← Feed

Posts

• Post #4387808

  RE: https://mastodon.social/@arstechnica/117039455695536520 Crack down on prediction markets, full stop.

• Post #4116657

  The illusion of choice.

• Post #3853072

  “I asked a few AI researchers whether they could name any other real-world software that scales so poorly. None of them could think of any. Even outside the world of software, it’s hard to find a comparable example, given that economy of scale is the principle that has made light bulbs, cars, and clothing so affordable. By economic and engineering measures, generative AI might be the worst technology ever deployed.” https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/07/generative-ai-engineering-disaste...

• Post #3840118

  I’m sick and tired of so-called “experts” telling me that I can’t fart myself into orbit. The sky is the limit, if we have the will to overcome. 🚀

• Post #3744158

  Deeply irritated this morning by #firefox on #ios. I accidentally closed a tab by swiping it very slightly. I can’t reopen the closed tab, and I can’t even see what it was. Three UX failures in one thumb twitch. Now I have an unscratchable itch in the back of my mind that I may have deleted something important and I HATE IT. Swipe gestures are a UX disaster. An analogue minefield of digital traps, hair thin distinctions and accessibility barriers.

• Post #2636805

  “If there is a conflict between two groups, rather than adjudicating it, making a call, we say: all right, we need to add a process in to fix this conflict. This results in a sort of procedure fetish, where the process is kind of the end that people care about, rather than stepping back and saying, well, what are we trying to actually do here.” https://www.thejournal.ie/metrolink-conference-engineers-infrastructure-ireland-7039886-May2026/

• Post #2636804

  “The Silk Road Café is located in the Chester Beatty library at Dublin Castle. It has been in business since 2001 and was gearing up for the celebration of its 25-year anniversary in mid-July when it was informed it would have to close for security reasons. Abraham Phelan, the owner of the café, told The Journal he now has to let all his staff go. There are between 20 and 25 staff members employed at the café, a number of whom have been working there for over 20 years.” https://www.thejournal.i...

• Post #2636803

  If you categorise people by their actions, that category can easily become a group identity, and group identities are forever. Once an action becomes a badge of identity, all hope for growth and change is lost, perhaps for generations. Call out offences individually. Call out offenders by name, not collectively. Otherwise you risk compressing the snowflakes into ice.

• Post #2636802

  RE: https://infosec.exchange/@brian_greenberg/116315152417885333 This tracks. In most modern companies the choice is between using Microsoft’s pile of shit, Google’s pile of shit, or Amazon’s pile of shit. They’re each shit in different ways and to different degrees, and you often don’t have a choice anyway because they’re transient dependencies via other vendors.

• Post #2636801

  “Criticism of Russia is not treated as hatred towards Russians. Opposition to American wars is not automatically framed as hostility towards Americans as a people. Protest against the Chinese government is not assumed to be anti-Chinese racism. Only when it comes to Israel does this distinction repeatedly collapse. That collapse carries consequences.“ https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/5/16/britain-is-losing-the-ability-to-tell-anti-semitism-from-dissent

• Post #2326774

  RE: https://vmst.io/@jalefkowit/116512432420427808 Smart appliances were a mistake

• Post #1910131

  Westenberg is on fire tonight: “Every war feels necessary. Every panic feels justified. Every empire feels eternal and every new God feels true. Every resource looks infinite right up until it isn’t. Every revolution feels pure for about eighteen months. Every Cassandra looks hysterical. Every mistake of the past was made by people who were certain they weren't making it.” https://www.joanwestenberg.com/the-loop-everything-has-happened-before-and-everything-will-happen-again/

• Post #1690003

  Five(ish) years ago I deleted twitter, abandoned facebook, and uninstalled instagram from my phone. My mental health is better, but I’ve effectively lost touch with *a lot* of extended family and friends. Fedi is great, but it’s an exclusive subculture, even less representative of “real life” than the networks it replaced.

• Post #1664193

  RE: https://chaos.social/@delta/116442985976134144 I noticed this failure happen in real time, and I remembered reading about the new multiple relays feature. I went to delta.chat and followed the instructions to set up two extra (random) relays by scanning their QR setup codes, and set one of them as my new default. Everything magically worked again (though I had to long-press and manually resend the last couple of messages). It takes a lot of effort to make complex things look effortless. Ma...

• Post #990932

  “I let this thing into my brain, and now it is always there. For any new potential project, there is a voice in my head telling me how much easier it would be to let the model do it... Feeling this for myself has only reinforced my belief that these models constitute an addictive substance. They alter cognition in ways deleterious to human prosperity. In other words, for as much output as they provide, they take something important from us.” https://taggart-tech.com/reckoning/

• Post #453213

  “we estimate that a million satellites could mean that a teragram (one billion kgs) of alumina accumulates in the upper atmosphere – enough, alongside launch emissions, to significantly alter atmospheric chemistry and heating in dramatic ways we do not yet understand. There is no public mandate for a single company in one country to make changes on that scale to the planet’s atmosphere.” https://theconversation.com/a-new-space-race-could-turn-our-atmosphere-into-a-crematorium-for-satellites-276...