Tootfinder

After a few weeks with Debian Stable, I decided yesterday to switch to Debian Testing after all. On more modern computers, it really does make a difference whether I have kernel 6.3 or 7.2 available or can use significantly more up-to-date packages.
Last month I also played around with Debian Sid, and it was absolutely stable for me, though the constant updates—often several times a day—were annoying. So Testing is the perfect compromise for me.
Let me just say this: I still co…

foldoc: FOLDOC entries (2002)
A network of hyperlinks among entries in the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (FOLDOC, www.foldoc.org), an online dictionary of acronyms and technical terms for computers. An edge points from i to j if the term j is referred to in the entry for term i. Edge weight denotes number of uses of the same term.
This network has 13356 nodes and 120238 edges.
Tags: Informational, Web graph, Weighted

The wonderfully #lazy way to #SSH into your computers
https://hackernoon.com/the-wonderfully

I fucking hate programming computers

Skimming the Sedelow & Sedelow papers, I came across this passage, which is as true today as it was in 1978.
Sedelow, W. A., & Sedelow, S. Y. (1978). Formalized historiography, the structure of scientific and literary texts: Part I. some issues posed by computational methodology. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 14(3), 247–263. https://

https://itsfoss.com/news/switzerland-replace-microssoft-pilot/
If the pilot is successful, we might expect the migration to continue on all the 54,000 workstations owned by the federal administrations.
Why?
First is the risk of foreign access. US cloud le…

Switzerland's Federal Government is Replacing Microsoft on 3,000 Computers
This is the pilot phase, with 3,000 workstations moving away from Microsoft 365. The federal administration has over 54,000 computers.

Xreal's Aura and Meta's VR Glasses hands-on: similar compute puck, lightweight design, and price, but Aura uses optical see-through lenses suitable for walking (Boone Ashworth/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/weve-tried-meta-and-xreals-xr-glasse…

I Put on Meta and Xreal’s XR Glasses. Face Computers Are Finally Getting Good
Xreal’s long-hyped Aura glasses arrive soon for $1,279. Here’s how they fare against Meta’s recently announced VR Glasses.

NARRATOR
How does a sharp-minded kid from the Midwest sticks
With a stack of print-outs higher than library bricks
Grow to design the code that a rocket ship ran
And guide a crew to land where no one had land?
When computers were giants that filled up the span
She coined the profession while drafting the plan:
“Software engineering” from one steady hand

What’s her name then?
What’s her name then?
What’s her name then?
What’s her …

The penny has just dropped. People in my timeline have been talking a lot about apples, particularly what colour they are, using hashtagappleevent. I thought this was like Apple Day at Berrington Hall but no, I think it's to do with computers 🤦 This is what 25 years of living in #Herefordshire does for you 🍏🍎

from my link log —
Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail.
https://fabiensanglard.net/jurrasic_park_computers/index.html
saved 2026-07-14

For Linux users on servers/personal computers, do you use full disk encryption (FDE), if so did you know about these performance tweaks? #luks #linux
I found out after using full disk encryption on my Linux devices for a long time that there are these tweaks that make it soo much more effici…

Your brain runs on 20 watts of power. Could brain-inspired computing do the same?
https://theconversation.com/your-brain-runs-on-20-watts-could-brain-inspired-computing-do-the-same-292048?ref=refind&…

Your brain runs on 20 watts. Could brain-inspired computing do the same?
Neuromorphic technology is reimagining how computers should work.

A Java Geek weekly 157
Security Baked Into the JVM. How People Actually Use Claude. The Findings Were Surprising. 13 years of blogging. The lazy way to SSH into your computers. 10 Popular Security Practices That Do Harm. Half the AI agents in production are if-statements with a GPU bill. 10 Modern CLI Tools You Should Try in 2026. Where Sensitive Data Hides in OpenTelemetry Pipelines, and How to Find It. Why I recommend Renovate over any other dependency update tools.

