mastodon - Link to source
One of the top stories on Hacker News today was a post arguing that Mozilla shouldn't accommodate any usage of AI in Firefox because (understandably) people were mad at Big AI companies for all the horrible things they've done to users and the internet and society. But I think people are ignoring the reality that *hundreds of millions of users* are using LLMs today, and they need to have tools from platforms that will look out for their interests. anildash.com/2025/11/14/wantin…

I know you don’t want them to want AI, but… - Anil Dash

A blog about making culture. Since 1999.
Anil Dash

mastodon - Link to source

Also Männer. Ich habe beschossen, mal aus dem Nähkästchen zu plaudern. Hier also die ultimativen Anmach-Lifehacks. Tricks, bei denen jede Frau sofort einknickt und die Beine breit macht:

- sehr ausgiebig erzählen, wie großartig man ist, insbesondere, dass man vor 30 Jahren mal ein geiler Hecht war (Leidtungssportler). Da stehen Frauen total drauf.
- einen inflationären broadcast raus schicken. Frauen finden es super, beliebig zu sein.
- eine Frau angraben, wenn die eigene Ehefrau daneben sitzt.

in reply to Neil Brown

mastodon - Link to source

David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)

Taking money is often tricky. In the UK, it counts as self-employment income. If you receive under about a thousand pounds a year, that!s fine, so a small tip-jar thing is fine but once you cross the threshold you need to file a tax return every year and become liable for an exciting new category of national insurance contributions. If you want to pay someone else to do some work, you’re paying them out of money that!s already taxed (and then they need to pay tax)l or you need some other legal entity to distribute the money (I think GitHub’s donations thing can do this?).

When I was freelancing, I would do paid consulting for F/OSS projects I worked on and I already had the tax liabilities from other work so it was a tiny incremental overhead. Since I started working as an employee, I’ve mostly just asked people who like F/OSS project I work on to donate to Murray Edwards: it works as well to motivate me to do more on the project, is tax deductible in several countries, and means I don’t have to do any paperwork.

For tiny projects, small donations are easy. For big donations, it’s worth setting up a charitable foundation that can handle the money and pay people. There’s a big gap in the middle. Being under an umbrella organisation can sometimes help. If the Linux Foundation were not the absolute worst, they could fill this need. The FSF tried: they’re a lot better intentioned than the LF, but barely more competent.


Murray Edwards College

Murray Edwards College

mastodon - Link to source

#Spotted at a Vintage Christmas Market in Aotearoa New Zealand:

A woman (50s?) in a floral dress wraps her arm around her friend's waist, grinning cheekily: "Shall we go in the shop over there and gasp at the prices?"
Her friend laughs: "Yes!"
They wander off, heads bowed together.

A dapper young human (11?) is promenading along in a bowler hat, waistcoat, tie, suit jacket, ironed jeans and shiny black shoes.
He's got a walking stick in one hand and his other is looped through Nan's arm.
Her pretty polka dot dress fluttering in the breeze.
Charm personified.

A small human (4?) is perusing bouquets of flowers with a critical eye.
Finally she chooses one, pays from an embroidered change purse, then kisses it with great ceremony before handing it to her farm gear and gumboot wearing Dad.
Dad taken off guard, eyes watering, picks her up for a big hug.

A small human (3?) is walking across a paddock carpark towards the market, holding Mum's hand.
Speaking in careful, optimistic tones he says: "Mum, when we get there do you want an ice cream or a pancake? I think you should have the ice cream."

A woman (70s?) reaches over a fence to pat a very hairy black yak. In return she gets a generous lick on the hand and laughs, saying to her friend. "Look at all that snot! Oh well, it'll wash off." She gives the yak an affectionate look and they wander off. (Continued Below)

#spotted
This entry was edited (6 days ago)

mastodon - Link to source

🇩🇪✅ GESCHAFFT: Verpflichtende #Chatkontrolle durch die Hintertür verhindert!🎉 Ein Riesenerfolg & DANKE an alle! 🙏

Aber ⚠️: Geplant sind weiter anonymitätszerstörende Alterskontrollen & freiwillige Massenscans. Der Kampf geht nächstes Jahr weiter!

chatkontrolle.de

Das Bild zeigt einen kurzen Textausschnitt aus dem neuesten Verordnungsentwurf des EU-Rats zur Chatkontrolle. Der Text lautet: "(17a) Nothing in this Regulation should be understood as imposing any detection obligations on providers." Übersetzung ins Deutsche: "(17a) Nichts in dieser Verordnung ist so auszulegen, dass sie den Anbietern Aufdeckungsverpflichtungen auferlegt."

