Tootfinder

Same movie btw with this classic scene
https://hachyderm.io/@thomasfuchs/115245588542876309

The future has arrived!

Yes, Google, I definitely need to make an "engaging video with AI” for my document of paid ad performance metrics and projections.
This is totally, definitely, indubitably a legitimate use case for a product that you're pushing on your users. *heavy sacrasm*

At the first Singapore Festival in San Mateo. Lots of great food but long waits

this is mainly for me: #vibecoding #browser #extension

I'm teaching problem decomposition this week and that means The Return of Moo Deng!

They didn't just take the fun out of flying. They loaded it up with pain and misery. Greedy ba$tard$. 😠
#travel #flying #greed

One cable, 96W charging, gigE, Thunderbolt display with built in camera connected
Very satisfying

Iger f-ed up. Bad. He knows it. His colleagues know it. His investors know it.
He made the •precisely• the kind of preventable error that we supposedly pay executives the big bucks not to make. He’s unfit for task. He’s unfit for society.
• Make • it • stick •

Thanks to several people coming through, I'm now able to run Star Map!!! Thank you, everyone.
https://hachyderm.io/@thomasfuchs/114891756723413030

Oh hai #catsofmastodon

Z okazji Dnia Bez Samochodu życzę wielkomiejskim kierowcom przejrzenia na oczy, autorefleksji (hehe) i dostrzeżenia hipokryzji w stwierdzeniu "samochodem dojadę w 20 minut, a autobusem to 2 godziny, bo stoi w korkach".
Zaś mieszkańcom okolic z faktycznym problemem wykluczenia transportowego szczerze współczuję.

“Many State Offices are concerned that Starlink proposals may be the lowest bid and alternative proposals may not be within the 15% window for consideration. What this analysis presents is that across many geographic areas Starlink may not be a qualified bidder as it may be unable to attain the required 100/20 Mbps service level (and, in deploying Starlink services, may actually degrade pre-existing users’ services to the point that they no longer receive minimal broadband speeds).”
#Enshitification #StarLink
https://communitynetworks.org/content/new-research-starlink-unlikely-meet-bead-speed-needs-scale

Why is everything on the cloud these days?
I’m kind of getting tired of every piece of professional and business software being a SaaS or cloud-based solution these days.
I have a good computer, it can run a lot of complex programs on it locally. I wish I had the option to do so.
Not everything needs to be synced 24/7. And I’d much rather have some tools include a cloud sync functionality that backs up changes with some kind of regular frequency for version control and cross-device access, but otherwise runs on my device.
These days, when I’m trying to go work somewhere without an internet connection or am traveling and have spotty data - I can’t access 90% of my work. Files don’t back up locally even when there’s a native desktop client app. Why?
It feels wasteful, sending so much data to the internet and back with constantly required online sync and web apps.
I feel nostalgic now, remembering the days of software that would require buying a license every couple of years, that would run on your device and could be accessed even from the top of a remote mountain if you wished, and that didn’t log you out every other week.
#tech #software

Thanks in part to @… and his investigations, I have replaced a massive space heater called a "Class A audio amplifier" with a tiny Class D whose cost is proportional to its volume, and am very pleased. So much space restored in the cabinet, so much wasted energy recovered, and to my aged ears no diminution in quality. 5 stars.

New toy arrived

"Trump administration ends government’s annual report on hunger in America"
There. Hunger problem solved. Next.
/s
#hunger #uspol #sarcasm

It’s funny how many people really think software rots like milk.
Well, pardon me while I pop a cartridge made 40 years ago into my NES and it plays like the day it was made.
wrt https://hachyderm.io/@thomasfuchs/115068295628933638
(When will there finally be quoted posts?)

There have to be consequences. Would-be quislings need to start having vivid pictures of what’s going to happen to them •personally• if they collaborate with fascists. I’d much prefer those consequences not be violent; in fact, harsh consequences now are the very thing that •avoid• violence. Professional and personal ruin will suffice. That means •we• have to make it stick.

