This is the problem with #Muse and all of the other #AI personal assistants: in order to use them, we would have to rearrange our whole lives to make them legible to the machines. The payoff is that then… we could pay Meta a commission for everything we do, forever? Sorry, no sale.
Remote
Dominic 🇪🇺 🏳️🌈 🇺🇦
@riotnrrd@mastodon.social
mastodon 4.8.0-nightly.2026-10-06Speaker to Users | digital flâneur | introvert but faking it | perdido en el corazón de la grande Babylon
Downtime: 🚴♂️🚵♂️🛹🏂⛷️📚
Avatar alt text: it looks like a classic Converse canvas high-top, but there’s something weird about it. That’s because it was generated by https://thisshoedoesnotexist.com/.
191 Followers
574 Following
47 Posts
Joined October 27, 2022
Languages:
EN,IT,FR,DE,ES — more or less in that order
Pronouns:
he/him/his, but also fine with they/them/theirs
Location:
Northern Italy — but I also travel a fair amount
Saturday night means Negroni and new book
What I want from the #Apple event today is for Apple Music to give me a switch labelled "I'm an adult and don't mind bad words in music" and stop the ridiculous censorship in Apple Music Radio programmes.
Replying to
@0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange Are you suggesting these things aren’t actually useful in education? https://findthethread.blog/What-Are-They-Teaching-Them-In-Those-Schools/
European governments chose to sacrifice their climate goals to protect their car manufactures, and have wound up with nothing: struggling carmakers closing factories (and decimating the supply chain), breached environmental targets — and citizens buying EVs from Chinese companies.
Incredible self-own, given our respective starting points. Once more with feeling: green energy is sovereign and resilient energy.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-fall-in-q2-2026-due-to-plummeting-oil-use
Who’s up for a good time? 🚵♂️ #cycling
Replying to
@dalias@hachyderm.io @futurebird@sauropods.win @davidtheeviloverlord@mastodon.social @Pineywoozle@masto.ai @jredlund@social.linux.pizza Yeah, I can see how that would be a logical supposition, and I have my own collection of photos of surviving fasces and painted Duce’s mottoes around here — but if anything my teachers’ politics were in the other direction. My guess is a locally prevalent interpretation, but not a tendentious one, at least at point of delivery (but who knows how it got into the curriculum?).
Replying to
@dalias@hachyderm.io @futurebird@sauropods.win @davidtheeviloverlord@mastodon.social @Pineywoozle@masto.ai @jredlund@social.linux.pizza That is what we were taught in high school in Italy (“liceo classico”), aligned to the fable cited in the second paragraph of the “Symbolism” section of the Wikipedia article. It seems this interpretation may actual stem from revolutionary France? More research is needed!
Replying to
@dalias@hachyderm.io @futurebird@sauropods.win @davidtheeviloverlord@mastodon.social @Pineywoozle@masto.ai @jredlund@social.linux.pizza Why? It was just a symbol of unity: “united we stand, together we fall”. Each individual stick in the bundle (fascia) is weak and easy to break, but the bundle all together is strong and very hard to break. It’s about the strength of a community being greater than that of any one individual.
Replying to
@gnomon@mastodon.social This would be why I only use Chrome for the odd service that is still Chrome-only, like multimedia stuff. Maybe this is what will push me to explore Chromium alternatives to fill that role.
Replying to
@rastilin@aus.social @ifixcoinops@retro.social I also had to unfuck several such “websites” for friends of mine once even Muggles realised Flash was dead. Very hard to do when the guy who made the Flash version was in the wind and of course had not left them with any source materials!
Replying to
@robpike I had something similar with Knog, purveyors of excellent bike lights and accessories. I had just ordered some stuff from them when the retaining clip on one of my pre-existing lights broke. I wrote to them to ask if they could just add the clip to my order to save myself the shipping costs for one tiny clip, and they said so so sorry, too late — and sent me the clip for free! After that, they’ve got themselves a customer for life. Customer service pays for itself.
Q: When did the Butlerian Jihad begin?
A:
In a game or a film, this would be where the ominous music ratchets up a notch during the exposition/flashback phase.
Replying to
@realcaseyrollins@social.teci.world @gnomon@mastodon.social My bad, I should have been clearer: I meant alternatives to Chrome that are still Chromium-based — and also include all of the APIs (especially multimedia in my case) which make those services Chrome-only in the first place.
