Tootfinder

You wouldn't #HTTP status code a #train.

DDoS attacks
Deutsche Bahn says cyberattack hit ticket and info systems
https://www.dw.com/en/deutsche-bahn-says-cyberattack-hit-ticket-and-info-systems/a-76024130

Deutsche Bahn says cyberattack hit ticket and info systems
Germany's national rail operator says it was hit with a cyberattack on its systems that disrupted ticketing and timetable information.

Ich freue mich, mal wieder beim Software Architecture Summit in München dabei zu sein - ich mache einen Workshop zu "Data-Oriented Programming”, mithin zu High-Level-Domänenmodellierung.
https://software-architecture-summit.de/modeling-und-design/da…

Data-Oriented Programming - Software Architecture Summit

Google rejected 1.75M policy-violating Android apps and blocked 80K developer accounts from Google Play in 2025, down from 2.36M apps and 158K accounts in 2024 (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/19/google-says-its-ai…

Google says its AI systems helped deter Play Store malware in 2025 | TechCrunch
Google said it prevented 1.75 million bad apps from going live on Google Play during 2025, a figure that's down from previous years.

I became a programmer because I found it much easier to program computers than to talk to people. Why would anyone in their sane mind claim that I'd be better off talking in human language to machines that pretend to be the kind of smug humans who have no clue about coding, but are going to fulfill all the assignments given by me by googling and copy-pasting whatever they can find?!
#NoAI #AI #LLM

Tons of updates to my CM tool:
* An agent for continuous management with fast-monitoring features
* JSON Schemas for editors
* Manifests and Hiera now support HTTP(s)
* ccm extendible with appbuilder for custom UIs around manifests (no code needed)
* Pre-, Post-messages to help users use things they installed
* Generic if / unless on every resource
* New docs
Focus is to excel at adhoc, snow flakes, devel VMs, a la carte CM etc, place where other too…

We have an extra up-and-coming ticket for #39c3, if anyone here is interested.

If a train is delayed 1440 minutes (precisely 24 hours), is it still a delay, or is it running according to the timetable?
(It's passenger information system error.)
#phisolophy

Senator Marsha Blackburn said
“I look forward to introducing the
"TRUMP AMERICA AI Act"
in the new year to create one federal rulebook for AI
to protect children, creators, conservatives, and communities"
Combats the consistent pattern of bias against conservative figures demonstrated by Big Tech and AI systems by requiring:
Audits of high-risk AI systems to undergo regular bias evaluations to prevent discrimination based on protected characte…

Blackburn Unveils National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence

Maintaining accurate timing in virtual machines has always been a challenge. Especially on hosts with many VMs.
Here's a clever solution, hopefully coming soon to a hypervisor or OS near you.
https://uapi-group.org/specifications/specs/vmclock/

So I'm reaching the end of Ultimate #Doom. What should I play next?
#games
Doom II
Doom 64
Heretic
Strife

iOS 26 is the mid-life crisis of operating systems.

Anyone know what this error means? I only see it with Treehouse Mastodon, not any other instances. It's with the official Mastodon iOS app, and it's been occurring for several versions now, whenever I try to browse my Home feed or user profile...

Astrometric view of companions in the inner dust cavities of #protoplanetary disks: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.00157 -> Gaia finds hints of planets in baby star systems: https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2025/12/Gaia_finds_hints_of_planets_in_baby_star_systems

Cadence shares closed up 7.6% on Wednesday after the chip design company reported Q4 revenue up ~6% to $1.44B and adjusted EPS of $1.99, both above estimates (Lora Kolodny/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/18/cadence-design-systems-stock-earnings-ai-chip.h…

Cadence Design Systems shares pop on earnings beat, custom chip optimism
CEO Anirudh Devgan said he expects the trend of companies making their own custom chips to accelerate.

