mastodon - Link to source

Amen to this. One of the things that really galled me about the spate of tech layoffs is the undercurrent of "gee, y'all just weren't working hard enough" instead of "corporate leadership didn't know WTF to do, made a bunch of shitty choices, and now y'all are on the unemployement line while execs collect bonuses and see their stock go up".

When, not if, things implode, it should be the C-suite that gets sent packing, not the workers.

mas.to/@gabrielesvelto/1149081…

Gabriele Svelto (@gabrielesvelto@mas.to)

Slowly reading through Ed Zitron's last article on AI and there's one thing that stands out: it's clear that the AI bubble might send us straight into another 2007-style financial meltdown.
mas.to
in reply to Hubert Figuière

mastodon - Link to source

Joe Brockmeier (@jzb)

@hub Exactly. When I've been a manager, I expected that if I had a failure at that level, I'd be (at best) demoted or given my walking papers with little more than pocket change. Instead, the C-suite folks skate by and, even if they're fired, they're given more than I make in a decade or two to hold them over until they can screw up elsewhere. Sigh.
@Hubert Figuière

mastodon - Link to source

I would strongly suggest organisations disable Microsoft Translator for Edge. It's enabled by default, and allows users to automatically translate webpages (without prompt after first use) to native language by sending the entire page content to MS. This includes intranet sites and SaaS services.

It links to a privacy policy that sounds fluffy and nice and - ya know - it isn't. The Microsoft Translator privacy policy for M365 or Azure doesn't actually apply to it.

mastodon - Link to source

Ed Zitron takes an axe to the AI bubble hype:

"ChatGPT is a very successful growth product and an absolutely horrifying business. OpenAI is a banana republic that cannot function on its own, it does not resemble Uber, Amazon Web Services, or any other business in the past other than WeWork, the other company that SoftBank spent way too much money on.

"And outside of ChatGPT, there really isn't anything else."

LONG (and detailed) evisceration of the hype mongering here: wheresyoured.at/the-haters-gui…


The Hater's Guide To The AI Bubble

Hey! Before we go any further — if you want to support my work, please sign up for the premium version of Where’s Your Ed At, it’s a $7-a-month (or $70-a-year) paid product where every week you get a premium newsletter, all while supporting my free w…
Edward Zitron (Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At)
in reply to DeManiak 🇿🇦

mastodon - Link to source

SysAdmin1138

The thing that gets me is there are 70ish people on the boards + CEOs of the Mag7 who are driving all of this. They're the ones in charge of the market monsters afraid of another monster immanentizing, so they have to get there first and own the market.

"This is an iPhone moment" was mentioned A LOT in the early throes of this, with the implication of not getting in on the LLM craze meant you'd be a candy-bar phone seller in an era of smartphones. That emotional message sells HARD to the people calling the shots.

in reply to SysAdmin1138

mastodon - Link to source

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

"This is an iPhone moment" was mentioned A LOT in the early throes of this, with the implication of not getting in on the LLM craze meant you'd be a candy-bar phone seller in an era of smartphones


I really can't understate how much FOMO dominates in big tech leadership. The history of information technology is full of disruptive technologies.

The PC made IBM a niche player and established Microsoft's dominance.

Microsoft missed out on the web (Gates famously called the Internet a passing fad) and let Google become one of the largest tech companies.

Smartphones made Apple from a distant second place in the PC race and a company worth a fraction of Microsoft to one of the largest companies in the world.

Each one of these (and a few others, such as virtualisation / cloud) caused a big company to lose market share to a new player. Sometime catastrophically, sometimes they recovered.

The thing that absolutely terrifies the senior leadership at these companies is that there will be a new thing that will cause a big shift in the industry and they will be in the position Microsoft was on the web or smartphones, or that IBM was on commodity desktops.

These people are typically the living embodiment of the Peter Principle.
Normally, they can do a completely mediocre job and watch the line go up a bit. As long as they don't do too many really stupid things, they're fine. They're in charge of a money fountain and they just need to not spill too much. But occasionally, once or twice a decade, something comes along where they need to actually do something or the money fountain might stop working.

The problem is that they're really bad at identifying these moments. And so they leap on everything that looks as if it plausibly might be such a thing. Normally they only waste a billion or so, and wasting a billion every few years is not a problem for a company making tens of billions in profit every year.