I have worked with exceptional university scientists in the US under the H1-B program. This $100,000 fee will make it all but impossible to hire them in academia going forward.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/19/trump-h1b-visa-100000-fee

Awake at 5am and I have to waste this lovely day at work rather than doing art. Meh.

looks suspiciously like Model F’s they hollowed out and stuck some proto-LCARS transparent plastic in it—maybe these are accidentally the first RGB gamer keyboards ever
(Star Trek IV, 1986)

What a loss. Makenzie Lystrup is a legend. I learned so much from her, especially regarding how to expand your workforce through inclusion.
So of course she has to go, because in this world we learn what should have happened by inverting what did happen.
https://mastodon.social/@arstechnica/114893880230134847

Cute art style. Not -terribly- hard right now, but we'll see how it gets tweaked. Has some good / interesting mechanics in it. Give it a whirl and let the developer know your feedback (survey link pops if you complete a game)

Fictional depiction of mild self-harm, blood.
#WritersCoffeeClub July 23: Share a description you're proud of.
I've been writing a vampire novel lately. Here's a description from the scene when the vampire character proves to the human protagonist that he's been telling the truth:
—
"It's okay, Ada," he gave me a reassuring close-mouthed smile. "Just watch."
He slashed across his wrist in a motion that made the matching scars on my left arm hum. I covered them with my right hand, as if to calm my skin that I wasn't hurting it like that anymore. That we were merely watching someone else.
The cut on Theodore's arm turned red and angry, as expected. And then, just before the wound pooled up enough to bleed, it closed. I watched time run backwards as it disappeared, the skin stitching itself together to leave no trace of the violence imposed on it by the blade.
"What?" I walked up to him as he handed his wrist to me for inspection. I ran the tips of my fingers over the spot where the cut was mere moments before - but Theodore's skin, cold as always, was smooth and unharmed.
—

For the record:
I cancelled Disney the same evening they kicked Kimmel out, and smoothing things over with Kimmel now will not be sufficient to get me to renew.
I will •start• considering a renewal when Iger is out on his ass, no parachute. (Not holding my breath for that.)

#CNN: Trump administration released FBI records on MLK Jr.
A masterful move by Trump, setting up a (false) standard for reviews of his own conduct. Not that he's equal to #MLK in any way but you know him.
Watch how GOP will now show sympathy for MLK's "flaws".
https://us.cnn.com/2025/07/21/politics/released-fbi-records-mlk-jr

"Trump is the head of a cult that has figured out how to turn fear, precarity and pain into the top of a sales funnel that destroys anyone who gets caught in it."
https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/22/all-day-suckers/#i-love-the-poorly-educated

Lololol

Oh no it happened - client for a research project I’m working on got upset that we’re doing manual data analysis of survey responses, and complained about why we are so slow when their internal team working on a different report got “everything done in a couple of days with #AI tools”
And then they told us that waiting for proper human analysis is a “waste of time” and that we need to just chuck our dataset into AI and “get it over with”
I really don’t know what to do right now 🥲
Trying to do this properly on their expected timeline will mean very little sleep for multiple days, but giving up on the project quality and dumping it into AI is will make this entire project a waste of time. (As I wouldn’t be able to trust the output of the analysis, or be proud of it to showcase the final report as an example of our work, and not to mention that I don’t want to support this expectation to rush everything at work with these AI models)

Brakowało mi ostatnio ludzi jak jasna cholera no i wychodzi na to, że w ten weekend poznaję nowych z samego tylko Mastodona.
@… - świetna wystawa i fajny wieczór, dzięki!

Now that’s a mic drop that still echoes 350 years later

You’ll never guess what happened at the Charlie Kirk memorial event in Phoenix yesterday

In India, today is the start of "nawaraatri", which is nine nights of triumph of good over evil. It is also the start of "dasaraa" ("dusseraah") which is 10 festival days, with the 10th day attributed to several notable "good over evil" events.
Happy nawaraatri and #dasaraa to all who observe. 🎊

good friday to you

General friendly reminder subtoot:
When you see a post that is not •for• you and is also not •about• you, you can indicate your comprehension of the situation by simply not replying.

Któregoś dnia przeczytałem „Stargard” jako „Star Guard” i już nie mogę tego odzobaczyć.

Why are authoritarian regimes so obsessed with “efficiency” and “cutting bureaucracy”?
Because bureaucracy is good, actually.

The weird paradox of really disliking AI is that I still find myself thinking about it all the time.
I read about it, I watch videos about it, I write about it, I bring it up in conversation. And just make myself angrier in the process. And make all my algorithms show me more content about it 😓
I feel like I’m Cady in the movie Mean Girls addicted to talking about how she hated Regina George:
“I was a woman possessed. I spent about 80 percent of my time talking about Regina. And the other 20 percent of the time, I was praying for someone else to bring her up so I could talk about her more. [..] I could hear people getting bored with me. But I couldn't stop.”

