Replying to
@tdp_org@mastodon.social https://www.newscientist.com/article/2475650-tom-gauld-on-moving-fast-and-breaking-things/
Remote
Theophile Escargot
@TheoEsc@mastodon.social
mastodon 4.8.0-nightly.2026-10-06TheoEsc on Twitter; TheophileEscargot on Metafilter,HuSi & Flickr. Programmer,reader,Londoner,father,runner. Diary: https://www.hulver.com/scoop/user/TheophileEscargot
352 Followers
309 Following
25 Posts
Joined October 14, 2017
Pronouns:
He, him
Boosts welcome:
Anything public
Replying to
@jcoglan@mastodon.social Kind of. It wasn't totally isolated from the Internet but had a "a curated allowlist that permits routine package installation". The AI got past the allowlist, and then successfully attacked an external company. It's still potentially worrying, even if only because more people are likely to be running poorly-isolated hacking AIs. https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jul/22/openai-cyberattack/
A certified poet from Slough,
Whose methods of rhyming were rough,
Retorted, “I see
That the letters agree
And if that’s not sufficient I’m through.”
— Clifford Witting
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2026/04/09/limerick-23/
@grammargirl@zirk.us Oh no, I'm so sorry.
Good news from the world of Microsoft Teams usability! It now pops up a label saying either "Enter starts a new line" or "Shift+Enter starts a new line" depending on which of the mysterious and invisible modes it's decided to put you in!
The #Transformers Timelines That Didn't Deserve to Die (27 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x8SO4l3bsc
Star Wars Transformers! Marvel Transformers! Go-Bot Transformers! Belgian Transformers!
Am I getting addicted to podcasts I wondered this morning, putting on T-shirt then jumper then headphones so I don't lose podcast time while putting on my pants
Just because the allegation is always trumpeted everywhere and the retraction always buried: Police say there was no evidence for a "Family Voting" charge in the Gorton and Denton by-election. https://www.thecanary.co/trending/2026/03/28/reform-con-job/
https://news.sky.com/story/politics-latest-starmer-labour-iran-trump-cobra-12593360?postid=11419214#liveblog-body
Conspiracy theory: modern user interfaces are designed to promote generative AI, as the only way to find anything buried in the chaos of deep menus and inscrutable icons constantly rearranged by updates is to ask an AI chatbot how to do it.
@bruces Here's a couple of videos that do a similar thing with spoken English:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=842OX2_vCic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90Zqn9_OQAw
From Old English to Modern American English in One Monologue
Replying to
@pheonix@hachyderm.io You'd think the shopping predictions would be great as it's how they make their money, that they'd be laser-focused on my tastes and needs with pinpoint accuracy. I just got recommended curling tongs by Amazon. I've been completely bald with the sides/back shaven for 20+ years.
Replying to
@Gargron@mastodon.social Thank you so much for all you've done! Without Mastodon I would have almost no hope for what's become of the Internet. Best of luck to you in anything you do!
Replying to
@Skafantaris @AmyZenunim Exactly.This threat model makes no sense. If anything it would be the other way round: Fedi poaches from Insta's vastly larger userbase.
Schumpeter’s Death: You’re Not Worried Enough About AI
https://kritikpunkt.com/schumpeters-death-youre-not-worried-enough-about-ai/
Bret Devereaux of ACOUP comments on the war: https://acoup.blog/2026/03/25/miscellanea-the-war-in-iran/ "a fairly classic escalation trap: once the conflict starts, it is extremely costly for either side to ever back down, which ensures that the conflict continues long past it being in the interests of either party"
Is this just part of getting old? I seem to have stopped wanting much variety in my food. Every morning I want to eat muesli & yoghurt for breakfast, every weekday lunchtime I crave a Sainsburys Classic Triple sandwich. I keep forcing myself to eat other things but I don't feel as satisfied somehow.
Been playing Scrabble with 12yo kid lately. I let him have 8 letters as a handicap but he's getting pretty good, he won 2 out of last 3 games... not sure when to try to play fair. Also annoyingly it turns out "seax" isn't valid according to our Scrabble dictionary. Gah.
Why do castles have crenelations rather than merlonations ?
Ten thousand million or so years ago two galaxies were colliding; or, rather, were passing through each other https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/jul/21/milky-way-disc-flip-collision-dwarf-galaxy-astronomers
Like Stories of Old: "I Watched MAGA's Favorite Movie". 30 minute video analysing the peculiar right-wing fantasy "Citizen Vigilante".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK-WVZW7ra4
Cassette Deck Vader
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOiOOD5IK7k
Replying to
@mergerson@mastodon.social The wikdchiq thing seems like a misunderstanding that snowballed. She tweeted that she was being impersonated on mastodon and replied with her actual mastodon.online account: https://twitter.com/wickdchiq/status/1594406919015481346
Someone reported to mastodon.online that she was complaining THAT mastodon account was impersonating her, and so they suspended her real account until it was clarified: https://twitter.com/joinmastodon/status/1594798429590507520
She was not banned for discussing racism, but as an apparent impersonator.
Replying to
@shaknais@mastodon.social That doesn't really make sense. It didn't have "access to arbitrarily execute code", it had access to make HTTP calls to limited uris through OpenAI's proxy. It was able to escalate that to unlimited HTTP calls, and then use those to exploit a vulnerability in a different company's (HuggingFace) website and execute code on that company's servers.
Whatever permissions it had at OpenAI should not give it arbitrary access to HuggingFace, a completely different entity.
Replying to
@AmyZenunim@unstable.systems Instagram has literally 1000 times as many users as Mastodon. Mastodon is more likely to net gain users because the pool it draws from is so much larger. Also if you look at Twitter/Tweetdeck or Reddit/Apollo, big corps suck at creating good UIs because they have fifty VPs messing around with everything. Mastodon' client UIs are likely to be superior. More likely Mastodon gets a million users from Threads before Threads pulls the plug.