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  RE: https://mastodon.scot/@dougcoulson/117343406521143514 Time for serious sanctions and bar complaints, tbh. And pushing for them to be taken seriously.

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  RE: https://infosec.exchange/@metacurity/117303224740977755 Part of me wonders if some of the freak out here is driven by a kind of “kill the heretic” urge, since the US AI labs are deeply rooted in apocalyptic Christian theology, and the Chinese labs very much are not. (Maybe there are apocalyptic Daoist or Confuscian threads, but it doesn’t seem widespread like in Christianity) Ideologies tend to conflict, and in those conflicts the wackiest ideology freaks out the most.

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  RE: https://social.vmbrasseur.com/@vmbrasseur/117062115632453344 “A lot of days we are using more wind,” Whitesides said. “There are no fuel costs there; it’s essentially free.” This is what makes wind and solar so nice as power generation systems. It’s almost a one-and-done thing, unlike fossil fuel generation where you pay a massive amount to build a plant that… does nothing until you pay (continually) someone else for the inputs.

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  More people should take courses in 18th century French history. https://bsky.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:r75unbj372lvbim6syioaueo/post/3mslohzup5224

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  Seeing another round of “it turns out that WFH has serious downsides because employees get all their social interaction at work and are getting unhealthy without that” and my first thought is “maybe we should fix that but where people are forced to rely on their jobs for social interaction” rather than “let’s go back to the office”

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  Neat the MFA is running a French film festival. (Pinging @tankgrrl@hachyderm.io in case they didn’t know) https://www.mfa.org/programs/series/the-boston-french-film-festival #Boston

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  RE: https://mastodon.social/@houstonpublicmedia/116998685471778121 Frankly at this point grid operators should guarantee residential rates and supply, and have large inbound customers bid for the remainder, along with them being the first cut when the grid is stressed. Want to open a datacenter? You’re first for the chop when the water or power supply is low, and you absorb the extra costs. If you don’t want this, then pony up the extra capacity as part of your hookup, and if you can’t then su...

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  RE: https://fosstodon.org/@AkaSci/116993671723883053 Given how capital intensive satellite internet is, especially since the satellites have a very short and hard-imposed lifetime, how small the addressable market is, and how much competition for ISP services there is, I honestly don’t see how having multiple satellite internet companies is viable.

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  Nothing quite like spending time trying to configure the WiFi gateway on some consumer hardware to make you seriously consider getting a good masonry bit for the drill and just running cat6 cabling instead.

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  RE: https://infosec.exchange/@corq/116938767979195456 Well, this explains the “we just updated your Wordpress install!” email I got from my hosting provider. I really, really would love to get rid of goddamn Wordpress and use something a bit less… full-featured.

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  Oh, huh, Taco Bell gave a huge number of people the enthusiastic shits. Now there’s one of the least surprising thing ever, though in fairness I think they don’t usually do it with parasites.

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  RE: https://mastodon.social/@brettcannon/116837182802106809 A reminder of why you should never put your "smart" TV on the internet. And also this should just be illegal. Put some sensible regulations in place as to what apps are allowed to do.

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  Oh, look, datacenters driving up the cost of power. This is one of those cases where I'd say the school district(s) and municipal governments should install some mass solar. Schools tend to have huge parking lots you can put solar shade over, and buildings with lots of flat space on their roofs, plus an in with the planning people. Bonus is you get incremental benefits -- you don't have to wait for everything to be installed and can turn things on as they go in. https://www.404media.co...

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  I'm actually kinda impressed at how all the computer-y AI boosters are completely missing how switching over to sparkling autocomplete will basically kill programming language research and development dead. Sparkling autocomplete can only produce variants of things in its trained matrix that pretty much by definition guarantees it can't make any use of new things. Like, say, developments in programming languages and their environments.

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  This whole bullshit with Chrome snagging another 4G of disk space for local model weights reminds me that developers should always be outfitted with the second shittiest machines still under support, and the proper response to whines of "my machine is slow!" is "write better goddamn code."

