Replying to
@julieofthespirits@kolektiva.social
AI BROS: AI will cure cancer!
ALSO AI BROS: ...You know, now that we've thought about it, we'd be happier spending that money on our datacenter buildout.
Remote
FeralRobots
@FeralRobots@mastodon.social
mastodon 4.8.0-nightly.2026-10-06Following-back because I followed you may not be a good use of your time.
648 Followers
460 Following
50 Posts
Joined October 30, 2022
pronouns:
he/him
profile photo:
nokia candy-bar phone partially chipped-out of a hunk of concrete.
banner photo:
array of dentistry practice heads, arranged such that they could appear to be singing as a choir.
Replying to
@Hex@kolektiva.social
Someone who says 'nobody forced you to buy a car' very likely believes they got where they are through inherent merit & hard work.
With a little work you could probably get that old dude to refine his position to "Nobody can be forced to do anything but die."
Just now reading Cornelius Ryan's _The Last Battle_, about the Battle of Berlin in WW2, & this reminds me of the complex of "impregnable" fortified FLAK towers the Nazis built around the city as part of their plan to old out indefinitely against invasion by the "asian" (Russian) horde.
They were irrelevant.
This is different, of course - the fantasy here is "snipers" & drones gunning down massed protestors. He's thinking about how Ceausescu or Mussolini or Louis XVI were taken down.
Why is it the Mastodon default to shift a playing video to picture-in-picture?
While I'm at it why did Mastodon break dark mode, & are they ever planning on fixing it?
Boosted by @cstross@wandering.shop
Replying to on pdx.social
@wolfinpdx@pdx.social @cstross@wandering.shop @mattblaze@federate.social
Hegseth has apparently gutted civilian liaison roles. Speculation is that FAA essentially defaulted to shutdown for posted duration of testing the Pentagon had announced because they couldn't get anyone at Biggs to talk to them in an official capacity.
So, yeah, crazycakes.
Replying to
@davidgerard@circumstances.run @eigenvectrix@social.treehouse.systems @saddestrobots@jorts.horse @prietschka@mastodon.social
I don't have the energy to make fun of that handle but I get why people would confuse him for someone else with that 'Who's on First' stolen valor.
Replying to
@forse @digyoursoul
We have a lot of protections for unions on the books in the US; however, court rulings over the past 30-40 years have really whittled down their scope.
So the answer is "maybe" with a side of "but they'll have to fight for it."
Replying to
@mxchara@seattle.pink @blogdiva@mastodon.social someone posted through watching it on bsky & holy crap it was so much worse than I feared. More or less all from the pigs POV. Not a perspective anybody needed.
Replying to
I would be slightly surprised if I could do one without falling.
Replying to
@davidgerard
also that does not sound like something Eugen would say, so now I'm curious.
Replying to
@carnage4life@mas.to When email became essentially free, grifters reimagined grift over the internet.
Replying to
@davep@infosec.exchange @cstross@wandering.shop
When I got let go (in the post-9/11 bust, not the dotcom bust), after making a special effort to ensure I could exercise my options*, the director of my division said to me (from memory): 'As an officer of this company I can't advise you not to exercise these options. But I can tell you that I wouldn't.' (We then shared a bitter laugh.)
_
*which I did sincerely appreciate, they were decent folks.
Replying to
@themself@mastodon.scot @cstross@wandering.shop
At [what would become] ZD Education c 1998, I was on a team that had built a demo for recombinining technical course materials into custom course manuals. Most of the cool-looking stuff lived in a library called "smoke & mirrors" (IIRC something like 'SmkMirs.dll'). 2 yrs later, when I joined, the ACTUAL PRODUCT still relied heavily on that library.
So, yeah.
Replying to
@vulgalour@birdbutt.com @vwdasher@weird.autos @silvermoon82@wandering.shop
yeah, Falcon-era version of the Ranchero. They could look really sweet, as with this one.
A bit after this they switched from "compact" (Falcon) to full-size. I never see those dolled up.
Replying to
RE: @weirdsatellite@mastodon.art
These three in such close proximity...🤔
Replying to
@themself@mastodon.scot @cstross@wandering.shop
[TBC the team was doing the best they could with their time & resource constraints. Literally nobody on that team was happy about having been forced to productize a demo.]
Replying to
@leahbobet I have not personally had people do this with me, but I've seen it happen - & my wife & I discuss this (among other things) as something we need to avoid letting happen to/with us, in this environment.
Replying to
@cstross@wandering.shop @Chigaze@mstdn.ca
I remember thinking fae were an interesting OMISSION in the potterverse. I suspect they were a bit too powerful to accommodate in her bureaucratic vision of magical society.
Replying to
@cstross@wandering.shop not sure how I feel about the fact that "hey this thing we made is incredibly dangerous & can steal from you all on its own!" is regarded as a VALUE PROPOSITION.
Replying to
@jprestonian@thegem.city
Yes.
Alt description: low-angle view of Ken's face, as though the webcam is pointed upward & he's standing. He's waving his arms, and his mouth is open as though shouting. The transcript reads as follows.
0:04 fine
0:06 it's Rico
0:09 are you happy now
@Popehat@mastodon.social
Replying to
@NewtonMark@eigenmagic.net the nature of #LLM training is that all training data is inherently shared with all users of the LLM. So their "opt-out" is Frankfurtian #bullshit. I'd love to see what precisely they're claiming to do for the customers who "opt out."
