. As such, in this article we discuss and examine how the Olympics impacts ongoing local, social and cultural productions and expressions of hip hop, and the distinct possibilities of breaking that enable its participants to ‘show and prove’ outside standardized, institutionalized rubrics.

Also available from here and here.

Found by way of Graeme Codrington's Facebook post which further delves into Rachael Gunn's performance at the Olympics as a form of protest, and as one of colonization and cultural appropriation.

Edit: Not really much in here, but Viral Olympic breakdancer Raygun defends her performance.

[ related topics: Politics Star Wars Games Invention and Design Theater & Plays Space & Astronomy Sociology Consumerism and advertising Civil Liberties Sports ]

For work, I am cleaning up our integration with Anthropic's Claude AI, which requires some conversing with it, and... yeah. Anyway, how many "r"s in "Ferrari"?

[ related topics: Photography Work, productivity and environment Artificial Intelligence ]

If you live in the US, UK, or Canada, your name, social security number, and known addresses are probably public now: Bleeping Computer: Hackers leak 2.7 billion data records with Social Security numbers

While BleepingComputer can't confirm if this leak contains the data for every person in the US, numerous people have confirmed to us that it included their and family members' legitimate information, including those who are deceased.

Better yet, it looks like the data isn't all accurate, which will probably lead to even more nightmare scenarios.

The culpable party appears to be a company called "National Public Data" which does background checks and such...

Via.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Theater & Plays Sociology Current Events ]

Today I learned about Codeberg, "... a collaboration platform providing Git hosting and services for free and open source software, content and projects".

And I also learned that back on April Fools day they advertised themselves as "Github but for lesbians", adding

Also, the tagline is an April Fools' joke. Codeberg welcomes all LGBTQIA* folk, but doesn't offer any additional features yet.

Referencing XKCD 624: Branding.

Unrelated and yet also related, the Vagina Museum informed us that

9th century Arab physicians believed that lesbianism was caused by the labia being too hot, but this heat could be relieved by rubbing them against another woman's vulva. Al-Kindi explained: "When friction and orgasm take place, the heat turns into coldness because the liquid that a woman ejaculates in lesbian intercourse is cold whereas the same liquid that results from sexual union with men is hot."

Which strongly suggests that medicine has gone backwards.

[ related topics: Free Software Erotic Sexual Culture Software Engineering Art & Culture Artificial Intelligence ]

Nextdoor fire alert for a "vegetarian fire". I can see why that might be alarming to folks who conflate BBQ with meat, but I'm here to tell ya that it's perfectly reasonable to grill veggies.

[ related topics: Food Pyrotechnics ]

Disney argues that a wrongful death lawsuit for an allergic reaction after dining at a park restaurant has to go to arbitration because the plaintiff once signed up for a streaming service trial.

So, yeah, be super ultra careful if you're gonna go to a Disney park, you've probably already agreed to arbitration...

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8jl0ekjr0go

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Food Current Events Monty Python ]

Someone wants melted cheese....

[ related topics: Photography ]

So apparently I can buy a keyed switch that gets a one star review for $40, or another garage door opener for circa $20. I just want an easy way to open the garage when I'm on my bike, without going around the house...

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy Bicycling Real Estate Aviation - Helicopters ]

Realtor.com: ‘I Lived in America’s First Car-Free Community’: Here’s Why This Trend Could Catch On

Just 15 miles from downtown Phoenix, AZ, Culdesac is billed as the first car-free community built “from scratch” in the U.S. In 2023, nearly 140 residents moved in, and there were plans to expand to 1,000 residents in 760 apartments on 17 acres by 2025.

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source Current Events Automobiles Community Real Estate ]

Autism in boys linked to common plastic exposure in the womb (in mice)

Prenatal exposure to higher levels of bisphenol A, a plastic commonly found in water bottles and packaging and known to leach into our foods and drinks, has been linked to autism spectrum disorder in boys, according to a new study that also identified the biological mechanism underlying this link.

