Flutterby™! (short)

Sounds like it reached market penetration quickly. It has done one thing, I am way less likely to click on a video in Facebook now, because the disappointment factor after doing so and finding out it's a bad Sora render is so high.

Tech Crunch: OpenAI’s Sora app is struggling after its stellar launch

Powered by OpenAI’s video generation model Sora 2, the iOS version topped 100,000 installs on day one, despite being an invite-only experience. It soon hit the No. 1 spot on the U.S. App Store, and it reached the 1 million downloads milestone faster than ChatGPT. At the time, Sora’s app was iOS-only and still required an invite, making its success all the more impressive.

Via.

Just a reminder that all of the mediocre grant applicants are running their projects through "AI", which will create a bland neutral description of what they plan to do.

If you hope to stand out, avoiding LLMs altogether is the only logical option.

A lawless agency: JUAN T.R., Petitioner, v. KRISTI NOEM, Secretary, U.S. Department of Homeland Security; DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY; TODD LYONS,Acting Director of U.S. Immigration andCustoms Enforcement; and DAVID EASTERWOOD, Acting Director, St. PaulField Office, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Respondents.

That does not end the Court’s concerns, however. Attached to this order is an appendix that identifies 96 court orders that ICE has violated in 74 cases. The extent of ICE’s noncompliance is almost certainly substantially understated. This list is confined to orders issued since January 1, 2026, and the list was hurriedly compiled by extraordinarily busy judges. Undoubtedly, mistakes were made, and orders that should have appeared on this list were omitted.

Reporting on the recent poll: PC World: DuckDuckGo poll says 90% responders don’t want AI

This one gets a top level pin in my browser: Identiconn™ Connector Identification Utility

Oh snap. The Dalles’ mayor called OPB’s data center story inaccurate. Here are the facts

An in-depth, line-by-line review of the article in response to Anderson’s letter found one error, which OPB has corrected and noted in the original story.

OPB incorrectly reported that projected monthly residential water rates are expected to climb by 7% by 2036. However, The Dalles 2024 Water System Master Plan forecasts that rates will climb by 99% by that year. OPB regrets the error.

Via.

By way of nycki @nycki@bark.lgbt I discovered XKCD colors

The 954 most common RGB monitor colors, as defined by several hundred thousand participants in the xkcd color name survey.

Available as a text file and a .css file. As nycki notes:

so now when I want a color on my website I can just write `color: var(--xkcd- off-white)` or so on. it's really convenient :)

Edit: nycki added the XKCD results blog post to their fediverse post.

Pavel A. Samsonov @PavelASamsonov@mastodon.social

All the same people boosting LLMs today were boosting NFTs five years ago. It's not a coincidence that

AI POWERED

is an anagram of

APE WEIRDO

404 Media: Aliens and Angel Numbers: Creators Worry Porn Platform ManyVids Is Falling Into ‘AI Psychosis’

Futurism: OnlyFans Rival Seemingly Succumbs to AI Psychosis, Which We Dare You to Try Explain to Your Parents

Via

Edit: Bonus, from 404 Media: App for Quitting Porn Leaked Users' Masturbation Habits

‪Notorious RBMK‬ ‪@comraderobot.bsky.social‬: "hey train perverts wanna see the shinkansen cloaca", with TikTok video (Bluesky hosted) of the high speed rail coupler system operating.

Meanwhile, 118th Congress 2nd Session House of Representatives — In the matter of allegations relating to Representative Matt Gaetz (PDF)

In sum, the Committee found substantial evidence of the following:

• From at least 2017 to 2020, Representative Gaetz regularly paid women for engaging in sexual activity with him.
• In 2017, Representative Gaetz engaged in sexual activity with a 17-year-old girl.
• During the period 2017 to 2019, Representative Gaetz used or possessed illegal drugs, including cocaine and ecstasy, on multiple occasions.
• Representative Gaetz accepted gifts, including transportation and lodging in connection with a 2018 trip to the Bahamas, in excess of permissible amounts.
• In 2018, Representative Gaetz arranged for his Chief of Staff to assist a woman with whom he engaged in sexual activity in obtaining a passport, falsely indicating to the U.S. Department of State that she was a constituent.
• Representative Gaetz knowingly and willfully sought to impede and obstruct the Committee’s investigation of his conduct.
• Representative Gaetz has acted in a manner that reflects discreditably upon the House.

Frankly there's quite a bit of that that I'd let him slide on if not for the hypocrisy and the ethics violations on the gifts. And that, yeah, the age difference in fucking a 17 year old is pretty damned skeevy.

Via.

Report: Indiana tops US in AI energy consumption with nearly half of state's energy going to data centers — By: David Speakman Jan 8, 2026 Updated Jan 15, 2026

Public urged to cut back on electrical usage across central Indiana, southern Indiana — January 24

A spokesperson for Hoosier Energy said, "High demand for electricity and tight power supplies throughout the Midwest are causing a serious power supply emergency."

Via.

A few days old, but Office of the Minnesota Secretary of State: Statement from Secretary Simon — January 25, 2026

SAINT PAUL – On January 24, 2026, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a letter to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz with three requests that she writes would "restore the rule of law, support ICE officers, and bring an end to the chaos in Minnesota.” The third request in the letter was to allow the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to access Minnesota’s “voter rolls.”

Via

Jade @JadedBlueEyes@tech.lgbt

Cloudflare just published a vibe coded blog post claiming they implemented Matrix on cloudflare workers. They didn't, their post and README is AI generated and the code doesn't do any of the core parts of matrix that make it secure and interoperable. Instead it's littered with 'TODO: Check authorisation' and similar

https://blog.cloudflare.com/se...rless-matrix-homeserver-workers/

The lobste.rs thread includes a link to the Matrix discussion of this fiasco and lots of discussion about how Clodflare's attempts at damage control just make it look worse.

Just a note of appreciation: switching from Firefox to Vivaldi has me using Startpage. It's not perfect, but Google has declined I find myself going back to it less and less.

I bounced off Kagi and a few others, but Startpage has stuck.

Argh. Same exact CGI::Fast->new() loop. From one form, I get the textarea contents entity encoded, in the other I get something that Perl is not interpreting as utf-8. I'm not seeing any difference in the HTML page meta statements, or the form. Driving me nuts.