Tootfinder

AI products are defective and dangerous. Why are we using them at all?
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-ai-products-are-defective-and-dangerous-why-are-we-using-them-at-all/

AI products are defective and dangerous. Why are we using them at all?
In our pursuit of productivity we have waived the most basic requirements of safety and accountability

Donald Trump has a hang-up about Pluto.
As far back as 2019, his appointed NASA administrator was making noise about reclassifying it as a planet,
a status it lost when in 2006 the International Astronomical Union created a new system of nomenclature for all those weird and wacky bodies hurtling around the sun.
Pluto, long a staple of the Big Nine and a famous childhood acrostic, was now a "mere" dwarf planet.
Trump's back on his weird horse again, makin…

Was afraid the new old stock cassette I just recorded was defective (it’s about 45 years old), turns out there was a cat hair trapped in it in such a way that it caused occasional dropouts

"The most powerful thing you can do in this situation doesn’t concern your attachments, or even your beliefs. It’s giving up on the idea that there is such a thing as safe territory. A kid’s book, a magic wand, even the idea of joy itself can be a tool used to club a kid back into the closet. Act accordingly."
https://

It’s Time To Grow Up | Defector
HBO’s new Harry Potter TV series is premiering this Christmas Day. Under current plans, it will last at least a decade. The trailer looks like the original films were run through an AI generator, but quality isn’t the point. The show is a transparent attempt to induct a new generation—and market—into the lucrative fantasy world…

Sorry not sorry but I’ll be over here doing anything but wallowing in a cognitively offloaded prison of my own making https://defector.com/go-ahead-and-use-ai-it-will-only-help-me-dominate-you

Go Ahead And Use AI. It Will Only Help Me Dominate You. | Defector
This piece was originally published on How Things Work, a newsletter by Hamilton Nolan. If you enjoy this, or the author’s previous work covering the NFL for Defector, you should subscribe to his newsletter right now. Recently there has been a lot of commentary of the following type: BAD WRITER [touchily]: “Actually, I do use…

Light curve of the defective #Proba3 satellite in the sky, from the video https://x.com/s2a_systems/status/2030056859353194647 - the "CSC shows currently a repeating rotation pattern of approximately 1150 seconds."

A mtg where we deliberated on shipping a defect. Product irrecoverably hangs when events A and B - which we do not deliberately _preclude_ from happening at the same time - happen at the same time. A is nearly always "on"; B occurs at a configurable interval: every 5s to 5hrs. For best results with A, B (which takes only 1 second) should happen as frequently as is convenient. Recovery == full reset.
We're going to ship this. They .. and any of our customers who accept th…

Silly idea: Monocrystalline rock candy.
I'm thinking you start with a normal polycrystalline rock candy block, break off one of the larger crystals as a seed, maybe polish or something to reduce defects on the broken surface, then lower into a supersaturated sucrose solution.
Then let it grow for a while and hopefully extract a relatively clear, defect-free <100> sucrose crystal.

Israel Hacked Popular Iranian Prayer App to Urge Defections, Resistance
https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/iran-strikes-2026/card/israel-hacked-popular-iranian-prayer-app-to-urge-defections-resi…

I'm reading an Evelyn Anthony book, The Defector, and I'm gripped. This specific copy used to be on the bookshelf along with many others by her in the room I stayed at in my grandparents's house, and I used to think, aged eight or so, that they looked the most boring books on earth. Now decades later I'm really enjoying them. I think this change in perspective and growing appreciation of things is one the aspects of getting older that I really treasure.