Flutterby™!

In Adrianna Tan's "From Fintech to Fin Tech" talk at North Bay Python, she put up a slide which said:

DO NOT WANT

• Work on ads
• Work on weapons
• Abet genocides
• Make the world worse
• Use Microsoft Teams

making particular reference to Meta's involvement in the Myanmar genocides, but, of course the awful people said "this is anti-semitic", because any complaint about genocide is clearly about Palestine and "hey warfare is not genocide".

I've seen this locally too, where mentions of unhinged people harassing city staff and threatening people has been met with complaints of "the Petaluma Historic Advocates aren't unhinged".

So, yeah. People telling on themselves.

Judge restricts Border Patrol in California: ‘You just can’t walk up to people with brown skin’

The court also ordered the Border Patrol to document every stop and provide reports within 60 days. During oral arguments on Monday, the government attorney said doing so would be burdensome to Border Patrol agents. Judge Thurston rebuked the government, saying: “They have to make a report for every arrest, not sure what the burden is.”

According to sworn declarations filed in court by those detained, Border Patrol agents slashed tires, yanked people out of trucks, threw people to the ground, and called farmworkers “Mexican bitches.”

Let's repeat that for emphasis: "During oral arguments on Monday, the government attorney said doing so would be burdensome to Border Patrol agents."

Wow, the meme is in the air: Æ. @aesthr@wandering.shop

It is the year 2025 and “I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.” would actually be a pretty certain indicator that you’re talking to a human because an LLM would instead tell you that a bay is a body of water and therefore doesn’t have doors, although sometimes a pod of dolphins could be in it.

PyXL — Python running directly on a Zynq-7000 FPGA (Arty-Z7-20 dev board) at 100MHz

A GPIO roundtrip takes 480ns on PyXL vs. ~15,000ns on PyBoard (MicroPython).

Stephen Thomas @skwthomas

Me: Marx didn’t predict I’d use adderall to respond to texts haha

Scholar’s QT of page 651 of Capital:

𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑃𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑑 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑟 𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑦 𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑜𝑟𝑡s 𝑡𝑜 𝑎 𝐿𝑒𝑔𝑎𝑙 𝑐𝑜𝑐𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑒 𝑓𝑜𝑟 ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑡 𝑓𝑢𝑛𝑑𝑎𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑠𝑜𝑐𝑖𝑎𝑙 𝑇𝑎𝑠𝑘𝑠

Quinn Norton @quinn@social.circl.lu

People keep talking about AI and crypto coins as things that are popular and interesting. But Fentanyl is also popular and interesting, so y'all will need a better argument than that.

Thom, Antipope of Fedi @thomholwerda@exquisite.social

Exactly 80 years ago today, Hitler blew his own brains out and died, in what can only be considered the single best use of a bullet in human history.

Why is this not a recognised, official holiday?

Anil Dash @anildash@me.dm

A bunch of tech CEOs are talking about being “AI-first”, the latest in a series of CEO fads like “return to office”, “founder mode” and “pivot to full fascism”. This one’s weird, though, because it only makes sense if… none of their workers are great at their jobs.

"AI-first" is the new Return To Office

C++ coders: The way that LLVM exploits undefined behavior may be a little extreme.

Vibe coders: What if, and hear me out, we didn't even expect the same behavior from the same inputs?

I'm having trouble reading things like this as anything other than a desire for more undefined behavior in programming languages.

https://mashable.com/article/l...k-zuckerberg-ai-writes-meta-code

If 30% of code at Microsoft is being written in a language that doesn't reliably compile to the same output, doesn't have a formal spec or grammar, and only has indirect error checking, what does that say about the languages specific to programming that we've been using?

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/2...osoft-code-is-written-by-ai.html

Reading Dennis Yi Tenen's "Literary Theory for Robots", talking about Athanasius Kircher's Mathematical Organ, and it's a good reminder to not dismiss shiny tech just because it is, but also to not let the well created wrapper convince us that there's more intelligence there than actually is.

What. The. Everloving. Fuck?

Lindsey Graham @LindseyGrahamSC

I was excited to hear that President Trump is open to the idea of being the next Pope. This would truly be a dark horse candidate, but I would ask the papal conclave and Catholic faithful to keep an open mind about this possibility!

The first Pope-U.S. President combination has many upsides. Watching for white smoke…. Trump MMXXVIII!

Life with Althaar referring to "the human sexosipher Chuck Tingle" is the cross-over I didn't know that we needed.

Tried to write "order of magnitude", auto-corrupt suggested "order of manure". In the context (answers from LLMs on browser share vs ClouldFlare data), I'm not sure it was wrong.

