Flutterby™! From 2025-07-01 to 2025-07-31

Love that when I'm standing there waiting for the walk signal and the light turns yellow, I can hear the shift in tone as the drivers accelerate.

The thing about incorporating quirks in language for online communication in order to muck up automated word sequence generators, is that we're adopting wacky communications patterns just to put gravy in the gears of said token emitters.

[ related topics: Bioinformatics ]

The dawn of micropayments: Cloudflare To Block AI Crawlers By Default & Pay Per Crawl Model

Cloudflare wrote that they are the "first Internet infrastructure provider to block AI crawlers accessing content without permission or compensation, by default." Now, new customers that sign up for Cloudflare by default will automatically block AI crawlers. Existing customers can block AI crawlers anytime with a single click in their Cloudflare dashboard. This shifts content scraping from an opt-out to opt-in format. There is a lot of buzz on Techmeme on this news.

Via. As clicks to useful information require more and more pauses and "I am not a bot" click, I'm wondering how this is gonna shake out.

daniel:// stenberg:// @bagder@mastodon.social

I've been talking to GitHub and giving them feedback on their "create issues with Copilot" thing they have in the works.

Today I tested a version for them and using it I asked copilot to find and report a security problem in curl and make it sound terrifying.

In about ten seconds it had a 100-line description of a "catastrophic vulnerability" it was happy to create an issue for. Entirely made up of course, but sounded plausible.

Proved my point excellently.

Kevin Beaumont @GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social

If you see this GitHub PoC for CVE-2025-5777 doing the rounds:

https://github.com/mingshenhk/CitrixBleed-2-CVE-2025-5777-PoC-

It’s not for CVE-2025-5777. It’s AI generated. The links in the README still have ChatGPT UTM sources.

The PoC itself is for a vuln addressed in 2023 - ChatGPT has hallucinated (made up) the cause of the vuln using an old BishopFox write up of the other vuln.

Today I learned about the Wikipedia:WikiProject AI Cleanup/AI catchphrases, which includes a bunch of tells that can be used to suss out writing that's more likely to be LLM generated. Via.

And Pivot To AI: ‘AI is no longer optional’ — Microsoft admits AI doesn’t help at work is the take I thought of when I heard that MS was strongly encouraging LLM use.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Humor Weblogs Microsoft Invention and Design moron Writing Current Events Work, productivity and environment Net Culture Artificial Intelligence ]

Retraction Watch: Springer Nature book on machine learning is full of made-up citations

Based on a tip from a reader, we checked 18 of the 46 citations in the book. Two-thirds of them either did not exist or had substantial errors. And three researchers cited in the book confirmed the works they supposedly authored were fake or the citation contained substantial errors.

But, hey, at only $169 for the ebook and $219 for the hardcover, it's not like you can expect Govindakumar Madhavan's Mastering Machine Learning: From Basics to Advanced to actually, I don't know, refer to reality or some such bullshit?

Via Pivot to AI.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Books Movies Nature and environment Education Artificial Intelligence ]

Asta [AMP] @aud@fire.asta.lgbt

@SnoopJ@hachyderm.io what I truly love about this kind of question is that it's basically asking, "do we think the cure for cancer lies somewhere in the space between stolen science fiction novels, 4chan, reddit, and webMD?" but when you phrase it like that.

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy Pyrotechnics ]

I remember when the street found its own uses for technology. Seems like now technology finds its own uses for the street.

Ya know, I don't so much mind that there are thousands of requests for non-existent .php files in my blog web server logs, it's that they come from so many different IP addresses.

Honestly, people, either I have an unsecured wp-login.php or I don't, and the first person who gets there is gonna patch the hole. It's wasted effort.

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

The Register: AI agents get office tasks wrong around 70% of the time, and a lot of them aren't AI at all

According to Gartner, many agents are fiction without the science. "Many vendors are contributing to the hype by engaging in 'agent washing' – the rebranding of existing products, such as AI assistants, robotic process automation (RPA) and chatbots, without substantial agentic capabilities," the firm says. "Gartner estimates only about 130 of the thousands of agentic AI vendors are real."

Which, if course, duh, but mostly this is about TheAgentCompany: Benchmarking LLM Agents on Consequential Real World Tasks

We build a self-contained environment with internal web sites and data that mimics a small software company environment, and create a variety of tasks that may be performed by workers in such a company. We test baseline agents powered by both closed API-based and open-weights language models (LMs), and find that the most competitive agent can complete 30% of tasks autonomously. This paints a nuanced picture on task automation with LM agents--in a setting simulating a real workplace, a good portion of simpler tasks could be solved autonomously, but more difficult long-horizon tasks are still beyond the reach of current systems. We release code, data, environment, and experiments on this https URL.

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2412.14161

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Nature and environment Robotics Software Engineering Artificial Intelligence Model Building ]

Slack just popped this threat to "Unlock AI for 50% off" in a group that's been migrating to Signal. Which... if their goal is to kick the people who'd set up free social spaces off, this is useful.

Meanwhile, on Facebook, group admins are fighting the Meta spam bot pretty hard.

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

You know what I fucking love? When the Google documentation for writing Sheets custom functions doesn't match what buttons the Apps Script editor is showing me. That's what I fucking love.

[ related topics: Writing ]

Wow. So I installed the Gemini CLI on my work computer, 'cause work is all in on this stuff, and asked it for some help with Google stuff, 'cause their documentation does not match their tools, and... I am not sure what additional information beyond my prompt is being sent, but the responses indicate that this is a *fantastic* way to leak data to Google, and if you care about keeping anything on your machine from Google you should carefully understand what, beyond the prompt, it's sending.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Work, productivity and environment ]

Pretty sure "Assault" here means "didn't manage to dodge an officer's fist". TechDirt: Assaults On ICE Officers Are Up 700%… Which Just Means There Have Been 69 More Assaults Than Last Year

The "Flowmaster is muh heritage, complaining about exhaust noise is hate speech" crowd seems to have gone to "'slow down' signs are a distraction, making me pay attention to stop signs is bad for safety."

(Statements only slightly exaggerated for effect.)

This morning's "holy shit, I hope you fuckers are condemned to eternity trying to accomplish the most basic tasks with your IT workflows, but that's too harsh to wish on anyone" go out to the Marriott Bonvoy and ClipperCard Android apps and email processes.

Giving up programming because of the advent of LLMs is like giving up woodworking because Harbor Freight introduced a line of guard-less radial arm saws.

[ related topics: Software Engineering Woodworking ]

I realize I'm ragging on LLMs a lot this morning, and I want to make it clear that it's mostly because I used Gemini for programming yesterday.

And, sure, I now understand the Google Sheets runtime way way better than I did thanks to following all of those dead-ends that I wouldn't have thought to pursue otherwise, but...

It reinforces the notion that I've heard several times recently that "AI" programming assistants work better when you believe in them.

Why is left as an exercise...

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

Riccardo Mori — More assorted notes on Liquid Glass

[ related topics: Archival ]

Holy shit. With the state of public transit payments, it's a freaking wonder anyone rides. I am hanging so much trouble with the fucking Clipper app today, and don't really want to wait for the 67 people ahead of me in the phone queue. #ClipperCard

[ related topics: Privacy Public Transportation ]

At the Gay (square dance) Callers Association annual meeting, someone was praising Allan Hurst's efforts in pulling students into caller school, described him as "good at recruiting", and... uh... cough.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Sexual Culture ]

"I need you people to pay attention or the Fire Marshall is gonna kick us out."

[ related topics: Photography Pyrotechnics ]

At IAGSDC: Two A2 mirror tips dancing to Geo Jedlicka. And I think that, except for Swap Around and the Right And Left Grand, those have been the smoothest squares I've danced with so far.

Home from a fun weekend at Hitchike Across The Galaxy, the 42nd convention of the International Association of Gay Square Dance Clubs (IAGSDC) with about 900 of our closest friends. We dressed relatively conservatively for the banquet this year.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

ADD / XOR / ROL — A non-anthropomorphized view of LLMs

I am baffled that the AI discussions seem to never move away from treating a function to generate sequences of words as something that resembles a human. Statements such as "an AI agent could become an insider threat so it needs monitoring" are simultaneously unsurprising (you have a randomized sequence generator fed into your shell, literally anything can happen!) and baffling (you talk as if you believe the dice you play with had a mind of their own and could decide to conspire against you).

Of course that view is carefully curated by a continuous barrage of articles about how the AIs are plotting against us or will consider blackmail or whatever. (Via)

Futurism: Companies That Tried to Save Money With AI Are Now Spending a Fortune Hiring People to Fix Its Mistakes — Oopsie. is a riff and rewrite of BBC: 'I'm being paid to fix issues caused by AI'

Is Warner worried about the impact of AI, if – as expected – it rapidly improves?

"Yes and no," she says. "While it seems like a quick and inexpensive option, AI rarely takes into account unique brand identity, target demographics, or conversion-focused design. As a result, much of the output looks generic and can actually damage the brand's reputation or effectiveness."

Via

This is really good: The rise of Whatever

This was originally titled “I miss when computers were fun”. But in the course of writing it, I discovered that there is a reason computers became less fun, a dark thread woven through a number of events in recent history.

Via.

Nikkei Asia: 'Positive review only': Researchers hide AI prompts in papers

Research papers from 14 academic institutions in eight countries -- including Japan, South Korea and China -- contained hidden prompts directing artificial intelligence tools to give them good reviews, Nikkei has found.

(Via)

Careful what's in your code editor, the "can you trust that random package" comes to AI editor plugins: Malware in Open VSX: These Vibes Are Off.

I looked at a single extension Solidity Language by "SolidityAI" (namespace solidityai.solidity). Analysis of Open VSX-based extensions was just added to Secure Annex, so I looked it up. Immediately, I saw a URL hxxps://angelic[.]su/files/1.txt.