Nature Communications: Male autism spectrum disorder is linked to brain aromatase disruption by prenatal BPA in multimodal investigations and 10HDA ameliorates the related mouse phenotype

Via

[ related topics: Health Nature and environment Invention and Design ]

Could swear I linked this, but I can't find it, so: When ChatGPT summarises, it actually does nothing of the kind.

RT Phil Wolff @evanwolf@mastodon.social

#Texas AG sues #GM for fraud, selling #OnStar customer data to insurers using it to screw drivers. The AG's filing includes receipts. Asks judge to award $10k per violation, plus $250K for 65+ y/o seniors. (billions) It's having them turn it off, and stop the abuse that will hurt GM the most.

#Austin's #Tesla next, please.

Kudos to AG consumer protection attorneys Bridegan, Nordstrom, Lee, and Baasch for protecting #privacy.

https://www.texasattorneygener...20Privacy%20Petition%20Filed.pdf

[ related topics: Privacy Law Consumerism and advertising ]

Oh, look, we've found cancel culture: Pianist's Melbourne show cancelled over Gaza remarks

Jayson Gillham premiered Witness at a show at the MSO on Sunday. The piece was penned by another composer as a tribute to the Palestinian press.

The British-Australian was scheduled to perform again on Thursday, but the MSO has said it is reworking the programme after Gillham introduced the piece by saying Israel had killed more than 100 journalists.

[ related topics: Music Sociology Current Events Journalism and Media Monty Python California Culture ]

Walked down to the end of H St to see the installation of Brian Goggin's "A Fine Balance". Installation isn't finished yet, so I can't really see how it's going to feel in context. Looking forward to seeing it once all the wrapping is off.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Current reading is Sidney Dekker's "The Field Guide to Understanding Human Error". It's really framing my read on someone raising concerns about culture and process based on a specific likely non-exploitable hypothetical security concern as a tell, and the response being about how that specific security concern isn't exploitable.

Very few pilots want to fly their airplanes into the ground. They thought they were making good decisions.

Ref: this and the blowback to Security Issues in Matrix’s Olm Library.

[ related topics: Aviation Sociology California Culture Douglas Adams ]

"if you don't like the way I drive, get off the sidewalk" indeed. Not like there's a huge entirely empty parking lot there or anything.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography ]

Dear developers of servers for new protocols: Leave me port 443, or, if you *MUST* have a web route on my domain, let me do it with CGI. Much easier for me to do symlinks than to have yet another service chewing up RAM that I have to maintain a redirect to in my server configs.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Invention and Design ]

Stay classy, LA Sheriff's Department: 4 ex-law enforcement officers charged in $37 million home invasion extortion scheme

On June 17, 2019, they allegedly put the plan in action. Lankford — again in violation of LASD rules — droved an unmarked department car to the victim's home with Cozart, Hart and Turbett in tow, according to the indictment. Lankford and Cozart allegedly approached the victim outside his home, both identifying themselves as a police officer and an immigration officer. Lankford showed his LASD badge to further sell the act, prosecutors said.

The victim's family was home at the time. The defendants allegedly forced the victim, his wife and their two children into one room, taking their phones and blocking them from leaving for hours. The victim was allegedly slammed against a wall, choked and threatened with deportation and separation from his 4-year-old son — unless he signed the settlement papers, prosecutors allege.

I love that the article specifies "in violation of LASD rules".

[ related topics: Children and growing up Sociology Law Enforcement Automobiles Marriage ]

Los Angeles Review of Books: The Funny Thing About Misogyny

In a preview of LARB Quarterly no. 39: “Air,” Katie Kadue breaks down the misogynist history of the rape joke.

Via Metafilter

[ related topics: Books ]

Worth just saying: RT mkb @mkb@mastodon.social

Thesis:

If so much of our #writing can be generated for us by #LLMs, maybe that writing should not exist in the first place.

