Tootfinder

Piano basics: the black notes - what are they for and how do you use them? https://www.musicradar.com/music-tech/keyb…

Piano basics: the black notes - what are they for and how do you use them?
Fear of a black key?… Don't be afraid. Adding flats and sharps to your music will give it a new lease of life.

“Why do people have such dramatically different experiences using AI?”
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/06/why-do-people-have-such-dramatically-different-experiences-using-ai/
In the example, you have Google engine…

Why do people have such dramatically different experiences using AI?
For some people, it seems, AI is an amazing machine which - while fallible - represents an incredible leap forward in productivity. For other people, it seems, AI is wrong more often than right and - although occasionally useful - requires constant supervision. Who is right? I recently pointed out a few common problems with LLMs. I was discussing this with someone relatively senior who works…

CYCLING FANS: I learned in the most round-about way that Florence has a museum I would have gone to any of the past three days when it was open, if I'd known it exited! The "Museo del ciclismo Gino Bartali". (Do I even need to translate?) #Italy25

Krugman outlines a constellation of possible causes around a core theme: extreme uncertainty.
“What does a business do in the face of this kind of uncertainty? It tries to avoid making commitments that it may soon regret.”
Krugman tries to tie it all to Trump’s recent actions, which is dubious: the post-college job market has been crap since 2022 or 2023; Krugman’s own graph suggests it started worsening circa 2018. The larger theme of uncertainty, however, fits that timeframe.

That's it, that’s the main statement describing Trump’s politics:
“I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I'm going to do.” https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-attack-plans-iran-no-final-decision/

"A society under “number go up” tends towards evil. The men and women behind an excessively high rate of return often make deeply sinful and immoral choices, little different than the Confederate plantation owners did in whipping slaves or lords in castles did when abusing serfs. That they do it with spreadsheets doesn’t make it better. (We even use old terminology: I know of several people in a large health insurance conglomerate who set policies to deny care whose nickname is “the three witches.”)
And that’s why Jeff Epstein’s story is so compelling, it expresses this evil in a way that we all understand. On Sunday, I wrote about the oddness of the story, how an elite sex trafficker convicted of procuring children as prostitutes was friends or associates with everyone from Trump to Bill Clinton to Larry Summers to Bill Gates. Epstein represents how elites live in one moral universe where evil bacchanalia is rampant, while the rest of us live in a different more normal one. Every society has elites, and there are always weird things that elites do. But America, and the West, have reached a point where there is increasingly deep resentment and cynicism about this divide."
#USPolitcs #EconomicInequality
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-number-go-up-rule-why-america

Bo Burnham once said:
“Why do you rich fucking white people Insist on seeing every socio-political conflict through the myopic lens of your own self-actualization? This isn't about you. So either get with it, or get out of the fucking way”

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #AfternoonShow
KAYTRANADA:
🎵 DO IT
#KAYTRANADA
https://doncrescendo.bandcamp.com/track/kaytranada-do-it-don-crescendos-dimebag-edit
https://open.spotify.com/track/73IdeGI8Gt1XxcaQ6vBsyD

I think that "chatbot" is a bad design paradigm for most problems. It's actually the refusal to to design work.
https://tante.cc/2025/06/19/chatbot-is-bad-design/

"ChatBot" is bad design
As anyone who has every seen anything I created knows: I am not a designer. So take my reasoning and thinking here with a grain of salt. I do have many designers amongst my friends and I do think that a lot of software engineering falls within the domain of design to a certain degree. […]

🇺🇦 Auf radioeins läuft...
Steely Dan:
🎵 Do It Again
#NowPlaying #SteelyDan
https://djamps.bandcamp.com/track/steely-dan-do-it-again-ampe-edit
https://open.spotify.com/track/2LXISHBkx8FyoxCBkckh19

*On Snake Oil*
In every snake oil sale show - no matter how long it has been going on - comes the moment of truth.
The moment of truth is, ironically, not evidence that the advertised snake oil works.
No, the moment of truth happens when the salesman opens the bottle and chugs it down in one go. What happens if he doesn't do it, what happens if he only takes a sip and pours the rest down the drain?
Maybe the snake oil show is one of the more interesting cultural …

Is this a parody?
I don’t do #InfoSec or other cons so I don’t have a strong sense of whether the “Open Space” concept is brilliant or uproariously absurd. I lean towards the latter because it just seems to me like a recipe for people standing around.