This time, they got into an exciting echo chamber where everyone else was jumping on the same bandwagon and so the personal risk if they were the one who didn't jump and was wrong was very high. The risk (again, to the individuals, not the company) of being wrong in the same way as everyone else is much lower (who could possibly predict that pissing away all of your money on a buggy bullshit generator is a bad idea? Everyone else is doing it! It wasn't my poor management that tanked the value of the company, it was an 'industry downturn', you can tell because all of our major competitors also lost 50% of their share price overnight. Oh, and actually it isn't really a tech industry problem, it's a global recession [caused by a liquidity crunch caused by wiping out $2T in the stock market overnight]).

The last few things that were not actually disruptive technologies (mixed reality / AR / metaverse, Web 3) were similar. One company jumped so all of the others did. No one looked bad when it turned out to be mostly nonsense because no one was the outlier, they were just tracking industry trends.

The weird thing this time is quite how much people are willing to throw money at it without any revenue. It's like a massive game of chicken, except it's the economy not a car that they're going to crash.

mastodon - Link to source
Itch.io has had to shadow ban all erotic and NSFW content after pressure from payment providers itch.io/updates/update-on-nsfw… . Payment providers are increasingly become censors of content raising issues around neutrality of banking and payment systems. #censorship #visa #mastercard

Update on NSFW content

We have “deindexed” all adult NSFW content from our browse and search pages. We understand this action is sudden and disruptive, and we are truly sorry for the frustration and confusion caused by...
leafo (itch.io)
#censorship #mastercard #visa

mastodon - Link to source

@MapComplete

Hi, fisrt of all, thank you and congrats for your incredible app.

Recently I've started to have a bug on the Android App, does not affect functionality but just to inform you.

The app shows two red bands on the top and bottom of the map view.

Screenshot attached

Edit:

OS: Android REL 13 aarch64
Host: Xiaomi Redmi Note 12 Pro (2209116AG)

Thank you once again.

@MapComplete
This entry was edited (5 months ago)
Unknown parent

mastodon - Link to source

MapComplete

Fdroid rebuilds the apps every few days. Seems like this version with debug info was the target for their rebuild.

Should be fixed in the next build cycle in a few days.

(Btw: the manual install you did might be updated by Fdroid when it has newer versions available, I'm not sure about that but it is signed with the same key)

(And secretly, we are happy with this message, know we know the auto updates work just fine 😊 )

mastodon - Link to source

Today I have been mostly weighing things using my Macbook TrackPad…

github.com/KrishKrosh/TrackWei… (the Homebrew version failed for me, so I built it with XCode…)

GitHub - KrishKrosh/TrackWeight: Use your Mac trackpad as a weighing scale

Use your Mac trackpad as a weighing scale. Contribute to KrishKrosh/TrackWeight development by creating an account on GitHub.
GitHub

mastodon - Link to source
Basically, ChatGPT hallucinated a feature of a website so hard that the developers of the website made the hallucination real. This may be the first time that a feature was coded in response to a hallucination. I don't know how to feel about this. techcrunch.com/2025/07/09/chat…

ChatGPT hallucinated about music app Soundslice so often, the founder made the lie come true | TechCrunch

Adrian Holovaty, founder of music-teaching platform Soundslice, finally solved a months-long mystery: weird images of ChatGPT sessions kept being uploaded to the site.
Julie Bort (TechCrunch)

mastodon - Link to source

👱‍♂️ Dneska nevstávám.
👩‍🦳 Já taky ne.
👱‍♂️ Nemám sílu.
👩‍🦳 Já taky ne.
👱‍♂️ Chrrr.
👩‍🦳 Tak jdeme, pojď.
👱‍♂️ Hmmm.

strava.com/activities/15217663…

#dovolena

U moře - Gretička je dnes mírně démonická…d8-D

Ranní procházka | Strava

👱‍♂️ Dneska nevstávám. 👩‍🦳 Já taky ne. 👱‍♂️ Nemám sílu. 👩‍🦳 Já taky ne. 👱‍♂️ Chrrr. 👩‍🦳 Tak jdeme, pojď. 👱‍♂️ Hmmm. | Strava
Strava
#dovolena

mastodon - Link to source

For everyone wishing they were at GUADEC in person (hi all! 👋) but are elsewhere, there are video streams at:

Day 3, track 1:
youtube.com/live/Z7F3fghCQB4

Day 2, track 2:
youtube.com/live/ADwZXaOSe9U

Live streams overview: youtube.com/@GNOMEDesktop/stre…

(Note: You're able to jump back in time in streams to catch what you missed also.)