Collectively, how much of what we write is perfunctory and obligatory rather than interesting? Maybe that 50 page report could have been 5 pages. Maybe that news story pretending there is meaning in a trivial stock market move shouldn’t have been written at all.

Add in #AI summarization and it gets even more pointless— computers dancing for each other.

Especially since "AI summarization" isn't, which means that the summaries have no real value.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Writing Current Events Artificial Intelligence Economics ]

Font with built-in syntax highlighting

Leveraging OpenType features to build a simple syntax highlighter inside the font

[ related topics: Weblogs Typography Graphic Design ]

Following yet another analysis that suggests that, yes, housing costs follow a supply and demand curve, even if the supply comes in at the high end (which ties to my observation that "affordable housing isn't what you build now, it's what you built 50 years ago" with a gesture around...), I've gotten to wondering: Does anyone have good resources that look at local induced demand creating housing shortages?

For instance: The story being told about Healdsburg is that the new condos, where a sub 600 sq.ft. studio is over a million bucks plus condo fees, are being bought by people wanting weekend/getaway places for whom the price is no object, and this is driving up the desirability of the Healdsburg core and thus bringing in more housing demand.

(How the multi-family is outpacing the impacting single-family homes just out of town nearly is also one of the things I'd like to read more on, though I know that the glamor of the single family home propaganda is wearing off).

So, yeah, I realize that macroeconomics has more in common with reading tea leaves than with science, but I'd love some good reading on the topic of local demand.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Invention and Design Sociology Real Estate ]

Random cat picture

[ related topics: Photography ]

Hit Em: A Musical Dream Come True

As Drew Daniel woke from uneasy dreams, he found himself at the center of a new musical micro-genre called “Hit Em”.

What can you do with 212 bpm in 5/4? Certainly tie your brain in knots...

[ related topics: Invention and Design ]

I forget which FB friend turned me on to this, but it is fantastic. It's a look at what gender means in sport, and how we demand that women use modern medicine to conform to very narrow definitions of female in order to compete, while those competing as men get every advantage of their biology.

I'm assuming that they're gonna get into some of the examples of when women's categories were created as soon as women started beating men, but haven't gotten there yet. Anyway, recommended.

Introducing Tested from NPR and CBC

Who gets to compete? Since the beginning of women's sports, there has been a struggle over who qualifies for the women's category. Tested follows the unfolding story of elite female runners who have been told they can no longer race as women, because of their biology. As the Olympics approach, they face hard choices: take drugs to lower their natural testosterone levels, give up their sport entirely, or fight. To understand how we got here, we trace the surprising, 100-year history of sex testing.

[ related topics: Drugs Erotic Sexual Culture Health Sports ]

So Petco apparently never marked that we'd picked up an order, canceled the order for non-pick-up, and refunded the money. And a good portion of me is like "the honest thing to do is to contact them, tell them what's up, and make sure that I pay for the order."

The other portion of me is like "the only way to contact support is via voice phone call? Fuck that. If they wanted my money they'd accept an email."

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Currency ]

Markov Chains are funnier than LLMs, an interesting short delve into humor and text generation.

Via

[ related topics: Humor Weblogs ]

The process of wiping off my old Intel MBP to give to my nephew is reminding me of all of the cruft that came across from the M series migration, and maybe I should wipe and reinstall my work machine.

This morning I thought it'd be cool to play with Nodezator, and now I'm down a rabbit hole of homebrew and pip3 and...

Ugh. Mac.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Macintosh ]

The Seattle City Council Says Cracking Down on Sex Workers Will Create Services, Stop Sex Trafficking, and End Gun Violence. Don’t Believe Them.