:git: #git submodules are kinda terrible. Why do I again have to write 100 lines of :bash: to have it do what `git submodule sync|update|whatever` should do itself:
- ensure the correct branch is checked out in the submodule at the correct commit pinned in the toplevel repo
- ensure that branch correctly follows the remote branch
- ensure remote.<name>.fetch is correctly set so g…

Language learning has been part of me since high school. I'm solid in 2 non-English languages, crappy but survivable in 2 others. I've played with & started learning others many times.
I'm real busy rn, but language learning could be a fun thing to do for myself & make me feel like I'm still me.
But I'm stumped about my language picks. I learnt the obvious European languages in school; later tried key Asian languages. What do I want to do now?
African languages? I won't be getting a chance to use them much in Aus, & I'm unlikely to get to a stage where I can read literature.
I tried Slovenian/Slovene on a whim & really love it, but I'll never go there. Is the practical but unfun answer grind out more kanji/hanzi? Or is whimsically learning a language spoken by only 2.5 million people reasonable? I will continue struggling through with Ukrainian, 'cause I think it's important.
#LanguageLearning

Riverwest 24 is next weekend. I thought about tossing my bike in the car and driving down to do some laps but then realized it's like 5 miles from my house so I'll just bike down there and do laps, hang out, etc.
https://www.riverwest24.com/

Well, it's not quite 11:00 and we've already completed the section of rendering we planned for today. That feels good.
Not going to do any more today because it's extremely hard physical work, but tomorrow's shift should complete the first coat on the outside of the building.
#roundhouse

I mean, we knew it was coming. I can't understand why an otherwise sane person like Masnick would go to bat for this.
Probably I don't know enough about it. Or maybe I do. https://social.growyourown.services/@FediTips/114709669094147749

Since I did not get to take part in the Oslo Enhjulssykkelrunde (Unicycle Tour of Oslo) this year (I was busy with the kids), I decided to do my own little varient of it as part of my commute on the way into work today.
Distance 23.91km [14.86 miles], moving time 1h36m, 175m [574ft] elevation gain, average speed 14.9km/h [9.3mph]
FWIW, I actually only live about 5km [3.1 miles] from my office 🤷 😆

Things almost impossible to do without good LLM software (in one minute).
I hear a music on a radio. Google music search gives me "Robbie Williams - forbidden road". But I know the words are somewhat different and I want to know what movie I have in mind.
Gemini says it's in fact, similar song to "I got a name", then my brain clicks and connects it with Quentin Tarantino.
Bingo - it's Django.

This post <https://pixelfed.social/p/stuffifound/844831816028127142> possibly helped me do some self-diagnosis as suggested by @… in their recently…

This also isn't a bad recommendation either, but the support has fluctuated in the past for me using it during the CrossOver 24->25 transition (or if you like to try out Previews like I do) so I'd mostly stopped
But if this is easier for you? Go for it!
https://toot.community/@mingistech/114713993850957467

Software Engineer Will Larson unpacks a lot in this July 2025 post. Key takeaway use cases of agentic AI include:
1. Using an LLM to evaluate a context window and get a result.
2. Using an LLM to suggest tools relevant to the context window, then enrich it with the tool’s response.
3. Managing flow control for tool usage.
4. Doing anything software can do to build better context windows to pass on to LLMs.
"What can agents actually do?"

Calamus 37 A leaf for hand in hand!
I continue to have little patience for these Whitman entreaties to American unity. The recitation of place names does little for me. But I do appreciate that he's talking more about loving unity between men than some abstract political message.
You friendly boatmen and mechanics! You roughs! ...
I wish to infuse myself among you till I see it common for you to walk hand in hand.
That's the gay part there. It's pretty mild, but still seems striking of talking about two boatmen or mechanics walking holding hands. One might even see an appeal to rough trade.
I am beginning to understand this Whitman concept of "adhesiveness", a brotherly love that could unify a nation. I still prefer a more sexual gay reading but I think his poems work in both ways.