Computers used to be these amazing machines enabling humans to create the most amazing shit and, to borrow the Steve Jobs line, were truly a "bicycle for the mind".
These days every feels so bleak. Like you can only rent the bicycle and all roads have mud, ice and tram tracks on them and only ever go uphill.

friendship with computers ended. novel and exotic solvents are my new best friend

Wonder what took them so long …
Also, if it is bad for the troups, isn‘t it bad for the general public as well?
US Military Disables Ad Trackers On Devices To Protect Troops - Slashdot https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/09/06…

Kind of wild electronic music was ever accepted. Cold sounds made by computers instead of real humans. Lazy art made by those who didn't have the skill to make real music. I wonder if any groups of people swore they would never listen to electronic music and would shun anyone who did? I wonder what they are up to now?
All probably true until real artists took it and showed people it could be warm and very human.

„Desktop Explorer“ angespielt: Denksport für Profis
„Desktop Explorer“ lässt Spieler die rätselhaften Geheimnisse eines alten Computers entdecken. Ein minimalistisches, aber extrem forderndes Mystery-Abenteuer.
https://w…

„Desktop Explorer“ angespielt: Denksport für Profis
„Desktop Explorer“ lässt Spieler die rätselhaften Geheimnisse eines alten Computers entdecken. Ein minimalistisches, aber extrem forderndes Mystery-Abenteuer.

Oh, great. Just looked at Hetzner’s new pricing for VPS servers:
CPX22 (dedicated vCPU): €7.99 − €19.49 ( 143.8%)
So that’s fun. I guess one way to ensure the Small Web doesn’t happen is to make it prohibitively expensive for people to have their own servers.
(Before anyone mentions it, prices of single-board computers are also increasing and shipping hardware is an even bigger challenge.)
If anyone knows cheaper EU-based hosts, please leave a comment.
It’s so m…

Let's play a game:
Post the oldest image of your "battle station" / computer setup that you have.
Ideally, post some specs of the system if you can remember.
I'll start:
- photo from 2003
- Pentium II, 350MHz
- 3DFX Voodoo Banshee
- 1024x768 17" Eizo CRT
- Iomega Zip drive, 100MB via Parallel port (*click!*)
- SCSI Scanner hidden away in the background
I think the Mac was a Power Macintosh 6300, but I'm not 100…

#WritersCoffeeClub Sept. 6: If you work digitally, what keyboard or dictation do you use? If paper, what do you write with?
Logitech G815 Tactile for readability.
It's for the best.
My handwriting is appalling. And from my old school notebooks, I can tell - this isn't something I can blame the computers for. This was always the case. Even as far back as -78.

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@Sobieck/117218414828168219
For what it's worth, I don't think it's social media, or the algorithms… I think it's the Internet and computers.
Starting—at least in my context—with when drum machines came along and…

foldoc: FOLDOC entries (2002)
A network of hyperlinks among entries in the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (FOLDOC, www.foldoc.org), an online dictionary of acronyms and technical terms for computers. An edge points from i to j if the term j is referred to in the entry for term i. Edge weight denotes number of uses of the same term.
This network has 13356 nodes and 120238 edges.
Tags: Informational, Web graph, Weighted

RE: https://mastodon.de/@Columba_Livia/117149763014309476
“Linux users are essentially the vegans of computers, if I dare say so.”

This is incredibly important.
Computers (writ large) have historically been tools that help humans solve problems which do not intrinsically demand computers but need complex computation (possibly including text transformation!) which humans cannot do as well or as fast.
The fact that we have grown a subculture of people who only really know computers has led to the situation where “computer-people” disregard other issues & the concerns of everyone else.

A look at the race to build quantum computers, as the tech becomes a geopolitical battleground with potential to transform cybersecurity, finance, and more (Mark Bergen/Bloomberg)

And it fit in the margin of a book.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2587839-fermats-last-theorem-formalised-by-ai-agents-in-just-11-days/?utm_id=97758_v0_s00_e0_tv4_a1demo0ecg7rma

Fermat's last theorem formalised by AI agents in just 11 days | New Scientist
Converting the proof of Fermat's last theorem into code that computers can check was expected to take years. Anthropic's Claude AI managed it in less than two weeks

Dunno why - I kinda like bying more of the same stuff I already have, like computers, vinyl, hard drives and.... books. These were lying around waiting to be read or placed back in the shelf

Given how computers work, it's astounding that every single git commit message isn't just the single word 'fuck'

Dicking around with old computers is self-care for me as I suspect it is with many people my age.
This morning I mainly did it because I had really bad nightmares (side effect from medical treatment), and barely slept and needed to get the bad images out of my head.