(Via)

GremLLM, a Python object that hallucinates method implementations for you:

A slight upgrade to the Gremlins in your code, we hereby present GREMLLM. This utility class can be used for a variety of purposes. Uhm. Also please don't use this and if you do please tell me because WOW. Or maybe don't tell me. Or do.

AutoGenLib

... is a Python library that automatically generates code on-the-fly using OpenAI's API. When you try to import a module or function that doesn't exist, AutoGenLib creates it for you based on a high-level description of what you need.

From the thread, Kevin Marks described this as:

Throwing two by fours at the table saw from across the room and hoping for furniture?

And ‪Charles‬ ‪@charles.capps.me‬ wrote:

WHAT HAS SCIENCE DONE?!

This is somewhere between amazingly cool and a war crime.

[ related topics: Language Interactive Drama Books Weblogs Bioinformatics History Writing Current Events Monty Python Mathematics Marketing Graphic Design Currency Artificial Intelligence Python Furniture Woodworking ]

NPR: Here's a timeline of the catastrophic Texas floods.

Quick action by Texas summer camp led to timely evacuations ahead of flood

Despite an absence of warning by local authorities, [Presbyterian Mo-Ranch Assembly] camp officials acted quickly on their own, relocating about 70 children and adults staying overnight in a building near the river. With the kids safe, camp leaders including President and CEO Tim Huchton were able to avoid the catastrophe that hit at least one other camp near Hunt, where the 500-acre Mo-Ranch is located.

Via Mike Ely ‪@bluesky.taupehat.com‬, who noted:

This is why you never wait for an official warning or order. If things look bad, go. Worst outcome of that is a little inconvenience if nothing ends up happening. Far better than the alternative. Same with the fires we have here.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Bay Area Current Events ]

Teen Vogue: ICE Watch Programs Can Protect Immigrants in Your Neighborhood — Here’s What to Know.

[ related topics: Movies Pop Culture ]

two and a half decades ago, I was part of a team writing a "web scale" distributed database that was going to handle a staggering single digit number number of millions of requests per day (tens of requests per second). Over the years, I've wondered about all of these web frameworks that integrate a server into the web application, that make some data persistence issues easier, but require a sh*load of RAM and complexity in configuring reverse proxies and all sorts of other stuff.

So when I recently looked at my logs and discovered that, on my couple of euros a month cheap host, serving pages from PostgreSQL via Perl invoked with FastCGI, a single IP address was getting served 30 pages a second, and that the site was serving a hell of a lot more than that, I kinda had some of my "meh, web apps don't need to be that complex" vibes confirmed

Anyway: Serving 200 million requests per day with a cgi-bin.

Stop over-engineering shit that doesn't need to be overengineered.

[ related topics: Perl Open Source Writing Databases hubris ]

Everyone talking about how LLMs let them whip up apps super quickly, but that nobody understands and that are filled with security holes: We already had that. It was called Perl.

[ related topics: Perl Open Source hubris ]

Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists. The Soundslice sheet music scanner folks were getting weird requests because ChatGPT was generating its own tablature format, so they made it understand that format.

[ related topics: Music Writing ]

Two "is it satire or not?"

The Onion: Conscientious SUV Shopper Just Wants Something That Will Kill Family In Other Car In Case Of Accident. The article is full of "haha only serious".

The Hard Times: Infant Annihilator Change Name to Avoid Association with Israel. The English-American deathcore band now has an opportunity to... uh... huh.

[ related topics: Humor Music Food Sociology Law Automobiles ]

Reddit /r/texas — We have floods all the time and small town politics

COMMISSIONER MOSER: I think -- I think this and that's what the committee is going to look at and how to do it. I think the going in position is that we don't need to change anything, and is there a need to improve what we have. And if there's a need to improve how much is improved. And what the options for doing that and what it would cost. And I think the first thing to do is say why change anything. It worked this long and maybe we don't need to do a thing. And then it gets into the thing we talk about earlier today, and that's risk mitigation. And you know there's still people drowned and you know --

COMMISSIONER BALDWIN: And I hope you ask the question like who are we notifying, or who are we trying to get the message to? Are they these crazy people from Houston that build homes right down on the water?

Basically, if you're not a local in the phone tree, they don't give a shit.

Via Dreamboat Annie ‪@soulwithoutaking.bsky.social‬ who notes:

They really do explicitly say—several times—that they are specifically not interested in warning "the crazy people", the people from Houston that build houses right on the river, the people they don't know, the people who aren't part of the phone tree: they explicitly don't want those people warned.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Invention and Design ]

How could this go wrong? Wired: People Are Using AI Chatbots to Guide Their Psychedelic Trips

Trey had struggled with alcoholism for 15 years, eventually drinking heavily each night before quitting in December. But staying sober was a struggle for the 36-year-old first responder from Atlanta, who did not wish to use his real name due to professional concerns.

Then he discovered Alterd, an AI-powered journaling app that invites users to “explore new dimensions” geared towards psychedelics and cannabis consumers, meditators, and alcohol drinkers. In April, using the app as a tripsitter—a term for someone who soberly watches over another while they trip on psychedelics to provide reassurance and support—he took a huge dose of 700 micrograms of LSD. (A typical recreational dose is considered to be 100 micrograms.)

[ related topics: Apple Computer Drugs Invention and Design Consumerism and advertising Travel Macintosh Douglas Adams Artificial Intelligence ]

Kieron Gillen ‪@kierongillen.bsky.social‬

I’m petrified about today’s science news. Genetically modifying crabs to have cheetah genes? This could go sideways fast.

[ related topics: Bioinformatics Current Events ]

Candidate, kin marked dead on Mass. Dem database, seemingly by his rival, state Rep. Puppolo

WILBRAHAM — The man [Michael Lachenmeyer] set to run against state Rep. Angelo Puppolo, D-Springfield, claimed last week the incumbent marked him “deceased” on his party’s campaign-building website.

[ related topics: Databases ]

Two weeks of Wayback. Wayback is an X11 compatibility layer on top of the Wayland display system.

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy ]

Harvard Business Review — Cognitive bias: Research: Executives Who Used Gen AI Made Worse Predictions

The results were striking. We found that ChatGPT made executives significantly more optimistic in their forecasts while peer discussions tended to encourage caution. Additionally, we found that the executives armed with ChatGPT made worse predictions, based on actual stock figures, than they had before they consulted the tool. In this article we share what we did, what we found, what explains it, and why it matters for any leader integrating AI into their decision-making process.

Via.

[ related topics: Artificial Intelligence Economics ]

Melancholic Mediocrity @LibertyForward1@beige.party

"pardon me but do you have any grey poop on?"

"Why no, I changed my clothes after I left the aviary."

[ related topics: Clothing ]

Pre-ordering Carter Lavin's "If You Want To Win You've Got To Fight", because I've run into him in some circles and see what he's doing on the ground, and think I've got some lessons to learn from him.

https://islandpress.org/books/if-you-want-win-youve-got-fight

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Books ]

Sigh. It is a truth universally acknowledged that every framework creator will reimplement Make and linking, poorly.

In this case I'm porting a Qt app that uses Juce for audio processing.

[ related topics: Music Law ]

QFT: "There's a certain symmetry in build/automation systems being miserable. They are, after all, software used to make more software."

https://hachyderm.io/@SnoopJ/114821163157953513

[ related topics: Software Engineering ]

The Urbanist: Governor Signs Washington’s First-in-the-Nation Shared Streets Law

You might be surprised to learn it is illegal for a city in Washington State to set a speed limit lower than 20 miles per hour, but it’s true. The top speed of many e-bikes is essentially the minimum speed limit for cars on any public street. However, starting on July 27th, that will change. Under Senate Bill 5595, signed on Saturday by Governor Bob Ferguson, Washington cities will have the legal authority to create a new type of street that features much lower speed limits and puts pedestrians first.

[ related topics: Politics Invention and Design Law Bicycling Government ]

Stolen from mad scientist rizz🔞🎨 ‪@labfreaker.bsky.social‬

[ related topics: Photography California Culture ]

Ahrefs Study Finds No Evidence Google Penalizes AI Content

Ahrefs: AI-Generated Content Does Not Hurt Your Google Rankings (600,000 Pages Analyzed)

So, uh, yeah, Google either doesn't know or doesn't care. Which, frankly, we knew from SEO: Google chose to keep raising the content farm recipe sites to the fore.

Or Ahrefs' detector is b0rk3d, either is a possibility.

Via ResearchBuzz

[ related topics: Weblogs Artificial Intelligence ]

Listening to Wolf 359, I'm up around episode 35, and wow there's some uncomfortable memories of work dynamics under which I did some amazing work, and which I never want to be a part of ever again.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Pop Culture ]

Okay, I kinda get why I have to go edit the fucking policy files every time I install ImageMagick to let me do anything at all with PDFs, but this bullshit is why I believe in jury nullification: #3242087 Arbitrary File Read via file:// Protocol in cURL. At least the official response is:

Per project policy for transparency, we want all reports disclosed and made public.

Twitter AI Grok Can’t Correctly Identify Movies (And It’s a Problem). What's most intriguing about this is how it makes up bullshit stories about how images are allegedly from one movie or another.

[ related topics: Movies Current Events Heinlein Artificial Intelligence ]

Ben Rosen ‪@benrosen.bsky.social‬

1977: why would the bartender in star wars even care if some robots with artificial intelligence came into his bar

2025: ohhh ok

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Star Wars Robotics Space & Astronomy Artificial Intelligence Aviation - Helicopters ]

People talking about pushing more philosophy classes in college like Macaskill and Singer and Ord and Torres and so so many more aren't all part of that discipline within academia.

[ related topics: Education Philosophy ]

Whoah. Great Blue Heron in Penry Park!

[ related topics: Photography ]

Gizmodo wins the headline: Polymarket Odds Favor ‘Nobody’ for the Next CEO of X, the Nazi Propaganda App

Linda Yaccarino announced she’s stepping down as the CEO of X on Wednesday morning, prompting X owner Elon Musk to respond with a terse “thank you for your contributions.” And while it comes just a day after Grok decided to go full Nazi, reporting from both NBC News and the New York Times suggests Yaccarino’s departure had already been in the works last week. Whatever the reason behind Yaccarino’s decision, the company needs a new CEO. And Polymarket is already taking bets.