Schedule (you can adjust timezone in the top right): events.gnome.org/event/259/tim…

Matrix chat room: matrix.to/#/#GUADEC-Attendees:…

#GUADEC #GUADEC2025 #GNOME #Linux #FOSS


GUADEC 2025

Welcome to GUADEC 2025 GUADEC is the GNOME community’s largest conference, bringing together hundreds of users, contributors, community members, and enthusiastic supporters for a week of talks and workshops.
GNOME Events (Indico)
#linux #foss #gnome #GUADEC #guadec2025
This entry was edited (5 months ago)

reshared this

mastodon - Link to source
One thing I miss in #OpenStreetMap, #Organicmaps and so on are contextual images. One thing I don't miss are all the ads. Wikimedia has a lot of contextual photos released under a #CreativeCommons license. (wikishootme.toolforge.org/) Couldn't it be possible to create an integration for OSM to pull images from Wikimedia into a map-app like Organic Maps? That would be awesome.
#creativecommons #openstreetmap #OrganicMaps

mastodon - Link to source

I often get asked about how I do software development with a #ScreenReader and I also have some thoughts about #DevTool #Accessibility. Finally found the time to write my thoughts down properly.

neurrone.com/posts/software-de…

Software Development at 800 Words Per Minute | Dickson Tan's blog

How I develop software at 800 words per minute with a screen reader
Dickson Tan's blog
#Accessibility #screenreader #devtool

reshared this

mastodon - Link to source

A great read for everyone reading "social media" theguardian.com/books/2025/jul…

"We paid people a few dollars to unfollow the most divisive political accounts on X. After a month, they reported feeling 23% less animosity towards other political groups. In fact, their experience was so positive that nearly half the people declined to refollow those hostile accounts after the study was over. And those who maintain their healthier newsfeed reported less animosity a full 11 months after the study."


Are a few people ruining the internet for the rest of us?

Why does the online world seem so toxic compared with normal life? Our research shows that a small number of divisive accounts could be responsible – and offers a way out
Guardian staff reporter (The Guardian)

reshared this

mastodon - Link to source

I'm going to present a new direction for one of the core libraries in the GNOME ecosystem, and how it will impact writing libraries, on Thursday, July 24, at 09:00

events.gnome.org/event/259/con…

#guadec2025 #gnome #igalia


GUADEC 2025

Welcome to GUADEC 2025 GUADEC is the GNOME community’s largest conference, bringing together hundreds of users, contributors, community members, and enthusiastic supporters for a week of talks and workshops.
GNOME Events (Indico)
#gnome #igalia #guadec2025
This entry was edited (5 months ago)

mastodon - Link to source

Kdo půjde v pátek na pivo?

Zamluvila bych aspoň jeden stůl, tak dejte vědět. : elpicko.cz/

(Jo a pozor, je to jenom pro nejdrsnější týpky. To víte, Palmovka! )

@mastopivo


elpíčko

Od 2.6. otevíráme už od 10:00! Od pondělí do pátku si na naší vaší zahrádce můžete vychutnat navíc kávu a nějaký ten koláč :) . Současně je k dispozici standartní nabídka z odpoledního nápojového lístku.
elpíčko
@MastoPivo 🍻
This entry was edited (5 months ago)

mastodon - Link to source

Quebec man outraged after being arrested by U.S. Coast Guard while fishing

ctvnews.ca/montreal/article/qu…

Fascist army doing fascist things. And our conservative Govenrment doing jack shit.


Quebec man warning Canadian boaters after he was detained by U.S. Coast guard, put in jail cell

A Quebec man says he is outraged after the U.S. Coast Guard accused him of fishing in American waters and then arrested him before putting him in a jail cell for nearly two hours.
Joe Lofaro (CTVNews)

hometown - Link to source

"Long before Prime Minister Mark Carney made sweeping election promises of harnessing artificial intelligence to boost productivity in the federal bureaucracy, AI programs were hard at work in the public service.

Whether it’s tax questions, addressing Phoenix pay issues, translation services, or drafting documents, it seems there’s an AI bot for that.

In fact, the annual report about the federal public service itself was developed with the help of generative artificial intelligence."

------

"Last month, PSPC’s Translation Bureau launched an AI translation tool prototype called PSPC Translate, spokesperson Jullian Paquin confirmed to The Hill Times.