"The Air Force is scrambling to get employees across the service back online after weeks of rolling cybersecurity quarantines locked numerous troops and civilians out of their computers, sometimes for days."
https://federalnewsnetwork.com/defense

Air Force network lockouts hit troops and civilians
Air Force employees are being locked out of their computers as cybersecurity quarantines tied to software updates disrupt work across bases and the Pentagon.

We got a tour at FAU to learn about old computers, starting with the Captain Hook Beowulf cluster, DIRMU and MEMSY.

foldoc: FOLDOC entries (2002)
A network of hyperlinks among entries in the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (FOLDOC, www.foldoc.org), an online dictionary of acronyms and technical terms for computers. An edge points from i to j if the term j is referred to in the entry for term i. Edge weight denotes number of uses of the same term.
This network has 13356 nodes and 120238 edges.
Tags: Informational, Web graph, Weighted

"Only the best people" example 4553555
Customs & Boarder Patrol employee caught swapping computer parts for NewEgg trade in credit.
Replaced 14th Gen processors with
"the altered computers had their CPUs changed to 12th Generation Intel Core CPUs, 13th Generation Intel Core CPUs, or Intel Pentium CPUs"
How do you swap a PENTIUM into a 14th Gen board???
https://www.pcmag.com/news/fbi-us-customs-worker-stole-intel-cpus-from-work-pcs-for-newegg-trade-ins

Replaced article(s) found for hep-th. https://arxiv.org/list/hep-th/new
[2/3]:
- Toward an Observable Algebra for de Sitter Space: Gap Protection and Modular Dressings
Hassan ElSayed
https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.26194 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_hepth_bot/117007888988009612
- Extended Scalar Particle Solutions in Black String Spacetimes with Anisotropic Quintessence
M. L. Deglmann, B. V. Sim\~ao, C. C. Barros Jr
https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.17765 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_grqc_bot/114397428123774125
- Universal supercritical thermodynamics for black holes
Shoucheng Wang, Xinyang Li, Yuliang Jin, Li Li
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.10808 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_grqc_bot/114675464316469493
- Running Quantum Computers in Discovery Mode
Aydin Deger, Benedikt Placke, G. J. Sreejith, Alessio Lerose, S. L. Sondhi
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.01013 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_quantph_bot/114783153034025740
- Full Eigenstate Thermalization in Integrable Spin Systems
Tanay Pathak
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.05887 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_condmatstatmech_bot/115337676705890347
- Boundary structure of gauge fields on asymptotically AdS spaces
Maxim Grigoriev, Mikhail Markov
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.06576 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_mathph_bot/115688746382829511
- Improved frequency hierarchy treatment for anisotropic spectral distortions
Jens Chluba, Sara Evangelista, Tom Daman, Geoff Vasil
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.14963 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_astrophCO_bot/116085543680916118
- Black-Hole Microstate Hair Requires a Horizon Measurement
Sudhanva Joshi, Sunil Kumar Mishra
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.28050 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_quantph_bot/116498398591886253
- Unified dark sector and Hubble-tension alleviation in scalar-vector-tensor gravity
Kimet Jusufi, Amir A. Khodahami, Ahmad Sheykhi, Jackson Levi Said, Emmanuel N. Saridakis
https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.14977 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_grqc_bot/116577642488987255
- Exact spectrum and anomalous relaxation in the open disorder-free Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev system
Soshun Ozaki, Hironobu Yoshida, Hosho Katsura
https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.08079 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_condmatstrel_bot/116719187444301432
- Energy Flux as an Entanglement Current in Moving-Mirror Radiation
Yasusada Nambu, Riku Yoshimoto
https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.19763 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_grqc_bot/116968262813501741
toXiv_bot_toot

“we predict that quantum computers will never break realistic RSA-encrypted messages, for fundamental rather than practical reasons”
https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2523350123

Vergeten we niet iets? #Linux
Nederlanders kunnen DigiD downloaden als app voor Windows en macOS - Tweakers
https://tweakers.net/nieuws/252582/ned

"And, of course, you have the commercials where savvy businesspeople Get Ahead
by using their MacIntosh computers to create the ultimate American business
product: a really sharp-looking report."
-- Dave Barry

Backup day for the home computers. Very simple script and it just works. Files are viewable in #Windows and #Linux and I have used the backups many times.
Put on a reminder towards the end of the month. I alternate between two drives. Eventually I will need to purchase a third drive …