Jay Kuo @jaykuo@universeodon.com

Overheard: “William Henry Harrison had a better first 100 days, and he spent 70 of them dead.”

theHigherGeometer @highergeometer@mathstodon.xyz

People are saying we should write jumble words to mess up the training of AIs; I say we should just write sentences like those of the length Jane Austen would write, that have such non-local structure and nested clauses that, what with the drift of attention and the window of tokens, the LLMs might start to emulate said sentences and then start to drift; one should also throw in even more semicolons (and, why not, nested parentheticals (and even em-dash-separated asides—who doesn't love author commentary—to pad out the length) for the additional context they give)—but of course, also trying to keep in mind the general readability of the flow of ideas: know your audience, after all; for me, I'm happy to just be typing into the void as a release-valve for my thoughts, even if none of you are still reading by this point; I would much rather write—and read!—read something like this than have to and and/or subtract all the additional nonsense words; even better would be Proustian nested clauses and inverted grammar, but that, unlike run-on sentences, does not come so easily, unlike (apparently) to 19th century German journalists (but of course in German one can split the verbs as far apart as one likes).

Or not.

Yawu Miller ‪@yawumiller.bsky.social‬

Mass. voters were told millionaires would leave the state in droves if the millionaires tax passed and revenue would decline. Two years later, there are more millionaires living here than ever and the state collected $2.2 billion from the surtax.

Institute for Policy Studies: New Data Shows Wealth Expands After Higher State Taxes on High-Income Earners, looking at how the surtax on large incomes has helped in Washington and Massachusetts, without slowing economic growth in those states.

Being excited about "AI" in 2025 is like watching someone pull a rabbit from a collapsible top hat and envisioning feeding humanity with endless hasenpfeffer.

mms :runbsd: :emacs: :c64: @mms@bsd.cafe

Is the term "buzz coding" already coined? If not, I'd like to coin it.

Basically vibe coding, but instead of using a llm you're drinking. The result is the same - new code that no one understands. But more fun!

The History Blog: New Vindolanda dig, new Vindolanda phallus

Spring is in the air, daffodils are in bloom, the new dig season at the Roman fort of Vindolanda has just begun and they’ve already found a phallus. It is very small and made of jet who inky blackness . It is pierced through the testicles so it could be worn as a pendant. The through hole is small, so the cord or chain it hung from was thin and likely broke.

Via.

Studio Ghibli releases a whole bunch of stills for personal use.

Via

The Register — Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, say economists — 'When we look at the economic outcomes, it really has not moved the needle'

In a working paper released earlier this month, economists Anders Humlum and Emilie Vestergaard looked at the labor market impact of AI chatbots on 11 occupations, covering 25,000 workers and 7,000 workplaces in Denmark in 2023 and 2024.

http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5219933

I just want a place to make some notes.

A moderator who went by the handle "Carrotcypher" on the "Fosstodon" Mastodon/Fediverse instance was kind-of a dick.

David Gerard @davidgerard@circumstances.run characterized this as

... warrants a goose chasing him going "WHAT CERTAIN POLITICAL VIEWS MOTHERFUCKER"

One of the founders of the Fosstodon instance, Mike Stone writes "Do What You Love".

The other founder, Kev Quirk writes "My Thoughts on the Fosstodon Drama".

Afina: Everyone Says They’ll Pay More for “Made in the USA.” So We Ran an A/B Test.

BBC: How Aldrich Ames became the US's most damaging double agent.

So far. I have suspicions about the history that'll be written about this era.

Thinking about file metadata for various things, and needed to put down a note here. To get the source URL from downloaded files in Firefox:

SELECT url,title FROM moz_places WHERE id IN (SELECT place_id FROM moz_historyvisits WHERE visit_type = 7);</blokquote>

(From here)

Probably need to copy places.sqlite before querying it with SQLite, 'cause Firefox locks it while it's open.

On MacOS, the file is in /Users/danlyke/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/*/places.sqlite.

Sometimes it seems like we're putting more effort into figuring out how to get the best output from LLMs than we are into figuring out how to get the best output from humans.

How to talk to your chatbot — Does being polite or rude affect the speed or accuracy with which a large language model responds to basic math questions?

I'm not sure I hold with these romantic characters holding up the story line... They need to kiss or get off the plot.

My neighborhood is like a third of the way to "The Italian Job"

‪Max Kennerly‬ ‪@maxkennerly.bsky.social‬

Seeing a lot of pro-/anti-AI arguments so, to settle this, I've taken all your posts without consent or payment and crammed them into an inefficient statistical model that spits out post variations which should be treated as gospel unless they're wrong in which case I warned you it makes mistakes.🙏

North Bay Python, enjoying @glyph@mastodon.social's comparison of Python to excavators, and making Python smaller and simplar, and running over a good half of the reason why I've felt like every time I started a project in Python I've regretted not using C++ (the other half involves compile-time type checking).

#NBPy

Catherynne M. Valente @Catvalente@wandering.shop

I’m going to say this slowly.

