@eswag@dju.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@regehr@mastodon.social @aburka@hachyderm.io @SnoopJ@hachyderm.io @dan@discuss.systems @dev@discuss.systems "Plant the tomatoes on whose land, Nick? Whose land?" PS: Land ownership is a concept with some interesting looking challenges from Georgist economics. I like the notion of abolishing it and supporting ownership-like land use by renting land from everyone else. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism

en.wikipedia.org

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@sabrina@fedi01.unicornsparkle.club @Landa@graz.social @futurebird@sauropods.win @cabel@social.panic.com We tried that last time. The Luddites have a very bad press because the industrialists controlled most of the presses. Not to say the Luddites were universally good foresighted people, but as far as I can tell (which is an amateurish mishmash of tidbits from mostly forgotten sources, treat with skepticism), they also weren't mindless technophobes either. They had, to use a dreadful contemporary phrase, "legitimate concerns".

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@nazgul It's early Monday. It took me 3 tries to see what was wrong with that picture. Going for coffee now...

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@maxleibman Dat spheroid is OBLATE!

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@pwloftus@pwl.farted.net @hellomiakoda@pdx.social @Guillotine_Jones@beige.party @maxleibman@beige.party Well *that's* going in the log...

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@Ashedryden@xoxo.zone Single point of failure means it can only fail once, right? How bad can it be? 😱💀

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@lzg That's fair. I don't think valid criticism of generative models comes from misattributing blame. I see these categories of criticism as important and valid: Motivation - the firms behind models are looking to replace ppl and concentrate power for themselves Effectiveness - the models aren't that good for replacing people Ethics - the models are being pushed out without safeguards or accountability Hypocrisy - the legal framework that sustains these corporations cares about IP; they don't

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@GossiTheDog Then in 2026, everything changed. Jk, but maybe debacles like https://archive.ph/T3LU6 will keep piling up to the point that people will stop giving slot machines running on remote graphics cards the keys to their personal kingdoms. Please?

archive.ph

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@ater@flipping.rocks @ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org Roko's Basilisk has nothing on Musk's Thieving Git.

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@david_chisnall@infosec.exchange This is why I like biology. Last I checked, the evolutionary explanation for sexual reproduction was that constantly reshuffling our genetic code minimizes the likelihood of a disease or parasite developing a universal hack. It also explains why some people are flattened by an infection while others don't even know they had it. There's a bdelloid rotifer which is just a population of clones. When something figures out an exploit, it's done for.

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@aral @winterwolves @brouhaha Hang on, but Nazis were a real entity, they were even a government and arguably a culture, but I presume Wolfenstein & similar are permitted?

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@billbennett We're so smort.

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 8mo ago

Replying to

@skeletor@mas.to I think my biggest contribution at work is experience.

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@MarkHoltom Same. My grandfather was a captain of an anti-tank unit that came across Belsen. He did tell me a little before he died. They could smell it miles before they saw it. The bastards running it had all fled. By the time they got there, it was populated only by people that famine had turned into rake thin scarecrows and corpses. That's about as far as he got, description-wise.

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 6mo ago

I think I'm getting more resistant to disease as I get fitter. The last 3 times my wife and kids all got colds, I felt run down and tired for a couple of days, then felt OK again.

I was like, "any second, my nose is going to start running and I'll have a sore throat," but it didn't break out. I hope today is another one of those. I'm so tired I feel like a human skinsuit scarecrow thing held up by coffee and hope this morning, but no other physical symptoms, while my dearest ones all cough...

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@martin Now I read my toot again, it doesn't read as a joke. In my head it was so obviously absurd that anyone would hire a nation state to take potshots at the sky - that was the humour.

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@martin How about this gag, "Define the Kessler effect." "When a shotgun and a railgun have a baby, and baby wants to play with your thing in orbit. And your thing in orbit becomes just like baby. And if any of it could be on fire, it would be on fire. Also, it's like that for centuries."