Had a great morning at the #German Museum of Technology. Must admit I spent the first hour in the special exhibition building, but found my way to the main one eventually.
Would have been cool if some of the Zuse computers were operational, but still good to see some big (if not uncomplicated) milestones in computing history

Poll for #Windows users only:
Do you feel that using your Windows computer to do simple taks has become smoother or more complicated with time (say now compared to 10 years ago)?
#ITPoll #Computers

How about they fuck right off instead?
#ireland

Backlash to data centres stateside means US may 'prefer to see them built in Ireland'
Former White House adviser Brad Setser said data centres are increasingly viewed by Americans as facilities “with a bunch of computers inside and not many jobs”.

Over the past couple of nights I've been setting up my Mastodon server on a new Ubuntu 26.04 VM (The original server was set up using Digital Ocean's "One click install" on 20.04 back in 2022).
I feel like a teenager again, in a good way. I haven't had this much fun messing with computers in a long time.

Digitally destroying your computer desktop https://spacetimetech.wordpress.com/2026/09/20/digitally-destroying-your-computer-desktop (inspired by @…

Digitally destroying your computer desktop
Wanting to destroy your computer has been a desire for as long as computers have been around. On Mastodon, my bud Christian Kras was trying to remember back to early Windows (XP, 98, ME, 95?) about…

Hmm why is this in the 'Desktop computers' section of John Pye's auction site...ah '12 PCs'...

Phrases "AI will soon be smarter that humans" are meaningless. Humans and computers work in tota[[y different ways and can't be compared.
But I still worry because.
"Since Adam and Eve ate the apple, man has never refrained from any folly of which he was capable. The End."
Bertrand Russell, 1959

Computers think in binary because every file is either a picture of a potato or not a picture of a potato

@… I like to sketch the rate of progress in terms like: "because computers are one million times as powerful as back then, we can forecast the weather 10 days ahead instead of just 7".

Check out today's Metacurity for the most crucial infosec developments you should know, scanned from thousands of sources and tightly excerpted, including
--AI could crack crypto’s defenses before quantum computers do, Buterin warns,
--FBI moves to seize sites selling stolen intimate images,
--Empire Market co-founder gets 40 years for $430m dark web operation,
--MonsterCloud owner charged over secret ransomware payments,
--Asos breach exposes detailed customer profiles,
--Arizona court hack exposes 1.3m people’s data,
--Ransomware attack knocks Japanese websites offline,
--Four states sue TP-Link over security claims and China ties,
--Ex-CIA officer admits $193m fraud and exposing an intelligence source,
--FBI warns FortiBleed attacks give ransomware gangs a foothold,
--Poem-powered botnet compromises 3.4k servers,
--Russia-linked spies sharpen malware targeting Ukraine,
--Apollo software pioneer Margaret Hamilton dies at 90,
--Senate passes healthcare cybersecurity bill,
--AI engineers put GPT-6 Astra behind the wheel for burgers,
--Co-op puts workers’ customer calls under AI surveillance
https://www.metacurity.com/ai-could-crack-cryptos-defenses-before-quantum-computers-do-buterin-warns/

Krisenfall in der Verwaltung: Wenn Microsoft 365 streikt, muss ein Plan B her. 🆘 Die Deutsche Rentenversicherung und die Bundesagentur für Arbeit haben genau das getestet.
Zum Artikel: https://heise.de/-11374072?wt_mc=sm.red.ho.m…

Enjoying MillMint today, and thinking about the way a world built by one person inevitably winds up uncannily unified in aesthetic to the point it undermines the project's credibility with regards to what it tries to express about ours
https://millmint.net

from my link log —
Colossus: the computers that helped win World War II.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/colossus-computer-ieee-milestone
saved 2026-07-27

The Computer That Helped Win World War II
Colossus cracked Germany’s encrypted communications

i used to post here about concepts in programming and languages. Now it's mostly reminders that people outside tech hate AI* and that the whole operation is a farce on its economics and its merits.
I used to Like Computers. Now I have to move my retirement funds out of the technology sector as a hedge against The Collapse. You could see why I'm cross.
ANY way, I'm less grumpy on my other account, mister dave tilde zone. or at least more diversely grumpy

- All of us who don't store our shit on big companies' computers: Oh no! Anyway...
- The rest of humanity: (panic)
#privacy
Source: https://gatissluka.com/

Applying the Turing test to the current “chatbot” generative AI does not show that AI is “intelligent”¹ but that humans are very bad in playing the imitation game as judges³.
__
¹In the original paper “ I.—Computing machinery and intelligence”² Turing explicitly states that there is no useful definition for the meaning of the question ‘can machines think?’ and replaces it with: ‘can computers play the imitation game?’
²

Remember casually maxxing out the RAM on all your computers because why not?