A new study of 14 open-source LLMs: larger models use exponentially more energy and produce more greenhouse gas emissions, but do not always give better answers (Sachi Kitajima Mulkey/New York Times)
https://www.nytim…

Your A.I. Queries Come With a Climate Cost
When it comes to artificial intelligence, more intensive computing uses more energy, producing more greenhouse gases.

Series C, Episode 02 - Powerplay
LOM: Some treat it as a sport, most do it for the bounty.
VILA: Bounty?
LOM: The administration pays very highly, that's why there are many professional hunters. They are the most dangerous.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/302/173 B7B5

Went to see a Hoopla improv show at The Bell, a mix of half a dozen different groups doing different thin
gs. "Shuffle improv" were basing their scenes on a shuffled playlist built by the audience on the way in
and an interesting format from a improv-as-a-second-language group chatting about their experiences in a
foreign land and basing their scenes off it. The group called "twelve people" only had six but were good
chaotic fun.
Lots of stuff about cooking and food.
I found myself pondering optimum size for an improve group. In general the larger groups seemed more fun to me, with the exception of three-person "burn the script" who did excellent work. More than eight wouldn't fit in the tiny stage at that venue. In rehearsal I like to have the group split in half and perform for each other. Hard to do that with fewer than six. Still up in the air if our group will get off the ground or not. More people does mean more calendar clashes even if it makes for a cheaper-per-person room hire.
Everyone has instagram pages, which are no use to me. Won't link or visit there. Interesting that nobody has a Twitter profile any more and of course nobody seems to have just a damned website which still strikes me as madness. Imagine not wanting to own your own space on the web?
#improv #london

@… @… If you haven't installed Mint yet, consider putting your data on a separate partition before you do. You can do this later, but it's easier at install time.

Trash panda update: they're not gone but seem to be starting to learn we don't like them. The super soaker is the weapon of choice - they hate it but it doesn't do any permanent damage.
I had one pop out in broad daylight earlier and pummeled it with the super soaker until it climbed up a tree out of range.
Another one showed up after dark and froze when I walked out the back door, maybe it thought I couldn't see it?
It thought wrong.
EDIT: The one in…

Like my new watch display?
It was advertised as for the elderly.
OK, by years lived I probably am one of those but jeez why not advertise it as easy to read or not cluttered with crap you do not need or???

The logic of my IT department:
"Hey you need to download this exe to install this program necessary to use our system."
*tries to download*
"Oh, it looks like you tried to download an executable? Sorry you can't do that, we blocked the download." 🐷

AI, AGI, and learning efficiency
An addendum to this: I'm someone who would accurately be called "anti-AI" in the modern age, yet I'm also an "AI researcher" in some ways (have only dabbled in neutral nets).
I don't like:
- AI systems that are the product of labor abuses towards the data workers who curate their training corpora.
- AI systems that use inordinate amounts of water and energy during an intensifying climate catastrophe.
- AI systems that are fundamentally untrustworthy and which reinforce and amplify human biases, *especially* when those systems are exposed in a way that invites harms.
- AI systems which are designed to "save" my attention or brain bandwidth but such my doing so cripple my understating of the things I might use them for when I fact that understanding was the thing I was supposed to be using my time to gain, and where the later lack of such understanding will be costly to me.
- AI systems that are designed by and whose hype fattens the purse of people who materially support genocide and the construction of concentration campus (a.k.a. fascists).
In other words, I do not like and except in very extenuating circumstances I will not use ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Gemini, etc.
On the other hand, I do like:
- AI research as an endeavor to discover new technologies.
- Generative AI as a research topic using a spectrum of different methods.
- Speculating about non-human intelligences, including artificial ones, and including how to behave ethically towards them.
- Large language models as a specific technique, and autoencoders and other neural networks, assuming they're used responsibly in terms of both resource costs & presentation to end users.
I write this because I think some people (especially folks without CS backgrounds) may feel that opposing AI for all the harms it's causing runs the risk of opposing technological innovation more broadly, and/or may feel there's a risk that they will be "left behind" as everyone else embraces the hype and these technologies inevitability become ubiquitous and essential (I know I feel this way sometimes). Just know that is entirely possible and logically consistent to both oppose many forms of modern AI while also embracing and even being optimistic about AI research, and that while LLMs are currently all the rage, they're not the endpoint of what AI will look like in the future, and their downsides are not inherent in AI development.