Replying to
@TarkabarkaHolgy@ohai.social I need to frame this and give it to my tween daughter. As inspiration, to be clear; I’m pretty sure she has the sentiment down, but maybe she can use tips on how to express it eloquently.
Replying to
@glyph@mastodon.social @petrillic@hachyderm.io I hate this and also I am quite sure someone has already pitched this very idea to a16z or yc or some other cesspit.
Replying to
@anyware@mastodon.social A "quiet mode" that persists over time is one of my favourite features of the Italian electronic identity system. I wrote it up here: https://findthethread.blog/Granular-Identity/
Of course, being a government system, it is not subject to the same incentives that drive growth hacking of private systems. In fact, their incentives go the other way: given that everyone will have to use this system, how can we make that experience as smooth & painless as possible?
Replying to
@isocat @pluralistic This enshittification is a deliberate design choice. I have a “smart” washing machine, but it can be operated entirely offline via its front panel. The “smart” features are: it sends me a notification when it’s done, so I can hang the clothes out to dry, and I can use the app to program weird washes that I can download from the net (sneakers, super-delicates of various types, etc). If those get discontinued at some point, I’ll shrug and keep washing.
The problem for #AI is it needs tons of data to be effective. In a corporate context, that's not an issue: data is everywhere, you "just" need to access it. In a personal context, although we live increasingly online lives, and generate data as a consequence, we tend to find the results creepy rather than helpful. https://www.theverge.com/tech/993391/meta-muse-ai-hands-on
I very much wanted to buy an ID.buzz when it first came out, but three things killed it for me (before even getting to the price conversation):
- the (lack of) range
- non-opening rear windows
- SWMBO threatening to divorce me
https://www.theautopian.com/vw-is-delaying-the-id-buzz-return-to-the-us-until-2028-but-im-not-sure-it-can-change-enough/ #EV
I love my trackball, I really do, especially paired with a portrait-orientation monitor for scrolling long documents. What I don't like is returning to cleaning out gunk from inside every few days! Is there such a thing as a purely optical trackball? Although I remember my optical mice would build up a crust underneath over time…
The #SaaSpocalypse is upon us! Will #AI kill #SaaS, or perhaps the consulting industry that was required to customise it to business' needs? Join me for a coffee, and we'll try to figure it out! ☕️ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaC7iqf76fo Featuring an example supplied by @genmon@mastodon.social!
Ma certo, abbiamo l'aria peggiore d'Europa tutto inverno, ma lasciamo pure circolare le auto diesel!
E prima che qualcuno mi tiri fuori il riscaldamento dei condomini, anche quello è un problema, ma la mappa della qualità dell'aria misteriosamente segue sempre le strade…
https://www.liberta.it/news/attualita/cronaca/no-della-regione-al-blocco-degli-euro5-pronte-misure-alternative-compensative/109865
I would absolutely wear a screen-less ‘Apple Watch Neo’! Currently I wear my Ultra on days when I’m working our, but I have other watches I like to wear too — and on those days, my rings go unfilled. I loved my Jawbone UP bracelet back in the day — until it broke… https://www.macworld.com/article/3138045/a-screen-less-apple-watch-neo-is-exactly-what-the-lineup-needs.html
It's obviously not great that Anthropic won't give the UK access to its upcoming #AI models, but the big question is, if a model failed the testing, what remediation actions are even on the table? Could/would the UK ban a new model? How would that even work? https://www.ft.com/content/560e1c8b-f163-4fd6-b604-e905550ac870?syn-25a6b1a6=1
Spending some quality time in Confluence, and the stupid Rovo "assistant" is the most intrusive one I've had the misfortune to encounter. "Press space to Ask Rovo or / to insert elements", forsooth — just get out of my way. But no, Atlassian made sure there was no per-user opt-out: it's all-or-nothing for the whole organisation.
If these #AI features are so good and beloved, why are all the top matches for "confluence rovo" from people trying to make the blasted thing go away?
Well, the stream is still going, and they appear to have attached winches to the wreck. So far, so good?
