Mourning Steve Langasek
I have encountered more image descriptions on Mastodon in 24 hours than I have in Twitter in a couple of years. Seriously. I'm not exaggerating.
As a blind person, this means a lot to me. If you read this and you describe your images, thank you so, so, so much on behalf of all of us. If you don't, now you know you'll be helping random Internet strangers make sense of your posts by typing in a few more words than usual.
If you have an Meta/Instagram account, you apparently have given the company permission to abuse it in the following way:
https://www.404media.co/instagram-begins-randomly-showing-users-ai-generated-images-of-themselves/
Today, @ddosecrets published 212GB of chat logs and recordings from paramilitary/militia groups, including Three Percent and Oath Keepers, available for everyone to download https://ddosecrets.com/article/paramilitary-leaks
More about the leak from @ProPublica: https://www.propublica.org/article/ap3-oath-keepers-militia-mole
Hiring: We are looking for a Linux Support Specialist to join our growing team support team. This position will focus on Linux support efforts across all relevant social surfaces where Framework has a presence. https://jobs.lever.co/framework/1e7b0169-520e-4207-bafc-b454cec10809
Batteries are a clearly more economic option, and we're going to have to learn to work with China, because they've monstered the market thanks to their (despite many other faults!) very strategically savvy gov't.
Of course, famously, funding the commons is extremely difficult. Despite how much "easier" short term it would be to take large amounts of VC cash, we are here for the long term vision.
Did we mention we are running a public fundraising campaign? We could use your help! https://spritely.institute/donate/
For AI agents to be powerful and personal, they will need significant data access. “When we’re talking about an app that might be able to look at your entire computer, that is really disturbing,” EFF’s @cmcsherr told @washingtonpost. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/01/05/agents-ai-chatbots-google-mariner/
Viewed a bad peer review course on LinkedIn (#trainingFailure) that advertises for using ChatGPT and GitHub.
#MicrosoftSucks
Sugary drinks linked to millions of new #diabetes and heart disease cases – study - https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/jan/06/global-health-inequalities-sugary-drinks-diabetes-heart-disease-africa-latin-america-influencers "Tufts University analysis highlights rise in global health inequalities, with fastest growth in linked diseases in Africa" #sugar
Absolutely wild to see the degree to which AI slop-brain has taken root in some places.
A team at Microsoft rejected a documentation PR because LLMs might have trouble reading tables.
https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/WSL/pull/2021#issuecomment-2546627586
Happy January 6th to all who celebrate!
Sometimes in debates about the usefulness of "AI" technology, people note recent examples in the news of AI being used to do amazing things, like improving cancer detection.
There's a really important distinction between AI / machine learning tools, even tools including generative AI, and the big LLMs like ChatGPT.
(1/?)
Fine weather to read a book. (It's cold, but no snow here.) https://www.gocomics.com/brian-mcfadden/2025/01/06
@jockr Bogus article that completely ignores the findings of fact in the Microsoft antitrust trial. The article also ignores the fact that OS/2 only became stable and viable after Microsoft left the project and it was reworked by IBM. Windows didn't really have a competing OS until Windows 2000, but the anticompetitive monopoly kept Microsoft's crap operating systems in dominance until all the competition was gone.
Free software was the last path to competition.
#ShlaerMellor, #FunctionPointAnalysis, #punk, #environmentalist, #unionAdvocate, #anarchosocialist
"with a big old lie and a flag and a pie and a mom and a bible most folks are just liable to buy any line, any place, any time" - Frank Zappa