0 days since random #Python project used `pytest.raises()` for warnings.
#pytest

It's kinda weird how the "The left hates technology (because AI)" mostly come from people whose experience with tech is on the level of vibecoding and the "left" they criticize consists to a significant part of people who've been actually building and maintaining systems for decades.
Maybe hands-on experience leads to different results then just "idea vibing"?

topology: Internet AS graph (2004)
An integrated snapshot of the structure of the Internet at the level of Autonomous Systems (ASs), reconstructed from multiple sources, including the RouteViews and RIPE BGP trace collectors, route servers, looking glasses, and the Internet Routing Registry databases. This snapshot was created around October 2004.
This network has 34761 nodes and 171403 edges.
Tags: Technological, Communication, Unweighted, Multigraph, Timestamps

🇺🇦 Auf radioeins läuft...
Soulwax:
🎵 Run Free (Radio Edit)
#NowPlaying #Soulwax
https://soulwax.bandcamp.com/album/all-systems-are-lying-run-free-nite-versions
https://open.spotify.com/track/6FpGarU82UbiZXyI7Dyh6M

So I think about one of the central thesis of Joseph Weizenbaum a lot.
It’s essentially an extension of “there’s no technical solutions to social problems”; it posits that computers are widely used to immortalize and amplify social problems while preventing reforms.
And it has gotten much worse since he wrote about this in the 1970s.
Two of the examples he gives are nation/world-wide stock exchanges and automated trading (lead to wealth concentration and gambling), as well as highly complex but wasteful, punishing and unfair welfare systems (instead of e.g. UBI).

👌SBU Alpha destroyed Russian air defense systems worth $4 billion! #shorts: https://benborges.xyz/2026/01/19/sbu-alpha-destroyed-russian-air.html

"Staffing problems caused by DOGE resulted in the Defense Information Systems Agency warning of “extreme risk for loss of service” across the military."
DOGE Cuts “Unexpectedly and Significantly Impacted” Critical Pentagon Unit
https://theintercept.com/2026/01/19/do

DOGE Cuts “Unexpectedly and Significantly Impacted” Critical Pentagon Unit
Staffing problems caused by DOGE resulted in the Defense Information Systems Agency warning of “extreme risk for loss of service” across the military.

My train‘s systems are broken so they wrote the car numbers onto the displays!

I'm so tempted to write papers for high impact journals that basically say 'any literature review on practices in cultural heritage organisations / GLAMs that only uses scientific databases is incomplete'. After all, who has the time, energy and motivation to publish in those systems? Not practitioners!

"‘Hothouse’ Earth: Scientists sound alarm as multiple climate systems near critical tipping points"
#Climate #ClimateChange

Multiple climate tipping points closer than believed, study warns
Sharp changes could result in a cascade of subsystem interactions that would steer the planet toward extreme warming and sea level rise.

Technically, it's a ford.

Spent the morning deal with the US Gov't - sheesh.
We had to update our SAM registration - most people have never had to deal with the US Gov't's procurement system and dueling systems of regulations (FARs vs DFARs), not to mention its decades obsolete industrial and product classification codes. What a mess!!! What a massive burden for a small company!! (And, of course, the Feds update things in disruptive ways.)
Then I had to deal with renewing my passport and ha…

Demystifying #OpenTelemetry: Why You Shouldn’t Fear #Observability in Traditional Environments
https://ope…

A research project led by the University of Glasgow has launched a free, open-source tool designed to make AI systems more trustworthy by enabling more rigorous audits, including by non-experts.
https://www.computing.co.uk/news/2026/ai/uk-research…

UK researchers launch AI audit tool for non-experts
A research project led by the University of Glasgow has launched a free, open-source tool designed to make AI systems more trustworthy by enabling more ...

Epic Systems: US-Anbieter gewinnt Ausschreibung der Charité
Nach einer langen Hängepartie ist die Entscheidung gefallen: Die Charité vergibt den 200-Millionen-Auftrag für ihre neue Klinik-IT an den US-Anbieter Epic.