If Andrew Tate & his ilk were right about ANYTHING they’d have no audience.

Guys would listen briefly, apply advice, & be WAY too busy with their new gfs, side-pieces, & high income hustles to bother tuning in.

It’s the Tinder principle: if you’re happy, they lose a customer.

Their business model is your unending misery.

"The Tinder principle" seems to apply to a whole lot of things, and it's reinforcing my feeling (that keeps getting shot down) that we need some new open protocols and formats for connecting with each other in more structured-data ways, without the pressures of externalities and advertising and Google for discovery.

I mean, on the one hand, yes, brandishing firearms bad, on the other hand, I'd be hard-pressed to vote for a conviction:

"... to investigate a report of a man brandishing a firearm towards a door-to-door salesperson. The initial reporting party told the communications center that a homeowner was in possession of a firearm and was actively chasing the salesperson."

I get it.

https://local.nixle.com/alert/11550977/

Look, I try to shop local, I try to support the people doing business in my city, but if you list yourself on https://www.publicsquare.com/ I'm gonna make an effort to avoid doing business with you. No matter how convenient your establishment is.

"Glandweed", huh? Pretty among the lupines, though, along the road over the hill at Ries Ranch, where North Bay Python is held. #NBPy

Hidden Layer: Novel Universal Bypass for All Major LLMs — The Policy Puppetry Prompt Injection Technique. Format it like a configuration file, if that doesn't work then write your query out in l33tsp3@k.

Leveraging a novel combination of an internally developed policy technique and roleplaying, we are able to bypass model alignment and produce outputs that are in clear violation of AI safety policies: CBRN (Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear), mass violence, self-harm and system prompt leakage.

Intel admits what we all knew: no one is buying AI PCs

Peter Hartley @TalesFromTheArmchair@hachyderm.io

Suddenly struck me that the next generation of computer scientists will need it explained to them what a "Travelling Salesman" is, and why on earth it isn't called the "Amazon Van Problem".

Margaret Fero @MaggieFero@hachyderm.io

Julia sets mark the boundary between convergent and divergent functions, and LLMs often dance around the edge of that boundary. Because we train bots to align to our preferences, the concept of "digital sycophancy" has emerged; they flatter you and reinforce what you say, often increasing loneliness and causing hallucinations to spread quickly. - Madeleine at #nbpy

If the prosecutors blow the Luigi Mangione case because of misconduct like eavesdropping on attorney calls, I will laugh and laugh and laugh...

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/u...rder-stalking-charges-rcna202974

Gaydient, various gay/queer flag CSS color schemes, for your own gradients.

Via

Jason Gorman @jasongorman@mastodon.cloud

Being a software professional at the moment's a bit like being a doctor in a time when every hospital administrator believes the X--Ray specs they advertise in the back of newspapers actually work.

This conjunction of toots arrived on my stream and I'm going to be processing it all day...

AnarchoNinaAnalyzes @AnarchoNinaAnalyzes@treehouse.systems

“Women everywhere are always expected to continually imagine what one situation or another would look like from a male point of view. Men are almost never expected to do the same for women. So deeply internalized is this pattern of behavior that many men react to any suggestion that they might do otherwise as if it were itself an act of violence.”

― David Graeber, The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy

joelle @joelle@social.joelle.us

Pro-trans satire, mention of sex assault

I’m okay with cis women using the women’s bathroom with me. I recognize they can’t help their biology, and are more likely to be a victim of sexual assault than a victimizer.

BenRiceM @BenRiceM@mastodon.social

If you visit CERN today they’re giving away neutrinos, free of charge

Shannon Prickett @Binder@petrous.vislae.town

The force constraining my Terminal Veracity is err friction.

Random Geek @randomgeek@masto.hackers.town

Just described model-generated code as "instant technical debt" and I have to make sure not to use that in a job interview.

Theresa O’Connor @hober@mastodon.social

Somebody who engages in logging is a lumberjack. But somebody who engages in blogging is just a blogger. What a missed opportunity.

North Bay Python: Maddy Muscari talking about ethics washing in AI, "real ethics is praxis, it's loud, it's messy, it's people first". So far this feels in-line with my belief that we need to be framing AI primarily in adversarial terms. #NBPy

North Bay Python: Watching @amethyst@n7.gg shoehorn Perl idioms into Python with decorators is making me wish we had more fun languages that thought better about performance while balancing what with safety. #NBPy

"I care about what happens to people when computers happen to them." —Adrianna Tan @skinnylatte@hachyderm.io at North Bay Python #NBPy

At North Bay Python listening to @skinnylatte@hachyderm.io talk about Fintech to fin tech, and the comparison of the current Silicon Valley environment to the the sardine over-fishing of the Monterey Bay gives me hope. #NBPy

Ended up driving the 3 miles to North Bay Python this morning because of logistics, but wasn't sure where to park so walking over the hill, and glad to get the morning with lupine. #NBPy

Thinking about, back in the 1900s at a tech gathering in Marin, asking a school board member who was talking passionately about bringing technology into the classroom about the curriculum need that was driving his fervor.

