@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io2025-07-07 01:38:13
Even if “AI” worked (it doesn’t), there’s many reasons why you shouldn’t use it:
1. It’s destroying Internet sites that you love as you use chat bots instead of actually going to sources of information—this will cause them to be less active and eventually shut down.
2. Pollution and water use from server farms cause immediate harm; often—just like other heavy industry—these are built in underprivileged communities and harming poor people. Without any benefits as the big tech companies get tax breaks and don’t pay for power, while workers aren’t from the community but commute in.
3. The basic underlying models of any LLM rely on stolen data, even when specific extra data is obtained legally. Chatbots can’t learn to speak English just by reading open source code.
4. You’re fueling a speculation bubble that is costing many people their jobs—because the illusion of “efficiency” is kept up by firing people and counting that as profit.
5. Whenever you use the great cheat machine in the cloud you’re robbing yourself from doing real research, writing or coding—literally atrophying your brain and making you stupider.
It’s a grift, through and through.
@pre@boing.world2025-06-02 20:28:08
Confusing episode. Let me clear it all up.
The world is sinking into the doubt needed to rescue Omega, remember, and The Doctor is falling with a balcony that's separated from the building.
How does he get out of that?
Well, saved by a literal magic door that pops out of nowhere, leading back to the time hotel. 🤨
Anita, who he spent a year with once a couple of Christmases ago, has been popping around the Doctor's entire long life, peeping on him with the Daleks and stuff. Trying to find him on the Earth's last day. Today.
And now he's rescued, today turns into a groundhog day. Same day over and over again. 😆
There's another woman that's been stalking him through time lately, Mrs Flood. She was following him everywhere, but she had Xmas off she reckons, so didn't see the Time Hotel bit. Thus the element of surprise in the deus ex machina rescue. 😀
The Doctor is broken free of the wish spell now anyway, popped his conditioning, and can use the time hotel's door to recall Unit and break them all out of the wish too.
The Rani pops in to say hi and explain her plans. 😝
How did the Rani survive the end of the Timelords? She flipped her DNA to sidestep the genetic bomb apparently? Well that makes no sense, but nor does anything else so no time to ponder.
The end of the Time Lords made them all Barons... No, made them barren. There can be no more children of the time-lords.
She's popping Omega back out of the underworld for his DNA because the timelords are all barren and she wants to recreate Galifrey.
But wait a minute: Poppy is the Doctor's kid in wish world! So she should have Timelord DNA too! Maybe that could work?
No. The Rani is a nazi, don't like the kid's contaminated blood. She's got human all over her DNA. Eww.
Rani pops off back to her Bone Palace, and makes the bone beasts attack.
The Doctor explains that the Giant dinosaur skeletons are beasts that pop in to clean up the world when there's a reality flux, and the Rani has turned them on Unit HQ.
So the UNIT HQ turns into some kinda ship? Like the Crimson Permanent Insurance. Lol. It's blasting lasers at the bone beasts and turning around, and has a steering wheel like pirate ship now. 🤣
During the battle, the Doctor pops out to take a ride on the sky-bike, looking like something from Flash Gordon, and crashes into the Bone Palace.
Too late though! Omega is pretty much here now. He's a giant boney CGI zombie, become his own legend. Looks great but doesn't really seem like Omega, who ought to be held together by pure will.
Omega eats the Rani! One of the Ranis anyway. Mrs Flood avoids being eaten. She pops off with the time bracelet. "So much for the Two Rani's. It's a goodnight from me!" as she disappears off into time. Great gag. 😁
The Doctor just shoots Omega to get him back into his box. Pops a rifle off the wall. The Vindicator has apparently also got a built in laser as well as locator beacons. So that's handy. The Doctor doesn't use guns but some of his devices work like one. 🔫
So all is well! The day is saved and the wish is over and baby Poppy survives in a time box! 🍻
They're going to take the space baby off to do space adventures. Ruby is jealous of seeing The Doctor and Belinda vibing like that, as they plan a life in space with the space baby. Aww. Poor Ruby. 😭
But then Poppy pops off! Disappears entirely, and everyone other than Ruby forgets. Ruby remembers because she's disappeared from time herself in the past they say.
Okay: to save his child and on Ruby's word alone, the Doctor will sacrifice himself to turn reality one degree.
He goes off to commit suicide by Regeneration, but Thirteen is here! She's popped out of her timeline to stop him! Or maybe to help, with a motivational chat instead. Gives him a pep talk then pops back off again.