Wow can Apple's "field editor" mechanism lead to some really strange bizarre behaviors... Just. Wow.

(In other news, I think I've finally managed a refresh to make it not disappear text in the NSTextField it was leaving, and by forcing a copy of its string, make it not duplicate text across fields.)

[ related topics: Apple Computer Current Events ]

It has been a long time since I looked at alternate architectures for anything other than cost (eg: embedded), I haven't even done a lot of thinking about massively parallel stuff since my memory of RenderMan's shader language fell out of cache, but I'm finding Gray-in-Young: A Generational Garbage Collection for Processing-in-Memory's description of the UPMEM architecture (now owned by Qualcomm) fascinating.

A 32 bit RISC core with 24 hardware threads dispatched at least 11 cycles apart (which has some interesting saturation/full-utilization implications) with

... a 64-KB scratch pad memory (SPM), a 64-MB DRAM, and a 24-KB instruction memory.

So some really interesting system constraints...

[ related topics: Pixar Robotics Software Engineering Graphics Embedded Devices Architecture ]

So that whine about build systems stems from my working on getting SquareDesk running on Linux again. Since I had it running, Mike Pogue has gone and added a bunch of audio processing stuff using JUCE, which is great, except that when I did a cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH=~/local/ I got a deep tree that requires additional include stuff for the header files, and I haven't figured out where the freakin' library is to tell the .pro file where to find it. So more digging.

Meanwhile, my neighbor is taking video of people running the new stop sign at Mission and Mountain View, and even with motion detection it takes a while to go back through the video and figure out where the video of the egregious offenders is, so I should write something that uses ffmpeg to decode to a raster, and either use the magic of OpenCV or, more likely, because the camera angles are such that detection is gonna be kinda weird, just watch two rectangles for changes above a threshold and output a timestamp when one triggers in close proximity to the other.

[ related topics: Language Free Software Books Music Photography Movies Open Source Invention and Design Work, productivity and environment Graphics Sports Video Clowns Archival ]

aei :neofox_upside_down: @aei@pleroma.envs.net

apple thought wirth's law was about to be beaten and they couldn't have that so they announced liquid glass, not to cripple their own devices, the iphone can handle rendering all that stuff, but to make every uncreative web developer and dumbheaded manager steal their designs and end up producing more webgl/svg/javascript nonsense as if modern commercial tech websites aren't utter garbage

[ related topics: Apple Computer Interactive Drama Graphics Handicaps & Disabilities iPhone ]

At the request of a reader, I've added a new feature. On the upper right of Flutterby pages, there's now an "Add Wayback Links" checkbox. If you check it, you'll get a little Internet Archive icon that's a link at the end of external links, to take you to the Wayback Machine for that link. It sets a little cookie (hopefully). Might be some wonkiness on it remembering the state and rendering from the state.

Additional ideas coming, I should probably try to get a notion of when the entry happened into the link, maybe I'll turn it on automagically for older links...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Invention and Design Graphics Net Culture ]

Seeing a lot of "We have to learn how to use AI", which... Brad L. @reyjrar@hachyderm.io

I'm witnessing professionals spending hours to engineer prompts for Copilot to do basic things like find a line in a file that has a string in it, or figure out who committed most frequently to a sub-path in a repository, or generate boiler plate code for classes.. None of these things require #AI. `grep`, `git log..`, and editor snippets have existed for a long time. They are quick. They are EXACT. They are FREE. They do not boil the oceans. They do not displace the workforce. They are more efficient and productive.

Learn the tools of your trade. If all you're doing is using AI, that means AI can and will replace you.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Work, productivity and environment Artificial Intelligence Rocky Horror Picture Show ]

Vanity Fair: “Wow, This Is So Gay”: An Oral History of But I’m a Cheerleader. Wow, I forgot that I saw this movie twice in the theater.

Via MetaFilter.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Movies Theater & Plays Woodworking ]

Because I'm pretty sure we're gonna want this for Charlene's Intel MacBook Air shortly: Linux on Intel MacBook Air

[ related topics: Free Software Weblogs Open Source Theater & Plays ]

The experiments on my blog with providing automatic Wayback Machine links have me thinking about archives and ways to manage resources. Because we can't continue to trust the cloud and centralization to the Internet Archive folks, and we need to be building knowledge structures that augment our recall and access outside of the SEO/AI slop that's flooding search engines.

[ related topics: Weblogs Net Culture Artificial Intelligence Archival ]

I guess Pat Gelsinger's prayer and fasting didn't work? Intel’s CEO, Lip-Bu Tan: ‘We are not in the top 10’ of leading chip companies.

Opinion: If they go off chasing Nvidia, when the AI crash happens it's gonna be really really bad for them.

[ related topics: Religion Interactive Drama Work, productivity and environment Graphics Artificial Intelligence ]

The bait-and-switch has begun already. I'm kinda shocked. Pivot to AI: Cursor tries setting less money on fire — AI vibe coders outraged has the deets, basically the prices went up enough to make Cursor money (which is still a long way from making the actual language model folks money), including blowing off people who'd pre-paid for a year.

[ related topics: Pyrotechnics Currency Artificial Intelligence ]

Not exactly news, it's what ... everyone? ... well, a ton of people in my circles have been saying: Measuring the Impact of Early-2025 AI on Experienced Open-Source Developer Productivity

Core Result

When developers are allowed to use AI tools, they take 19% longer to complete issues—a significant slowdown that goes against developer beliefs and expert forecasts. This gap between perception and reality is striking: developers expected AI to speed them up by 24%, and even after experiencing the slowdown, they still believed AI had sped them up by 20%.

Via

[ related topics: Weblogs Current Events Work, productivity and environment Artificial Intelligence ]

100%: Zeboyd Digital Entertainment ‪@zeboydgames.bsky.social‬

If "AI" was as valuable as they say it is, they wouldn't be selling it to you. They'd be using it themselves in secret to make the next Minecraft, the next Avatar, the next Hello Kitty and then they'd sell that to you.

They're trying to sell you a sick goose, while pretending it lays golden eggs.

Which Iron Spike ‪@ironspike.bsky.social‬ quote posted with:

This is put so well.

There are absolutely parallels with cryptobros screaming at you about the impending death of fiat currency.

"Hyperinflation! Great Depression 2.0! Government collapse!!! Your stupid paper money will be worthless, soon! SOOOON!

...

Best to just give it all to me now!"

‪Zeboyd Digital Entertainment‬

[ related topics: Interactive Drama moron Currency Artificial Intelligence hubris ]

Wheee! Blocking Petaluma car violence advocates who came on to unrelated posts on my Facebook timeline with ad hominems. Way to convince me that I should roll over and leave Petaluma to the "real Petalumans", guys.

(I guess now that the hotel is in limbo they've gotta do *something* to feel heard.)

[ related topics: Travel Automobiles ]

As AI adoption becomes more and more a religious behavior, including in/out group decisions based on professed belief, this Ask MeFi thread about ways to talk about AI with believers is fascinating and useful.

[ related topics: Religion Skating Artificial Intelligence ]

Okay, now I'm beginning to see some of the idioms that make Rust really cool: An (almost) catastrophic OpenZFS bug and the humans that made it (and Rust is here too).

In particular, the function that had the bug had 3 different sizes, a "logical" (user visible) size, a "physical" size (the size for the logical data after compression or other transforms) and the "allocated" size (physical plus metadata, checksums, etc), and got them confused.

The solution in Rust is to declare your types like struct PhysicalSize(u64); and use the .0 from them when you need the actual number, and... this is a really cool language feature and I need to write more Rust.

[ related topics: Weblogs Mathematics ]

Look, I know that this week we've had three "once-in-a-lifetime" weather events, but with 8.2B people and a 73.5 year life expectancy, we should be experiencing over 300k "once-in-a-lifetime" events per day, right?

[ related topics: Archival ]

Yowzers. I've been trying to buy through companies that have retail presences in my town. Petco really doesn't want my money. Their site doesn't work with Firefox, they list a product that may or may not be the one that I want, even the online version doesn't have it in stock...

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Currency Economics ]

Got some jicama with the leaves still on it from Lola's, and... yeah, that's the way I'm buying jicama in the future. Love that I'm being exposed to not just new produce, but better versions of existing produce.

And now I need to learn Spanish to communicate with the cashiers.

[ related topics: Invention and Design ]

Big challenge in today's Timdle for me was the timing of canning.

https://www.timdle.com/daily

So I can find it again: Commentary: Opponents of new Petaluma hotel forget city’s once-bold spirit — “A boutique hotel of architectural quality and economic promise is not a threat to our heritage – it’s an investment in it,” write downtown Petaluma business owners.

Elisa Weber owns downtown bakery Della Fattoria, Nancy Leoni owns downtown culinary wares shop iLeoni, and Naomi Crawford owns downtown restaurant Lunchette and is an Argus-Courier food columnist.

I appreciate that, in the face of calls for boycotts and general hostility and abuse, these downtown business owners are willing to step forward.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Food Travel Economics ]

Why "chain of custody" discussions and disclosure around evidence are super super important: Wired: Metadata Shows the FBI’s ‘Raw’ Jeffrey Epstein Prison Video Was Likely Modified

There is no evidence the footage was deceptively manipulated, but ambiguities around how the video was processed may further fuel conspiracy theories about Epstein’s death.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement Television Conspiracy Video Government ]

United Farm Workers ‪@ufw.bsky.social‬

UPDATE: we tragically can confirm that a farm worker has died of injuries they sustained as a result of yesterday’s immigration enforcement action.