📋 #croc is a CLI tool that transfers files and folders between any two computers, with end-to-end encryption #opensource #golang

I kind of hate how everything everywhere has rounded corners now. Are we all using Etch-a-Sketch computers now?

if I still had time to play around as much with my computers as I used to, I'd have tried bsd by now.

Sources: OpenAI bought tens of thousands of Macs for RL, Anthropic rents them, Nvidia sees Apple as its main local AI rival as Macs gain traction with AI devs (Aaron Tilley/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/apple-stumbled-ai-hardware-succ…

How Apple Stumbled Into AI Hardware Success With the Mac
The hottest products at Apple right now are not the iPhone, the iPad or a buzzy new show on the company’s streaming service. They are two of the lowliest members of Apple’s venerable Mac product line: its boxy Mac mini and Mac Studio computers, which come without monitors, keyboards or mice and ...

@… as for the term "AI", I find it funny - it seems we humans call "AI" things that computer do, and we are still better at it. Once computer bests us, we seem to stop using the term "AI" -- e.g. when computers started really playing chess against humans it was definitely considered (high-end!) AI, and nowadays it is just "some…

How you feel about AI’s energy use might change how you feel about computers entirely.
https://www.theverge.com/cs/features/937356/ai-data-center-gpu-environmental-impact

Who’s afraid of the big, bad GPU?
AI data centers are increasingly sparking backlash, but we don’t have a good way to talk about the many other uses of GPUs.

from my link log —
The cursed computer iceberg.
https://suricrasia.online/iceberg/
saved 2026-08-28 https://dotat.at/:/T7KZQ.html

The Cursed Computer Iceberg Meme
this is not a hall of shame. the intent is to awaken you to many of the peculiarities and weirdness of computers. hopefully, after reading these articles, you will have learned a lot and will embrace chaos.

@duckz@mastodon.gamedev.place I used to be exactly the same way, which is why I've been using only AMD computers for many years. But Panther Lake is currently far superior to any AMD CPU in this area.

A deep dive into Grok Bot, including its architecture, use cases, and alternatives, as xAI adds shareable bot templates and online purchases through Stripe Link (Flavio Copes)
https://flaviocopes.com/grok-bot/

A deep dive into Grok Bot
A detailed Grok Bot guide covering setup, persistent computers, skills, routines, templates, approvals, real use cases, limits, pricing, and alternatives.

RE: #cybersecurity

Breakthrough Computers Made From Slime Use Amoeba-like Organisms to Solve Intricate and Costly Problems
Interesting, true, but I was a little disappointed it wasn't a silicon-slime bioengineered hybrid 😔
https://thedebrief.org/breakthrough-computers-made-from-slime-use-amoeba-like-organisms-to-solve-intricate-and-costly-problems/

Das RK im Name des Computers lässt darauf schliessen, dass der Mit-Initiator der Initiative der Millimeterwelle-Initiative, Richard Koller, die Mails von seinem Computer aus versandt hat. Koller, Wohnort Bätterkinden, steckt auch hinter anderen Mailings, zB rund um die Bargeld-Initiative.
2/3

POL-OL: Nachtrag zum Einbruch im Prinzessinweg: Fund des Tablets - Täterschaft weiterhin unbekannt Oldenburg (ots) - Vergangenen Freitag berichteten wir über den Diebstahl eines Tablets und eines Computers aus einer Wohnung im Prinzessinweg in Oldenburg, https://www.presseportal.de/blaulicht/pm/6

I still enjoy computers, but hardware truly is the worst.
I have a (relatively new) usb-to-sata drive dock that mysteriously has super slow speeds with just a single drive that I own, and is fine w/ the rest.
Last night I discovered the reason when I switched another drive from 512 to 4k logical sector size - read speeds suddenly went from around 250MB/s to around 50MB/s. Turns out the dock is buggy with 4k logical sector sizes, and that other drive is the only one that I have w/…