A file I came across on my iPad. No idea where it came from. #randomThoughts
Thoughts to ponder:
Why isn’t the number 11 pronounced onety-one?
If 4 out of 5 people SUFFER from diarrhea, does that mean that one out of five enjoys it?
Why do croutons come in airtight packages? Aren't they just stale bread to begin with?
If a pig loses its voice, is it disgrunt…

@… I would do it if I owned my house. :-p

Dead Amstrad ALT-286 becomes something new #Amstrad

Dead Amstrad Becomes Something New
When you run into old hardware you cannot restore, what do you do? Toss it? Sell it for parts? If you’re [TME Retro], you hide a high-end mini PC inside an Amstrad-shaped sleeper build. The d…

Looking forward to it!
https://mastodon.social/@karlgroves/114534519629700177

There's plenty of money. It's all about priorities.

So when the narrow-ass Ballard Bridge sidewalk pops up in 10 Things I Hate About You, do other people loudly boo at the screen? Or is that just me?

That little dance bees do? It's the cha-cha.

Maybe I'm doing it wrong or missing the obvious, but am I the only one who thinks the way to read a fediverse timeline is in proper chronological time order (oldest to newest) like I can easily do in my email app?
Some apps have a context feature or implement threading, but by and large reading or browsing a timeline on the fediverse from newest to oldest seems to be the norm. I find this, at best, unsatisfying.

"It’s also a smart reply to the recent 'abundance' arguments made by many in the party’s establishment. Yes, we need to build out transit and increase housing development, but the public sector should do those things. A strong defense of the public sector against privatization, and a willingness to push for its expansion instead of opting for 'market-based solutions,' is an essential part of what it means to be a democratic socialist"

The Democratic Socialist Core to Zohran Mamdani’s Campaign
At a time when much of the left is in retreat or ducking for cover, Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign is championing democratic socialist politics and raising expectations.

Building a product as an engineer is quite annoying when it comes to marketing. It's a must do step. Every time I do an email announcing new features, reach out to users, or post information on reddit I nearly always either get a new subscriber, sometimes a premium one, and at the very least increase the exposure of my product. Yet it's so annoying to do :) My only solution for this right now is discipline and not allowing myself to write code until I do something on the marketing si…

TSP - Travelling Salesman Problem - to represent a picture. Robert E. Bosch names it 'Opt Art' and we are watching a talk how to do this with TurtleStitch. Remote, by indian student Bhavik.
#TurtleStitch10 #embroideryart

It all fits. Suppose you’re corporate leadership. You’re laying people off / refusing to hire because you have no clue what things will look like even 1 or 2 years in the future, and you are •terrified•.
Meanwhile, your investors, your gullible trend-chasing investors, are already mentally dividing companies into “pre-AI” and “post-AI.” And not only do you have no idea how to be “post-AI,” but you have no idea whether you’ll be solvent next year. What do you tell them?!??
Obviously you tell them you’re not hiring because you’re having such incredible success with AI! Maybe even you’re going to lay off all the senior people! They’ll love that!
Now you’re not failing and flailing — you’re leading the march into the future! Yay!

Look @… :)
From: @…
https://mastodon.social/@je…

Cheryl Lindo Jones (@jezlyn@mastodon.social)
Angehängt: 1 Bild I love 3D printing. Yesterday I didn’t have an external grip for my Playdate. Today I do! (And it works pretty well) #3DPrinting #gaming #Playdate

I should learn to do a floating IP, but it sounds complicated! https://docs.oracle.com/en/learn/oci-ip-failover/index.html#task-2-configure-the-cluster-and-the-floating-ip

Time to write a dice roller...gonna use `lark` to parse the string so I can just type out the roll and add tags for the damage types and let it do the math. Is it overkill? Yes. Does it work? No, not yet...but that's the fun part.
#python #lark

I'm #ActuallyAutistic as hell, unapologetically autistic. I just want you to know, which you already do, that I speak to myself, or not. Sometimes, I wonder if anyone actually cares, or if I’m just talking to myself. But honestly, it makes me happy. So, here we are, just vibing, being a little extra, and sharing my weird little world with you.