What is happening? Have I gone through the looking glass?? C-suite types are saying things about AI that…actually make sense?!?
AWS CEO Matt Garman: “My view is you absolutely want to keep hiring kids out of college and teaching them the right ways to go build software and decompose problems and think about it, just as much as you ever have.” https://mastodon.social/@fromjason/115067646625547469

The computer in this scene is a Macintosh Plus, with a completely fake user interface that still tries to pretend it’s Apple

paying the cute animals on the internet tax - the duckies got bigger and more feathers while I was away
/cc @…

I’m becoming a bit of a silver label myself

This is one of the most beautiful essays I’ve read all year.
“But while I've always suspected that AI is about a denial of death, in the aftermath of the traumatic and unexpected arrival of the Real, I feel this even more deeply. AI promises an illusion of steady continuity in a world full of unexpected redirection. Nothing shatters that illusion of perpetuity like the sudden death of someone you love.”
Wow wow wow wow. I’m crying in public reading it and couldn’t care less. https://mastodon.social/@antisomniac/114892553894128252

Thanks to @…, TIL the word “petrichor!” More from Wikipedia:
❝Petrichor (/ˈpɛtrɪkɔːr/) is the earthy scent produced when rain falls on dry soil. The word was coined by Isabel Joy Bear and Richard Grenfell Thomas from Ancient Greek πέτρα (pétra) 'rock' or πέτρος (pétros) 'stone' and ἰχώρ (ikhṓr), the ethereal fluid that is the blood of the gods in Greek mythology.❞
Heh, “god-blood of stones.” Completely unnecessary levels of linguistic badassery. I approve wholeheartedly. https://infosec.town/notes/aag9xttylpw0a9p8

Happy 40th birthday, Amiga!

Update - I think I managed to come to a compromise on timeline and firmly established that no AI will be used for this project.
They agreed, although they did make say that “it’s as if you decided to dig up a garden using a shovel instead of a tractor. As long as it’s done, it’s done”
I don’t wanna pick a fight so I left the comment alone but now that I think of it I have two responses:
- who digs a garden with a tractor?
- last I checked tractor didn’t have a ~30% chance of lying about the dirt they did or up to 70% odds of just giving up on working if the ground was too hard to dig

“There's another option: break the fourth wall between the actors and the audience.” https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:yobyqjt4hs5icoihvaombhhn/post/3luikoqynwk2g

love finding little details like this

The horror of the mass starvation in Gaza and Sudan right now is beyond words. It’s hard to even know what to say about it.
These two famines have in common that they are the result of scorched-earth military campaigns targeting specific ethnic groups. All famines are human-made in this modern world, but these famines are •intentional•.
Who are we, we humans with our so-called civilization, if we still after all these years of trying cannot stop genocides in progress?

Quote posts on hachyderm when 😭

Oof, what a story. So important to hear and remember.
https://sfba.social/@NorcalGma2/114898505992253056

KKK = MLM?!?? TIL!
From @…:
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/114898221431663702

Calling text rearranging algorithms “artificial intelligence” is like calling cars “magical carriages”

So the rapture is this week? Can’t wait for the believers to evaporate into the air or whatever they do.

Waiting for Ruby Central people saying they had a sponsor-involved deauthorization incident.

If they wanted that people thought that maybe that last TNG movie wasn’t so bad—I think they succeeded.

Tried to finally watch Star Trek: Picard and it’s so overwhelmingly awful that I literally couldn’t watch it.
I knew it had mixed review but holy shit. Like as in the actors couldn’t get themselves to act because the writing is so bad.

Looking away from this shit is exactly why there is so much of this shit.
For the love of fuck.

People out there really going “it’s not the problem of the Rails core team”.
WHO’S PROBLEM IS IT THEN???
Jesus fucking Christ, show at least a semblance of a spine and responsibility in leadership roles.
We’re talking fucking computer code versus the dignity and lives of people here.

The Rails Core team should resign immediately

Did you know that Pascal, among many other things, invented public transport?

The reason the crackled pork rind foreskin is yapping about Tylenol is to distract from their anti-vax agenda

lol Disney caved and is unsuspending the suspension

This isn’t about Liquid Glass, which probably works better in Safari than in most other apps; I mean basic stuff like some sites just render blank or there’s 60-hz GPU flickering and many outright freezes and crashes

PSA: there’s a recall on some Anker powerbanks, check if you have one of them
https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2025/Anker-Power-Banks-Recalled-Due-to-Fire-and-Burn-Hazards-Manufactured-by-Anker-Innovations-1

iOS 26 Safari is so buggy, it’s borderline unusable

If the scene was realistic, they’d first have to look for a molecular design app in the stack of diskettes and then load the app for like a minute

Does anyone have a good playlist for the Rapture?

