Flutterby™! (short)

Monday April 20th, 2026

damage to the metaphysical fabric of human existence Dan Lyke / comment 0

Mississippi Free Press: Editor’s Note | We Unknowingly Published an AI Column by a Fake Author. Here’s What Happened. Not a whole lot of new there, they missed it, they feel bad, they're working to tighten up their processes. Via Taggart :ifin: @mttaggart@infosec.exchange who noted:

What happens when you must wonder if everything you read is synthetic, meaningless, intentionless wordloaf? What happens when most of the text around you actually is?

This is not about economics. It's not even about climate. It's about the damage to the metaphysical fabric of human existence.

"the first agentic cannabis device" Dan Lyke / comment 0

JFC: The first agentic cannabis device

Not just a vape. A connected earning device. Gudtrip combines premium cannabis, blockchain rewards, and AI-powered asset tools in one product.

Created by Puffpaw, who sells a device as

...a smarter way to beat nicotine addiction by vaping for crypto rewards.

My mind boggles.

end of personal computing Dan Lyke / comment 0

Truth: Dave Winer ☕️ @davew@mastodon.social

Something that hasn't largely been noticed, we no longer have personal computers.

Anthropic spyware Dan Lyke / comment 0

That Privacy Guy: Anthropic secretly installs spyware when you install Claude Desktop. Stuffs a bunch of browser extensions into your system.

Via Matthias Ott @matthiasott@mastodon.social

Can confirm this for Arc, Brave, Edge, Chromium, and Vivaldi on my machine:

#Anthropic secretly installs spyware when you install Claude Desktop

Are Waymos making SF safer? Dan Lyke / comment 0

tef @tef@mastodon.social

i've heard a few times that "waymos will make streets safer" so i went and looked up sf's traffic fatality statistics and they're pretty much identical

i mean, there is a slight increase over the last two years but there's sufficient variance to avoid suggesting a trend

as i understand it, waymos tend to take people off busses and other forms of transit, rather than out of their own cars

so i'm doubtful it will lower deaths on the road, just the number of busses

The Devil is beholden to performance metrics Dan Lyke / comment 0

mhoye @mhoye@cosocial.ca

"The Devil Went Down To Georgia" says that the Devil was "in a bind because he was way behind and he was willing to make a deal", suggesting that Satan Himself - note that the song specifies "the Devil", not "a devil" - has monthly quotas and faces consequences for not meeting those quotas. From this we can infer the existence of a greater and more sinister being capable of imposing KPIs on Satan Himself, suggesting in turn that KPIs themselves are the product of something more evil than Satan.

Sunday April 19th, 2026

Pondering how the connectionist Dan Lyke / comment 0

Pondering how the connectionist approach to AI had a quick flash with LLMs, but in order to actually make this stuff appear to be useful they need to be layered under regexes and tool guidance.

Conceding the field, once again, back to the symbolists.

Provident decided to shut down our Dan Lyke / comment 0

Provident decided to shut down our local hospice supporting thrift store, which sucks, but they're selling stock at 50% off. I got some honest-to-god programmer socks for a buck.


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Dan Lyke
for the web publications at www.flutterby.com and www.flutterby.net. Last modified: Thu Mar 15 12:48:17 PST 2001