"I have directed the Department of Defense to continue its surge of weapons deliveries to Ukraine, and the United States will continue to work tirelessly to strengthen Ukraine’s position in its defense against Russian forces." - President Biden in response to Russia's latest air attacks whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/s…

Louis Armstrong reads ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas (his final commercial recording). “This is Louis ‘Satchmo’ Armstrong, talking to all the kids from all over the world at Christmastime.” kottke.org/24/12/louis-armstro…

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We really got the computer-human relationship all wrong: it should be a model of consent, rather than about restraining bolts, governor modules, or the Three Laws of Robotics

I was thinking about this excellent speech by Martha Wells on her Murderbot diaries being stories of bodily autonomy and slavery, and about the fantastic video on The Tragedy of Droids in Star Wars by Pop Culture Detective.
marthawells.dreamwidth.org/649…
youtube.com/watch?v=WD2UrB7zep…

Martha Wells spells out how wrong the Three Laws of Robotics are in stipulating a subservient relationships for robots to sacrifice themselves on behalf of humans, built around fears or assumptions that robots would inherently act to harm humans (or not act to save humans) and that therefore robots should put humans before themselves.

#ThreeLawsOfRobotics
#MurderbotDiaries
#ArtificialIntelligence #Al

Wikipedia is a problem for Musk/Trump. Not, as Musk says, because it's "woke." Because it's one of our last reliable tethers to a consensus reality. Therefore, an antidote to disinformation.

It's not making anyone money. It's not enshittified. Of course it's not perfect—it's an endeavor of imperfect cooperating humans. But it needs protection and support.

newsweek.com/elon-musk-takes-a…

#wikipedia

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@RaccoonForFriendica new version 0.4.0-beta01 available for testing!

Changelog:
- feat: add "Distraction free" post layout;
- feat: add "Compact" post layout;
- feat: implement post dislike action;
- fix: retrieve post source for editing even for plain text;
- chore: translations update;
- chore: update dependencies.

Moreover, let me wish everyone happy holidays and remember to #livefasteattrash on Christmas and New Year's Eve.

A special and heartfelt acknowledgement goes to all the contributors of the #raccoonforfriendica project, people who helped with code, translations, bug reports, ideas for improvements, design, roadmap and in many other ways. Remember that this wouldn't have been the same without your contributions, and the fact that people who don't know each other (and don't even speak the same language) can meet and create something together is one of the best things of the free and open source model.

Hope we can continue in this direction next year. Thank you everyone, you are awesome ❤️🦝🎄

#friendica #friendicadev #androidapp #androiddev #fediverseapp #raccoonforfriendica #kotlin #multiplatform #kmp #compose #cmp #opensource #procyonproject

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2024 was a banner year for Matrix, from Matrix 2.0 progress and Trust & Safety improvements, to operationalizing open governance and hosting the first Matrix Conference.

We can't wait to see what 2025 brings! From all of us to you, merry merry and a happy new year ✨

matrix.org/blog/2024/12/25/the…

30 years ago today, Compuserve and Unisys tried to give themselves a Christmas gift at the Internet's expense, by charging a $5,000 royalty for using GIF images. #retrocomputing dfarq.homeip.net/cashing-in-on…

It’s hard to overemphasize just what a bombshell this was for the webcomic scene in the late 90s/early 00s. Comics had been using GIF even for non-animated strips, and major comics started spearheading anti-GIF campaigns and teaching people how to switch to PNG.
ioc.exchange/@siliconundergro/…
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Interesting article in The Atlantic summarising some recent research suggesting that Walmart makes the communities it operates in poorer than if it had never been there at all.

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…

This entry was edited (1 year ago)

Wishing you a Merry Christmas, wherever you may be ✨🎄

Joyeux Noël!
Frohe Weihnachten!
¡Feliz Navidad!
Buon Natale!
Feliz Natal!
Весела Коледа!
Veselé Vánoce!
Glædelig jul!
Häid jõule!
Καλά Χριστούγεννα!
Nollaig shona!
Sretan Božić!
Priecīgus Ziemassvētkus!
Džiaugsmingų šv. Kalėdų!
Kellemes karácsonyi ünnepeket!
Il-Milied it-Tajjeb!
Vrolijk kerstfeest!
Wesołych Świąt!
Crăciun fericit!
Veselé Vianoce!
Vesel božič!
God Jul!
Hyvää joulua!

“Elon Musk Is a Paid Subscriber to Shockingly Racist Pro-Apartheid South African X Account”
mediaite.com/news/elon-musk-is…

That’s silly. Why subscribe when he could buy it outright?

(And then bring his same success with Twitter and run it into the ground.)