RE: https://infosec.exchange/@tinker/116928387853350891
Can we like smash all the computers already?
Just like in the dune books..
Im tired

RE: https://mastodon.ie/@andrewg/116928127037360734
“Affordable entry-level computers may ‘disappear by 2028’ according to one forecast. And the memory shortage is expected to continue for years.”
So I guess we’ll just have to rent our computing from… *c…

Sources: China's government asked Alibaba, ByteDance, and others to report on their plans to buy Nvidia RTX Pro 5500, saying it intends to approve the purchases (Qianer Liu/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/ch

China Weighs Allowing Purchases of New Nvidia Chips by ByteDance, Alibaba
China’s government has signaled it could allow some domestic companies to buy a new Nvidia chip built for high-end professional computers, according to two people familiar with the matter, as the country’s AI firms strain for enough computing power to run their chatbots and agents. The Ministry ...

@… If not for the fact that the vendors will stop supporting software on these computers, and eventually they’ll presumably stop being able to do web traffic because they won’t support the newest cipher suites, I could probably live with that.
(Yes, I understand I could potentially work around those issues, but I don’t want to have to).

New consumer computers* sold now have less storage capacity than computers sold 20 years ago**.
Progress!
*often 128GB SSD
**e.g. iMac Core 2 Duo from 2006 had 160GB hard disk standard

'If you showed up at Defcon and gave a talk about how your autonomous malware did something unexpected and damaged someone else's computers, the first question from the audience would be "Why are you so shit at making secure sandboxes?" It wouldn't be "How are you so awesome at making hacking tools?"'
https://

Updating all our Apple devices and computers on advice of our IT team at work who highlighted attacks underway. In the process of doing so… discovering how long it has been for a couple of devices! 🤦‍♂️

foldoc: FOLDOC entries (2002)
A network of hyperlinks among entries in the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (FOLDOC, www.foldoc.org), an online dictionary of acronyms and technical terms for computers. An edge points from i to j if the term j is referred to in the entry for term i. Edge weight denotes number of uses of the same term.
This network has 13356 nodes and 120238 edges.
Tags: Informational, Web graph, Weighted

Idea: open an antique shop specializing in vintage computers and call it "Debian Stable"

France ordered every ministry to ditch Windows, Teams, Zoom, and all American tech. 2.5 million computers moving to Linux. Denmark dumped Microsoft Office. Germany moved 30,000 PCs to Linux. All 27 EU members signed a digital sovereignty charter. The US CLOUD Act lets American authorities force any US company to hand over data stored anywhere in the world. That's why they're leaving.

AWS says it plans to shut down Mechanical Turk on September 30, 2026, following an assessment; the service, launched in 2005, outsourced tasks to humans (Annie Palmer/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/25/amazon-service-that-jeff-bezo…

Amazon service Bezos once called 'artificial artificial intelligence' is shutting down
Mechanical Turk launched in 2005 as a way to farm out tasks that are easy for humans to complete but too challenging for computers.

foldoc: FOLDOC entries (2002)
A network of hyperlinks among entries in the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (FOLDOC, www.foldoc.org), an online dictionary of acronyms and technical terms for computers. An edge points from i to j if the term j is referred to in the entry for term i. Edge weight denotes number of uses of the same term.
This network has 13356 nodes and 120238 edges.
Tags: Informational, Web graph, Weighted

“So far most people have been in the mode of thinking ‘elliptic curves broken, hashes safe, lattices safe,’” he wrote. “But there is a good chance that the concrete security of lattices will take serious hits from the next two years of AI math.”
Buterin said this is a major reason why Ethereum’s lean roadmap has been going in the “hash-only” direction.
#AI #crypto #cybersecurity #quantum

Apple says M5 Ultra uses a quad-die 3nm architecture, "a first for Apple silicon", with inter-die bandwidth of 4.4TB/s and up to a 36-core CPU and 80-core GPU (Steve Dent/Engadget)
https://www.engadget.com/2243405/apple-m5-ultra-with-80-core-gp…

Apple's M5 Ultra With An 80-Core GPU Will Power Through Your AI Models And 8K Video
With the launch of the latest Mac mini and Mac Studio computers, Apple introduced new chips with cutting-edge technology.