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  The more of this I see the more I wonder about the long term effects of COVID, tbh. https://mastodon.social/@prietschka/116513063765127751

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  Yow. Hantavirus has an up to 8 *week* incubation period. That's wild. Also the fact that there's potentially some human to human transmission here is kinda terrifying. (I wonder how long before all the world except the US has a viable hantavirus vaccine available?) This was a fairly small cruise ship, thankfully, but still. Ocean cruises. Not even once. https://www.science.org/content/article/cruise-ship-s-hantavirus-outbreak-puts-researchers-uncharted-territory

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  Oooh, it's 5/4. Dave Brubeck day! Have a link to possibly the best version of Take Five that we have a surviving recording of. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT9Eh8wNMkw

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  @soatok once again I’m reminded that you should never implement your own crypto. When you’re in a situation where you must implement crypto you always should assume you’re an idiot, that you will get things wrong, and plan the protocol to be able to shut off the versions where you screwed up. Then find people who can tell you how you screwed things up and believe what they say.

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  Neat pointer to a thing from @tchambers@indieweb.social and I look forward to the outcome. Also, if you're a person in Big Tech (or even Medium Tech) and think "this is neat, I kinda wish someone was doing that for this other thing I like"... that means you! Yes, you, the person who doesn't have the time but absolutely has the cash. Sponsor a grant for someone to do the work. You can afford it. It's probably even tax-deductible and employer-matchable. https://indieweb.soc...

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  Oh, look, another expensive toy I really don't need but *absolutely* want. https://gizmodo.com/anker-uv-printer-printing-on-different-materials-comparison-2000749680?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

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  At this point I’m comfortable saying any policy this administration proposes is bad and planned for bad and probably evil purposes. They may suck at it because they’re incompetent, but the reasons are still bad. https://universeodon.com/@digyoursoul/116439835076916678

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  Oh, hey, maybe we found the ginormous security flaw that Mythos was warning about! https://piefed.social/c/programming/p/1990030/mcp-design-flaw-puts-200k-servers-at-risk-and-anthropic-won-t-fix-it

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  Is it quantum? I feel like any kind of bitcoin AI movie should be quantum somehow, that just seems appropriate. https://flipboard.com/@kotaku/culture-ofp4l3m8z/-/a--nDxHQSJTSix2Xsu37o0aA%3Aa%3A1938881949-%2F0

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  Saw a news blip that said "RFKjr is talking everything from cocaine to Froot Loops" and I misread that as *taking* and I suspect my version is also entirely accurate.

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  With this whole "AI Zuck" thing, I am now left wondering whether people will consider the real or AI Zuck to be significantly more human, and also why that's the AI one.

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  This is hilarious. Also fake, but let's be honest our bullshit AI "summaries" have set us up for this and frankly we deserve the ridicule for it even when it's not real. https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@rygorous/116395019715158849

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  Huh, the ATProto/Bluesky folks have gone full Web3 and built payment stuff into their protocol. I'm sure this'll work out, since we all know Web3 is going great! https://bsky.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:xgvzy7ni6ig6ievcbls5jaxe/post/3mjfc2sekbc2k

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  Handy list of things you can do with Google. We *do* still have a lot of useful information and really powerful capabilities built into search, we're just intent on hiding them behind a layer of AI crap for stupid organizational reasons. https://cardcatalogforlife.substack.com/p/google-has-a-secret-reference-desk

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  New Tank! performance. It's ridiculously self-indulgent and goddamn awesome. 28 years after the original series got released but Yoko Kanno and The Seatbelts absolutely still have it. https://youtu.be/d75ov4HvRrM Edit: holy shit, she’s coming to #Boston in a week! Anime Boston 2026 at Hynes on April 3rd. She’s musical GoH too. Also link to find a place to buy so you don’t have to mess with ripping from YouTube: https://linkco.re/1XRNMCYM?lang=en Buy music, support artists.