Replying to
@Richard_Littler@mastodon.social "As an aside I was also surprised to learn many of his close friends referred to him as 'Mic.' Short for 'Michael', I assume. So much about him I just never knew!"
Replying to
@Mabande@mastodon.social @joannekelly@mastodon.ie @hildabast@mastodon.online
That requires a presumption of intent I'm not interested in making, & I'll tell you why: I *often* quote-tweet "semi-viral threads", & occasionally use "🧵 " to save chars. & I see a lot of people I follow do that, too. None of the people I'm thinking about give a crap about "numbers" beyond our mutuals, we just care that the thread gave us an idea, or are treating Twitter like a bulletin board on which we leave notices for our friends to comment.
Replying to
@mission_europa@universeodon.com @hildabast@mastodon.online
This was baked into the UI: Quote tweets are full tweets, & get a higher precedence than replies.
It's possible full tweets get higher algorithmic ranking - I don't know - but they get pride of placement, which is going to inherently enhance their reach, if in some cases only a little.
Replying to
@parkermolloy People have been making jokes about how horrifying* Grimace is since at least the 80s, there had to be a few people on that team hoping someone would pick up the loose end & run with it. Sure, they didn't plan it - but they knew it was possible. One always thinks about the possibilities.
_
*I mean he's basically a shoggoth.
Replying to
@mekkaokereke so they're coming for his wife & kids?
I'll have sympathy for them, but he put them in that position. none for him.
Replying to
@mike@thecanadian.social
...or at least, wishing for certain death.
@loren@flipping.rocks @LadyDragonfly@universeodon.com
Replying to
@grahamsz@indieweb.social @NewtonMark@eigenmagic.net
Right, but
a) is fine-tuning enough? we've been told before that tuning would keep stuff from showing up that neverthless keeps showing up.
b) how much will that surchage be?
c) will that surcharge actually end up covering cost? I.e., are Slack setting themselves up for an fall in a couple of years?
If your first reaction to a lightly-shared story about someone discovering illicit use of civic resources to mine crypto is to pick nits with press reports of the amount of electricity stolen, you maybe should ask yourself why you're defending someone who's funding his participation in a Ponzi scheme by stealing from his muncipality.
Replying to
@Crow74@mastodon.social @hildabast@mastodon.online @Mabande@mastodon.social @joannekelly@mastodon.ie
I often do both regular retweet then QT, too, for more or less the same reason. When/if we get a reasonable QB on Mastodon, I'll likely do the same here.
...& yes, if I especially want people to engage with an entire thread, I'll add 'thread' or 'start here & go back to the top' or the like - especially if I'm retweeting from the middle of a thread (say, what I think is a particularly important part).
Replying to
@tempus_fuckit@toot.cat
It's definitionally not a #DarkPattern because it's very clearly signaled in the UI.
For it to be a dark pattern, you'd want to be able to propose some benefit that accrues to mastodon.social specifically from people signing up on mastodon.social.
@Mastodon@mastodon.social @aral@mastodon.ar.al @digitalcourage@digitalcourage.social @gael@mastodon.social
Periodic reminder that the OG Luddites didn't lose to technology - they lost to the socio-political order of their day.
If you wanna say they were fools, OK, but let's be clear that by saying that, you're also saying they shouldn't have tried to oppose the social order.
Replying to
@paninid@mastodon.world
we knew Vought wouldn't care whether it's legal or moral but I think most folks fail to appreciate how literally he means it when he says he doesn't care whether it's DOABLE. it's not an accident that Trumpists build so many potemkin projects & promote scientific regimes that resemble Lysenkoism.
Replying to
@sc68cal
...or at least, they think that. If Kaplan behaves as he has done, he'll have none of it.
Her rhetorical bullshit ploys are particularly egregious coming from someone who taught legal ethics for decades.
@molly0xfff
Replying to
Correctly identify the locus of "AI" risk: The Harry Potter Fan Fiction Sex Cult & the well-funded tech bros who're in it.
https://bsky.app/profile/leahmcelrath.bsky.social/post/3mvsf6gnrs22s
Replying to
@matuzo@front-end.social old enough to remember when joel was good & idol was new & picking eilish.
Replying to
@sc_griffith@mathstodon.xyz
I once made a really offhand reference to 'active graffiti' viruses that could propagate from literal physical walls (with smart display properties) to network agents. (I cut the part where it could also propagate to one's digital augments because beta readers thought it was too confusing.)
But going from computing hardware to brains is some straight-up LSD megadose stuff.
Replying to
@mattmcirvin@mathstodon.xyz @sc_griffith@mathstodon.xyz
TBF to Neal, L Bob Rife had to contract with The Fed to port the software so it would run on human brains.
Replying to
@TonyVladusich@mathstodon.xyz
do you know whether amblyopia/strabismus or degraded retinal acuity (e.g. associated with damage from detachment) would factor in to that? Because I have both of those & while I could see it, it took a moment of adjusting my eyes.
@tob@hachyderm.io @sbszine@dice.camp @brucelawson@social.vivaldi.net
Replying to
@DocAtCDI "whenever I've got a really bad problem, I just pretend I'm dead for three days, & right away I have a bunch of entirely different problems!" - Jason Mendoza, after asking himself 'What Would Jason Do?'
Replying to
@grahamsz@indieweb.social @NewtonMark@eigenmagic.net
That's why I'd like to know what they're promising. The disclosure in the ToS is pretty vague. I'm having a hard time imagining how they make non-pooled training work cost-effectively, so my bias is going to be to assume it's possible to prompt hack to get at a company's Slack chat content.