After this lurid display, Moore introduced a panel to speak in favor of her proposal—a group that included Kirkland real estate broker Kristine Moreland, who runs a controversial group called The More We Love. PubliCola has written extensively about The More We Love and Moreland, who originally performed private encampments sweeps at a rate of $515 for each person removed and now holds the sole contract for all homeless outreach in Burien. Moreland didn’t bring up her work in Burien, instead describing The More We Love as “an anti-sex trafficking organization” and talking about the need for more funding for supportive services for victims of trafficking.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Work, productivity and environment Travel Guns Seattle Real Estate ]

ICYMI: Zoom just sent around a "even if you opted out previously we're gonna enable an AI Assistant unless you opt out again" message.

And, yes, I know, Zoom is way down the enshittification rathole, but it's what we still use for forum broadcasts. Sigh.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Community Artificial Intelligence ]

Okay, we're probably not using the Objective-C Firebase client library as it was meant to be used, but did ya ever look at code and say "I can't possibly be understanding this, 'cause it can't possibly be intentionally this O(N^2)"?

[ related topics: Language Books ]

Matthew Garrett: Client-side filtering of private data is a bad idea. It's about the Feeld dating app, but it's also about how one goes about deconstructing an Android app to see what sort of web traffic is occurring.

Via

We are looking at robot vacuums. We have a number of recommendations. Right now one of the leading ones is the Roborock S7. It navigates with LIDAR and ultrasonics.

One of the factors we're favoring is technologies other than onboard cameras, and no onboard human frequency mics or speakers. This may seem paranoid, but...

https://digipres.club/@foone/112990496866634756

[ related topics: Photography Robotics ]

Today I learned about Valetudo "Cloud replacement for vacuum robots enabling local-only operation".

[ related topics: Robotics ]

Subpixel Text Encoding — Matt Sarnoff, 10.22.08 Or: If you take LCD pixel layout into account, how small a font can you make?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Graphics Typography Graphic Design ]

Fantastic read: Infrequently Noted: Reckoning

Modern websites don't have to feel broken. Better is possible. This series walks through today's network and device ground truth, stares into abyss of developer practices, and closes with advice for managers and engineers who want to avoid the same mistakes.

With a good drop into how JavaScript first, especially in public services websites, disenfranchises the users that the sites should be most set up to serve.

[ related topics: broadband ]

JAMA Pediatrics: Notice of Retraction: Hahn LM, et al. Post–COVID-19 Condition in Children. JAMA Pediatrics. 2023;177(11):1226-1228.

We had concluded that the incidence of PCC was 0.4% (1/271). In correcting these errors, we found that the incidence of PCC was 1.4% (4/286).

PCC being "post–COVID-19 condition".

Time to go back to masking, I suppose. That sucks.

Via.

[ related topics: Children and growing up ]

"It is never surprising to find human errors at the heart of system failure because people are at the heart of making these systems work in the first place." -- Sidney Decker, in "The Field Guide to Understanding Human Error", which I am finding to be a really good read, and recommend.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Douglas Adams ]

If I haven't grabbed you by the lapels and said "You have to listen to the Tested podcast from NPR and CBC" yet, I'm doing it now.

Also, fuck the Olympics and the IOC and most organized sport.

https://www.npr.org/2024/06/10...roducing-tested-from-npr-and-cbc

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Sports ]

Closing tabs: American Psychologist: Evidence of Bias Against Girls and Women in Contexts That Emphasize Intellectual Ability, Lin Bian, Sarah-Jane Leslie, Andrei Cimpian

DOI:10.1037/amp0000427

Admittedly a password on a PDF isn't the end-all of copy protection, but it's interesting to see the Modern Western Square Dance community intent on finding out about suppression of interest and usability in a market of a few hundred people.

Anyway, I started to read those, rebooted, and now if have to go to the email to find the password again, and it's hard to get enough out of this to feel like I'll have a reason to resubscribe.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Community Economics ]

This has all of the hallmarks of someone asking an LLM for quotes about Francis Ford Coppola's movies, and having it create an amalgam of quips about other films and flat out bullshit...

