It can be hard to imagine how to defend oneself against an overwhelming force like ICE. But a few enterprising hackers have started projects to do counter-surveillance against ICE, and hopefully protect their communities through clever use of technology. eff.org/deeplinks/2026/01/how-…
A few enterprising hackers have started projects to do counter surveillance against ICE, and hopefully protect their communities through clever use of technology.
I remember a while back there was a petition asking the Government of Canada to setup their own fediverse instance and the reply was really off topic. I have lost the link. Anyone remembers?
I’ve written several times trying to get someone—anyone— to show a little initiative on this file. Crickets so far. Undeterred, here we go again. I’ll let you guys know if I get a resoonse this time. #x #GROK
Perhaps the single most certain thing about generative AI is that developing "skill" with prompting AI has very little value as any sort of long term "investment".
* If the technology improves rapidly, any tricks you learn now will soon be irrelevant. * If the technology stagnates, it just won't be nearly as useful or important as the people preaching about it claim. (If it's even useful at all for the things you might want to use it for.)
*sigh* Hoopla's catalog system is broken. If I click on an audiobook narrator's link, only *some* of their titles appear, as an example. Same for authors. Unfortunately, Libby has a better catalog system but Hoopla has better audio quality. To fix this, download the Library Extension for your web browser and browse Audible. You will find titles neither system appears to have, but this extension finds them. libraryextension.com/ #Library #Libraries
Just wanted to install an #XMPP client to create an account to test something. I moved away to #Matrix years ago because I had no hope anymore for #XMPP, but now that I wanted to create an account, I am just shocked at how dead it is: #Fedora still has Gajim 1.7.3, when the last release is 2.4.1. #pkgsrc is a bit but noch much better with 2.1.1. #Tkabber is even worse: pkgsrc has 0.11.1, when 1.1.2 is the latest release that was released in 2015(!). It seems distributions keep XMPP clients around, but don’t update them because nobody is using them anymore. I had not expected for XMPP to be that dead. That’s shocking.
I also think if distributions cannot be bothered to update a package in over 10 years, they should just remove it…
The situation of @gajim in Fedora repositories is sad, but @dino is up to date there. flatpak is also an option to get the latest gajim, or run from source. I actually use a fedora laptop for work, maybe some day I'll look into what's missing for gajim to be up-to-date in fedora again...
Když jsem stavěl dům, tak mi stavař neřekl jednu podstatnou věc: Kanál v garáži má být pod každým autem, ne uprostřed. Protože jak steče sníh, tak se zrovna já "brodím" ve vodě. Žena to vyhrála
my to máme pod autem, ale nemáme tam žádný spád, takže nám tam nic neteče. Stavbyvedoucí nám na to řekl, že to je jenom servisní odtok a vyspádovaná podlaha v garáži se nedělá. 🤷🙂 Každou zimu na to nadávám.
"I don't believe this was a fair test of my command abilities." Saavik- Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Stardate: 8130.3 #StarTrek #StarTrekFilm #IDIC #Quote
Sent my feedback on public initiative for European commission and open source. Placed my name - I am proud and active on what I'm doing, talked as a blind european citizen. Every european relying on accessibility should talk now.
Ask your pressing questions live or in advance and get clear answers on adopting Nextcloud as a Microsoft 365 alternative, including demos and real-world migration insights.
Anybody still shopping at Target? I haven't in a year.
Marc Fischer @marc-fischer.bsky.social From a good friend in Minneapolis: "Target is allowing ICE to stage in their parking lots, use their restrooms, and abduct people from inside their stores - so if you weren’t boycotting already, now is the time." They were staging in Chicago as well.
Hi all. So, we are back at square one. Magnesium cream has now decided to stop working. Sleep meds don't let me sleep. I'm just trying to get through as best I can, thanks to the amazingly kind people who asked how I'm really doing. It's looking like I might have to go into a hospice for a few days to see if they can stabilize me. Ho hum, I'll just look it in the teeth and dare it to kick me! Lol!
While they promise new airports, here is the infrastructure they already gave us: 10,000+ rusting oil drums at Bluie East Two. Left for 80 years. Leaking into the soil. Who pays for the cleanup? NOT THE USA.