The Doctor zaps reality with his Tardis, dying but holding off on the actual regeneration for a few moments to go check on the kid.
The kid is safe! But isn't his own kid any more. Poppy has popped all her Timelord DNA and is just all human now. Poppy's pop isn't the doc, it's someone called Richie.
And Belinda has been so keen to get home all this time in order to get back to her Baby! Who isn't a timelord, and definitely didn't exist until she was wished into being.
This may not be the most ethical action The Doctor has ever taken: To bend the whole universe in order to recreate a baby that was accidentally wished into being out of nothing. Twisting time to give a child to a nurse who didn't previously have a child, or even remember the wish. Then it's not even the same child that disappeared, coz this one is all human. 🤷
But the doc is popping off to regenerate with Joy in the stars, and... Turns blonde: "oh. Hello?" 🤯
It's Rose! Billie Piper is back? Fantastic!
Is Rose doing a David Tennant Impression there?
Billie playing the Doctor, doing a Tennant impression as Bad Wolf? Amazing. Can't wait.
#doctorWho
@detondev@social.linux.pizza2025-08-08 06:00:30
alright im going through my old files again and rediscovered a shitty unfinished sci-fi epic poem thing i was writing sometime when i was 14/15/idfk. all i remember about it is that it was gonna keep doing this countdown and changing structure accordingly for a really long time, i was thinking of depicting the character finding love in an ethereal sorta way for the ending, and it was gonna incorporate a enochian number square for some reason.
@midtsveen@social.linux.pizza2025-06-06 20:25:11
Happy #PrideMonth! 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈
I’m just too fabulously queer and genderfluid to function like anyone expects. My identity is a whole spectrum, shifting and sparkling with every color and every gender. 🌈✨
Some days I’m femme, some days I’m masc, and some days I’m something totally unique and undefined. 💖💙🤍
My
@cdarwin@c.im2025-06-06 18:23:11
The Trump administration’s cancellation of $766 million in contracts to develop mRNA vaccines against potential pandemic flu viruses -- is the latest blow -- to national defense, former health security officials said.
They warned that the U.S. could be at the mercy of other countries in the next pandemic.
“The administration’s actions are gutting our deterrence from biological threats,” said Beth Cameron, a senior adviser to the Brown University Pandemic Center
"we are…
@toxi@mastodon.thi.ng2025-06-08 07:36:53
Launch pad.
(Not really, but that part of the Saalfelder Weg very much makes me feel like wanting to take off... Höhengefühle!)
#SilentSunday #LandscapePhotography #Photography
@blakes7bot@mas.torpidity.net2025-07-06 18:19:57
Series C, Episode 02 - Powerplay
VILA: You know, those two are really nice girls, really nice.
RECEPTIONIST: They've brought in over twenty primitives in the last two years.
VILA: You don't surprise me, they're all heart those two.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/302/399
@inthehands@hachyderm.io2025-06-06 17:16:17
I know some of the money is thinking what @… says here. The trouble here is that Tesla is currently wildly, absurdly, comically overvalued wrt its fundamentals, and there are really only two rationalizations for that:
(1) Musk is a brain genius who will innovate the company into magic unicorn fairyland of world domination.
(2) Musk has Trump on a leash and will reap the benefits of kleptocratic plundering of the US Federal budget.
Both of those justifications depend on Musk remaining at Tesla. If he leaves, there’s little reason for the P/E ratio not to correct to normal car company levels — which AIUI would mean a stock price drop of >90%.
https://hachyderm.io/@zzzeek/114637505037473139
@brian_gettler@mas.to2025-08-06 15:20:14
I spent a few minutes this morning reading articles published in Canadian newspapers in the days immediately after the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They have a few things in common - they rely on US military sources, are optimistic about the effects on the war, and include very little on the horrors the bombs wrought. It took a few days for articles reporting the cities' utter annihilation to appear, based largely on Japanese accounts and only after the US bombed Na…
@grifferz@social.bitfolk.com2025-07-07 20:28:00
Meanwhile in Dwarf Fortress, construction of the temple to Bisek Cavernmoth, god of darkness and the night, has hit a stumbling block when my stonemason took it upon himself to decorate it with a statue of a slug.
Even more disturbingly, this appears to be a therapeutic endeavour for young Vutok.
#DwarfFortress
