Angus McIntyre

The fact that the British defense attaché to the United Arab Emirates is called Group Captain Sandy Sandilands is proof that this season's writers are just getting lazier and lazier.

Humanity is fast closing in on our "Game of Thrones, Season 8” moment, and the chaotic season finale of “A Planet Called Earth” is just going to leave our audience in the rest of the galaxy furious and disappointed.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/03/10/raf-chief-sandy-sandilands-leads-british-desert-sorties/

If you're skeptical about vibe-coding, consider that the US military is reportedly using Claude for mission-planning and target selection, so they are literally vibe-warring.

Can't imagine how that could go wrong in any way that matters.

Here’s a scenario to consider:

1. Xi Jinping decides the time is right to invade Taiwan.
2. With many US forces concentrated in the Middle East, & cruise missiles & smart bombs in reduced supply, the US can’t respond effectively.
3. The invasion of Taiwan, successful or not, cuts off US access to advanced chips (90% made in Taiwan)
4. US tech stocks are wiped out, the US economy goes into freefall.
5. US becomes Russia 2.0: a failed state with a mad dictator, nukes & an economy in shreds.

Now that an Australian biotech company has successfully demonstrated "Doom" running on human braincells, I think we have to acknowledge the possibility that human beings might one day be capable of thought.

I did wonder vaguely why feathers kept floating up past my window.

Eventually I looked out and found this individual enjoying a pigeon lunch on my neighbor's air conditioner.

#birds #BirdsOfMastodon #hawks #HawksOfMastodon

For #caturday, two more black-and-white cats from the cat colony by the Ponte del Risorgimento in Rome. Smol kitten is apprehensive about the camera-toting stranger, big cat is unimpressed.

#cats #CatsOfMastodon

Roses are red
Violets are blue
The dungeon’s pitch black
You've been eaten by a grue.

The commits were coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE!

It's negative-something degrees out, so going outside requires layering up in your warmest clothes.

The orange cat, who is not the sharpest knife in the feline drawer, thinks that snowpants and winter jackets are terrifying monsters that swallow human beings (and probably cats).

The worst part is that he can hear my partner's voice, muffled by her scarf, coming from INSIDE THE MONSTER, and she's obviously been swallowed whole & is crying out for help, and he DOESN'T KNOW WHAT TO DO.

#cats

RE: @verge@mastodon.social

Starting in March, I guess I won’t be using Discord.

"Donate your Sky Miles so that people unlawfully abducted by the mad dictator’s heartless goon squad can get home to their families” is a dystopian flourish so absurdly over-the-top that even I would have rejected it as a plot element in my fiction.

And yet here we are.

So the OS upgrade went well but it removed a Python version that one of the APIs depended on and redeploying for the new version required me to rewrite an old ansible playbook because ansible's moved on too and that revealed that GitHub's server fingerprint has changed and part of the API turns out to depend on a feature of flask that has been deprecated, but it's in scaffolded code so I have no idea what it does or how and if you want me I’ll be over here slowly walking into the sea.

#TechDebt

For #caturday, this cat is from the same Roman cat colony as the cat I posted last week. I'm pretty sure that they're related.

#cats #CatsOfMastodon

How to make AI profitable.

1. Create tech that needs massive amounts of high-end hardware (RAM, GPUs, SSDs etc)
2. Pre-order hardware in huge quantities at current pricing
3. Spread stories about hardware shortages caused by AI
4. Wait for hardware prices to spike
5. Receive pre-ordered hardware
6. Sell hardware into retail channels at new high price

Optionally:

1. Wait for prices to crash as supply catches up
2. Buy hardware for your AI projects at new low price using earnings from 6.

“Hi! Your OS here! See that red badge demanding your attention?”

"What is it?”

"It's sports news! Isn't that great?”

"I don't give a shit about sports. How do I turn it off?”

"If you're not interested in sports, you can customize the alerts to show something you ARE interested in.”

"I'm interested in an OS that does what I tell it. One that works for me. That doesn't track me or try to ‘maximize engagement’ or sell me crap or nag me about using AI or whatever. Got anything for that?”

“…”