This would be hilarious
https://beige.party/@SnowshadowII/114705410178751849

"Only you can be you. What a privilege! Nobody can reach what you can if you do it. So do it. We need your best, your voice, your body."
-Stella Adler
#acting #coaching #inspiration

Rewatching Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.
It's a shame they do not make kid movies like this anymore.
This movie is amazing! Stunts. Actual stunts!!
#movies #disney

from my link log —
SIMD in Rust: you do not need multithreading to do more than one thing at a time.
https://sander.saares.eu/2024/12/31/you-do-not-need-multithreading-to-do-more-than-one-thing-at-a-time/

You do not need multithreading to do more than one thing at a time
As hardware gets faster and more capable, software keeps getting slower. It is remarkable how inefficiently typical apps use the capabilities of modern processors! Often this means an app is doing …

“zpool import -FX” is not my favorite command. But when the hosting system panics and leaves the virtual devices backing a FreeBSD VM’s zfs filesystem in an inconsistent state, I'm sure glad it exists.
(I do have hourly zfs snapshots mirrored to a different system that I could restore from if necessary, which comforts me in situations like this. But it's nice not to have to roll back by even a few minutes, other than for the few affected files identified by “zpool scrub” checks…

Please do not forget: 30 years ago, Yitzchak #Rabin was cowardly murdered. It was preceded by a smear and #hate campaign, which was particularly driven by Benjamin #Netanyahu. Netanyahu profited the most from Rabin's…

NFL Analyst Sounds Off on the Addition of Pete Carroll https://www.si.com/nfl/raiders/seattle-seahawks-las-vegas-pete-carroll-geno-smith-damien-woody

Family (well 3/4 of us) traveled to Staunton for the day for lunch, some wandering, and chiefly to see an adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility” at the intimate Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton, VA.
Fantastic performance. It’s a great story anyway, but this take on it added some humor. Never overdone, which is a difficult thing to do. Deserved standing ovation at the end. 👏

No GNOME and no KDE so no Signal Desktop for me...
It would otherwise store its password in the plain, i.e., drop encryption entirely, unless you override it to use a password store. I'm on Sway. No idea what I could do.

Friends of computational reproducibility: do any of you have experience with Guix?
#reproducibleresearch

Bengals star Ja'Marr Chase predicts when the NFL will have a 2,000-yard receiver, plus which player will do it

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/ben…

Corporate Media Continues to Ignore The Real Story of Israel's Attacks on Iran
Israel's preemptive attack on Iran is not a surprise—it is the first step to ongoing atrocity that risks nuclear war if we do not stop it immediately https://open.substack.com/pub/qasimras

Israel's Attack on Iran Risks Nuclear War
Israel's preemptive attack on Iran is not a surprise—it is the first step to ongoing atrocity that risks nuclear war if we do not stop it immediately

if you link to jwz it tells me that you like reading the feed of an annoying overconfident asshole and recommend others do that too

Over the past few months, I've been building out a home server that was originally purely to run on-prem LLMs. Since I wanted it to run killer AI, I named it "Delores." Over the weekend, I received a Mac Mini in the mail that I got a good deal on and set it up to augment Dolores. I was trying to figure out what to name it and eventually went with "Teddy."
From my laptop, iPads, etc, I can remote into an Ubuntu VM, Windows VM, or (now) MacOS and do whatever I am looking to do.