Chatkontrolle

🇫🇷 Französisch: Traduction du dossier Chat Control 2.0 🇸🇪 Schwedisch: Chat Control 2.0🇳🇱 Niederländisch: Chatcontrole Inhalt der Seite: Die Abschaffung des Digitalen Briefgeheimnisses Hilf jetzt mit die Chatkontrolle zu stoppen…
Patrick Breyer
#Chatkontrolle
in reply to Patrick Breyer

mastodon - Link to source

Patrick Breyer

🇪🇺✅ SUCCESS: We've prevented mandatory #ChatControl through the back door!🎉 A big win & THANKS to everyone! 🙏

But ⚠️: Anonymity-breaking age checks & "voluntary" mass scanning are still planned. The fight continues next year!

chatcontrol.eu

The image shows a short excerpt of text from the latest Council draft regulation on "Chat Control". The text reads: "(17a) Nothing in this Regulation should be understood as imposing any detection obligations on providers."

Chat Control: The EU's CSAM scanner proposal

🇫🇷 French: Traduction du dossier Chat Control 2.0, stopchatcontrol.fr🇸🇪 Swedish: Chat Control 2.0🇩🇰 Danish: chatcontrol.
Patrick Breyer
#chatcontrol

reshared this

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Wizard of the Other Oz (ft. Pierson) - Studio C

"Dorothy (Pierson) finds herself in the wrong Oz, one where the wizard (Dalton) and witch (Aleta) only speak in Aussie slang."

youtube.com/watch?v=1nRC9Cpi43…


Wizard of the Other Oz (ft. Pierson) - Studio C

Dorothy (Pierson) finds herself in the wrong Oz, one where the wizard (Dalton) and witch (Aleta) only speak in Aussie slang.Please enjoy this sneak peek sket...
YouTube

mastodon - Link to source

LES PETITS TRACAS DE PIERRE-ÉDOUARD STÉRIN : DETTES, NUL EN AFFAIRE, DÉTESTÉ DU GRAND PUBLIC, SON EMPIRE RÉACTIONNAIRE S'EFFONDRE

La rentrée 2025 est rude pour Pierre-Édouard, qui voit ses Nuits du Bien commun chahutées, sa villa envahie, et son business en grande difficulté.

Notre article à lire ici : contre-attaque.net/2025/11/14/…

Pierre-Édouard Stérin se prend la tête : à force de faire monter le fascisme, il va finir ruiné. Pas de bol.

L'empire réactionnaire de Pierre-Édouard Stérin s'effondre-t-il ?

La rentrée 2025 est rude pour Stérin, qui voit ses Nuits du Bien commun chahutées, sa villa envahie, et son business en grande difficulté.
B (Contre Attaque)

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#PPOD: This new JWST picture features a cosmic creepy-crawly called NGC 6537 — the Red Spider Nebula. Using its Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam), JWST has revealed never-before-seen details in this picturesque planetary nebula with a rich backdrop of thousands of stars. Planetary nebulae like the Red Spider Nebula form when ordinary stars like the Sun reach the end of their lives. Credit: ESA, NASA & CSA, J. H. Kastner (Rochester Institute of Technology)

#space #science

A planetary nebula. The nebula’s central star is hidden by a blotchy pinkish cloud of dust. A strong red light radiates from this area, illuminating the nearby dust. Two large loops extend laterally away from the centre, formed of thin ridges of blue dust. A huge number of bright, whitish stars cover the background, also easily visible through the thin dust layers.
#science #space #PPOD

mastodon - Link to source

I live in a house with large open spaces carved up by some alcoves, columns and protrusions. I'm told on occasions that it looks quite attractive.

but as I, a #blind person, miscalculate while bending down to pick something up and yet again catch my head on another bit of pointless wall, I'm reminded how truly subjective design preferences are.

#blind
in reply to James Scholes

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Paweł Masarczyk

@jakobrosin Now that you mention columns, there's a canteen of an arts university near my workplace where I sometimes like grabbing my lunch. Because its the university of fine arts, there's a mandatory clash of a human with the art, in a literal way. The stairs to the entrance are divided into sections, each odd section leads indeed to one of the entrance door, every other ends with a huge stone columnade in, if I'm not mistaken, corynthian style. It's fun to touch if you've never observed ancient Greek architecture, otherwise quite disappointing if you made it the couple of steps up only to realize there's no way in so you have to go back and climb again at another spot.
@Jakob Rosin

mastodon - Link to source
Today's discovery: The Victor Reader Stream (second generation) has a micro SD card under the battery. It acts as internal storage but also has the operating system on it. And that operating system is ... Linux, from 2010, with Busybox.
I'm very interested to try and get SSH running, but I don't think the binaries are there. It looks like there is support for serial of some kind. The OS partition is 100% full. I'll reimage a second micro SD card at some point and find out how much I can tinker with it before it breaks. If anyone wants a dd dump of the entire card, let me know.