80/20 rule: 80% of conservatives are projecting (being gay, not wanting children, had an abortion, drinking, etc.) and 20% are just evil

Gonna go on MH break from social media

Fwiw I made this demo like 20 years ago and it still works fine the browser.
The photo was shot on a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-F717 from 2002 (and that was state-of-the-art back then, not retro).
http://madrobby.github.io/scriptaculous/puzzle-demo/

This is also somehow (though I couldn’t say how exactly) related to how lots of programmers believe that “but the next update to ChatGPT will make it a real boy”—there’s something fundamentally flawed with their ability to think.

There is this weird notion among software developers that software goes bad just like milk does.
It literally works and will always work exactly the same way (including all good and bad things about it) as the day it was created. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It’s dangerous to go alone. Take this. https://youtu.be/PKebn_Ly9T8?si=LKvEHnECZHMeJNzf

I wonder if the people yapping about Bluesky today realize that many entire Mastodon instances have disappeared overnight with absolutely no way for people to port their data.

Next Starship “launch” is coming up, wonder why he didn’t ask Mechahitler to fix the design issues

It’s almost like it’s a grift idk

And why don’t we have a cure for cancer and materials for a space elevator yet?

And if it worked so well, why isn’t it tasked to make better versions of itself?

So if AI worked so fantastically well, why don’t the owners of the AI companies keep it to themselves instead of selling it at a loss

Men will generate emotional support tokens before going to therapy

You’d think AI stans would want to dissociate or rebrand now that ordinary people are using “AI” literally as an insult (“this looks like AI”, “is this AI?”)

It’s kind of weird that it’s extremely easy to emulate a DOS or Windows XP PC on a Mac, but pretty hard to emulate an old Mac.
infinitemac.org is pretty good for the most part but it’s still not easy to import or export data into older system versions, and some of the emulation is pretty unstable.

Anyway is there a tool (that runs on modern computers) that can convert sit to dsk (400k)?
And yes, I know one is an archive format and the other a disk image format.
And no, I don’t mean running a whole-ass emulator.

Every time I do anything with emulating old Macs and I want to "just create a disk image" it's like pulling teeth; literally all the emulation software and utilities are endlessly janky and it feels like they're deliberately made to be obtuse and gate-keepery.

This whole opinion, while well-meaning and bringing up generally good points (we humans can decide what technology we research and how we use it)—misses the point: there will not be an “AGI” that derives from current “AI” technology.
What the “AI” companies are proposing and the media is accepting at face value is like saying ever more realistic graphics in computer games will suddenly reach some threshold and the graphics will become the real world.
It’s nonsense.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/ng-interactive/2025/jul/21/human-level-artificial-intelligence

We should add a slop factor to the Drake equation, 9 out of 10 alien civilizations fail because they drown in self-made AI slop

What if we banned Nazis instead of books

All those “holodeck malfunction” episodes on Star Trek are actually documentaries about vibe coding

I’m really wondering what will happen to my field when the old programmers are all gone or have been fired, all those people who have a shit about the craft.
When designing software has been replaced by vibe coding and endless layer cakes of bullshit.
I feel like that time is closer than most people think.

It's astounding how Mozilla manages to consistently add shit to Firefox even at a time when people look for alternatives to Chrome. (Newest versions have started to force more AI crap into the UI.)

Wishing the publisher the Streisand effect in full force https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/jul/22/harvard-educational-review-palestine-issue-cancelled

The keming of the I and G is still sus

tbf Data killed "just" about 5,000 intelligent lifeforms, whereas Jean-Luc "Slaughterer of La Barre" Picard killed more than 32,000.

"The Measure of a Man" is a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode about the danger of letting AI roam freely and denying responsibility for technology as humans.
In later episodes and movies the laissez-faire AI known as "Data" is responsible for countless murders and attempted murders, torture, injuries, kidnapping, property theft and many other crimes.

I've a "old #astronomy software" side project and I'm looking for the early Mac software "StarMap" or "Star Map" from Bruce Webster.
So far my searches came up empty, but I'm not a specialist in old Mac software.
Does anyone have a copy of this app?
It's described in detail in a July 1985 BYTE article: #retrocomputing

“It doesn’t have to be crazy at work!!!”

Genetically superior DHH while writing “just words” about why he is not racist and also brown people should be deported