Lionsgate pulls Megalopolist trailer due to made-up critic quotes

[ related topics: Quotes Movies Current Events Automobiles ]

From poisoning LLMs to "nostalgia" for the Reagan years, this captures so much of the zeitgeist: RT monkϵyborg 🦾🐵 @monkeyborg@triangletoot.party

Leading causes of death in the U.S., 1980-89:

Ages 0-1: Demonic possession

2-5: Failure by parents to apply “Mr. Yuk” stickers to caustic household chemicals

6-10: Razor blades in Halloween candy

11-14: Being gagged with a spoon

15-19: Ritual sacrifice by Satanists (D&D players)

20-34: Cocaine

35-49: Injuries sustained while Jazzercising

50-64: Communism

65: Last day on the force before retirement

66-79: Lung cancer

80+: Encounters with disrespectful juvenile street gangs

[ related topics: Drugs ]

In practice, requiring human oversight of automated decision making doesn't correct for bias or errors -- people tend to defer to the automated system. Ben Green's excellent paper on this focuses on government use of automated systems, but the dynamic applies more generally. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3921216

First, evidence suggests that people are unable to perform the desired oversight functions. Second, as a result of the first flaw, human oversight policies legitimize government uses of faulty and controversial algorithms without addressing the fundamental issues with these tools.

And sure, as you point out, mistakes are made today by human moderators ... but those mistakes contaminate any training set. And algorithms typically magnify biases in the underlying data.

@Raccoon@techhub.social @mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io

[ related topics: moron Douglas Adams ]

Kentucky State Fair removes winning miniature depicting pornography set

Last week, Shepherdsville native Preston Poling won third place in the Kentucky State Fair’s miniature contest. Poling said the white ribbon-winning piece was “a simple design.” The miniature scene was a room with white walls, a black leather couch in the corner, a wooden office desk, a computer and a desk chair. The simple design Poling created was a smaller version of “The Casting Couch,” a popular pornography set.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Current Events Graphic Design Race Gambling Furniture ]

Square dance music producer released a recording of a song that I am unfamiliar with, "Too Wet To Plow", so I had to go find the lyrics.

And I am extremely disappointed that I didn't find a lick of innuendo there.

[ related topics: Music ]

Empty lots and vacant houses for DeCarli.

(Chain link fences in this town sure do have opinions. Also people who are pissed off that they can't develop in the flood plain.)

[ related topics: Photography Real Estate ]

When I manifest the cosmos, there will be a special hell for people who paint hinges.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Argh. I have a Bostitch 1 3/16" 23 ga pin nailer. I have 1 1/4" pin nails. I have Senco 1" pin nails, but they don't feed reliably. I'd really like to drive something longer, but...

I don't wanna buy another nailer, or try to find nails that will fit this thing. Ugh.

Dear Microsoft. I want you fuckers to try to talk an 85 year old former mortician and home appraiser through using Windows 11 vs Windows 10.

I'm trying to help him via Zoom screen share, and holy shit the attempting to be "helpful" with arranging windows. We have no idea what it's trying to do.

Also, if it's gonna be glacial I wanna see what's happening in the task manager.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Humor Microsoft moron ]

Been trying to be super skimpy on spending money, but got a new pressure regulator for my air compressor, and I have been trying to find good nails that feed reliably through my Bostitch 23ga pin nailer, and I finally broke down and bought the $320 Senco device, and holy crap that is night and day. Between decent less leaky consistent air pressure and the higher end gun... Gonna make the rest of this trim and the baseboards so much nicer.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Guns Currency ]

Startup Alarmed When Its AI Starts Rickrolling Clients — "Literally f*cking Rickrolling our customers."

Though he's not entirely sure how it happened, the Lindy CEO and founder told TechCrunch that he has a theory about how his AI assistants figured out how to execute this specific brand of internet humor.

"The way these models work is they try to predict the most likely next sequence of text," Crivello explained. "So it starts like, 'Oh, I’m going to send you a video!' So what’s most likely after that? YouTube.com. And then what’s most likely after that?"