#Friendica just dropped an important update that pre-generates the content of channels - considering that the home feed is itself a channel (and can easily take over a minute to load sometimes) this might well make Friendica finally becomes properly usable in #SelfHosting hardware. Time to test! #Friendica
Mac TweeseCake eaters, how do you get TweeseCake to appear in the list of apps that are allowed to use the microphone? This is on a fairly old Mac OS, Ventura I think. Can't send voice messages yet, the record button does nothing, the person I'm trying to help doesn't get any system prompts to allow access and when we went to System Settings, Privacy and Security, Microphone, there's not a button to add an app there, only a list of apps that have requested access. Any advice welcome.
it is with an extremely heavy heart that i inform you all that Ralph Giles aka @rillian at many places died suddenly of a heart attack over the weekend. i will miss him so much.
Small hypothesis: I bet people like AI chat interfaces in some part because they are “clean” – simple text, easy to process, consistent visuals, no ads, no pop-ups, etc.
To use a cliche example: Even if it wasn’t in any way “smarter,” it’d still be nicer to ask ChatGPT for a recipe than go to a webpage to read that recipe. Its interface is a natural “reader mode.”
I think it very well might, because of the difference in their nature.
Recipe webpages are strictly transactional. Their main purpose is to squeeze as much juice out of you *on this visit* as they can, and they compete in an extremely brutal, low-margin economy against other pages which have the same content and are attempting the same thing. There's 0 brand loyalty, there are no switching costs, if the page falls down in SEO rankings, they'll have 0 revenue after a week. This means that if they already have a customer "hooked", they need to shove as many ads in their face as they can. Next week, that customer won't remember whether the awful domain was online-recipes[.]com or recipesonline[.]us anyway.
Chatbots are different, as most people only use one. That means there's value in keeping the customer hooked, and giving them access to useful info when nobody else will is a great way to do this.
In an AI chatbot, the goals of squeezing as much money out of that customer and keeping that customer for themselves are at odds with eachother, and both of these goals are important.
I don't think they'll stay as pleasant to use as they are, but I also don't think they'll ever get anywhere near as bad as recipe websites.
Apple and Google have left X in their app stores, despite its AI-generated images that violate their own rules. There are no principles left in Silicon Valley.
I hereby coin the term "Ptolemaic Code" to refer to software that appears functional but is based on a fundamentally incorrect model of the problem domain. As more code is generated by AI, the prevalence of such code is likely to increase. 1/7
Ich habe heute ein TikTok von Connor Scott Gardener gesehen. Er spricht darin über seine Erfahrungen mit Augenärzt*innen – und selten habe ich mich so unmittelbar, so schmerzhaft präzise wiedererkannt. Es war dieses „Ja, genau so fühlt sich das an“, das Erinnerungen an alte Müdigkeit und Verletzungen wachruft. (1/9)
Ich bin blind seit Geburt. Leber’sche Congenitale Amaurose. Eine Erkrankung, bei der die Stelle des schärfsten Sehens nie ausgebildet wurde, bei der die Fotorezeptoren rundherum im Laufe des Erwachsenwerdens nach und nach abgestorben sind. Als Kind hatte ich dennoch Sehrest: grobe Umrisse, große Objekte, Lichtquellen. Ich bin im Dorf Fahrrad gefahren, bis ich zehn war. Heute, Ende dreißig, benutze ich einen Lichtsensor, wenn ich sicher sein will, dass das Deckenlicht wirklich an ist. Mein Leben ist nicht weniger geworden – aber mein Sehen ist längst kein Feld mehr für medizinische Überraschungen. (2/9)
Und doch betrete ich Augenarztpraxen, in denen man genau so tut, als wäre ich ein ungelöstes Rätsel. Ich komme meist nur, um ein Rezept für ein blindentechnisches Hilfsmittel abzuholen. Keine Hoffnung, keine Erwartung auf Verbesserung. Nur Bürokratie. Und trotzdem beginnt fast immer dasselbe Ritual: Tropfen zur Pupillenerweiterung. Grelles Licht, das schmerzt. Untersuchungen, deren Sinn niemand erklärt. Ärger, weil ich nicht „richtig mitmache“. (3/9)
Ich habe das Glück, arbeiten gehen zu können. Seit Jahren bezahle ich meine Blindenhilfsmittel selbst. Sogar das Jaws-Update werde ich selbst bezahlen, genau um dieser Erniedrigung zu entgehen. Ich empfinde das als entwürdigend. Auch ich bin von Geburt an blind. Bei mir sind die Augen normal, der Sehnerv ist verkümmert. Daran ändert sich nichts. Ich will mich nicht jedes mal neu rechtfertigen und meine Blindheit beweisen. Und es ist mir unverständlich, warum es für Menschen mit einer auf dem Ausweis festgestellten unbefristeten Behinderung keine Regelung gibt, dass der Ausweis als Nachweis der Notwendigkeit gilt... #Blindleben #Disabled-Alltag
Interesting chat with my wife's uncle this weekend who is a Vietnam vet.