Typhoons vacuum microplastics from ocean and deposit them on land, study finds #environment

Typhoons vacuum microplastics from ocean and deposit them on land, study finds
Tropical storms such as typhoons, hurricanes, and cyclones are Earth's most powerful weather systems. Born over warm oceans, they travel thousands of kilometers to land, traversing waters now polluted with plastics, from coastal runoff to the vast oceanic garbage patches.

All these FPS tutorials prepared me for this.

@… Love seeing the openSUSE community tackle Y2K38 openly and transparently. Thank you for putting this on the radar.
Also important: we’re not at the finish line yet, even if many assume we are. There’s still real work across toolchains, libraries, and long-lived systems.
#Y2K38

RE: https://social.treehouse.systems/@jnkrtech/116083805012851868
This post sure has a point. Reductive? Yes, but in a way that illuminates.
(Quibble/nuance downthread)
1/

The other picolibc project this week is to (finally) put together a coding standard and reformat all of the code. I'm wondering if others have experience with this particular transition and if you all have advice and guidance about how to make this less disruptive. Of course, bike-shedding about the actual format is highly encouraged.

picolibc/.clang-format at refs/heads/reformat · picolibc/picolibc
picolibc - a C library designed for embedded 32- and 64- bit systems. - picolibc/picolibc

Series C, Episode 13 - Terminal
VILA: We're registering very high-level discharge from the energy banks.
DAYNA: Hmm, that can't be right. We only require minimal output to hold fixed orbit and maintain normal systems.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/313/243 B7B3

From Proposal to Passage: Enacted U.S. AI Laws, 2023–2025
https://fpf.org/blog/from-proposal-to-passage-enacted-u-s-ai-laws-2023-2025/
@…

I am guessing no one here can confirm or deny this #java #JVM crash-on-keystore-decrypt which, if true, is a VERY SERIOUS BUG that could not be trusted in a production environment, and then has gone unfixed for decades? That does not seem very likely, does it?
As it is, keytool says there is nothing wrong with my keystore or its password, and watching the process launch I see after the init, it sits, idle, a few seconds later its Time value in top only increments the millisecs, and within a minute, it is gone, voom, not a trace in any logs as to why.
I do, truly, LOATH this technology. It is so fucking fragile; a life-sentence for the sr developers and sysadmins in production systems (that's why they often don't get holidays)

Before you leave for the weekend, don't miss today's Metacurity for the most critical infosec developments you should know, including
--African cops bust 651 suspected cyber scammers across 16 countries,
--WVA AG sues Apple over alleged CSAM stored in iCloud,
--Ukrainian man sentenced to five years for role in DPRK remote IT worker scheme,
--Systems at Mississippi's only medical center struck down by cyber incident,
--Predator spyware can shut down re…

African cops bust 651 suspected cyber scammers across 16 countries
WVA AG sues Apple over alleged CSAM stored in iCloud, Ukrainian man sentenced to five years for role in DPRK remote IT worker scheme, Systems at Mississippi's only medical center struck down by cyber incident, Predator spyware can shut down recording indicators, much more

Who could have predicted that the NHS's past distain for standardised systems would continue to cause problems?
https://www.ukauthority.com/articles/nhs-not-ready-for-ai-royal-college-of-physicians

NHS not ready for AI - Royal College of Physicians | UKAuthority

Dear #GitHub, thank you for implementing the new, completely useless "Files changed" view that tells me to switch to the old view because it can't display more than 40 comments. Also, thanks for making your horribly useless platform the de facto standard for making reviewing anything a true misery.

🇺🇦 Auf radioeins läuft...
Soulwax:
🎵 Run Free (Radio Edit)
#NowPlaying #Soulwax
https://soulwax.bandcamp.com/album/all-systems-are-lying-run-free-nite-versions
https://open.spotify.com/track/6FpGarU82UbiZXyI7Dyh6M

Did I #dream of feeding a computer cat snacks? Perhaps.
But it had poor throughput, so they ended up stacking on top of the feeding hole.

