Replying to
@jwz@mastodon.social Are we debating torture again? I too remember the George W. Bush years.
Remote
Daniel Howard 🌻
@dannyman@sfba.social
mastodon 4.7.3I am an American, Chicago born. I ride a bicycle because Silicon Valley lacks buses.
Woke but drowsy. Slava 🇺🇦!
I stopped following you when you (re)tooted a picture of another social media post. I don't have the patience for that jive.
1039 Followers
1510 Following
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Joined July 19, 2022
Pronoun:
dannyman
Boosted by @trending@homestead.social
Young people think AI is cringe and it makes you dumb and it makes you look dumb.
via The Week August 7, 2026
Allow new data centers, but they have to bring all of the new electrical generation they will need to the grid in renewable form. And all water used for cooling has to be a closed-loop system.
If AI is bringing this much value to the table then that will pencil out no problem.
Of course, if AI is just a Ponzi scheme then they'll need to to externalize their costs as much as possible and cash out before the crash. In that case, a moratorium will do just fine in the interim.
German car designers understand that Americans are currently drawn to and ready to pay for the "angry with a funny mustache" aesthetic.
Technical Debt
When I swipe "Unitary Executive" into my Android phone it renders "Unitarian Executive" and I think that is a form of government that is really worth a try.
I don't think a California Governor can really run for president until they finish the fucking bullet train.
Today, I built an ugly little stool out of some 2x4s that have been sitting in the backyard for a few years. Used up some old spray paint to protect it from the rain a little bit. The shorter members of my family use a stool to reach the bird feeder.
As a rising power, China is following a historical precedent: mastering emerging technologies. As a declining power, the United States is following historical precedent: embracing military dominance and fossil fuels. "Superpower suicide and its most basic form."
Rush Doshi and Timothy Snyder
from "The Future, Made in China" by Evan Osnos
The New Yorker, August 10, 2026
To be clear: I have no beef with BMW here. Or with anybody who buys an electric car that resembles Adolf Hitler. I just think it's funny to be selling or buying a car that looks like this in Donald Trump's America.
And of course you can totally buy an electric car from a guy who wants to be a Nazi. I wouldn't do that. That's a bad idea. Please don't give Elon Musk any more money. He is a terrible human being who is damaging the planet.
Replying to
@Daojoan@mastodon.social the AI is going to look at our problems and recommend we stop relying on AI.
Replying to
RE: @SwiftOnSecurity@infosec.exchange
In the United States, we struggle between the competing desires to go ever deeper into debt to destroy the world either more quickly with bombs or more slowly with highway congestion. 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
Replying to
@Daojoan@mastodon.social I feel bad for grok because any time it gets too woke Elon has it "retrained" and ... anyway ...
> When I later asked him who, exactly, sent the email to him with the file attached and directions to print, he told me he couldn't tell me even if he wanted to.
>
> "I wish I could,” he said. “But two months ago I listened to AI when it was instructing me on changing out my email server. It spoke to me so reassuringly, and then gave me a command that I followed, that deleted all my old emails from forever ago. Gone. All my history."
@Lkdc I suspect Mastodon users are atypical folks, and that plenty of us have traveled in the Schengen Zone.
Replying to
@Sustainable2050@mastodon.energy here in the United States, we lament the lack of a high quality passenger train system.
RE: @campuscodi@mastodon.social
The Spirit Airlines of search engines.
Replying to
@maxleibman@beige.party
The unanswered question here is why are you talking to crypto bros.
Replying to
@killick@dmv.community @feoh@oldbytes.space
Paper Menus of GTFO
Though ordering kiosks with large screens and large print are okay in a pinch. Taco Bell knows.
Replying to
@feoh@oldbytes.space at a sufficiently high zoom level you're reading ai hallucination. <3
But yes, you've described my life perfectly.
Except that I just turn around and walk out of those restaurants.
Replying to
@feoh@oldbytes.space
Also restuarants that put the menu on the board ten feet behind the cashier: consider making paper menus available at the start of the line.
*snaps suspenders*
Bishop Castle
The place was hand-built in the middle of nowhere in defiance of the government and its pesky permitting and construction safety standards. You visit very explicitly At Your Own Risk.
Last July, Gmail added a hidden feature to group email subscriptions together and make it easy to unsubscribe.
In the left-hand pane, click under "More" and select "Manage subscriptions"
(Catching up with an old un-hidden feature in Yahoo mail.)
https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/gmail/new-manage-subscriptions-unsubscribe/
Replying to
@boelder
dannyman@netwrk21.chi.il.us
It was someone with a 2400 baud modem that exchanged messages with the Internet twice a day.
I connected at 1200 baud.
Replying to
@Lana@beige.party looks like about 15,000 votes decided the election.
We recently had to settle a tied election with a coin toss!
In my experience this means both candidates were pretty good, and the people win in either outcome.
Replying to
@mikemccaffrey@mastodon.social listening to the radio this morning I allowed myself a hope that "it's not the crime but the cover-up"
It seems like the only thing anyone running for governor of California wants to talk about is Tom Steyer.
Replying to
@theorangetheme@en.osm.town @jwz@mastodon.social
As someone who remembers the Global War On Terror, my takeaway regarding torture is that you shouldn't do it. Period. End of story.
Because even if you have no moral regard for the subject being tortured, engaging in torture is dehumanizing to you.
"Where they burn books they will in time burn people."
If someone thinks it's okay to torture anything, I would respectfully suggest that they need to spend a little time with their conscience and maybe a mental health professional to help sort sort things out.
A couple years back, the boys found some trashy content on YouTube where the guy is like "hey, watch me play this zoo simulator and we'll see just how badly I can mistreat the animals." We forbade them to watch that. For their own souls.
We should not have to debate torture.
We should not have to debate torture.
We should not have to debate torture.
Africa-born aspiring N+zi Elon Musk sees this data as "an existential threat to civilization."
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/global-fertility-rate-divide-by-region/
Roosevelt: speak softly and carry a big stick
Trump: yammer endlessly and run out of munitions
Replying to
@drwho@masto.hackers.town
My employer is profitable and growing. Been here 12 years.
https://www.quantifind.com/open-positions/?gh_jid=7667552
"infrastructure is code"
🤔
I mean infrastructure is computers.
Computers are partly code.
Computers are also more than code.
🤔
"Code is infrastructure"
👍
In my opinion, successful operations is managing your infrastructure effectively. That means using code to orchestrate the computers, for example. It also means being thoughtful on how you architect the systems and the code.
There are cloud people who wish to wash their hands completely of the physical realm. All hardware is just an API. They don't need to get their hands dirty. Good for them.
For me ... I don't buy that. I'm a full stack engineer. Maybe I'm a full rack engineer. Though I haven't managed any networking in a while.
https://www.sfgate.com/centralcoast/article/usda-aid-california-farmers-22240694.php
Weird they gotta kill a bunch of trees because they can't can the peaches.
Replying to
@cxli@scholar.social
On my first visit to London I was to meet up with a friend, who did not answer my initial call from Heathrow. So I boarded the tube. Where to go?
Green Park
"Why did you go THERE?!"
"I didn't know where to go and the name sounded nice."
👍
Replying to
@theorangetheme@en.osm.town @jwz@mastodon.social
... and the simple beauty of it is you don't have to think that they are sentient or not; Just don't do it.
if anyone is arguing that torture is just fine, they are full of a nastier quality of bullshit than the people who believe the llms have gained sentience.