“TABS [by Mozilla] pulls exactly the data you need—from HTML to Markdown to JSON—using the fastest, most efficient method for each page. It adapts to the structure and complexity of the site, staying stealthy and reliable so your [AI] agents always get what they need without friction.”
Ethical Stealthy AI Scraping (tm) by Mozilla.
#Mozilla
Indirect CW for teen pregnancy, rape, death.
Just finished "Girls Like Us" by Randi Pink. Pink has a knack for telling stories that capture the grim but also vibrant nuances of African-American history. I previously read "Under the Heron's Light" which has more elements of magical realism and connects more directly to the history of enslavement; "Girls Like Us" is more historical fiction, with a bridge at the end to contemporary times (circa 2019, when the book was published). It tells the story of a disparate group of mostly-Black teens who are pregnant in 1972, and shows a range of different outcomes as varied as the backstories of the different girls. Rather than just separate vignettes, the girls' stories are women together into a single plot, and Pink is a expert at pulling us in to deeply contemplate all the complexities of these girls' lives, showing rather than telling us truths about the politics of teen pregnancy and abortion, and how even though the choices involved don't have simple answers, taking those choices out of the hands of the people they most intimately affect is cruel and deadly.
#AmReading #ReadingNow
Urban Adventure 🏞️
城市探险 🏞️
📷Nikon FE
🎞️Fuijfilm NEOPAN SS, expired 1993
#filmphotography #Photography #blackandwhite
My youngest got me the most amazing Christmas present! A session handling some items from the V&A East storehouse. Yes, actual touching allowed! (Gloves provided) So I touched two ancient mandolins, a watercolour by Beatrix Potter, an original sketch for a Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back costume design, and a four-track tape recorder and mixer desk owned by David Bowie. She knows me so well. ❤️❤️❤️ #art <…
Metacurity is pleased to offer our free and premium subscribers a weekly digest of the best long-form (and longish) infosec-related pieces we couldn't properly fit into our daily news crush.
This week's selection covers
--The time is now to end cybersecurity with AI,
--Prosecutors say PowerSchool hacker was skilled,
--People with facial differences struggle with digital identity systems,
--Autistic teens can't grasp ramifications of digital crimes, …
One of the things that made organizing a lot easier with the GDC was a thing called "GDC in a box." It was a zip file with all kinds of resources. There was a directory structure, templates for all kinds of things like meetings and paperwork you had to file (for legal reasons) and "read me" files.
We had all kinds of support. There were people you could talk to who had been there. There were people you could call to walk through legal paperwork (taxes). Centralized orgs are vulnerable and easy to infiltrate. They're easy for states to shut down. But there are benefits to org structures.
I think it's possible to have the type of support we had with the GDC, but without the politics of an org (even the IWW). I hope this most recent essay has some of the same properties. I hope that it makes building something new, something no one has really imagined before, easier.
This whole project is something a bit different. It's a collective vision and collective project, from the ground up. Some of it has felt like a brain dump, just getting things that have been swimming around in my head down somewhere. But I hope this feels more like an invitation.
Everything thus far written is all useless unless people do things with it. Only from that point does it become a thing that lives, a thing with its own consciousness that can't be controlled by any individual human.
Tech billionaire cultists want to bring a new era of humanity with AGI. That is definitely not possible with LLMs, and may not be possible at all. But there is a super intelligence that is possible, though it's been constrained by capitalism: collective human intelligence.
The grand vision of the tech dystopians is that of the ultimate slave that can then enslave all humans on their behalf. I think we can build a humanity that can liberate itself from their grasp, crush their vision, and build for itself a world in which people will never be enslaved again. Not only do I think it's possible, I think it's necessary. I think there are only two choices: collective liberation or death.
And that's what I plan to write about next time to wrap this whole project up. Today things often feel impossible. But people talked about the Middle Ages as though they were the end of the world, and then everything changed in unimaginable ways. Everything can, and will, change again.
"The profit motive often is in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings."
For centuries, people believed ice was slippery because pressure and friction melted a thin film of water.
But new research from Saarland University reveals that this
long-standing explanation is wrong.
Instead, the slipperiness comes from the subtle interaction of molecular dipoles between ice and surfaces like shoes or skis.
These microscopic electrical forces disorder the crystal structure of ice,
creating a thin liquid layer even at temperatures near abs…
Who's ready to clean some floppy drive heads? Not really the way I planned to spend my day off but things are reaching dire straights for available floppy drives. Starting to hold up other projects.
#retrocomputing
Metropolitana VI - Asymmetry ✅
城 VI - 非对称 ✅
📷 Pentax MX
🎞️ Ilford Pan 100
#filmphotography #Photography #blackandwhite
Just finished "I'm Awful, Thanks" by Lara Pickle. A good story that serves as a guide to managing emotions, although it's actually a cute story too, not just framing for the mental health discussion.
That said, I feel like it doesn't get far enough into the details of accepting self-control as our only form of real control vs. understanding that some events outside our control aren't fair or are others' attacks, and trying to manage our own emotions as our only response is a disservice to ourselves and others. Even further, I suspect that the HR resolution depicted here, while not impossible, is less frequent than much worse outcomes, which is part of a larger pattern of systemic assaults on our mental health that aren't totally solvable with individual emotional regulation.
Sure, leveling up one's control of ones own emotions and learning to accept and manage a range of emotions is super useful and it's a good thing overall, but the systemic problems of late stage capitalism are real, and making it seem like everyone is responsible for managing their own mental health in the face of these problems helps avoid confronting them.
Still, it's a good book overall, with vibrant art and a well-structured plot.
#AmReading #ReadingNow