About morbid thriftiness (Autism Spectrum Condition)
As you may have noticed, I am morbidly thrifty. Usually I don't buy stuff that I don't need — and if I decide that I actually need something, I am going to ponder about it for a while, look for value products, and for the best price. And with some luck, I'm going to decide I don't need it that bad after all.
One reason for that is probably how I was raised. My parents taught me to be thrifty, so I have to be. It doesn't matter that, from retrospective, I see that their thriftiness was applied rather arbitrarily to some spendings and not others, or that perhaps they were greedy — spending less on individual things so that they could buy more. Well, I can't delude myself like that, so I have to be thrifty for real. And when I fail, when I pay too much, when I get cheated — I feel quite bad about it.
The other reason is that I keep worrying about my future. It doesn't matter how rich I may end up — I'll keep worrying that I'll run out of money in the future. Perhaps I'll lose a job and won't be able to find anything for a long time, Perhaps something terrible will happen and I'm going to need to pay a lot suddenly.
Another thing is that I easily get attached to objects. Well, it's easier to be thrifty when you really don't want to replace stuff. Over time you also learn to avoid getting new stuff at all, since the more stuff you have, the more stuff may break and need to be thrown away.
Finally, there's my environmental responsibility. I admit that I don't do enough — but at least the things I can do, I do.
[EDIT: and yes, I feel bad about how expensive my new phone was, even though it's of much higher quality than the last one. Also, I got a worse deal because I waited too long.]
#ActuallyAutistic

Which #hamRadio lighthouse activation program do US hams usually do?
I will soon be near Oak Island Lighthouse in North Carolina, which is WLOTA 1247 and ARLHS USA-558. The websites for WLOTA and ARLHS both appear to be in something of a state of disrepair, so it's not clear to me how active either program really is. I also can't tell if they tend to operate outside of contest wee…

"You talk as if a god had made the Machine," cried [Kuno]. "I believe that you pray to it when you are unhappy. Men made it, do not forget that. Great men, but men. The Machine is much, but it is not everything. I see something like you in this plate, but I do not see you. I hear something like you through this telephone, but I do not hear you. That is why I want you to come. Come and stop with me. Pay me a visit, so that we can meet face to face, and talk about the hopes that ar…

"NASA Pulls Back From Promise to Host Major Climate Change Reports, Citing Legal Loophole"
#Nasa #Climate #ClimateChange

NASA Pulls Back From Promise to Host Major Climate Change Reports, Citing Legal Loophole - Inside Climate News
Earlier this month, the agency said it would work to re-host information from a federal website that went dark. Now it says it will no longer do so.

This is a really well thought-out survey on redesigns for an updated autistic pride flag! I believe it's open to everyone but obviously the input of autistic and neurodivergent people is especially significant. (I also like this survey because it takes the possible overlap with the Metis flag seriously)
Symbols matter, so consider contributing!
#autism

Autistic pride flag survey round 2!
In this survey, I'm going to ask you to rate 13 flag designs that have been proposed as autistic pride flags. You will get to see the results of the survey upon submitting. No questions are mandatory so if you run out of steam feel free to submit a partial response. You may edit your response after submitting but you will need to save the special URL google will provide you in order to do so. When you hit submit, right click "edit your response" and save that URL into a text file or somewher…

I don’t know, asshole, was 1947 worth it? Was close to 80 years of settler colonialism and apartheid worth it? Is the current genocide of the Palestinian people being committed by israel worth it? https://ravenation.club/@welkin7/114652095075122736

Typically I’ll spend every summer saying “I hate the heat” and I still do, but I’m trying my best to get used to it because it’s only going to get hotter on this planet every year. Okay, off for a bike ride!

Google’s insists data it holds is secure and it won’t create lock-in for the UK government, but do the answers match the ambition?
https://www.computing.co.uk/interview/2025/exclusive-google-defends-uk-deal-data-sovereignty-concerns

Exclusive: Google defends UK deal amid data sovereignty concerns
Google’s insists data it holds is secure and it won’t create lock-in for the UK government, but do the answers match the ambition?

Linux, MacOS... Still have to do a bit more work to get a native (non virtualized) ngscopeclient test environment working on every major platform but it's progress.

First salt water swim of the year this evening, and it was very , very nice. Why don't I do this more often?

I've been using MacOS for 12 years and still don't understand Spotlight. For instance, I search for this file and it will ONLY show me this backup (~$), NOT the file whose name is… "human-factors-fm.pptx". I'm constantly disappointed. Do I need change a config?

