Sarah Jamie Lewis

Camera telescope testing last night, wasn't the best seeing, but I always love a taking a nice photo of Jupiter + moons.

Testing out a new telescope camera, chance encountered a bird catching a ride on a thermal.

RE: @sarahjamielewis@mastodon.social

Another example of how the slop permeates everything.

Today while checking out some new metadata resistance papers, I came across one which talks about a project I originated (@cwtch@fosstodon.org) and manages to not only cite the wrong year and paper title, but also attributes the work to "Lewis, Angel and others" in the text or "S. Angel" in the references.

Just why? What is the point in producing slop that looks like a paper? On what planet is that something worth doing?

"we are cancelling the free open source project tier you've been using for years, to be considered for the replacement tier you will need to post the following statement of partnership on your website about that is focused on how great our new AI features are"

Oh...we're in *that* stage of the hype decline.

The extent to which core linux projects are laying the groundwork for age verification is very concerning.

I understand why some believe they are compelled to do so, and why others feel that it may be better to implement the most minimal conforming implementation in the hopes of fending off something worse.

But the line must be drawn such that no threat can obligate an OS to collect/store personal information - without that freedom, we face an uphill fight to protect general purpose computing.

The extent to which core linux projects are laying the groundwork for age verification is very concerning.

I understand why some believe they are compelled to do so, and why others feel that it may be better to implement the most minimal conforming implementation in the hopes of fending off something worse.

But the line must be drawn such that no threat can obligate an OS to collect/store personal information - without that freedom, we face an uphill fight to protect general purpose computing.

I like how the internet has got to the point where random sites feature fake quotes by me, occasionally regarding research I never did, sometimes while working in positions I've never held.

Fun conversations attempting to game out the question "to what extent is [an OS mandating data collection] / [mandating OS data collection] related to age legal in Canada?"

- Big difference between the acceptability of applying collection at the point of service of a restricted activity v.s. mandating general collection, even if it stays on device.

- Charter FoE rights likely come into play when it comes to mandating the existence of parental controls, optional or otherwise.

It's absurd how good running has been for my mood, the knowledge that I am able to cover significant distances at speed has done wonders for my ability to deal with the constant stream of bullshit.

In fun legislative news, BC has finally stopped waiting around for the US to modernize, and has gone ahead and adopted permanent DST starting next week!

"Recent actions from the U.S. have shifted how B.C. approaches decisions that merit alignment, including on time zones. Making this change now reflects the current preferences and needs of British Columbians, and helps ensure the province is well-positioned to thrive, even when circumstances across the border evolve."

https://archive.news.gov.bc.ca/releases/news_releases_2024-2028/2026AG0013-000209.htm

With all the discussion around detecting when a code repo contains commits authored by an LLM, I think it is important to note commits like the following in Mozilla Firefox from 2 weeks ago: "Bug 2011195 - When an agent commits, don't add itself as author" https://github.com/mozilla-firefox/firefox/commit/71cc24b6a400dbd434e4df37087960d94b764791 I don't think it's a good thing that Mozilla seem to be explicitly encouraging unattributed LLM code in Firefox.

"we can help you book 4-8 meetings each day!" I don't know how you found my email, but it would appear that you have been gravely misled about the kinds of services that I would find valuable.

When it became obvious that the primary consumer of bandwidth was corporate web scrapers powering generative models, I started being more selective about what personal projects (/+updates) I made public. Ultimately I have no interest in doing subsidized work in the service of for-profit enterprises; and while there was always an undercurrent, lately the dynamics of the foss ecosystem have radically shifted towards that end. Thinking back to the days when IRC was the main way I shared code.

We ( @openprivacy@hachyderm.io / @cwtch@fosstodon.org ) are looking for a software dev for a short-term contract to tackle a set of Android-related issues for Cwtch.

Specifically we are looking for someone who:

- has experience with flutter (both desktop/android)
- has experience with android / kotlin dev
- is able to work in Canada

Our budget for this is 4800-6000 CAD, and we estimate there is ~1 month of work, with the potential for more down the road.

Please send recommendations/pitches to jobs@openprivacy.ca.