Peter Vágner reshared this.

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The assets of Radio Free Asia on the auction block: rasmus.com/auctions/galIdtyncH…

International Television and Radio Network Broadcast Production Editing Newsroom and Corporate Headquarters Independent Shipping Available

A Washington DC based international television and radio broadcast network is making a significant reduction in its operations and will make a complete liquidation of all excess television, radio, studio production, field production, switching, broad…
rasmus.com

mastodon - Link to source

I remember my own experiments with “AI” a long time ago. It could be fun (AI Dungeon, anyone?) even if it couldn’t produce reliable results. But it was also extremely inefficient. Like: even on a GPU, producing a single moderately long response would occupy the entire GPU for seconds! Meanwhile my web server can handle thousands of parallel requests on much cheaper hardware and with a fraction of the power usage. So surely nobody would attempt this at scale…

I clearly underestimated the industry’s dedication to burning money and resources (often enough literally) while chasing the newest fad. investor.nexteraenergy.com/new…


NextEra Energy and Google Announce New Collaboration to Accelerate Nuclear Energy Deployment in the U.S.

Duane Arnold Energy Center restart to strengthen American energy grid resilience; Iowa's only nuclear facility is targeted to be fully operational by the first quarter of 2029 Project expected to create approximately 400 direct, high-quality full-tim…
www.investor.nexteraenergy.com
This entry was edited (3 weeks ago)
in reply to Wladimir Palant

mastodon - Link to source

Wladimir Palant

So OpenAI managed to lose $11.5 billion in just one quarter. Not quite unexpectedly given how expensive it is to improve and simply run their machinery and how little money it brings in. theregister.com/2025/10/29/mic…

And that is totally fine of course as long as this still counts as a huge success, so that even more investor money flows in. And OpenAI (just as everyone else in AI) keeps raising the stakes to justify their need for more money. Now if that isn’t a Ponzi scheme…

At this rate it cannot be long until the bubble bursts. You cannot bring in an investor with pockets as deep as Microsoft’s every few months.


Microsoft just revealed that OpenAI lost more than $11.5B last quarter

updated: Satya has also delivered Sam most of the cash he promised
Matt Rosoff (The Register)
This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)
in reply to Wladimir Palant

mastodon - Link to source

Wladimir Palant

I’m pretty sure that all those AI companies hold a meeting somewhere and brainstorm bad ideas to outperform each other. Burning massive amounts of power? Nah, too trivial. Let’s support it by building new nuclear plants! No, been there. We can shoot data centers into space! That will take too long. Why don’t we involve AI when military decisions need to be made under extreme pressure?

Well, we have a new contender.

“Microsoft and nuclear power company Westinghouse Nuclear want to use AI to speed up the construction of new nuclear power plants in the United States.”


Sure, why not put a bullshit generator in charge of designing something that could contaminate a huge chunk of land for the foreseeable future if done wrong?

404media.co/power-companies-ar…


Power Companies Are Using AI To Build Nuclear Power Plants

Tech companies are betting big on nuclear energy to meet AIs massive power demands and they're using that AI to speed up the construction of new nuclear power plants.
Matthew Gault (404 Media)

glitchsoc - Link to source

"Remember when you thought age verification laws couldn't get any worse? Well, lawmakers in Wisconsin, Michigan, and beyond are about to blow you away.

It's unfortunately no longer enough to force websites to check your government-issued ID before you can access certain content, because politicians have now discovered that people are using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to protect their privacy and bypass these invasive laws. Their solution? Entirely ban the use of VPNs.

Yes, really.

As of this writing, Wisconsin lawmakers are escalating their war on privacy by targeting VPNs in the name of “protecting children” in A.B. 105/S.B. 130. It’s an age verification bill that requires all websites distributing material that could conceivably be deemed “sexual content” to both implement an age verification system and also to block the access of users connected via VPN. The bill seeks to broadly expand the definition of materials that are “harmful to minors” beyond the type of speech that states can prohibit minors from accessing—potentially encompassing things like depictions and discussions of human anatomy, sexuality, and reproduction.

This follows a notable pattern: As we’ve explained previously, lawmakers, prosecutors, and activists in conservative states have worked for years to aggressively expand the definition of “harmful to minors” to censor a broad swath of content: diverse educational materials, sex education resources, art, and even award-winning literature."

eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/lawm…

#VPNs #AgeVerification #CyberSecurity #Privacy #DigitalRights


Lawmakers Want to Ban VPNs—And They Have No Idea What They're Doing

It's unfortunately no longer enough to force websites to check your government-issued ID before you can access certain content, because politicians have now discovered that people are using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to protect their privacy and…
Electronic Frontier Foundation
#privacy #cybersecurity #digitalrights #ageverification #vpns
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