We should acknowledge that if there is an "Epstein client list",
there’s a good chance Donald Trump is on it.
“I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,” Trump said in 2002.
“He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
Is that why Bondi won’t release the list?
Quite the enticing possibility.
If there ever was a case made for conspiracy theorists,…

Trump betrays his conspiracy-addled base
From Epstein to chemtrails, they're learning it was all a scam.

“Discord just made an announcement…” where’s an official link then?
“Feel free to copy and paste to other servers.”
No, I do not think I will.
I’ve already seen this song and dance before. Last time it was about VRChat rippers and crashers supposedly planning to do mass raids on a particular day. So far as I have experienced and heard, nothing came of it.
I don’t appreciate the unverified @everyone spam.

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #VarietyMix
The Roots:
🎵 Somebody’s Gotta Do It
#TheRoots
https://dj-wildstyle.bandcamp.com/track/somebodys-gotta-do-it
https://open.spotify.com/track/6tBcjgG49lE4Mt3qCyeTOB

Something that’s been bothering me for years in the security world: why do researchers demand bug bounties for vulnerabilities in open source projects, when the very contributors maintaining and fixing those issues get nothing, just goodwill?
It feels deeply unfair. The burden falls on unpaid maintainers, yet bounty hunters get rewarded. If you want a paid bounty, maybe help fund the people who actually fix the mess too.

In short, at least give the penguin a fair viewing. If you still don't
like it, that's ok: that's why I'm boss. I simply know better than you do.
-- Linus "what, me arrogant?" Torvalds, on c.o.l.advocacy

I don't know what to say about this new Mortal Kombat trailer (cw: gore). I've played the original game back when it was forbidden in Germany due to the violence.
This latest incarnation seems to push the right buttons for some fans. To me it just looks like obvious CGI gore and camera moves. Somebody is saying a line from the original video game. But what else can you do with this franchise? This is probably true to form.

I hired GargoylePastures €to do some graphic novel pages for this book. And the art was so lovely, I decided to use it for the cover. Also, it's pride month and ‪ GargoylePastures is a queer artist. Check out the pride collection: https://gargoylepastures.com/prideclothingstore

Pride Clothing Store — Gargoyle Pastures
le printful products

"It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side,""
We have certain things in common, Jeffrey': Trump shocks with imagined script - Raw Story
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-2673354671/?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Jul.17.2025_11.40pm

"you need to make it cheap and easy for people to make the switch. If it’s expensive, most people won’t do it. If it’s difficult or inconvenient, then forget it."
https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/the-false-dichotomy-of-systemic-and?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

ChatGPT Agent uses a virtual browser to do tasks such as filling online forms and calling public APIs, and generates downloadable PowerPoint and Excel files (Reece Rogers/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/openai-chatgpt-agent-launch/

OpenAI’s New ChatGPT Agent Tries to Do It All
It’s a PowerPoint generator! It’s a date-night planner! It’s … another agent from OpenAI.

I'm trying PopOS on a second PC and there's some things I love and, all the things I hate about it have to do mainly with GNOME.
How come the terminal doesn't have autocomplete?
Why can't I navigate to a smb address by putting it on the file manager?

⚠️ Please BE AWARE that there is a chance that if you transfer your save file from Switch to Switch 2, you may lose it. This person lost 20 years of data that they'd had since their Game Boy Advance. Totally brutal. It's a huge gamble, and to me, might not be worth it if you really value your save data.

'There's nothing I can do. I don't even know if I wanna play anymore' — Pokémon fan left devastated after '20 years worth of data' lost in Switch to Switch 2 transfer
‘My Scarlet save file is gone,’ sobs gamer. They say no error messages popped up during their Friday the 13th transfer attempt.

geekery
Spent part of yesterday watching how-to videos on OBS (Open Broadcaster Software), which I have in mind to start using in conjunction with Zoom.
I'm amused at my own level of enthusiasm haha! "Ooh i could do _this_! Ooh I wanna try if _that_ works!"
"New toy" energy, and I haven't even downloaded it yet :-)
#OBS #geekery

But here’s the thing: anyone could make music •before• gen AI. Some more skilled or more artistically successful than others, sure! But that’s not the point. •Doing it• is the point. •Living it• is the point.
A product that promises to generate it for you so that you neither do it nor live it is antithetical to the point, is hostile to the idea of art itself.
(Note: that’s exactly what the artists in the OP are •not• doing! They are all grabbing the AI and actively •doing• and •living• while poking at the curious new object.)
5/