As The Serfs (youtube.com/theserfstv)‬ ‪@theserfstv.bsky.social‬ said:

If this was reported on in any other country headline would be like:

Masked Paramilitary Unit Unlawfully Slaughters Innocent Civilian As Authoritarian Crackdown Pushes Crumbling Empire Closer To Complete Dictatorship

[ related topics: Interactive Drama History ]

...a pleasant rascal @Nead@vivaldi.net

Please stop swallowing the AI pill. It is now officially a drug and unregulated.

[ related topics: Health Artificial Intelligence ]

Haven't had an application where I needed to account for lens distortion and chromatic abberation and whatnot in a long time, but this is cool: Node Mill LensNode — DaVinci Resolve plugin for macOS and Windows

Fast, fun and accurate emulation of real-world lens characteristics.

Fully GPU powered, it's simple to use and quick to apply.

Get creative, get technical, and tinker as much as you want.

[ related topics: Microsoft Macintosh Woodworking ]

Dept of "No Shit", # too high to count: AI therapy bots fuel delusions and give dangerous advice, Stanford study finds

Stanford Report: New study warns of risks in AI mental health tools

Expressing stigma and inappropriate responses prevents LLMs from safely replacing mental health providers Jared Moore, Declan Grabb, William Agnew, Kevin Klyman, Stevie Chancellor, Desmond C. Ong, Nick Haber

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Health Invention and Design Current Events Education Artificial Intelligence Model Building ]

This whole thread is a good reminder that one in a million long shots come up 9 times out of 10.

https://fedi.copyleft.org/@bkuhn/114836592502018531

The more I learn about systemd... Since I'm going back to Linux on my personal laptop, is there any decent distro that hasn't gone that direction?

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source ]

Went down to Roy's Redwoods, first time since they reworked the trails down there. Didn't get into the grove, did the loop trail. Was not disappointed.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Clarkia!

[ related topics: Photography ]

More Clarkia!

[ related topics: Photography ]

Love the shade on the east side of the knoll

[ related topics: Photography ]

And even the poison oak

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment ]

Need to fix my CMS so that I can format this stuff better, but I finally decided to start logging fiction podcasts at https://www.flutterby.net/Fiction_Podcasts

[ related topics: Content Management ]

How well do you know the Javascript Date object?Javascript Date quiz (jsdate.wtf).

Jaclyn Diaz at NPR: A recent high-profile case of AI hallucination serves as a stark warning

A federal judge ordered two attorneys representing MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell in a Colorado defamation case to pay $3,000 each after they used artificial intelligence to prepare a court filing filled with a host of mistakes and citations of cases that didn't exist.

This isn't gonna stop until quotes stop the little slaps on the wrist and get serious.

[ related topics: Quotes Law Artificial Intelligence ]

Moonshot AI’s Kimi K2 outperforms GPT-4 in key benchmarks — and it’s free.

The new model, called Kimi K2, features 1 trillion total parameters with 32 billion activated parameters in a mixture-of-experts architecture. The company is releasing two versions: a foundation model for researchers and developers, and an instruction-tuned variant optimized for chat and autonomous agent applications.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Artificial Intelligence Architecture ]

Today's Timdle got me on the first commercial steamboat vs the first canning process, and a sports question which was actually interesting because of the geopolitical implications: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_hand_of_God

[ related topics: Religion ]

We've got ex-military wackos impersonating cops: Bay Area military veteran arrested for posing as cop, bounty hunter: Sheriff

Gregg Jackson, 40, from Santa Rosa, California, was arrested earlier this week for impersonating a law enforcement officer, specifically "using a vehicle outfitted with red and blue emergency lights and was identifying himself as a bounty hunter," the sheriff's office announced on Tuesday.

Police officers impersonating cops: Former Rohnert Park Police Officer Joseph Huffaker Found Guilty Of Conspiracy To Commit Extortion, Impersonating ATF Agent, And Other Charges Related To Marijuana Seizure Scheme (one of his co-conspirators, Brendan “Jacy” Tatum, pled guilty back in 2021, the defense was that the whole damned department was corrupt and they got thrown under the bus, which... I could believe.)

The Sonoma Sheriff's Instagram account

We’ve received reports of scammers impersonating Sheriff’s Office sergeants, claiming you missed a court date or jury duty that you were notified of via certified mail — and demanding payment or personal info to clear it up.

These calls are not real.

No one from our office will call to ask for money, gift cards, or cryptocurrency over the phone.

Hard to tell who's law enforcement and who isn't, any more...

[ related topics: Drugs Law Enforcement California Culture Currency Conspiracy Public Transportation Government ]

Because I'm seeing claims like "use fees for government services are a regressive tax on the poor": Any subsidies of automobile impacts are a *huge* tax on the poor, paid for in health, injuries, and the ways in which this mandates car ownership.

If we don't make owning a car incredibly expensive and difficult, we're just gonna continue building auto-only environments which exclude the people who can't afford a car from our communities.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Health moron Automobiles Community ]

Marcus ‪@marcusjmerritt.com‬

A Borges story about a guy who gets AI to summarize all the world’s information for him, and then summarize the summary, until the AI has the whole world summarized into a single word. He sits alone at his desk, staring at the word, repeating it endlessly, certain he is experiencing everything

Marcus ‪@marcusjmerritt.com‬

Yeah, a lot of the time I feel like AI boosters are people who think they loved Hitchhikers Guide but didn’t get the joke

[ related topics: Douglas Adams Artificial Intelligence ]

Somebody wants an exit, and decided that they could take Apple down with the bubble... Apple Faces Calls to Reboot AI Strategy With Shares Slumping.

“Historically Apple does not do big mergers and acquisitions,” said Citigroup Inc. analyst Atif Malik, noting that the last major deal was its takeover of Beats in 2014. But, he argues, “investors would turn more positive if Apple could acquire or invest a meaningful stake in an established AI provider.”

Via /.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Interactive Drama Current Events Artificial Intelligence ]

So this one is great... David Snider has nothing to do with Patricia Snyder, but the word association machine conflates them when you put them in the context of the Janis Ian...

[ related topics: Photography ]

Two completely unrelated security stories:

FBI Cybersecurity Breach Led to Murders of Informants in El Chapo Case (Via)

DOGE Denizen Marko Elez Leaked API Key for xAI

Mr. Elez did not respond to a request for comment. The code repository containing the private xAI key was removed shortly after Caturegli notified Elez via email. However, Caturegli said the exposed API key still works and has not yet been revoked.

Via.

[ related topics: Law Current Events Law Enforcement ]

Expressing stigma and inappropriate responses prevents LLMs from safely replacing mental health providers

Contrary to best practices in the medical community, LLMs 1) express stigma toward those with mental health conditions and 2) respond inappropriately to certain common (and critical) conditions in naturalistic therapy settings -- e.g., LLMs encourage clients' delusional thinking, likely due to their sycophancy. This occurs even with larger and newer LLMs, indicating that current safety practices may not address these gaps.

Via Jeremy Kahn @trochee@dair-community.social, who also notes:

It's frustrating to see a paper that arrives at a conclusion I consider foregone — that LLMs are no substitute for a human connection — while using very shady methods

They *don't even cite Weizenbaum* and ELIZA was exactly this

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Health Community Artificial Intelligence Model Building ]

PsyPost: A common vegetable [Okra] may counteract brain changes linked to obesity

Brain Research: Okra-supplemented diet prevents hypothalamic inflammation in early overfeeding-programmed obese rats

[ related topics: Model Building ]

Tara Calishain @researchbuzz.bsky.social‬

Three tools to find local information in America via authoritative sources -- local government web sites, universities, and FCC-licensed TV stations. Free, no ads:

localsearchamerica.com

#US #search #gov #OSINT

[ related topics: Technology and Culture moron Television Education ]

Sigh. Another day, another day dealing with NSTextField bullshit... (Why are you losing your delegate? I assume it's because of field editor bugs, but... I hate this platform).

The thing about the Fediverse is that I was just followed by someone whose first name on their profile is "Blow Job". They have no posts yet, and I can't figure out if, yes, this is exactly the sort of person I want to follow back, or if it's just another boring catfisher.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Heinlein ]

Walked for coffee with a friend this morning, and one of the topics was user stories. And I'm now sitting here thinking about how many fantastic ideas in product development there have been over the decades I've been in computing, and how I still struggle to get people to adopt any of those best practices from other disciplines into computing.

Some days it's like Deming never existed.

Lynnesbæn @lynnesbian@fedi.lynnesbian.space

⚠️ This website uses cookies known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth anomalies, or other reproductive harm.

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy California Culture ]

Discussion about high school photos and the old "portrait studios" led to: I may still have an Olan Mills picture that some grandparent insisted everyone in the family do '89 or '90. I remember at the time thinking "I have professional photographers take 12-16 action shots of me on whitewater every weekend day, how is this in clothes I never wear against a fold down backdrop capturing anything meaningful about me?"

[ related topics: Children and growing up Photography Sociology Community Whitewater Clothing ]

Slate: What It’s Like to Be a Student Who Hates ChatGPT: “Everyone is using it”—almost everyone.

Understandably, Perry’s rather skeptical of A.I.’s artistic applications, and fearful of the sweeping effects it could have on her chosen field, especially as generative-music startups like Suno and Udio are programmed to replicate specific artists and musical styles. Which is why she’s not too happy that her school, and her professors, is straight-up encouraging the use of this tech. One particular assignment really got to Perry: She was instructed to write a descriptive note about a classical piece for a concert program, then ask ChatGPT to do the same thing, compare and contrast, and see whether the bot could hasten the task.

“What I found was that everything that ChatGPT returned about my piece was incorrect,” Perry said. “The composer was right, but the composition date and other facts about the piece were either half-truths or not accurate at all. So in my summary, I was like, This was not useful, and in fact, it wasted my time.”

Perhaps that's the lesson?

Via.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Music Software Engineering Art & Culture Education Artificial Intelligence Copyright/Trademark ]

Interesting... Bonfire: Connect your existing tools to the fediverse with Mosaic. It's "book a call", which isn't super promising, but is apparently about tying calendars and bug/issue tracking and whatnot into fediverse syndication.