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 8mo ago

Replying to

@sarahtaber@mastodon.online Very nice video! This has started a binge for me. Subscribed.

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 12mo ago

Replying to

@RickiTarr@beige.party Me making a PR on someone else's codebase like...

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@usluck@channels.im Hiro's engine - why didn't the Romans have an industrial revolution? I thought slaves was the answer, but the British Empire was as enthusiastic about slavery as the Roman Empire. Probably it was capitalism.

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 10mo ago

Replying to

@Quasit @osma @SKleefeld Primaries are important in the US. What prevents them from being a big deal in US public consciousness? Standing and voting for progressive candidates has worked. It needs to happen a lot more. Why doesn't it? Is the problem that most ppl have no time or energy because of their wage slavery in the US?

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@hllizi@hespere.de @Landa@graz.social @futurebird@sauropods.win @cabel@social.panic.com I remember reading Tom Paine's Rights of Man during Brexit, & chuckling despairingly when he claimed that (paraphrased badly), just as all city dwellers pitch in to help with the harvest, so no person will vote against their own interests. I read that at a time when British crops were rotting in the fields because no bugger wanted to pick them, a year or so after a vote to prevent the poor sods who did want to pick them from being welcomed into the country.

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 47mo ago

Replying to

@mimrma@mastodon.social Es soll ein "muddle of guinea pigs" geben, aber es ist inoffiziel: https://allanimalsfaq.com/pig/a-muddle-of-guinea-pigs/

allanimalsfaq.com

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@Landa@graz.social @futurebird@sauropods.win @cabel@social.panic.com I think the industrial revolution comparison is fair. The industrial revolution impoverished millions over generations, globally destroyed a class of artisan specialists, and most (India & China notably) have barely caught up to their relative standard of living before it. IMO, the IR gets an undeservedly good reputation because of the labour movement's victories in spreading the benefits of industry to the general population in the 20th century west.

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@hllizi@hespere.de @Landa@graz.social @futurebird@sauropods.win @cabel@social.panic.com I think there were more steam and other explosions than one would want, but I take your point. The machines also enabled mass production of high quality weapons, so anyone who looked like they might not want to deconstruct their local industries and send all their wealth to the owners of UK sweatshops would soon find their capitals being randomly deconstructed by mass produced explosive shells. Models enable the deconstruction of common experience?

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 47mo ago

Replying to

@mimrma@mastodon.social a "for fuck's sake" of Trump supporters.

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 4mo ago

Replying to

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@sashag@anarres.family It is not native, that can never have been born, but with strange Elons, it can eternal lie. And fib. And bullshit. And violate people without their knowledge or consent. Because of strange Elon's illegal power plants, externalised costs (probably corporate manslaughter in UK law) and state regulatory capture. I'm no Lovecraft with prose. Then again, I'm also not a galloping racist eugenicist. Also, I don't have a cat, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't fuck up naming it that badly.

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@randahl@mastodon.social When. And who's responsible when it happens?

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@david_chisnall@infosec.exchange I haven't seen a good idea about how to achieve this with FOS software, however. People understandably take off-the-shelf components when there are ones available that work well. Forks die if other forks become more popular. I guess many states, each sponsoring their own FOSS distro, *might* approach the necessary diversity, but it would look like islands of monoculture, and each island would have the same vulnerability architecture.

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@mwl@io.mwl.io @mhoye@cosocial.ca While trying to keep my eyebrows from physically leaving my head, I imagined little speech bubbles as I read that article: "My business was deleted by the best premium model running on the finest of agents." "Screw you, Poindexter, I don't need to know what a context window is." "Claude's not stochastic, *you're* stochastic."