I asked him if he felt like the south Vietnamese were supportive of their efforts to keep the north in check and he yes but they had a lot of issues with people sneaking across the lines and switching sides all the time to whoever they thought was going to win.
> Mounted on each side of the Seawolf Hueys were 2.75-inch rocket launchers, and two M-60 flex-mounted machine guns per side. Unique to the Seawolf gunships were its two gunners, one seated on each side of the helicopter with a freehand, shoulder-fired M-60 machine gun. These very special young gunners hung out of the helicopter with one foot on the rocket pod and fired to the side, under, and to the rear, as the gunship rolled in and out of an attack run.
I thought when he was talking to me about this that they were mounted. He was hanging out the chopper shooting an M60 FREEHAND?! That's wild
He told me originally they didn't have the 50 cal and when they added that to the Hueys to penetrate the bunkers they had issues with the machine gun literally moving the helicopter and taking them off target
At one point they needed to recover the tail section of another chopper and the south Vietnamese wanted to barter for it I guess, so they took a trip to one base to go pick up some cases of beer, then flew over to another base in Cambodia to trade it for a cooler full of steaks, then took the steaks with them to trade the Vietnamese for the tail section. They jammed it sideways through the doors of the helicopter and flew it out that way.
He said they'd sleep with their clothes on and when they got the announcement SEAWOLVES SCRAMBLE they had 10 minutes to put on their shoes and run to load up and take off to go assist/defend another unit from the air
They'd take off so aggressively that they'd drop down off the side of the ship and you could stick your foot out the door and touch the water before they'd catch the airfoil and lift off
Also they were trained to release the rocket pods and kick out the ammo box sitting in the middle if they were ever going to go down, but it never happened.
Considering how small the unit was and that they are officially recorded as getting 8200 kills he probably has a lot of fucked up shit in his head. God damn.
Thank you for sharing all this. Fascinating. Stories that are passed down like this are sometimes never heard. The hardships, challenges, even enjoyable moments (where can be found in war).
@polishdub what's interesting to me is that my mother in law and nearly all her siblings were in the Navy, but nobody seems to recognize the very special and dangerous unit he was in during Vietnam. Most of the others I think are a bit younger so they never really saw active duty like that, but still... they should know
my wife has never known what he went through. She just always thought of him as Santa Claus because of his white beard
I hereby coin the term "Ptolemaic Code" to refer to software that appears functional but is based on a fundamentally incorrect model of the problem domain. As more code is generated by AI, the prevalence of such code is likely to increase. 1/7
Like the ancient Ptolemaic model of the solar system, which tried to overcome its fundamentally incorrect understanding of the solar system by adding complex "epicycles" to force its Earth-centred model to match observed reality, 2/7
It attempts to fit solutions from potentially very different domains together with corrective code "epicycles" until it satisfies its context, the user, and tests. 4/7
This is a trap: while the code works within its parameters, its internal model is incoherent. When it inevitably fails, the incoherent basis for debugging or correction will lead to additional 'epicycles' being added. This process increases system complexity and brittleness. 5/7
The Ptolemaic model of the solar system, though completely incorrect, allowed sailors to navigate the globe for centuries, its failure was not practical but explanatory, similar to how Ptolemaic Code works until deeper issues arise. 6/7
but more epicycles means more lines of code which means more productivity which means better "programmers" which means "better" software, more money, etc, etc...
This is exactly how I have described the limitations of black box models to others.
A good scientific model should do two things:
1) Provide accurate predictions of outcomes given certain inputs, and 2) Enable greater understanding of how a system works.
Simpler machine learning models, like logistic regression or decision trees, can sometimes do both, at least for simpler phenomenon. The models are explainable and their decisions are interpretable. For those reasons among others, applied machine learning researchers still use these simpler approaches wherever they can be made to work.