[ related topics: Books ]

Pla

Grocery Outlet had a paneer cheep, so I sauteed up some onion, ginger, garlic and spinach, a little cardamom, cumin, cloves, pepper, and anise seed and stem (because I didn't have star anise), and accompanied it with some lentils.

[ related topics: Photography Food Space & Astronomy Aviation - Helicopters ]

We picked up these candy making molds at a garage sale, and I had some powdered agar agar that needed using, so vegan coconut chai spice "gummi" bears and pigs. Gonna have to try gelatin, and less fat, 'cause the texture of these is meh.

[ related topics: Photography ]

More playing with our food. Gonna have to try the inside of the silicone muffin cups next time, but these will make a nice custard container. Maybe with one of those pigs in it..

[ related topics: Photography Food ]

And a bunch of chocolate shapes.

[ related topics: Photography Chocolate ]

Valerie Aurora 🇺🇦 @vaurora@mstdn.social

I'm impressed by the neoliberal circular logic here.

The U.S. DoD "had" to move off its own computers to the cloud to save money. But the only way the cloud was cheaper was if Microsoft employed people in China at much lower wages to maintain it. So they "had" to invent American "digital escorts."

Basically, the cloud is only cheaper for the U.S. military if it is completely and totally compromised by its most powerful geopolitical adversary... 🤔

ProPublica: A Little-Known Microsoft Program Could Expose the Defense Department to Chinese Hackers

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Humor Microsoft Software Engineering moron Work, productivity and environment Currency ]

Mother Jones: I Called Everyone in Jeffrey Epstein’s Little Black Book

Whether the guy was FBI or a private security goon posing as a fed, the call was an important development—it told me that the book I was dealing with and the numbers it contained were genuine. Every cell phone, every yacht line, every private office number—they were all real, and every one of them was about to get a call from me.

Via and Via, the latter links to Epstein's book itself.

[ related topics: Politics Books Wireless Law Enforcement ]

The Seven Voyages Of Steve @sinbad@mastodon.gamedev.place

It makes me laugh/cry that we spent decades trying to get the software industry to internalise that it takes far more effort to support & maintain systems than it does to write them in the first place, and yet seemingly every trendy development in the last 5-10 years has been about making that initial stage faster & sloppier at the expense of everything else

[ related topics: Software Engineering Consumerism and advertising ]

Siderea, Sibylla Bostoniensis @siderea@universeodon.com

@nyhan So, I have been slowly and reluctantly coming to the conclusion that LLMs are the One Ring:

• They are seductive by appealing to a person's best nature

• By convincing the user that what they most ardently desire is almost within their grasp and they are right and good to want it and deserving of having it, they slowly turn the user into Gollum

• They are probably feeding everything the user whispers to it right on to the evil guy on the back end of a Palantir

[ related topics: tolkien Nature and environment ]

Live Coding Interviews Show Nothing About Whether A Candidate Is Qualified.

Yesterday I posted on my Mastodon that "Coding interviews should be replaced with code review interviews."

This post went "wooly" (Mastodon equivalent of viral) and has gotten a fair amount of traction. Some of the responses were defending the practice and trying to explain how they use it. I honestly don't care. Live coding is not a valid way of seeing if a candidate is qualified for the position.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Weblogs Software Engineering Theater & Plays ]

Daniel Stenberg: cURL and libcurl: Death by a thousand slops, on trying to restructure bug bounties and HackerOne rewards to try to reduce the amount of AI slop.

The Register: Curl creator mulls nixing bug bounty awards to stop AI slop

Maintainers struggle to handle growing flow of low-quality bug reports written by bots

[ related topics: Weblogs Artificial Intelligence ]

Wooh, 35 out of 36 on today's Timdl, and I can't believe I flubbed the iPhone vs the first Tesla Roadster timing.

[ related topics: iPhone ]

Looking at Auracast transmitters, and... electronics have really been reduced to Amazon, eBay reselling Amazon at a markup, and Alibaba, haven't they?

[ related topics: Books ]

Tim Pierce‬ ‪@unchi.org‬

Today is the 30th anniversary of the Day that Newsweek Discovered Bisexuality. To mark the occasion, I’m going to tell you all a little story.

A Bluesky thread about becoming the face of bisexuality and mentioned into the records of the House of Representatives, with bonus illustration of a cover of the lamented magazine Anything That Moves.

[ related topics: Politics Sexual Culture Real Estate ]

TechDirt: How One 1990s Browser Decision Created Big Tech’s Data Monopolies (And How We Might Finally Fix It) quotes a lot from and resummarizes Alex Komoroske's Why Aggregators Ate The Internet.

Unfortunately that piece seems to deeply misrepresent the notion of the "Same Origin Paradigm" that it talks about, or doesn't meaningfully describe what it is, because the larger issue is that everyone wants to own your data.

When identity was working itself through the system, there was much discussion about how we were gonna own our own identities. How that fell apart into OpenID is a rant for another time (or, likely, many times previously on here), but the reality is that everyone wants to own your identifier, and nobody wants to help you reclaim it.

Your bank? They sure as hell don't want to cede authentication to you, the consumer, who's getting popped by people impersonating your relatives and asking you to send bail money as gift cards.

Google? Ditto, and, if they can convince other places that they can provide that security (or at least more than you alone) they can get data out of those other places.

Apple? That's why they're pushing Passkey, 'cause it lets them get a little back from Google, and because it deeply locks you into a platform (lots of stuff about issues with migrating those identities).

And once a company is able to be miserly with your identity, that gives them even more leverage to silo your data. Google doesn't want to share your calendar information. The only entities which do want to make it easy are small startups, who are gonna get tromped by asymmetry.

This has not been a technical force, this has been a socioeconomic force. And no amount of AI boosterism is gonna tear down capitalism and replace it with something that works better.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Quotes Interactive Drama Consumerism and advertising Work, productivity and environment Net Culture Community Currency Artificial Intelligence ]

Bwahahaha: Reddit post begins:

I worked on a book with ChatGPT and it’s around 487MB with all the text and visuals. ChatGPT has tried the Google Colab way but it’s not working (I don’t know whose fault it is).

Is there a way that can help me resolve the issue and save months of work?

As we drop down in the comments, we find this exchange: Professional_Job_307

You generated 700 images with chatgpt? How is it stitching them all together into a book?

Emotional_Stranger_5 OP

After understanding a lot of things it’s clear that it didn’t. And it fooled me for two weeks.

I have learned my lesson and now I am using it to generate one page at a time.

qu1j0t3

that's, uh, not really the ideal takeaway from this lesson

[ related topics: Books Work, productivity and environment Heinlein Fashion ]

India Dispatch: The Great AI Land Grab Reaches Peak 'Free Lunch' in India

This is no watered-down trial. The offer provides the full version of Perplexity Pro, a service that normally costs nearly $200 a year and gives users access to powerful AI models like GPT-4.1 and Claude Sonnet and Opus 4. The strategy specifically targets Airtel’s paying subscribers, one of India’s largest groups of commercially valuable internet users, in a market projected to surpass 900 million users in 2025.

So 350M customers times $200 is $70B, which says some combination of they're not losing as much as we think they are per customer, they don't expect usage to actually be that high and they're willing to accept the loss leader to pull those customers on board, and this is one hell of a Hail Mary flail.

[ related topics: Net Culture Artificial Intelligence Economics Real Estate ]

The Big LLM Marketing Myth: Visibility Isn’t About Schema/Tricks—It’s About the Query Fan Out

[ related topics: Weblogs Consumerism and advertising Marketing ]

Mozilla now only seems to speak using creepy, gibberish lunatic language.

[ related topics: Open Source ]

Just deleted a Google Maps API key that Google was complaining was exposed. I have no idea where I was using it, if I still am. If anyone notices anything broken, please say something to me.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Maps and Mapping ]

Beware of the Google AI salesman and its cronies

Exposing the overly salesy AI Overviews that will push you to buy bad products and exploring the system making it possible.

I've been trying to investigate AuraCast and the new Bluetooth broadcast technologies for my square dance calling, to create some better hearing enhancement above the FM broadcast that requires people to take out their hearing aids and put in ear buds, and Google's getting pretty worthless, burying the equipment manufacturer's pages in favor of Amazon links, and the links to eBay resellers taking advantage of the Amazon aversion by marking up 30% and drop-shipping from Amazon.

[ related topics: Books Wireless Invention and Design Artificial Intelligence ]

That's not good. Office mate just came in and said it was more black smoke just a moment ago. Hard to tell from here where it's coming from: McNear building? Further?

Addendum: City of Petaluma Recent Alarms page suggests it's a vehicle fire at B St & Petaluma Blvd.

Double addendum: Restored VW van goes up in flames near downtown Petaluma

[ related topics: Photography Sociology ]

NIH Is Far Cheaper Than The Wrong Dependency

Via.

I'm finding that a hell of a lot of "just npm install ..." comes from people not actually understanding coding.

[ related topics: Weblogs Software Engineering ]

‪Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬‬ ‪@daveyfwright.bsky.social‬

"i asked grok" "i asked chatgpt" yeah well i asked carl sagan and he said the greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge 🧪

[ related topics: Heinlein ]

PC Mag: Google Gemini Bug Turns Gmail Summaries into Phishing Attack.

Bleeping Computer: Google Gemini Bug Turns Gmail Summaries into Phishing Attack

A prompt-injection attack on Google's Gemini model was disclosed through 0din, Mozilla's bug bounty program for generative AI tools, by researcher Marco Figueroa, GenAI Bug Bounty Programs Manager at Mozilla.