Zelensky says some air-defense systems lacked missiles until today: https://benborges.xyz/2026/01/16/zelensky-says-some-airdefense-systems.html

It's called hexadecimal because it's used by witches.
#shitposting

This white paper provides a comprehensive analysis of modern warfare through five interconnected characteristics that have been prominently displayed throughout the Ukraine conflict:
- The rise of autonomous systems and their impact on force architecture
- The information domain as a critical battleground
- Electronic warfare and spectrum superiority
- The challenges of sustaining logistics in contested environments
- The evolution of air defense strategy
…

Lessons from the Ukraine Conflict: Modern Warfare in the Age of Autonomy, Information, and Resilience
As warfare evolves, the Ukraine conflict offers policymakers a blueprint for modern defense strategy—emphasizing autonomy, contested logistics, electromagnetic superiority, and adaptive organizational models.

> Train 4 life
Checks.
> it's not about trains
#shitposting

"Claws" is becoming a term to describe OpenClaw-like agent systems that usually run on personal hardware and are a new layer on top of LLM agents (Andrej Karpathy/@karpathy)
https://x.com/karpathy/status/2024987174077432126

Andrej Karpathy (@karpathy) on X
Bought a new Mac mini to properly tinker with claws over the weekend. The apple store person told me they are selling like hotcakes and everyone is confused :) I'm definitely a bit sus'd to run OpenClaw specifically - giving my private data/keys to 400K lines of vibe coded

The European Parliament has temporarily disabled AI features on lawmakers' official devices, citing concerns that sensitive information could be sent outside its secure systems.
https://www.computing.co.uk/news/2026/ai/european-parlia…

European Parliament switches off AI features over data fears
The European Parliament has temporarily disabled AI features on lawmakers' official devices, citing concerns that sensitive information could be sent outside its secure systems.

"After running through terminal count for the #ArtemisII wet dress rehearsal, the launch team paused the clock at T-33 seconds in the countdown," says https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/missions/2026/02/19/live-artemis-ii-wet-dress-rehearsal-coverage/: "Teams are now reconfiguring and replenishing the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen systems, in order to recycle back to the T-10 minute mark and perform another run of terminal count. [...] The entire recycle process lasts approximately 60 to 90 minutes."

Remember, folks: it is bad to discriminate others by blocking you from using their software based merely on where you were born.
Now I need to recharge my sarcasm tanks.
#FuckRussia

Ukraine's SBU 'destroyed or disabled' $4 billion worth of Russian air defense systems over past year, agency claims: https://benborges.xyz/2026/01/19/ukraines-sbu-destroyed-or-disabled.html

I'm greatly looking forward to BOB #13 - very happy to see lots of OCaml content, which is about time!
https://discuss.systems/@bobkonf/115722690881550536

Unpopular opinion: since software progresses much faster than literature or art, software copyrights should also expire much sooner.

We have learnt to look at the world through ratings, reviews, and whether a place is “Instagrammable.”
Nuance is pressed flat into a system of stars.
Even mountains and valleys are scored on Google Maps,
while countless unassuming places slip silently through the net.
I often wonder, ruefully, how much we are missing when only the ranked and the rated rise to the surface.
It begins to feel as though such systems are not merely cataloguing the world,
bu…

About Me - Learning To See Again
For over twenty years I've been seeking out alternative stories in our surviving material culture and sharing them with my photographs and words.

OpenAI partners with Foxconn to design and develop data center server racks to be manufactured in the US; Foxconn will produce cabling, power systems, and more (Seth Fiegerman/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

There's a little "zambie" running through the corridor.
My first thought: what kind of movies do people let their little children watch these days?!
My second thought: oh, wait, zombies are a normal thing in animated movies for children these days…
I feel old.

A modern coreutils fork that replaces the obsolete "no" answer with "maybe later". And loops until you give up.

"According to the report, the spearphishing emails relied on links that appeared trustworthy because they passed through legitimate online advertising and click-tracking systems commonly used to track user engagement."
North Korea-linked hackers pose as human rights activists, report says
<…

North Korea-linked hackers pose as human rights activists, report says - UPI.com
North Korea-linked hackers are using emails that impersonate human rights organizations and financial institutions in phishing attacks, according to a report released Monday.