[ related topics: Humor Bioinformatics Work, productivity and environment Net Culture Machinery Trains Artificial Intelligence Video Gambling ]

Comparing and contacting, one of these boards may be worth pulling the nails from and reusing....

[ related topics: Photography ]

Trying to figure out how to do as much work flat as possible and still have the necessary precision so that the existing door hangs.

[ related topics: Photography Work, productivity and environment ]

Door by slow door, the reclaimed white oak is replacing the painted trim. Not gonna contemplate the doors right now...

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment Race ]

Copying here so that I can link people to it. Written to The Petaluma Argus-Courier, published on August 9. I think I missed something in editing, because the point of the police parking the dynamic speed trailer under the 15MPH yellow sign is that it has a big "30MPH" white speed limit sign on it. So... uh... Anyway, the scuttlebutt is that we may get stop signs!!! Yay!

EDITOR: The short stretch of Mountain View Avenue between Olive Street and Fairview Terrace has seen three automobile collisions in the past five weeks. Pedestrians and bicyclists cross this racetrack with trepidation, and a local power wheelchair user reports having been hit by drivers several times.

Residents of Mountain View Avenue have talked about trying to get traffic calming and safety improvements for literally decades. I've only lived here for 16 years, but in that time the speed limit along the straightaway was raised from 25 mph to 30 mph so that it could be enforced.

The enforcement we've seen involves parking an electronic speed sign underneath the 15 mph recommended speed sign for the curve. Meanwhile, the safety improvements of paint and reflectors installed in 2022 have already worn off, and guerilla safety enhancement efforts are removed within a few business hours. Resident-installed speed monitors record speeds of over 40 mph within 150 feet of stop signs.

I would be irate at the inaction of city processes, but as I look around I realize that there are many roads and intersections in Petaluma that are much higher priority to fix than our neighborhood. If we truly care about climate, and about the livability of the city, we need to prioritize rebuilding our infrastructure in ways that makes it accessible to all users, not just automobile drivers speeding recklessly through our neighborhoods.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama History Law Enforcement Automobiles Race Handicaps & Disabilities Global Warming ]

Homogenization Effects of Large Language Models on Human Creative Ideation

<blockqutoe>Coupled with evidence that ChatGPT users exhibit greater fluency, flexibility, and elaboration than users of an alternative CST, these results suggest that current general-purpose instruction- tuned LLMs (such as ChatGPT) are capable of functioning as useful CSTs by enabling the rapid enumeration of relatively obvious possibilities that users might otherwise fail, or take longer, to consider. However, these systems are not currently well-suited to helping users develop truly original ideas.

https://doi.org/10.1145/3635636.3656204

Via Mark Gritter, who links to some additional resources used in the paper.

[ related topics: Model Building ]

When Pirate Bay does it, everyone is up in arms, but when Facebook shows me all of these pirated webcomics with the credits clipped off from scammy link farms with "source unknown" (when the source is immediately obvious to anyone who reads web comics or spends 30 seconds with Google) they're "generating engagement".

[ related topics: Television California Culture Comics ]

Automated bullshit generation comes to policing: AP: Police officers are starting to use AI chatbots to write crime reports. Will they hold up in court?

“It was a better report than I could have ever written, and it was 100% accurate. It flowed better,” Gilbert said. It even documented a fact he didn’t remember hearing — another officer’s mention of the color of the car the suspects ran from.

It'll be interesting to see if there's any more attention paid to the correctness of these. It's not like police officers ever get prosecuted for perjury, but will GPT?