AI, AGI, and learning efficiency
My 4-month-old kid is not DDoSing Wikipedia right now, nor will they ever do so before learning to speak, read, or write. Their entire "training corpus" will not top even 100 million "tokens" before they can speak & understand language, and do so with real intentionally.
Just to emphasize that point: 100 words-per-minute times 60 minutes-per-hour times 12 hours-per-day times 365 days-per-year times 4 years is a mere 105,120,000 words. That's a ludicrously *high* estimate of words-per-minute and hours-per-day, and 4 years old (the age of my other kid) is well after basic speech capabilities are developed in many children, etc. More likely the available "training data" is at least 1 or 2 orders of magnitude less than this.
The point here is that large language models, trained as they are on multiple *billions* of tokens, are not developing their behavioral capabilities in a way that's remotely similar to humans, even if you believe those capabilities are similar (they are by certain very biased ways of measurement; they very much aren't by others). This idea that humans must be naturally good at acquiring language is an old one (see e.g. #AI #LLM #AGI

Current situation which SCotUS decision today will make worse:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/04/trans-kids-attacks-trump-families/
I am not part of the community, so there are likely better resources:
•

"We're going to do whatever it takes to keep her safe"
How families are fighting to survive Trump's war on transgender kids

Hrmm, it seems like there aren't many sources on how to put a PiKVM onto a proper VLAN. It seems like it's using `systemd-network` for networking, might have to put together an article on how to do it properly assuming I can remember correctly.
#pikvm #homelab

idea: real-world version of anubis
it gives you an MD5 hash to calculate and you have to do it with a pen and paper
the first time you do something unpleasant, it's one round. then it's two. then... you get the idea

The Johnson Amendment is not exactly a difficult law to parse.
To keep their sweet tax-exempt status, religious groups can’t endorse political candidates.
But evangelicals want to have their cake and eat it too. -- They don’t want to pay taxes, but they do want ministers to be able to climb into the pulpit and tell their flock who to vote for.
The "Alliance Defending Freedom", the hard-right law firm with a truly staggering track record of getting the United St…

Goodbye, separation of church and state
Churches now have extra special speech rights, thanks to Trump.

Hummm.
Goto social "profile" page doesn't show boosts. Doesn't appear it can even be configured to do so.
Annoying. Was hoping to be able to write devlogs here and boost them from the @… account and have 'em show up on the website.

Code is a confusing engineering object for our human brains. It is a bit like building a bridge or a kitchen utensil: it’s an object without a mind, it has a function, it can fail, people do unexpected things with it. But it can also feel a bit like a person given a task: it has behavior, it •decides•, it •acts•, it •causes•.
(All arguably true of a bridge too, but most of us don’t think of bridges that way!)
The lay understanding of code leans heavily on the idea that programs are anthropomorphic, little homunculi with agency.
2/

I feel like computers are getting more like cars, or... how I view cars.
I do not need/want to spend a ton of money to get everything computerized car with ever sensor and camera and screen there is because I just don't think I need it or it's worth it for how much I drive.
I get that some people want that, and should probably have it, but I've got like 35 years of driving experience and I think I do okay.

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #VarietyMix
Aviram:
🎵 Just Do It
#Aviram
https://avirammusic.bandcamp.com/track/just-do-it
https://open.spotify.com/track/27avEUKxNln4b9qaUG2M9F

Test fitting boards in a STEP export of the current rack chassis using Dune3D for the first time.
It's definitely got some rough edges but I think it has potential. Doesn't feel as polished as SolveSpace but the STEP import is a key feature I've found missing in other tools.
But I can't figure out how to do boolean operations on imported step geometry, even if I say it's part of a solid body I'm not able to e.g. do an extrusion to cut off the lid of the ch…

More Montessori:
❝Imagination does not become great until human beings, given the courage and the strength, use it to create.❞
And here’s a kicker:
❝Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war.❞
Put that last thought in the context of arts and education being deeply intertwined, and oligarchy seeking to dismantle both, and…well….
/end