Anthropic details the "Assistant Axis", a pattern of neural activity in language models that governs their default identity and helpful behavior (Anthropic)
https://www.anthropic.com/research/assistant-axis

The assistant axis: situating and stabilizing the character of large language models
Anthropic is an AI safety and research company that's working to build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems.

The University of Mississippi Medical Center is closing all its statewide clinics and canceling many appointments Thursday after a cybersecurity attack shut down all its computer systems. h/t @…
http…

The Alpha unit of Ukraine's Security Service (SBU)
destroyed half of Russia's stockpile of the coveted Pantsir air defense system,
the SBU announced Feb. 14.
"The 'Pantsir' is one of Russia's modern and key air defense systems.
The cost of a single system ranges from $15 to $20 million.
These anti-aircraft missile systems are the most effective in countering Ukrainian long-range drones," the announcement read.
The "syst…

Ukraine destroys half of Russia's 'key' Pantsir air defense systems, security service says
The Alpha unit of Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) destroyed half of Russia's stockpile of the coveted Pantsir air defense system, the SBU announced Feb. 14.

I see that the #Łódź region railways play hard.
It says: "Turn your smartphone on. By looking someone in the eyes, you risk falling in love."

Success! (from viaduct.world)
#rail

Google plans to charge developers $2.85/app and $3.65/game if a US user follows a link that takes them outside of the Play Store to install it within 24 hours (Sean Hollister/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/news/848540/google-app-fees-ext…

Want to link from Google’s app store to your app? That’ll be $2–4 per install
Google will charge fees when Android developers link outside of the Play Store, or use alternative billing systems, and says it’s complying with the Epic injunction.

This piece makes the interesting case that accountants can be a first line of defense against cyber threats.
Research reveals a surprising line of defence against cyber attacks: accountants
https://theconversation.com/research-r

Research reveals a surprising line of defence against cyber attacks: accountants
Researchers found auditors who had dealt with one cyber-breached client became more likely to spot serious weaknesses in systems and controls elsewhere.

#TIL I learned that #Signal usernames need to have two digits. Should I use the last two digits of my InterCity pass there?

Surveillance tools exported by China, based on US tech and obtained by Chinese companies, to countries like Nepal are being used to stifle Tibetan refugees (Associated Press)
https://apnews.com/article/china-tibet-nepal-sur…

Chinese surveillance based on US tech is used to silence Tibetans in Nepal
Nepal is just one of at least 150 countries to which Chinese companies are supplying surveillance technology, from cameras in Vietnam to censorship firewalls in Pakistan to citywide monitoring systems in Kenya. This technology is now a key part of China’s push for global influence, as it provides cash-strapped governments cost-effective, if invasive, forms of policing — turning algorithms and data into a force multiplier for control. The irony at the heart of this digital authoritarianism i…

A general (shitty) comment on BlueSky
A few days ago I've seen something comparing ex-Twinnera to a privy, and praising #BlueSky.
My dear, don't you see the irony? The way I see it, you've just moved from one of Jack Dorsey's privies into another, after he let Elon and his friends shit in the middle of the floor to get some money from them. And now you're delighted, because obviously the same thing won't happen again.

I've just slipped so hard that I've hit myself in the head with the shoes. But I managed to keep my balance and I didn't fall.
Talking about the shoes in my bag, of course. You can stop your imagination now.
#ninja

Can Autism Spectrum be a superpower? Well, sometimes, I guess.
It's the same kind of superpower like having a chaingun in place of your hand. There are days you feel like you definitely ought to use it. And it sounds really cool in theory.
But it's not very useful if you need to open a jar. And I dare say that in my life, jar-opening situations are far more common than situations needing a chaingun. On top of that, most people don't really appreciate *you* having it, as if you had a choice.
#ActuallyAutistic

A report from House Oversight Committee Democrats delivers a damning recounting of the varied ways Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) violated cybersecurity protocols across nearly every executive branch agency.
Check out today's Metacurity for more on this crucial development and other infosec news you should know, including
--Palo Alto: attackers have moved from AI experimentation to AI operationalization,
--Dragos discovered three new ICS threat g…