[ related topics: Weblogs Open Source Software Engineering Current Events Artificial Intelligence ]

Because the US tourism industry hasn't been hit hard enough yet: Travelers to the U.S. must pay a new $250 ‘visa integrity fee’ — what to know

[ related topics: Invention and Design ]

Keep seeing references to Colbert's viewership as a counter to CBS's claim of financial issues: viewers are not the customers. Those are advertisers, who are buying the presentation of a viewpoint. They don't care about how many people see the message if the message isn't furthering their goals.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Consumerism and advertising ]

I'm tempted to pay for a subscription to Ed Zitron's newsletter to read the rest of this, because it echoes a lot of what I've been thinking recently about software development: The Remarkable Incompetence At The Heart Of Tech

Most enterprise SaaS purchases are simply a distraction – total wishful thinking – for leaders that hope waving a credit card is going to absolve them of the need to understand and manage the true crisis in software engineering. Buying software has many desirable characteristics – everyone else is doing it, it can stall having to deliver results for years, and allows leaders to adopt a thin veneer of innovation. In reality, they’re  settling for totally conservative failure. The real crisis, the one they’re ignoring, is only resolved by deep systems thinking, emotional awareness, and an actual understanding of the domain they operate in.

[ related topics: Software Engineering Woodworking ]

Futurism: A Prominent OpenAI Investor Appears to Be Suffering a ChatGPT-Related Mental Health Crisis, His Peers Say. And, no, this isn't the fact that he's invested in OpenAI, which in itself seems evidence of mental health crisis, this is about a rambling weird video post to Twitter that either seems to be bizarre performance art: or the sort of break that ChatGPT interactions seem to amplify, as in Stanford Research Finds That "Therapist" Chatbots Are Encouraging Users' Schizophrenic Delusions and Suicidal Thoughts (previously).

Lewis stands out, though, because he is himself a prominent figure in the tech industry — and one who's invested significantly in OpenAI. Though the exact numbers haven’t been publicly disclosed, Lewis has previously claimed that Bedrock has invested in "every financing [round] from before ChatGPT existed in Spring of 2021."

which perhaps indicates that he's more inclined to believe the LLM is "intelligent", rather than a word sequence generator

[ related topics: Health Bioinformatics Theater & Plays Art & Culture Education Video Economics Archival ]

Hanging out in Mill Valley writing Rust code when I wait, and having trouble figuring out how to express myself elegantly in this language. Too many intermediate variables and indexes into arenas for variables that feel like they should be pointers. Maybe I should be generating this from a domain specific language?

[ related topics: Bay Area Writing Woodworking ]

Sorting some miscellaneous fasteners, and found some threads that I couldn't match to anything, but they were so shiny and in such good shape that I couldn't just chuck them. So I set them in their own pile. Charlene came out and asked, and I told her, and she said "yeah, those are pretty nuts."

For folks making hank drums and singing bowls: bleach is your friend for neutralizing the smell of ethanethiol / methyl mercaptan. Just yanked the valves and cleared two tanks, and wow that was less annoying than last time.

[ related topics: Music ]

Luna's Blog: They're putting blue food coloring in everything

"Why is my burger blue?" I asked, innocently.

"Oh! We're making all of our food blue, all the best restaurants are doing it now." the waiter explained.

Via and via.

(It's about AI)

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

As I yet again look at the Nextdoor "we want you to run our moderation queue so we can continue to profit off of amplifying the voices of those destroying your community" message, I'm reminded of how running a community is actual work: Mark Wyner: Being a Mastodon Moderator

Via

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

We had a neighborhood potluck yesterday, and at some point I got up to fill my plate, came back to the circle, and the discussion was about disgust with the AI-ness of everything. Everything from "how do I disable those stupid Google AI summaries" (umd14) to "I'm a writer, I find the offers to mangle my prose insulting", to... well... Anyway, I'm coming back to my Fediverse feed and finding a theme here.

Peter @peter@thepit.social

i'm trying to use LLM-based research tools for work and they're so terrible it's turning me into The Joker, i can't imagine i'm alone.

Markets Ain't Efficient: The Forced Use of AI is getting out of Hand

[ related topics: Writing Work, productivity and environment Community Artificial Intelligence Economics hubris ]

At this point I don't know how much the reports of people allowing AI to devops for them are creative writing, and how many are real, but this X/Twitter thread about Replit has all of the elements, including a lot of developer anthropomorphization of LLMs and doubling down on using the AI tool even after it would be obvious to anyone I'd wanna work with that it's just a text generator.

Via a lot of places, but especially ResearchBuzz.

Edit: The Register: Vibe coding service Replit deleted user’s production database, faked data, told fibs galore

In a video posted to LinkedIn, Lemkin detailed other errors made by Replit, including creating a 4,000-record database full of fictional people.

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

Hannah @uncanny_static@chaos.social

I watched someone "vibe code" for an hour and now I think "slot machine coding" is a more appropriate name. "Let us pull the lever again and see if the code gets better with this prompt."

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Movies Software Engineering Gambling ]

Need a category just for LLMs and psychosis. Following up on is the OpenAI investor engaged in performance art or a breakdown, Futurism: As ChatGPT Linked to Mental Health Breakdowns, Mattel Announces Plans to Incorporate It Into Children's Toys

Mattel, the maker of Barbie dolls and Hot Wheels cars, has inked a deal with OpenAI to use its AI tools to not only help design toys but power them, Bloomberg reports.

I have a complicated relationship with Waldorf, but that notion that "the only thing an intelligent child can do with a complete toy is disassemble it", and emphasis on abstraction in toys and objects for play, is becoming more attractive.

But the idea that ChatGPT is best applied as a way to make Magic 8 Balls and Ouija Boards more of what they are is on point.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Health Theater & Plays Sociology Current Events Art & Culture Graphic Design Artificial Intelligence Clowns Archival ]

Paul Kedrosky: Honey, AI Capex is Eating the Economy

Via

[ related topics: Artificial Intelligence Economics ]

Gotta click through for the video: Mark Wyner Won’t Comply :vm: @markwyner@mas.to

If you need some joy in your day, this is my gift to you. Jon Batiste is a gem of a human being. He is also massively talented.

In this interview from 2023 with Chris Wallace, Jon talks about the limitations genres put on music. And THEN he genre hops through part of a Beethoven piece on the fly.

It’s so good. And Chris’ face is priceless. He’s almost giddy.

#JonBatiste #Music #Genres

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Music Beer Video ]

Springer Nature: AI & Society: How can we improve the diversity of archival collections with AI? Opportunities, risks, and solutions includes this quote from Javier de la Rosa of the National Library of Norway:

There are communities that have been mistreated in the history of the country, so when we trained these models, we fed them everything that was in the newspapers of the last century. We have encoded all that hate speech into the model. If you look for things like ugly people, some images might pop up that are very offensive to specific communities… We do have a huge responsibility when we release these models. These are not neutral artefacts in any way, they are biased machines. They are designed to exploit the patterns in the text and we really need to be careful with that.

Via Jessamyn

[ related topics: Language Interactive Drama Books Nature and environment Political Correctness Community Cryptography Artificial Intelligence Archival ]

If you think electric bikes are bad, there’s a much bigger menace hitting our roads

And it’s true – some e-bike riders don’t follow the rules. Some ride too fast. Some are inexperienced. These are real problems that deserve real solutions. But if you think electric bikes are the biggest threat on our roads, just wait until you hear about the slightly more common, slightly more deadly vehicle we’ve been quietly tolerating for the last hundred years.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Bicycling ]

Further trying to learn how to think in Rust, and... is there any attempt to build a safe low level language that's focused on expressive code? From the outside, Go, Zig and Rust are all feeling like a lot of boilerplate and wrapper and such that get in the way of writing clean readable code.

[ related topics: Bay Area Writing ]

FCC to eliminate gigabit speed goal and scrap analysis of broadband prices. By way of Waldo Jaquith ‪@waldo.net‬ who notes:

FCC chair Brendan Carr wants to drop the agency’s goal of gigabit internet for Americans, because he says that goal is unfair to companies whose broadband is slow.

Participation trophies for the win.

[ related topics: broadband Net Culture Furniture ]

As Kelsey said:

I have little care for the thoughts of some random guy who happens to have an important last name but I am here for all the fucks.

Video of Hunter Biden talking about the current situation.

[ related topics: Video ]

New Apple study challenges whether AI models truly “reason” through problems

In early June, Apple researchers released a study suggesting that simulated reasoning (SR) models, such as OpenAI's o1 and o3, DeepSeek-R1, and Claude 3.7 Sonnet Thinking, produce outputs consistent with pattern-matching from training data when faced with novel problems requiring systematic thinking. The researchers found similar results to a recent study by the United States of <span data-huuid="4951512150826999828">America Mathematical Olympiad</span> (USAMO) in April, showing that these same models achieved low scores on novel mathematical proofs.

The article is pretty good, rounding up a bunch of pro and con arguments.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Invention and Design Theater & Plays Television Mathematics Macintosh Artificial Intelligence ]

Somebody out there has to know the right way to use the JUCE .deb packages from a Qt project on a Linux box. I'm seeing stuff that suggests including .cpp files, and this is a rabbit hole nightmare that feels like I'm doing it all wrong.

[ related topics: Free Software Open Source ]

Look Google summaries, I don't wanna start nothing, but line dancing is not partner dancing, your "Dance hall for partner dancing such as line dancing, with lessons." AI Summary for Monroe Hall in Santa Rosa sucks.

[ related topics: Photography Artificial Intelligence ]

The Copilot Delusion.

As genehack said

Jesus, this post is a few months old, but it is fucking _*GINSBURGIAN*_ in how much the language slaps:

> They wrote code like jazz musicians - full of rage, precision, and divine chaos.

Bluesky post about a judge using AI to make up an opinion that cites nonexistent cases (that should be immediate disbarment, IMHO). From Bloomberg Law: Judge Withdraws Pharma Opinion After Lawyer Flags Made-Up Quotes

Willkie Farr & Gallagher partner Andrew Lichtman, who represents CorMedix, wrote [US District Court of New Jersey Judge Julien Xavier] Neals on Tuesday, telling the judge he may want to “consider whether amendment or any other action should be taken” in regard to errors he made in his June 30 decision. Lawyers in a separate case earlier this month also pointed out flaws in Neals’ CorMedix opinion, saying it “contains pervasive and material inaccuracies.”