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Law Enforcement Automobiles Artificial Intelligence ]

J.F.C.

https://a2mi.social/@dave0/113031300914816116

https://mas.to/@pjie2/113030674867405430

[ related topics: Photography ]

Asking for a Sex Book Will Not Get You Out of Reading

[ related topics: Books Erotic Sexual Culture ]

Sainsbury Wing contractors find 1990 letter from donor anticipating their demolition of false columns

IF YOU HAVE FOUND THIS NOTE YOU MUST BE ENGAGED IN DEMOLISHING ONE OF THE FALSE COLUMNS THAT HAVE BEEN PLACED IN THE FOYER OF THE SAINSBURY WING OF THE NATIONAL GALLERY. I BELIEVE THAT THE FALSE COLUMNS ARE A MISTAKE OF THE ARCHITECT AND THAT WE WOULD LIVE TO REGRET OUR ACCEPTING THIS DETAIL OF HIS DESIGN.

LET IT BE KNOWN THAT ONE OF THE DONORS OF THIS BUILDING IS ABSOLUTELY DELIGHTED THAT YOUR GENERATION HAS DECIDED TO DISPENSE WITH THE UNNECESSARY COLUMNS.

Via Simon Willison

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Theater & Plays Graphic Design Architecture ]

Last time we were down at Raphio Chocolate, they had samples of the juice squeezed from the chocolate fruit pulp. It was kinda... non remarkable. BBC: Have Swiss scientists made a chocolate breakthrough? is about condensing that juice, and using it in conjunction with the ground husk.

[ related topics: Current Events Monty Python Chocolate ]

Okay, loving this: BBC: Why badminton has become code for teen sex in Hong Kong.

In teaching materials it released last week, a <!-- -->module titled adolescents and intimate relationships for Secondary Year 3, suggested that teenagers who wanted to have sex with each other could "go out to play badminton together" instead.

Via Angela Glansbury 🚽 @floppyplopper@todon.nl who noted:

parents, are your children talking about BADMINTON?!? 🙀

FWB: friends with badminton

LGBT: Lets go, badminton time

FFS: friendly fun shuttlecocks

LOL: lots of lobs

BDSM: badminton day shuttlecock maniacs

[ related topics: Children and growing up Erotic Sexual Culture Current Events Monty Python Pop Culture Hong Kong Conferences ]

Maybe lots of ewaste and lithium batteries in everything isn't such a good idea after all? WSOC TV 9 Charlotte: Children’s book sparks fire inside Burke County minivan, investigators say, with some interesting conflicting reporting:

“The world itself is moving to lithium batteries, which propose some of these troubles to the fire service,” Chief Craig said. “I don’t know if there is — other than trying to keep them cool — that there is any precautions.”

vs the statement from Cottage Door Press:

“Our electronic children’s books, which have sold millions of units without incident, use alkaline batteries, not lithium-ion batteries. We are relieved that no one was injured and are working closely with local officials and experts to determine the cause of this incident.”

Also interesting is the way that news propagates, WSB TV 2 Atlanta: Child’s book starts fire in mom’s minivan basically looks like a rewrite of the WSOC story. Which, yeah, news orgs do their "reporting" by rewriting other news orgs work all of the time, but/and there's gotta be a better way.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Books Technology and Culture Current Events Work, productivity and environment Television Pyrotechnics ]

There's a strong contingent in Petaluma arguing against those awful out of town developers destroying the character of downtown. While blighted lots near downtown sit locked up by local families that have owned them for generations.

Anyway, this woman's rant seems completely apropos.

https://social.linux.pizza/@Bearfaced/112970664904813908

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source ]

Holy crap! I haven't vetted this beyond Matt, though I trust him, but Steve Silberman @stevesilberman@newsie.social , the author of Neurotribes. Dead Head extraoirdinaire, and generally awesome human being, as died.

Damn. I will miss him.

https://xoxo.zone/@mathowie/113046412549920878

Cybertruck parked by Wickerhsham Park with a SoilDAO vinyl wrap, and I am unsurprised at the overlap with crypto scammery.

(Wait, "crypto scammery" is redundant. Sorry.)