DOGE linked to potential Russian, Chinese access to OPM systems, report
Palo Alto: attackers have moved from AI experimentation to AI operationalization, Dragos discovered three new ICS threat groups, European Parliament disabled AI features over cybersecurity concerns, Kenyan authorities used Cellebrite on human rights activist's phone, much more

What do you think of Francis Bacon?
#FediPoll #poll #shitposting
Mmm, bacon
I'm indifferent to bacon
Bleh, bacon
I don't consider him as food

Did you know that #PEP425 ("Compatibility Tags for Built Distributions") said:
> Why isn’t there a . in the Python version number?
>
> CPython has lasted 20 years without a 3-digit major release. This should continue for some time. Other implementations may use _ as a delimiter, since both - and . delimit the surrounding filename.
This didn't age well.
#Python

Elon Musk mention, from "Cunk on Earth"
"I suppose Elon Musk could invent a machine that chops his own head off electronically before the mob arrives."
#ElonMusk #CunkOnEarth

When the pseudomedicine #spam gets to the point of "biblical tricks"…

#Sphinx joined the list of packages dropping #Python 3.11 (and therefore #PyPy) support. Of course, we could just go through the effort of dropping it from respective packages in #Gentoo, given it's not technically that common… but honestly, at this point I have zero motivation to put the extra effort for this, just to learn that next month some core package starts requiring Python 3.12.
So, would anyone really mind if I removed Python 3.11 and PyPy support completely from Gentoo packages?

Whenever I see yet another #AI "AGENTS" file, trying to write instructions for *machines* in human language, like the #LLM statistical algorithm could actually reason about them, a Butlerian jihad opens in my pocket. And the fact of giving clear instructions like they were talking to an #ActuallyAutistic person is adding insult to the injury.
#NoAI

0 days since I had to check which year is it.
(Also, for some reason I thought it's 2027.)

A new railway operator just dropped.
(Do we have a tag for that kind of errors?)

When I was a little one, I was told that I ought to follow the path set for me, and I'll eventually find happiness there. It's just around the corner, just walk forward and don't stray. So I ran ahead, only to discover another segment of the same road, even more bleak than the previous one. And I heard again: just a little more. Finally, I realized that this road only leads to my grave, and there's no reason to hurry; and the only way to find happiness, is to actually stray from it.

When you enter the park through the traditional hole in the fence, then notice a new gate 10 m away.

While helping my mum with something recently, I've noticed that her #GMail started featuring a banner that she ran out of space, and mails will stop arriving in less than a month. As expected, she never even noticed it. On the other hand, I had two thoughts about it.
Firstly, of course, #Google are shameless assholes (Microsoft's even worse, as I boosted at some point before). Mom's new phone came with Google Photos preinstalled in place of vendor's gallery, and of course it automatically started making backups of her photos and movies in the "cloud", or as I'd like to call it, to pedophiles. The photos finally filled up the free space, and Google started doing everything to convince her to buy more space. I honestly doubt she'd be able to figure out that she needed to turn these backups off and wipe them; if anything, I suspect she'd just start hopelessly removing photos from the phone, which might not have helped at all.
Secondly, it's that if such a thing happened to me, I probably wouldn't even know, because I'm reading my mail via a mail client. So I wouldn't ever have seen their banner. Well, unless they also send a mail about it, and my mom missed it among all the spam.
#GAFAM

I have a mystery to solve, for people speaking #German.
More context: it's a small empty space next to a staircase on the second floor of a fort.

I'm an influencer now.
I've noticed that the two seats behind me are free, and sat there. The guy at the next table followed suit and commented "good idea" xD.

I see #LLVM is embracing socialism.
* get_distribution_components() is outdated!
* Add: llubi
* Remove:
#shitposting

#TIL I learned that anyone can register a #MediaType for a format they didn't create *and* get it registered with their name in the media type.
#MIME

New #consent #meme just dropped:
Emergency floor & litter box washing.
My muscles: I consent.
My nose: I definitely consent!
My #diabetes: is there someone you forgot to ask?