Aside from typing, I'd bet every skill that was taught in those labs is now obsolete. Every piece of software now completely different.

This is a post about "AI" in schools.

"I did not get this diagnosis because I want disability money or a therapy animal or a special star beside my name. Instead it has given me an opportunity to reexamine my life and my perception of myself."

https://researchbuzz.me/2025/0...ty-to-use-the-toilet-unassisted/

I'd like a little more bed, but looks perfect for grabbing lumber for my woodworking hobby or a load of bark for landscaping in the yard, definitely like the "just use your phone" for entertainment approach.

I think the question will be whether we'll have become a one car household by that point, in which case we'll trade the Bolt for it, or be a two car household and trade the '90s Ford Ranger for it.

Road & Track: The Slate Truck Is a Simple EV Pickup and SUV in One, for a Very Low Price

I was going to post yet another "Google's AI overview doing wacky bullshit", but then I saw this claim that "AI Overviews ... now has 1.5 billion users per month".

And, like, yes, it's all of us looking at how stupid it is, but let's stop giving this idiocy oxygen.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/2...ogl-q1-earnings-report-2025.html

McSweeney's: A Disillusioned Urban Planning Glossary

Compiled while sitting through a three-hour public hearing and rethinking life choices.

Back in January of 2000, I observed that with the advent of search and "jump to" boxes on web pages, we were returning from the world of point and drool click to command-lines. So this seems pertinent: tante @tante@tldr.nettime.org

It is kinda funny. Terminal applications are always seen as too clunky and unwieldy for average non-nerds to use but that's exactly what chatbots are: Command line apps with unspecified parameters and outcomes.

In a link to the FBI IC3 (Internet Crime Complaint Center) Internet Crime Report 2024, Molly White @molly0xfff@hachyderm.io says

FBI: Americans aged 60 and older reported losing almost $3 billion to crypto fraud last year. In total, Americans reported being scammed out of around $9.3 billion via crypto, out of a total $16.6 billion in total reported Internet crime losses that year.

...and I kinda wonder if we're doing a disservice when we call out cryptocurrency based scams as such, because that implies that there are things about cryptocurrency that aren't awful and horrible.

We'll know we've achieved AI when the conversation includes "I'm sorry ..., I can't do that".

Can you imagine ChatGPT or Gemini telling you "I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that" rather than just spewing bullshit that sounds remotely plausible? Not happening.

Today I learned that the font used in the much parodied "You wouldn't download a..." anti-piracy campaign is pirated from a design by Just van Rossum, brother of Guido, the creator of Python.

Where else are you gonna read about Boaty McBoatface, the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau, and a Kodak Instamatic Camera from the early 1960s set up in a waterproof housing with its shutter attached to a bait line? Camera set up to catch Loch Ness Monster discovered

The Redwood Rainbows had a tie dye party this weekend that we couldn't attend, but they had a bunch of dye left over, so we figured we'd use it up before it went totally bad. Then it soda ash didn't fully dissolve, so... We'll see what we got tomorrow.

Ya say "wardriving" to kids these days, and they have *no idea* what you're talking about...

It's like they weren't even alive in the days when Linksys was the wireless provider of choice.

David Gerard @davidgerard@circumstances.run

look, moore's law clearly states that AI line goes up and to the right forever and also i get a hot robot girlfriend who really loves me

Talia "Epistemic" Bhatt ♀︎♀︎‬ ‪@taliabhatt.itch.io‬

So I can't help but notice that all this brouhaha about single sex spaces and trans exclusion from them is eliding the axiom underlying the panic.

Namely: taking the normalization of men's violence against women as a given that cannot be meaningfully ameliorated except through sex-segregation.

Psychology Today: Are We All Becoming More Hostile Online? Has internet communication changed the way we all communicate?

It appears that not all of us are becoming more hostile, but that the people who are get more exposure online, making the perception of hostility outsized.

American Political Science Association: The Psychology of Online Political Hostility: A Comprehensive, Cross-National Test of the Mismatch Hypothesis, Bor and Petersen

Across eight studies, leveraging cross-national surveys and behavioral experiments (total N = 8,434), we test the mismatch hypothesis but only find evidence for limited selection effects. Instead, hostile political discussions are the result of status-driven individuals who are drawn to politics and are equally hostile both online and offline. Finally, we offer initial evidence that online discussions feel more hostile, in part, because the behavior of such individuals is more visible online than offline.

DOI:10.1017/S0003055421000885

Via.