The prototype was designed after a “noticeable decline” in translation request volumes, which suggested employees were using external translation tools like Google Translate and DeepL, an AI translation tool, Paquin said.

“To address this, the Translation Bureau sought to provide a secure, high-quality alternative that reflects Canadian linguistic standards and ensures data confidentiality.”

The tool is not intended to replace human translators, but to support the day-to-day communication needs of employees, and to reduce reliance on “unvetted external platforms," Paquin said."

archive.ph/fceZP

#cdnpoli

#cdnpoli
This entry was edited (5 months ago)

mastodon - Link to source

Last week, Quentin was on The Digital Access Show with Narelle from DASAT, talking all things NVDA and Digital Accessibility. Watch it here: youtube.com/watch?v=UWmVMdu03v… or however you get your favourite podcasts!

#NVDA #NVDAsr #DigitalAccessShow #DigitalAccessibility #DASAT


Season 2 Episode 25 - Quentin Christensen

On this week's episode of The Digital Access Show, Quentin Christensen from NV Access dives into the NonVisual Desktop Access screen reader and shares his th...
YouTube
#nvdasr #nvda #digitalaccessibility #digitalaccessshow #dasat

mastodon - Link to source
North Korea’s military is being transformed on the battlefields of Ukraine – so why is Seoul silent? - The Guardian apple.news/AIXOAjZfBSAaLf0_2Sd…

North Korea’s military is being transformed on the battlefields of Ukraine – so why is Seoul silent? — Guardian US

Observers question whether South Korea grasps the threat it faces from Pyongyang’s partnership with Moscow
apple.news

glitchsoc - Link to source

PSA

Humans are animals.

We don't mean this figuratively or pejoratively: we mean this in a literal, factual sense.

Humans are part of the kingdom animalia, which comprises all animals.

As such, if you think, say, or write things like:

  • "humans and animals"; or
  • "humans versus animals";

... you're setting humans apart as something other than what we are, as if we're somehow above other animals, which is incredibly anthropocentric and flawed :Sighing_Face:

It's a bit like saying "2 and even numbers", which implies that 2 isn't an even number. Instead, you might say "2 and other even numbers"

So, when you are talking or writing about any animals, please kindly specify whether you mean:

  • human animals
  • non-human animals
  • all animals

Thank you 🫶

#humans #HumansAreAnimals #NonHumanAnimals #AllAnimals #PSA


kingdom of multicellular eukaryotic organisms

Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)
#psa #humans #humansareanimals #nonhumananimals #allanimals
This entry was edited (5 months ago)

mastodon - Link to source

"What you have is, in essence, a very grassroots and cheap approach to launder misinformation to the public.”

From @feed - Google’s AI Is Destroying Search, the Internet, and Your Brain

Google’s AI Overview, which is easy to fool into stating nonsense as fact, is stopping people from finding and supporting small businesses and credible sources.

404media.co/googles-ai-is-dest…


Google’s AI Is Destroying Search, the Internet, and Your Brain

Emanuel Maiberg (404 Media)
@404 Media

mastodon - Link to source

Here, you will find all sorts of obscure singers on cd, many of whom you can't find anywhere else, including Youtube! To say that I am impressed is an understatement.

classicmusiccds.com

For those of us who love Italian tenors, they have an entire section devoted to them!

classicmusiccds.com/product-ca…

#cds #opera #recordings #singers


ITALIAN TENORS – WELCOME TO CLASSIC MUSIC CDs

Posts about ITALIAN TENORS written by bensaude777
WELCOME TO CLASSIC MUSIC CDs
#opera #recordings #singers #cds

pleroma - Link to source

> Open source X and Threads competitor Mastodon will begin experimenting with a new way to raise funds: in-app donations. The organization on Wednesday announced it’s launching a campaign that introduces banners inside its Android and iOS apps, prompting users to make a monetary donation.

oh great here we go

Please read: A personal appeal from Mastodon founder Eugen Rochko
This entry was edited (5 months ago)

mastodon - Link to source

matrix.org/blog/2025/07/postgr…

Thanks for the interesting read @matrix!

The article doesn't mention federation at all. Federated rooms would have worked fine for people on other servers, right? And repairing a room could also be done by fetching the uncorrupted state from another homeserver?


How we discovered, and recovered from, Postgres corruption on the matrix.org homeserver

Matrix, the open protocol for secure decentralised communications
Richard van der Hoff (matrix.org)
@The Matrix.org Foundation
⇧