Tootfinder

Yesterday, I've read a vibe coded script for the first time in my life, and I've cried.
It wasn't ugly. "Ugly" is not the right term. It was as if someone wasn't able to comprehend beauty, but badly tried to mimic it. It felt like "malicious compliance" to beauty. The kind of awful verbose pedantry that feels wrong every step of the way.
It's the kind of code you'd expect in a corporate environment when you know that the code would be read by the top suits who have no idea about coding, but judge it by the volume and expect science fiction level of make-believe.
It's the kind of code is abstracted away into the tiniest details. Every function returns a complex dataclass explaining precisely what it did, for no reason at all. What would be two lines of code is a function. What would be a function is a whole module. It's a caricature of good programming practices.
I was supposed to add modifying a second field on the same object via GitHub API. I've guessed it would take me about an hour to figure out the code enough to be able to do that — what ought to be 2-3 extra lines. I suspected I'd discover that most of the code does precisely nothing. Just meaningless API exchanges that are absolutely unnecessary. It felt like the kind of parody of bureaucracy where you have to file 10 forms to do something, and only one of them actually means anything.
What used to be "do one thing well" became "doing ten totally random things is fine, as long as one of them happens to be what I need, and the whole thing doesn't blow anything up in an obvious way".
Perhaps it's just because this way a throwaway script. Maybe "production" stuff takes more, err, prompt refining? Maybe it actually can produce stuff that's comprehensible.
But if that code was any indicator, then I'm not going to believe that any big LLM contributions are actually reviewed by humans. A review will take more time than rewriting from scratch. This is a ticking time bomb. That LLM-generated code isn't introducing exploits right now is either a statistical accident, or it's just that nobody bothers.
Clarification: I didn't "prompt" it or request one. I'm not a hypocrite.
#NoAI #NoLLM #AI #LLM

Admiring the genius of "Apollo 13" (1995)! 🌌 This film epitomizes unmatched ingenuity and teamwork, surmounting incredible odds. It embodies Churchill’s wisdom: success isn't final, failure isn't fatal; courage to continue is vital. 💪🚀 #Apollo13 #CinematicMasterpiece

I hope this isn't a sign on how the week will go. Forced update to work machine. Takes forever to apply and then it freezes on reboot. Forced reboot and about 30 minutes later a black screen forcing another reboot.
Only doing prep work for the upcoming release, nothing major.
Coffee, more coffee!

The Stock Market Is More Expensive Than It Looks. Tread Carefully.
Up 8%, down 5%, down 4%, up 6%
—these are just a handful of the single-day herk-a-jerks since the beginning of February for shares of America’s largest company, Nvidia.
The broader S&P 500 index this past week had briefly slid 9% from its January high, then rocketed back several points, and was last seen trying to decide on its next adventure.
This isn’t a call to flee stocks.
It’s a suggest…

The Stock Market Is More Expensive Than It Looks. Tread Carefully. — Barron’s
Corporate profits have been wonderful, but they seem puffed up by an accounting quirk and more.

In the interests of starting a more productive dialogue than yesterday's main character was interested in, let's make a #brainstorm thread about design changes to ActivityPub and/or client UI that could actually help address drive-by (often racist) harassment on the fediverse.
Feel free to discuss pros/cons but don't feel an idea needs to be perfect to suggest it. Also since this is a brainstorm don't worry about complexity/implementation cost. If you have a great-but-hard-to-implement idea someone else may think of a way to simplify it.
Note that the underlying problem *is* a social one, do there won't be a technological fix! But tech changes can make social remedies easier/harder.
I've got some to start:
1. Have a "protected mode" that users can voluntarily turn on. Some servers might turn it on by default. In protected mode, users whose accounts are less than D days old and/or who have fewer than F followers can't reply to or DM you. F and D could have different values for same-sever vs. different-server accounts, and could be customized by each user. Obviously a dedicated harasser can get around this, but it ups the activation energy for block evasion and pile-ons a bit. Would be interesting to review moderation records to estimate how helpful this might or might not be. Could also have a setting to require "follows-from-my-server" although that might be too limiting on private servers. Restriction would be turned off for people you mention within that thread and could be set to unlimit anyone you've ever mentioned. Would this lock new users out of engagement entirely? If everyone had it on via a default, you'd have you post your own stuff until someone followed you (assuming F=1). One could add "R non-moderated replies" and/or "F favorites" options to soften things; those experiencing more harassment could set higher limits. When muting/blocking/reporting someone who replied to your post, protected mode could be suggested with settings that would have filtered the post you're reporting.
2. Enable some form of public moderation info to be displayed when both moderator and local server opt-in. Obviously each server would be able to ignore federated public tags. I'm imagining "banned from X server for R reason (optional link to evidence)" appearing on someone's profile & an icon on their PFP in each post viewed by someone on server Y *if* the mods of server X decide it's appropriate *and* server Y opts in to displaying such tags from server X specifically. Alliances of servers with similar moderation preferences could then have moderation action on one server result in clear warning propagation to others without the other mods needing to decide whether to also take action immediately. In some cases different moderation preferences would mean you wouldn't take action yourself but would keep the notice up for your users to consider. Obviously the "Scarlet Letter" vibe ain't great, but in some cases it's deserved, and when there's disagreement between servers about that, mods on server Y could either disable a specific tag or disable federation of mod tags from that server in general. Even better shared moderation tools are of course possible.
3. Different people/groups have different norms around boosting. Currently we only have a locked/public binary. Without any big protocol changes, adding a "prefers boosts/doesn't" setting which would warn in the UI before a viewer chooses to boost if the preference is "doesn't" could help. This could be set per-post, but could also have defaults and could have different values for same-server or not, or for particular servers. For example, I could say "default to prefer boosts from users on my server but not from users on other servers" or "default to prefer boosting on all servers except mastodon.social." Last option might be harder to implement I guess.
#ActivityPub #Meta #Harassment

Apple expands its American Manufacturing Program, bringing in Bosch, Cirrus Logic, TDK, and Qnity Electronics to make components in the US for sale worldwide (MacKenzie Sigalos/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/26/apple-american-manufacturing-program-trump.ht…

Apple expands American manufacturing program with four new partners
Apple is adding Bosch, Cirrus Logic, TDK, and Qnity Electronics to its American Manufacturing Program, committing $400 million through 2030.

If only I had known this earlier, I might have been more enthusiastic about GenAI. 🫣
"Microsoft is paying influencers to say Copilot isn’t awful garbage that makes work miserable by, e.g., “posting an Instagram video about fun things to do with Microsoft Copilot.” [CNBC]
Microsoft and Google are spending $400,000–$600,000 per influencer."

Any reason why Apple decided to go all Halloween with their new iWork icons?
Is anyone in control of the clown cart over there?
#apple #design

There's a Mail piece with a headline that seems like people are angry at the development work on Jony Ive's home, as though he's about to drop a giant translucent Bondi Blue structure in the neighbourhood.
But the quotes are like:
> 'Initially people were worried because it is a big project and they thought it was bound to disrupt the community but they have been perfect.'

The house iPhone built: Apple icon Sir Jony Ive under fire for turning his £17million listed Cotswolds mansion into a 'James Bond lair'
When it comes to Grand Designs, Sir Jony Ive's transformation of his Cotswolds mansion is possibly the grandest of them all with work due to take three years.

So now that Meet.Coop isn't working (they shut down the @… instance and don't seem to be able to bring it back) wondering if anyone knows of another #privacy or #cooperative