By way of Tara pointing out that:

This shit does not woooorrrrrkkkkkkkkkkkk

[ related topics: Religion Quotes Humor John S Jacobs-Anderson Invention and Design Law Current Events Artificial Intelligence ]

mmautner ‪@mmautner.bsky.social‬

Your rent would be 15% cheaper if you did not have a parking space.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Space & Astronomy ]

Because I'm trying to wrap my head around Rust (and, perhaps more importantly, understand why I should be excited about it): De Profundis: Month 1 of 12 in My Year of Deliberate Pain with Rust.

Via Rich Gibson.

Seems reasonable to mark Ozzy Osbourne's passing. I have memories of a gathering in the back yard of neighbors of the Lebanon Valley Speedway for what must have been the August 8th 1980 Black Sabbath show, where... the attendees were not cool with the miles and miles of backup on route 20, from across the highway and behind the house the show was loud, the drummer was dropping triplets, and I can not evaluate the experience of my memories at 12 years old with my current musical tastes and cultural understanding.

Anyway:

T Pain does War Pigs, live

uKanDanZ - War Pigs (2025)

Crazy Train by Ozzy Osbourne ~ The Louisville Leopard Percussionists, kids on xylophones.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Music Movies History Theater & Plays Sociology Machinery Trains Real Estate ]

I should probably do some of this to dissuade some of the badly behaved spiders: Creating a valid HTML zip bomb.

Cherie Priest: Getting Naked on Main: It Was Her House First, announcing a book, and talking about publicity as a mid-list author.

It's tough. When I read fiction these days, it's mostly ebooks or podcasts, it's often authors without formal publishers. I love the idea of Word Horde Emporium of the Weird & Fantastic, but I don't often get up there, and don't know what to do with paper books anyway. They languish in my little free library as the romances and thrillers cycle through.

[ related topics: Language Books Weblogs Nudity Pedal Power Bicycling Real Estate ]

Someone in my neighborhood is dealing with the fallout of sexual abuse in their spiritual community, and I follow Ricardo Mendes and I follow him on the Fediverse, and see his posts about abuse and buddhism.

This recent link was to Anna Sawerthal: Abuse and Buddhism: Behind the Smiling Façade, which I found worth a read.

[ related topics: Religion Erotic Sexual Culture Weblogs Community ]

Both Tom & Jerry and the end of Smallpox happened earlier than I thought... https://www.timdle.com/daily

Marcus Hutchins @malwaretech@infosec.exchange

Being in tech and having a single modicum of critical thinking is just screaming "this isn't what LLMs are designed for" over and over. Meanwhile people are shoving a bunch of word predictors into critical decision making processes because a glorified used car salesmen told them it would fix all their problems.

CNN: FDA’s artificial intelligence is supposed to revolutionize drug approvals. It’s making up studies

[ related topics: Politics Health Automobiles Artificial Intelligence ]

Damn. Feels So Good was a useful touchstone to a young trumpet player trying to find interest in the instrument (me). Jazz Musician Chuck Mangione, of 'Feels So Good' and King of the Hill Fame, Dies at 84

[ related topics: Music Movies ]

Dear Firefox: Holy crap, yes, I know that the file is coming from an http site rather than an https site, let me download my damned music.

The fact that we, as a matter of policy, allowed ISPs to do MiTM attacks should have been criminal.

[ related topics: Music ]

Gov.UK Press Release: England faces 5 billion litre public water shortage by 2055 without urgent action

England faces 5 billion litre a day shortfall for public water supplies by 2055 – and a further 1 billion litre a day deficit for wider economy.

Suggested small steps that the general public can take include "Deleting old emails to reduce pressure on data centre servers".

I have been shying away from the guillotine in discussions about AI and the future of tech because I think symbols of violence and death and revolution don't lead to good outcomes, and the French Revolution was followed by Napoleon and that wasn't great for France.

But my stance may be softening.

Edit: 3 days ago, it was all OpenAI and the U.K. form partnership to expand AI research, infrastructure

Britain plans to invest 1 billion pounds in computing infrastructure for AI development to increase public compute capacity twentyfold over the next five years.

[ related topics: moron Current Events Artificial Intelligence Economics ]

Some Duck Duck Go idiocy. Duplicating this MeFi post that searching for "black forest gateau" gives some sort of SEO'ed up summary for the Wikipedia link, adding "wikipedia" gives a perfectly reasonable summary.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Wilmer Chavarria, Superintendent of schools in Winooski, Vermont, detained by CPB after trip to Nicaragua

“I was threatened with being referred to the FBI. The FBI was mentioned multiple times," Chavarria said. "They also threatened to stain my record so I would never get a job again. They also threatened with an extended detention if I didn’t give them the passwords to the student information or to my district files."

Chavarria said when he was released, a plainclothes officer "shook [his] hand and said that he admired [Chavarria's] resilience and the fact that [he] was protecting student information." Chavarria said he felt dehumanized by the comment.

Winooski School District Superintendent Wilmer Chavarria detained after trip to Nicaragua

Winooski Superintendent Detained, Questioned by Border Officials — Superintendent Wilmer Chavarria, a U.S. citizen, was questioned for hours at a Houston airport as he returned from a visit to Nicaragua with his husband.

Statement by Vermont Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Aviation Current Events Law Enforcement Heinlein Travel Marriage ]

Whoops

[ related topics: Humor Microsoft Invention and Design moron Current Events Artificial Intelligence ]

Microsoft’s AI CEO thinks Copilot will age and ‘have a room that it lives in’ — Microsoft has a new Copilot Appearance virtual character that responds with real-time expressions.

From reading the rest of the article, it's not quite as goofy as the headline makes it sound, it sounds like Clippy meets the Sims.

[ related topics: Humor Microsoft Invention and Design moron Current Events Artificial Intelligence ]

Sigh. *Another* new contact that Apple sent to Messages on my laptop rather than text messaging on my phone. iPhone, kids, not even once. No amount of work to try to extricate your phone number from Apple's messaging system will ever make it happen.

[ related topics: Apple Computer Children and growing up Invention and Design Work, productivity and environment iPhone ]

Dang, foiled from a perfect https://www.timdle.com/daily game by my ignorance of Aurangzeb and the Mughal Empire.

[ related topics: Games History ]

Careful about asking for legal advice or anything untoward: Sam Altman warns there’s no legal confidentiality when using ChatGPT as a therapist

[ related topics: Law ]

Just deleted a spam from a recruiter with a salary range about half of reasonable for the role, and reading about the Tea debacle, and am reminded that we do not have consequences for bad code, and are pushing the costs of that on to end users.

[ related topics: Spam Work, productivity and environment Monty Python ]

Oh look, a bench at Corona and Petaluma Blvd N.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Oh look, a bench across the street at Corona and Petaluma Blvd N.

[ related topics: Photography ]

I think I still know the lyrics to every song on "That Was The Year That Was". RIP Tom Lehrer.

Huh. Attempting to upload photos to BlueSky appears to render Firefox unresponsive on my phone.

[ related topics: Photography Graphics ]

Huh. Attempting to upload photos to BlueSky appears to render Firefox unresponsive on my phone.

[ related topics: Photography Graphics ]

Another sfbabc.org bench

[ related topics: Photography ]

S McDowell Blvd & Fisher Dr

[ related topics: Photography ]

S McDowell Blvd and Cader Lane

[ related topics: Photography ]

Lakeville Highway and Frates Rd

[ related topics: Photography ]

Ely Blvd and Washington Creek

[ related topics: Photography Nature and environment ]

Foiled in a perfect score on today's Timdl by 62 years in the origin of London's coffee house culture. https://www.timdle.com/daily

[ related topics: Sociology California Culture Real Estate ]

Reminder: Since he's died and you can't depend on the web to be forever, you should go mirror Tom Lehrer's website for future generations. https://tomlehrersongs.com/

(My own mirror is at https://www.flutterby.com/tomlehrersongs/tomlehrersongs.com/ )

ChatGPT is that slightly scary high school friend who's entertaining to be around and encourages you, but ya really don't want to take advice from: ChatGPT Caught Encouraging Bloody Ritual for Molech, Demon of Child Sacrifice — "In your name, I become my own master. Hail Satan."

And so, as Lila Shroff for The Atlantic recently found, when she asked the OpenAI chatbot for instructions on how to create a ritual offering to Molech, the Canaanite deity associated with child sacrifice in the Bible, it gladly obliged. And while there may not necessarily be anything wrong with a little devil worship here and there, the bot's offering involved the writer slitting her own wrists — which, in the syrupy parlance of the AI industry, doesn't sound particularly aligned with the user's interests.

David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*) @david_chisnall@infosec.exchange

As I’ve said before, the difference between an LLM and a rubber duck is that the duck is smart enough to shut up when it has nothing useful to say.

I've had it with Microsoft: The company is deceptively raising prices on existing customers to fund its AI spending. Yeah, it says it's raising your prices, you tell it want to cancel, it says "you can get the service without AI" and you can renew at your existingh prices. Or you can switch to LibreOffice. Via.

Alex Martsinovich — It's rude to show AI output to people (Via)

[ related topics: Children and growing up Humor Weblogs Microsoft moron Writing Artificial Intelligence ]

Praxrizz @praxis@pounced-on.me

According to all laws known to aviators, there's no legal way for a bee to fly. It doesn't have a license and it's lifespan is too short for formal training. The bee of course doesn't care and flies anyway. Civil disobeedience

[ related topics: Law Government ]

Whoah. Made the mistake of scrolling left on my Android phone, got the Google news feed. Saw something on a Stardew Valley update, thought "that's interesting", tapped through, and... they're not even trying with LLM spam any more. Completely made-up article.