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@hllizi@hespere.de @Landa@graz.social @futurebird@sauropods.win @cabel@social.panic.com I think we're seeing the supercharging of the old trick that Nye Bevan characterized so well: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9907942-how-can-wealth-persuade-poverty-to-use-its-political-freedom LLMs and associated slop ducts have persuaded people dying of covid to support the people whose recklessness got them infected. I'm not sure what people down the rabbit hole *wouldn't* vote for at this point. They're so hacked.

goodreads.com

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 8mo ago

Replying to

@streetartutopia

"What day/night will be the wildest party on your island?"

Maybe when the last of you abusive human cattle farmers is locked up by your peers?

Elmo, your peers are the "cattle" people you think you're better than because you can't tell the difference between net worth and human worth.

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 27mo ago

Replying to

@MeanwhileinCanada@ohai.social What animal?

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@hllizi@hespere.de @Landa@graz.social @futurebird@sauropods.win @cabel@social.panic.com A note of encouragement is that reality continues to be real. It's taken a lot to drag the masses out of their cocoons of wealth, but it's happening. People in the US are seeing each other get shot in the face by government thugs, Brits working 2 jobs are sleeping rough. It's difficult to believe the bullshit on your phone when the rest of your body tells you you're cold, hungry and unsafe.

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 12mo ago

Replying to

@lethalbit@chaos.social "All the heat you could ever need." Sounds like vapourware to me. As in, the hardware is mostly vapour now.

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 2mo ago

Senators Propose Age Verification for All Computer and Phone Operating Systems

https://ground.news/article/senators-propose-age-verification-for-all-computer-and-phone-operating-systems_b260ef?utm_source=mobile-app&utm_medium=newsroom-share

I read it as "Senators Propose Striplighting in my Anus"

Makes as much sense, as likely to happen. Poor old USA though. You literally have grumpy senile old farts proposing "down with this newfangled doohickey" and sponsored by bastards looking to install striplights or something.

ground.news

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@peter@thepit.social Well maybe this solves the aging population crisis by reducing the life expectancy to 30. I assume we're going to have a laissez-faire attitude to this the same way we did with Covid. Ironically, it's almost as if a higher power is trying to save us by making transport difficult via 47's dementia war in the Strait of Hormuz. I'm sure we'll band together and power through this impediment to well and truly fuck ourselves. The human spirit is, after all, indomitable, as well as stupid.

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu Try a progressive europe-wide tax. Tax land ownership. That would boost the value of the Euro so you don't get inflation when you print Euros to pay for education, training and infrastructure projects. Yes, you can pay for a giant drone-centric military designed by the Ukrainians too... Oh, you can rewrite the copyright laws that the US wrote for you so that they got all the value from IP. Also, tax IP. You should not want your own Meta or Palantir. Those things are disasters.

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 6mo ago

@0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange

How very dare you! 89.43% still contains a 9.

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 18mo ago

Replying to

@zackwhittaker@mastodon.social It stands to reason. When you ingest so many petabytes of other people's work, it's got to come out somewhere.

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@esoastronomy Anti satellite technology is a developing field. IIRC, China shot down one of their own satellites, maybe a decade ago. I wonder if we can commission their anti-satellite missile capabilities?

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 9mo ago

Replying to

@janet@weirder.earth @timnitGebru@dair-community.social No, there's a form to write to the US government asking for regulation to force "AI" companies to behave responsibly and safely. If it weren't a parody, I don't see why it would do that. https://www.replacement.ai/

replacement.ai

Replacement.AI

Humans are no longer necessary. So we’re getting rid of them.

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Rob Williamson @eswag@dju.social

· 3mo ago

Replying to

@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io @vampiress@eigenmagic.net It's helped me a little with code archeology. Given a codebase that was insufficiently described, with fading knowledge from its authors, an LLM did the donkey work of git blaming, reading commit messages, following documentation links & looking at GitHub PRs, to come up with a guess at *why* the logic does what it does, complete with checkable links. The most useful part of it was instances where it claimed it couldn't find a reason for the behaviour. I'm ambivalent.

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