Levi Strauss says hackers breached employee computers, accessed corporate data
https://therecord.media/levis-data-breach-social-engineering

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@thecarpentries/117009445820321744
It is amazing to think about the scope of influence that @… has had on scientific computing.
I still remember the chaos of the 1st workshop we ran at Utah State in 2012. @… would say "you know what would be useful" and then I'd run off to try to find it.
And the 1st workshop I lead (at the UBC in 2013) where installation issues were such a nightmare that we lost the first couple of hours just getting peoples computers ready to learn.
Scientific computing has come a long way since then. And @… has been a big part of that.

IBM acquires HRL Laboratories from Boeing and General Motors, seeking to integrate HRL's electron spin quantum circuits into its quantum computers (Stephen Nellis/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-tra

C-3P0 is a walking, talking example of what happens when you decide that instead of paying a professional designer, you'll just get your nephew to do it for free because "he's really good at that computers stuff"

Alibaba says its new open-source multimodal model, Qwen3.8-27B, passed 1M downloads within a few days of release, making it one of its fastest-growing models (Juro Osawa/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/alibabas-small-device-model…

Alibaba’s Small, On-Device Model Gains Traction
Alibaba Group said its new small-size AI model that customers can run on their own personal computers has been downloaded more than 1 million times in just a few days since its release, making it one of the company’s fastest-growing models. Alibaba’s new Qwen3.8-27B, a 27 billion-parameter open-source model that understands text, image and video prompts, can be downloaded for free, and users

foldoc: FOLDOC entries (2002)
A network of hyperlinks among entries in the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (FOLDOC, www.foldoc.org), an online dictionary of acronyms and technical terms for computers. An edge points from i to j if the term j is referred to in the entry for term i. Edge weight denotes number of uses of the same term.
This network has 13356 nodes and 120238 edges.
Tags: Informational, Web graph, Weighted

I miss when computers didn’t incessantly try to extract money from users

U.S. military officials say they have disabled advertising trackers on a ​range of phones and computers, a development that follows reports that commercially available location data had been used to target American forces in the Middle East.
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/us-military-turns-off-ad-trackers-devices-amid-middle-east-targeting-reports-2026-09-04/

foldoc: FOLDOC entries (2002)
A network of hyperlinks among entries in the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (FOLDOC, www.foldoc.org), an online dictionary of acronyms and technical terms for computers. An edge points from i to j if the term j is referred to in the entry for term i. Edge weight denotes number of uses of the same term.
This network has 13356 nodes and 120238 edges.
Tags: Informational, Web graph, Weighted

We’re now locking our computers down even more because for some reason people like to play Russian roulette with “AI” agents.
Chatbots are a mass psychosis.
https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=p6zjojqw

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@thomasfuchs/117029307906700902
Yes computers in 2026 are ridiculous fast but the real thing that stills blows my mind is that a MacBook Pro now lasts like a full 24 hours doing web browsing or watching video.
Back in 2002 when I got my first PowerBook you’d have to carry around a car battery to do this.

"Health systems are warning patients about phishing scams using the MyChart name and logo to trick people into clicking malicious links, handing over personal information or even installing malware on their computers."
https://www.wmar2news.com/matterformallory/fake-mychart-emails-can-show-alarming-test-results-trick-patients-into-installing-malware

Companies: "We're going to save to much money with computers three times as expensive and spending thousands of dollars each month for each employee to use this rental mainframe that we share all our proprietary data with!"
Investors: "MORE!"

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@thomasfuchs/116987035704390404
Tangential, REPLs and generally terminals (or their emulators) aren’t popular because they’re the best solution to run programs on computers.
They’re popular because people knew how to use typewriters and it was (relatively) easy with 1920s hardware to make a typewriter type out signals received over a serial connection.
This was relatively flexible, has long backwards compatibility and generally suffices for most use cases until today.
In other words, it’s not the best user interface, it’s an adequate user interface.

The real tragedy is that the plebs using LLMs are often for the first time seeing what computers can do—when they could have done it faster and better for decades with programming tools.
It’s tech’s greatest failure, both by companies’ hiding or even removing (e.g. Visual Basic in Microsoft Office) programming tools in applications and by “software engineer” wankery making the tools ever more esoteric and hard to use.