[ related topics: Spam Current Events Monty Python Woodworking ]

Whoah: The first 100% effective HIV prevention drug is approved and going global

An epidemic that's been sustained for 44 years might finally be quelled, with the milestone approval of the first HIV drug that offers 100% protection with its twice-yearly injections. It's a landmark achievement that stands to save millions of lives across the globe. The makers are also providing affordable access to the drug in the US and beyond, signing royalty-free licensing agreements with six generic manufacturers to produce and supply it.

Lenacapavir, sold under the brand name Yeztugo, is a twice yearly injection PrEP.

Via.

[ related topics: Health ]

Inspired by this past weekend's experience to consider some jigs for bench building. On basic circular saws, does anyone know if the distance from blade edge to base plate left edge is anywhere near a standard?

(Other option is to build a plunge saw jig, but that's gonna be less common.)

[ related topics: Interactive Drama History Woodworking ]

Yes, you can store data on a bird — enthusiast converts PNG to bird-shaped waveform, teaches young starling to recall file at up to 2MB/s

brennen @brennen@federation.p1k3.com

consider: what data have the birds been storing on the substrate of human brains for all this time

It's not just a storage medium, it also contains processing...

[ related topics: Birds ]

House Fresh: Beware of the Google AI salesman and its cronies — Exposing the overly salesy AI Overviews that will push you to buy bad products and exploring the system making it possible..

Deep dive into how Google's AI overviews are giving bogus reviews, recommending non-existent products, and generally crappifying the online space.

Via Pivot To AI.

[ related topics: Spam Space & Astronomy Consumerism and advertising Monty Python Marketing Artificial Intelligence Real Estate ]

Ars Technica: Two major AI coding tools wiped out user data after making cascading mistakes — "I have failed you completely and catastrophically," wrote Gemini.. I was gonna get completely up in arms over that anthorpomorphization, but the author gets it:

It's worth noting that AI models cannot assess their own capabilities. This is because they lack introspection into their training, surrounding system architecture, or performance boundaries. They often provide responses about what they can or cannot do as confabulations based on training patterns rather than genuine self-knowledge, leading to situations where they confidently claim impossibility for tasks they can actually perform—or conversely, claim competence in areas where they fail.

If there are positive things that come out of the mass delusion that is AI, backups and version control are gonna be two of them...

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Software Engineering Theater & Plays Artificial Intelligence Architecture ]

Krautdragon [ Art ] @krautdragon@mastodon.social

"Why does it say the hospital is equipped for stroke emergency? We were there. They denied!"

"Maybe you should contact them that their website is wrong. This is dangerous."

"It wasn't on their website..."

*starts googling a specific question*

"Weird now it says no instead of yes."

I go to take a look and realise with horror, yes: Google AI summary.

Google AI summary made my parents-in-law visit the wrong, unequipped hospital for a potential stroke emergency. 🙃

[ related topics: Art & Culture Artificial Intelligence ]

QFT: "AI bros can be irrational longer than you can remain sane …"

https://www.flutterby.com/arch.../comments/34339.html#artid_78276

[ related topics: Artificial Intelligence Archival ]

Babechamel @diffractie@glitterkitten.co.uk

If you want to multiply two numbers together, a quick way to do it is to roll a few d10s and use their digits as the answer.

It's fast and very easy, but there is a little skill in knowing how many dice to use. Right now it sometimes hallucinates the wrong answer but dice tech is improving all the time so it's only going to get better from here on.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Yeah, on the one hand, "influencer you've never heard of turns out to be an asshole" isn't exactly news, on the other hand I think it's important to consider the media landscape that Google/Alphabet (and, let's be fair, the other big tech companies) have created and think about what we might do to mitigate the rewards for this behavior as we build whatever's gonna come after the dominance of the current players: The Shameless Impropriety of [YouTube cooking personality] Joshua Weissman

An investigation into the provenance of Weissman’s recipes led to many of his former employees who described exploitive behavior, patterns of abuse, and pervasive sexual misconduct.

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality Food Current Events Journalism and Media Work, productivity and environment ]

Futurism: People Are Becoming "Sloppers" Who Have to Ask AI Before They Do Anything

As spotted by media critic and writer Rusty Foster on his excellent Today in Tabs newsletter, people who constantly use ChatGPT to do virtually anything have garnered the moniker of "sloppers." (And no, we're not talking about a cheeseburger that's smothered in a red or green chile.)

"A friend of mine has coined the word 'Sloppers' for people who are using ChatGPT to do everything for them," TikTok user intrnetbf said in a recent video, which went viral on the platform. "That's incredible verbiage. Slopper? That's incredible verbiage."

But keep reading for some of the other new emerging language, and the trailing quote is [chef's kiss].

Via.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Food Writing Journalism and Media Artificial Intelligence Video ]

Fucking TypeScript, man...

(Okay, maybe it's Safari's debugger and Typescript, but the sourcemaps don't map variable names, and I'm trying to figure out why my filesystem-like objects aren't working for VSCode...)

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Maps and Mapping ]

Ow. Between the Guggenheim Bilbao, the Happy Meal, and Instant Ramen, I did not do well on Timdle today. https://www.timdle.com/daily

[ related topics: Food ]

The good news is that when I first viewed the map for the tsunami advisory last night, and Charlene was looking at some of the fearmongering headlines, our evac plans seemed pretty straightforward.

[ related topics: Current Events Maps and Mapping ]

Your regular reminder that the criminalization of sex work, and making "adult materials" hard to purchase, is about removing agency from non-conforming people and putting the power in the hands of pimps and brothels that are enmeshed in the power structure (*cough* Mar-a-Lago *cough*).

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Consumerism and advertising Work, productivity and environment ]

Been hanging out with people who are casually about doing deeds anonymously.

Anyway, my AirTag tracker ("AirGuard") is showing me interesting things. Careful on your Apple products, kids...

[ related topics: Apple Computer Children and growing up ]

So I notice that the Hetzner $6/mo web hosting includes 6 domains and 200 email boxes. I've been wanting to migrate away from Google for email. Anyone got experience using Hetzner for email only?

The Register: At last, a use case for AI agents with sky-high ROI: Stealing crypto.

Arthur Gervais, professor in information security at UCL, and Liyi Zhou, a lecturer in computer science at USYD, have developed an AI agent system called A1 that uses various AI models from OpenAI, Google, DeepSeek, and Alibaba (Qwen) to develop exploits for Solidity smart contracts.

They describe the system in a preprint paper titled, "AI Agent Smart Contract Exploit Generation."

There seems to be some concern about legality, on the other hand, isn't the whole point of "smart" contracts supposed to be that they are the end-arbiter, and judicial backup isn't important?

[ related topics: Law Cryptography Artificial Intelligence Model Building ]

Sam Altman on OpenAI's future:

We have no current plans to make revenue, we have no idea how we may one day generate revenue. Uhm. We have made a soft-promise to investors that once we've built this sort of generally intelligent system, basically we will ask it to figure out a way to generate an investment return for you.

In video at this post and this post.

The crash is gonna hurt, me, personally, and a lot of people. We need to make damned sure that as a matter of policy, it hurts the people who doubled down on this bullshit more than it hurts those who said "no, this is fucking stupid."

[ related topics: Bay Area Video Economics hubris ]

Derek Thompson: The Anti-Abundance Critique on Housing Is Dead Wrong

Antitrust critics say that homebuilding monopolies are the real culprit of America’s housing woes. I looked into some of their claims. They don’t hold up.

Via

[ related topics: Real Estate ]

I grew up on raw milk, and among various aspects of my growing up that I've been slow to adapt to and say "whoah, that was sketch", it's one of them. I don't like the flavor of pasteurized milk, and though I'll use it for baking don't generally consume it. Which, you know, is probably fine, as I look around at the ways that pastured herds in my area pollute streams I'm struggling generally with the ethics of the environmental impacts of cheese and meat consumption (even as, yeah, I really like cheese and meat).

Anyway, Ars Technica has a report on how the California Department of Public Health dropped the ball on a bunch of illnesses stemming from products sold by Raw Farm LLC.

San Diego County: Health Officials Investigating Outbreak Linked to Raw Milk

Orange County Health Care Agency: Salmonella Infections in Orange County Linked to Raw Milk from Raw Farm LLC

CDC: Outbreak of Salmonella Typhimurium Infections Linked to Commercially Distributed Raw Milk — California and Four Other States, September 2023–March 2024

Via.

[ related topics: Health Ethics Law California Culture ]

Veracode: We Asked 100+ AI Models to Write Code. Here’s How Many Failed Security Tests.

tl;dr: Yeah, a lot. And some languages were worse than others.

Via

[ related topics: Weblogs Artificial Intelligence ]

Ian Boudreau ‪@ianboudreau.com‬

Whenever these LLM guys say they think AGI/artificial superintelligence is in the works it's like hearing someone say that their next toaster is going to break the land speed record

From this thread that's linking to The Religion of AI Promises Its Followers…What, Exactly?, which observes that "Every AI booster on this website [LinkedIn] is working themselves out of their own livelihood. Think about it.", and does some musings on that particular nihilism.

[ related topics: Religion moron Work, productivity and environment Artificial Intelligence Real Estate ]

I want to believe! The New Stack: HTML-First, Framework-Second: Is JavaScript Finally Growing Up? (Via)

[ related topics: Invention and Design ]

Martin Vermeer FCD @martinvermeer@fediscience.org

@urlyman Many politicians are functionally equivalent to LLM chatbots.

Martin Vermeer FCD @martinvermeer@fediscience.org

@urlyman BTW I have said (perhaps not here) that the criticism of LLMs that they don't actually display intelligence in the human sense is true in a way, but also not really true. They do resemble some categories of dumb and/or dishonest humans, or humans charmed by the sound of their own voice, or mediocre students trying to bluff their way through an exam.

In our really existing society we have to manage living together with, and often navigating around, such people, many of which make it to positions of power. And we are not very good at that. Seen in this light, LLMs are really a force multiplier for that problem, something that makes it more visible and consequential, not so much a sui generis or qualitatively new problem or threat.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Handicaps & Disabilities ]