But in our haste to increase accuracy for more complex phenomenon, we've created models that merely provide semi-accurate predictions at the expense of explainability and interpretability. Like the ptolemaic model of the solar system, these models mostly work well in predicting outcomes within the narrow areas in which they've been trained. But they do absolutely nothing to enable understanding of the underlying phenomenon. Or worse, they mislead us into fundamentally wrong understandings. And because their training is overfit onto the limits of their training data, their accuracy falls apart unpredictably when used for tasks outside the distribution of their training. Computational linguists and other experts that might celebrate these models instead lament the benighted ignorance left in their wake.
Or how it was more eloquently stated in the great philosophical film Billy Madison:
"Mr. Madison, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul."
@DaveMWilburn #pluralistic describes the technical debt of these AI coding models as asbestos in the walls.
A hazard we'll be digging out of the walls for decades to come.
It remains a fact that when petrostate despots are this desperate to impose user adoption, alarm bells should be ringing. Fossil fuel funded cyberwarfare.
“While we were taking the picture, I said, ’Could you make it $1.5 trillion?’” Trump said about Saudi investment. “So he’s got something to think about.”
The tell-tales are lots of special casing in the code (the epicycles there) and the response "it works and that is all that counts" when you try to discuss what you see in the code.
This way of doing things not only happens in coding (as this example above) but un many disciplines including science itself (when theoretical knowledge is incorrect or not fully understood, so little empirical models are established until a bigger paradigm explains everything naturally) but also in industry, for example, in the US cows feed in industrial corn feeders instead of natural grasslands. This cause an increase of Escherichia Coli bacteria that naturally exists in the cow's rumen that ends up in the burger grinded meat. Industry invested in chemists and biochemists to develop a chemical process that uses ammonia and other substances that kill the EColi bacteria, but also leaves the meat without color (grey). So another process is developed to artificially color back the meat... Off course everything is fixed allowing cows to eat in grasslands, because the cellulose of the grass naturally controls the level of EColi bacteria. Artificial epicycles for fixing something fundamentally wrong that hould be fixed easily.
It's like overfitting a high degree polynomial to some data - each new data point requires a significant change to the overfitted formula (for software, substitute "use case" for "data point").
In order to make technological progress, we needed to abandon the incorrect model of our solar system. We would probably not have made it to the moon if we'd stuck to the ptolemaic model of our solar system.
Similarly, in order to meaningfully advance our software ecosystem, we need to abandon code produced using poor software engineering practices – such as LLM codegen.
Problem of Ptolemaic model wasn’t correctness—it is equivalent to heliocentric model—but the fact that its builders resisted attempts to falsify core assumptions.
That is the problem with AI coding. When it works, it skips model verification entirely. When it doesn’t, it doesn’t offer actionable insights.
@dk@nettime.org Jumping back a level of analysis or two (and therefore maybe no longer being valid): I'm thinking of the tweaks LLM masters demand their engineers make to LLM output, usually (from what I've seen) for two reasons:
To reduce antisocial behavior (e.g., LLMs producing fascist, misogynist, racist, anti-queer, etc. content, or stop them from encouraging people to commit #suicide) To increase the happiness of rich-people-who-own-the-LLMs (e.g., increase profit, decrease Grok saying Elon is an asshole, etc.)
The fact that both of these need to (apparently) be done regularly suggests a mismatch with "reality." Arguably, that is not objective external reality but the internal reality of the LLM vis-a-vis its constantly-updating training corpus. The combination of the LLM code and its training corpus seems to make LLMs regularly say awful things and also fail to generate maximum profit for the owners/shareholders.
I won't be the first (or 10,000th) to say there is a significant mismatch between what LLMs (currently) are and what their masters want them to do.
I think this prediction is on target. It is a more general syndrome that results from multiple failures to practice good software engineering. Reuse of code can be really great or a nightmare. I’d put AI-code reuse together with other common software failures in the category of faulty design. That affects everything downstream if you don’t catch it. Your formulation also highlights the failure to create complete requirements as well as the limitations of testing. It’s why we have brittle systems. I’ll wager most human-generated code of any significant complexity is “Ptolemaic” by your definition. No one has proved to my satisfaction that the current crop of AI-developed code is any better quality than what people produce, and that’s generous. But it is fast and probably costs less (initially) even if it doesn’t work right!