Replying to
@cstross@wandering.shop There’s a test plot at the local agricultural university campus; seems to be working well! I can’t see an English-language source, but there’s this in Italian: https://dipartimenti.unicatt.it/diproves-agronomia-6-agrofotovoltaico-9951
This right here is why you can’t just say your #AI tool has a human in the loop, because inevitably you’re going to end up having to apologise for a situation where the human “should have checked the accuracy of what the A.I. tool returned”. https://simonwillison.net/2026/May/10/new-york-times-editors-note/#atom-everything @simon@fedi.simonwillison.net
I hate that the stupid chatbots a) pretend to be people, and b) hide out in previously-useful software making it worse.
Look, if you want to indulge in a spot of cosplay with your plastic pal who’s fun to be with, go wild — just don’t get anything on me, mmmkay?
Yet another reason to prefer #EVs, beyond avoiding high fuel costs and reducing pollution: electric cars turn out to be more durable than internal-combustion ones. Makes sense: there’s far less to go wrong in an EV, but battery degradation doesn’t seem to be as much of a factor as had been feared. https://electrek.co/2026/09/22/massive-uk-study-finds-high-mileage-electric-cars-more-durable-than-petrol/
I caught the very tail end of the pre-System 7 era, upgrading from 6.0.8 soon after getting my first Mac LC. Not a bad OS to imprint on, even in hindsight! https://www.macworld.com/article/3136937/35-years-ago-system-7-era-defining-upgrade.html
What If We Had Taxed the Internet? < This is pitched as a negative, but actually a bandwidth tax of some sort would have prevented a lot of stupid nonsense. The parallel holds up when extended to a per-token tax on LLMs. https://thesaltroad.net/p/what-if-we-had-taxed-the-internet
Replying to
@dcz@fosstodon.org There were houses, but few cars; this is not a main road by any means!
For #AI agents to be useful, they need data — and it seems that #Muse, the new agent from Meta (Facebook), will go to just about any lengths to get access to more of users’ data. It’s just as creepy as the pervert glasses, except it points the other way. https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/meta-keeps-apologizing-for-muse-its-explanations-miss-the-point-entirely/91409363
Time-lapse view from the North Tower of the old WTC recorded on September 10, 2001
Most of the reactions to the Live Rewind feature #Apple presented boil down to “ew, creepy”. I also wonder how this could ever work in jurisdictions with robust consent laws, like the EU? If I hear that chime, can I make you turn the feature off? https://pxlnv.com/linklog/live-rewind-audio-intelligence/
I love this suggestion from @genmon@mastodon.social! Apple, please build us an all-music-videos mode?
https://interconnected.org/home/2026/05/08/mtv
I am very productive in airport lounges, but my wrists can’t take that much sustained typing on a laptop keyboard. Does anyone have good recommendations for a “natural” (split) travel #keyboard?
The idea of a device that has the sensors of an Apple Watch, but no screen, is such a good one that of course it has come up before, a decade ago in fact: https://findthethread.blog/Smart-Swatch/
Recording ambient audio and on-screen activity wasn’t invasive enough for LG TVs; they will actually scan the network for local devices. If this tech is in LG monitors too, they are dead in the enterprise market. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/09/lg-tv-shown-capable-of-tracking-user-activity-even-when-offline/
“First, don’t interfere with user input”: this should be forcibly tattooed onto the eyeballs of #UX designers, too many of whom seem to love stealing focus, e.g. with dialog boxes, or conversely, not placing focus on the sole input that is displayed, like a search field in a pop-up. https://unsung.aresluna.org/first-dont-interfere-with-user-input/ @mwichary@mastodon.online
The progress bars for the installation of what I must assume at this point is the iPadOS 27 RC were both in portrait — although it’s true that I had the orientation lock set. I don’t know whether that affects anything during installation, but it does persist over a reboot, so it’s not impossible, I suppose.
If you’re standing so close to me that taking my bag off the handle of my roll-aboard - a gesture I think we can all agree is primarily vertical - causes me to elbow you in the sternum, that is 100% on you.
Same if your roll-aboard hits mine into the roll-aboard of the person in front of me in line.
A couple of birthdays ago, I got myself a Leatherman Skeletal to be rugged and outdoorsy, and to be able to repair the bikes, skis, or snowboard that I generally have with me in the outdoors.
It actually gets used a lot more for little jobs around the house when I can't be bothered to go fetch my big toolbag — twice yesterday, once already today.
Ah well, at least I'm using it!
Even when I determine to chill and wait to go to the gate until boarding actually commences, I still underestimate the amount of time I will spend standing around. I could have had another coffee and copy-edited a whole other doc! #travel