[ related topics: Cryptography ]

A number of people have asked me about my reactions to the Harris housing plan, such as has been published, and I just wrote this for a private forum:

Working off of https://mailchi.mp/press.kamal...ower-costs-for-american-families : Last night, at the Petaluma Urban Chat board meeting, the Realtor had the same reaction to the $25k down payment support for first-time homebuyers that I did: That just raised the cost for starter homes by $25k. And, it's hard to be against "Stop Wall Street Investors from Buying Up and Marking Up Homes in Bulk", but I'm not sure that a fund buying 100 homes in a struggling development is all that different from 20 individuals following the Rich Dad playbook with 5 homes each. People like to piss and moan about institutional investors, but as long as constrained supply makes housing a super profitable investment, it hardly matters if it's single homeowners or institutional investors.

Though the bit about breaking the strangle-hold of monopolistic rent pricing is good.

I know a couple of people who make their living as affordable housing developers, and anything that simplifies the funding path for them is good (I mean, it reduces the demand for their services, but...), and I hope that the bullet points under the "Calling for New Construction..." is focused on multi-family. Which is tough to do as a small developer, but if the rules really do get simplified then maybe we can get to building single-digit-n-plexes by neighborhood developers.

I kinda doubt that there's room for Federal policy to override some of the worst of the local land-use regulations, because that stuff really needs more regional solutions. I'm all for the ways that the California State Legislature is overriding local control on some of the worst Prop 13 driven single-family zoning, but at the Federal level it'd be really hard to build policy that'd do the right overriding both here and in Ohio.

All of the good solutions are gonna deflate the housing market in some way, so are gonna be politically unpopular. So... it's something. I'd like to find the document that goes into more specifics, but I probably don't have the background to read the text of "Preventing the Algorithmic Facilitation of Rental Housing Cartels Act" and the "Stop Predatory Investing Act" to actually understand them.

And... one of the challenges with policy in campaigning is that the more specific the proposal, the easier it is to pick it apart, so getting too specific means that the press is gonna shower you in negative bullshit. Which we're seeing here, even with the generalities. Which makes me wanna be a cheerleader, even though I think a bunch of the more popular proposals here are going to be counter-productive.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Invention and Design Sociology Work, productivity and environment California Culture Machinery Community Fabrication Economics Real Estate Model Building ]

Somebody in Novato must have put an air quality sensor right beside the local barbecue joint's chimney or something. This is a level of pretty I can get behind.

(I was checking Watch Duty for updates on the Two Fire, you do have them on your small butt impactful recurring donations, right?)

[ related topics: Photography Movies Food Pyrotechnics ]

"This is Texas! White people do guacamole crimes every day!" -- from the podcast "Today's Lucky Winner".

[ related topics: Race ]

This is cool. The secret inside One Million Checkboxes — Teens wrote me a secret. I found them.

There was this web site with a whole bunch of collaborative checkboxes floating around not too long ago. Obviously people are gonna hack on it. This talks both a little bit about design, and about some kids hacking on it.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Games Writing Graphic Design Boats ]

As my personal philosophies evolved to see some of the harms in the "if you believe it strongly enough you can manifest it" in the Richard Bach/James Redfield/etc "New Age" thinking, I confess that I never expected to see those magical thinking attitudes surface so strongly in Republican opinions about transportation policy.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Invention and Design ]

Bypassing airport security via SQL injection

The TSA press office said in a statement that this vulnerability could not be used to access a KCM checkpoint because the TSA initiates a vetting process before issuing a KCM barcode to a new member. However, a KCM barcode is not required to use KCM checkpoints, as the TSO can enter an airline employee ID manually. After we informed the TSA of this, they deleted the section of their website that mentions manually entering an employee ID, and did not respond to our correction. We have confirmed that the interface used by TSOs still allows manual input of employee IDs.

In twenty freakin' twenty four. Sigh.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Aviation Work, productivity and environment Databases ]

University of Virginia suspends tours that had come under fire for mentioning Thomas Jefferson's ties to slavery

The Jefferson Council alumni group had opposed University Guide Service volunteers for mentioning that the school's founder was a slaveowner.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Current Events Pyrotechnics Education Douglas Adams ]