I love the idea! That said, how is traditional software development not prone to this either? Factoring out the deconomic (as in: the problem scaling out quickly) aspect, what do we do to prevent fundamentally incorrect models other than verifying the resulting artifacts against more or less distant interpretations of the user intentions that an AI could not?
Nice. It is a little unfair to Ptolemy. Epicycles are in implementation of the Fourier transform.
It is very good example of the distinction between a predictive model and a casual one. The Copernican model would still have to inject corrections.
“ For his contemporaries, the ideas presented by Copernicus were not markedly easier to use than the geocentric theory and did not produce more accurate predictions of planetary positions.”
Hi @dk, makes me think of this interview with Oswald Wiener, which is luckily still on archive.org: web.archive.org/web/2016031518… Quote: " Zwei Gedankenstränge waren die Vorläufer zum Bioadapter. Zum einen die Vorstellung der Gesellschaft als Homöostat. Ich bemerkte, dass die Kybernetik diesen Zug an sich hat, als Neuheitenverhinderungsmechanismus zu funktionieren. Ich habe auch alle möglichen Gleichnisse gebraucht, etwa dass Kopernikus über moderne Computer verfügte. Dann hätte man das ptolemäische Weltbild endlos weiterführen können, das ja in erster Linie deswegen aufgegeben wurde, weil die Epizykel immer mehr und die Berechnungen immer komplizierter wurden. Aber durch Erhöhung der Rechenleistung hätte man das kopernikanische Weltbild verhindert. Vielleicht nicht für immer, aber für 100 Jahre. Wenn der Sprung zu einer neuen Qualität, einer anderen Auffassung geschieht, weil die Widersprüche nicht mehr administrierbar sind, wäre der Computer ein Mittel zur Verlängerung des alten Zustands. Der andere Strang waren erkenntnistheoretische Schwierigkeiten. Man kann schwer übersehen, dass wir nur Repräsentationen der Wirklichkeit in unserem Kopf haben, die verbessert, verschlechtert, angepasst werden. ..."
Beim Einsteigen in den Mietwagen wird mir klar, sie haben mir das richtige Fahrzeug für die Mission gegeben. Ein kleiner Bildschirm zeigt, wogegen ich rückwärts fahren könnte. Nach kurzem Zögern widerstehe der Versuchung.
Like - face generation. People either wear glasses or they don't, it's a binary operation. But generation via diffusion starts with a continuous feature space, and is acted upon by a continuous function. This code will function in most cases but it is fundamentally incorrect.
If you take two faces, one with glasses and one without, interpolating between them will get you weird glasses melded with the face, and this is an artefact of that.
Eben in einer Unterhaltung mit Produktionsmitarbeiter:innen das Wort „Motek“ für Hammer gehört. Gemutmaßt, dass es polnisch ist. Recherchiert und zwei Dinge herausgefunden: 1. gebräuchlich im Ruhrgebiet und tatsächlich polnischer Herkunft. 2. im hebräischen bedeutet Motek „Schatz, Liebste:r“ und daraus ist im jiddischen das Kosewort „Motte“ entstanden. Meine Oma hat mich quasi immer „(Mini)Motte“ genannt 😍
When I started experimenting with #Linux again in 2024, I was very impressed at how mature everything had become since I last tried it in the mid-00s. The biggest surprise, though, was #GNOME. It had a level of intentionality and clarity of vision that far exceeded my expectations of a FLOSS project. It made me feel welcome and comfortable.
To the developers of @gnome : Thank you for having the audacity to strive for simplicity in the face of continued criticism from the community. It matters.
We need to sort out the crisp situation in the UK. No one wants 25g of crisps. 50g should be the minimum portion, especially if it's individually packaged in a none biodegradable wrapper that will still be sitting in landfill when my great-grandchildren are drawing their pensions
See? All 3 of my wrappers got a little bit of TLC. (tender love and care) Brailab-Wrapper got the nicer say-all, Softvoice-wrapper did too, and Flexvoice-wrapper got major updates to how it handles both say all and consonant generation. Whew whew. Gotta give them love all equally, they're my babies now. Weee weeee they go, crying through the night, asking me to fix this callback or that function, weeee weee. Hush little code babies, hush. You're all patched up now. Next time you'll all grow will be when NVDA 2026.1 will require I wrap the wrapper in another wrapper to sandbox the wrapper from wrapping NVDA too rapidly. Wait what?
Hubert Figuière
in reply to abadidea • • •