Can you answer without checking: how many rounding directions does the #C standard define, as of #C23?
3
4
5
6

So the correct answer is 5 rounding directions, though the last one was added in #C23:
FP_INT_UPWARD / ceil()
FP_INT_DOWNWARD / floor()
FP_INT_TOWARDZERO / trunc()
FP_INT_TONEARESTFROMZERO / round()
FP_INT_TONEAREST / roundeven() (C23)

Remember, when someone exclaims "ohhh", they actually mean "zero".

Grim political joke
After Trump "made America great again", USD's exchange rates have been soaring lowest in almost 5 years. Is the idea of "making Europe great again" an attempt to compensate that?

Today we give you slithering seats.
(It's 36WEd-001 running for #ŁKA.)
#train #shitposting

0 days since it turned out that GNU #make does not respect the #jobserver protocol it designed itself in yet another way. Or to put it otherwise, I've wasted my whole morning implemented something that cannot work because it didn't occur to me that GNU make people only set rules without caring to actually follow them.
#Gentoo #Linux

It's entirely normal that after unpacking the parcels, you realize that you've ordered 40 kg of cat food, right?

I thought that the concept of "designated driver" is limited to cars. But then I've seen these five guys, four of them deep asleep and the fifth one showing the tickets.

Cynicism, "AI"
I've been pointed out the "Reflections on 2025" post by Samuel Albanie [1]. The author's writing style makes it quite a fun, I admit.
The first part, "The Compute Theory of Everything" is an optimistic piece on "#AI". Long story short, poor "AI researchers" have been struggling for years because of predominant misconception that "machines should have been powerful enough". Fortunately, now they can finally get their hands on the kind of power that used to be only available to supervillains, and all they have to do is forget about morals, agree that their research will be used to murder millions of people, and a few more millions will die as a side effect of the climate crisis. But I'm digressing.
The author is referring to an essay by Hans Moravec, "The Role of Raw Power in Intelligence" [2]. It's also quite an interesting read, starting with a chapter on how intelligence evolved independently at least four times. The key point inferred from that seems to be, that all we need is more computing power, and we'll eventually "brute-force" all AI-related problems (or die trying, I guess).
As a disclaimer, I have to say I'm not a biologist. Rather just a random guy who read a fair number of pieces on evolution. And I feel like the analogies brought here are misleading at best.
Firstly, there seems to be an assumption that evolution inexorably leads to higher "intelligence", with a certain implicit assumption on what intelligence is. Per that assumption, any animal that gets "brainier" will eventually become intelligent. However, this seems to be missing the point that both evolution and learning doesn't operate in a void.
Yes, many animals did attain a certain level of intelligence, but they attained it in a long chain of development, while solving specific problems, in specific bodies, in specific environments. I don't think that you can just stuff more brains into a random animal, and expect it to attain human intelligence; and the same goes for a computer — you can't expect that given more power, algorithms will eventually converge on human-like intelligence.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, what evolution did succeed at first is achieving neural networks that are far more energy efficient than whatever computers are doing today. Even if indeed "computing power" paved the way for intelligence, what came first is extremely efficient "hardware". Nowadays, human seem to be skipping that part. Optimizing is hard, so why bother with it? We can afford bigger data centers, we can afford to waste more energy, we can afford to deprive people of drinking water, so let's just skip to the easy part!
And on top of that, we're trying to squash hundreds of millions of years of evolution into… a decade, perhaps? What could possibly go wrong?
[1] #NoAI #NoLLM #LLM

I feel like desktop GNU/Linux nowadays (especially around #GNOME) is a lot like: "Do you recall this thing #Android does that you really hate? Good news, everyone, we just copied it to our application, and you can't switch back!"
#FreeSoftware

What if instead of all these fancy in-#train LCD/LED displays, we just used split-flap displays?
#retro