The Right Wing Explodes - Mastodon

MostlyHarmless @MostlyHarmless@thecanadian.social I hope America is as lucky as the upside down Delta jet. Everyone survives but the right wing explodes. 1:56 AM • February 20, 2025 (UTC)

“Truly a middle finger”: Humane bricking $700 AI Pins with limited refunds

Scharon Harding writing for Ars Technica: After launching its AI Pin in April 2024 and reportedly seeking a buyout by May 2024, Humane is shutting down. Most of the people who bought an AI Pin will not get refunds for the devices, which debuted at $700, dropped to $500, and will be bricked on February 28 at noon PT. Shocked! I think this summed it up pretty well:

Sums up LinkedIn - Mastodon

Jaunty Art @JauntyArt@crispsandwi.ch Saw this on LinkedIn and I think it perfectly sums up LinkedIn 11:07 PM • February 12, 2025 (UTC)

Actual Rights - Mastodon

The Icarian @The_Icarian@federated.press 6:36 PM • February 12, 2025 (UTC)

Signal will never weaken encryption - Mastodon

Meredith Whittaker @Mer__edith@mastodon.world @brayd @signalapp We will never weaken encryption, add a backdoor, bow or scrape, etc. We would rather shut down or leave a market. Our position does not change based on jurisdiction. 8:22 PM • February 6, 2025 (UTC)

Left Intolerance (lol) - Bluesky

Opinion | The Left insisted that we all embrace Barack Obama. But now that Republicans have our own African-American president, Elon Musk, they’re back to their typical intolerance. by Hugh Hewitt — New York Times Pitchbot (@nytpitchbot.bsky.social) 2025-02-05T16:21:46.497Z

Smaller government - Mastodon

Saulo Popov Zambiasi @saulopz@corteximplant.com minimum state Sensitive content (flagged at origin) 4:31 PM • January 30, 2025 (UTC)

Microsoft probing whether DeepSeek improperly used OpenAI APIs

Romain Dillet writing for TechCrunch: According to security researchers working for Microsoft, the Chinese company behind the R1 reasoning model may have exfiltrated a large amount of data using OpenAI’s API in the fall of 2024. Microsoft, which also happens to be OpenAI’s largest shareholder, notified OpenAI of the suspicious activity. While anyone can sign up and access OpenAI’s API, the company’s terms of service stipulate that you can’t use the output to train a new AI model.

Developer Creates Infinite Maze That Traps AI Training Bots

Jason Koebler writing for 404 Media: Since they made and deployed a proof-of-concept, Aaron B said their pages have been hit millions of times by internet-scraping bots. On a Hacker News thread, someone claiming to be an AI company CEO said a tarpit like this is easy to avoid; Aaron B told 404 Media “If that’s, true, I’ve several million lines of access log that says even Google Almighty didn’t graduate” to avoiding the trap.

Fish climbed on to a beach - Mastodon

Darren @DJDarren@mendeddrum.org Several billion years ago a fish climbed onto a beach, and now I have to be at work on a Wednesday. Bullshit. 8:11 AM • January 22, 2025 (UTC)

How long until OpenAI and the like get into the advertising business?

Dell mocked at its own press launch for copying Apple's names

Ben Lovejoy writing about the ridiculous new Dell laptop names on 9to5Mac: So yes, there really is going to be a Dell Pro Max Micro Plus. Not only are they copying Apple’s naming convention, which is bad enough, they’re making it nonsensical by subdividing each tier into 3 subtiers. That’s how you get the ridiculous name above.

Brilliant plan - Bluesky

I have a brilliant plan, all I need is: - the copyright to everything - all the money in the world — Pavel is looking for work (@spavel.bsky.social) 2024-12-28T16:29:13.002Z

This is so true:

If you think woke is the problem, try reading the US Constitution and amendments. Really read them. Pretend you didn’t know it was the Constitution. One woke idea after another. Basically if you don’t believe in woke, you’re in the wrong freaking country.

Why AI language models choke on too much text

Timothy B. Lee writing for Ars Technica: Today’s LLMs are far more capable: OpenAI’s GPT-4o can handle 128,000 tokens (about 200 pages of text). Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet can accept 200,000 tokens (about 300 pages of text). Google’s Gemini 1.5 Pro allows 2 million tokens (about 2,000 pages of text). Still, it’s going to take a lot more progress if we want AI systems with human-level cognitive abilities.

Never Forgive Them

Great, article from Edward Zitron over at his newsletter Where’s Your Ed At?. The whole things is great, but here’s a few quotes that stood out to me: Why wouldn’t you think that the content on one of the most notable media outlets in the entire world is trustworthy? Why wouldn’t you trust that CNN, a respected media outlet, had vetted its advertisers and made sure their content wasn’t actively tricking its users? I think it’s fair to say that CNN has likely led to thousands of people being duped by questionable affiliate marketing companies, and likely profited from doing so.

He Thinks He’s Steering - Mastodon

Michael ☕️ @mcpinson@mas.to President-elect Musk doesn't like this cartoon. #USPol #PresidentMusk #Elon #JDVance 7:46 PM • December 19, 2024 (UTC)

Shadow President - Bluesky

Where will Elon Musk end up ranking among America’s shadow presidents? Our panel of historians weighs in. — New York Times Pitchbot (@nytpitchbot.bsky.social) 2024-12-19T13:04:01.136Z

Flipboard’s Surf app is a big new idea about the future of social

David Pierce writing for The Verge: The app can see three kinds of feeds: anything from ActivityPub, which means things like Mastodon and Threads and Pixelfed; anything from AT Protocol, which means Bluesky; and any RSS feed. This sounds a lot like the new Reeder. I hope we see more apps like this and sites are forced to provide feeds that these apps can read from and maybe even interact with through things such as “likes” or “reposts”.

“Great” Depression - Bluesky

Wait, do we think Trump is trying to recreate Depression era policies because he keeps hearing it was “Great”? — Kevin M. Kruse (@kevinmkruse.bsky.social) 2024-12-13T23:50:29.050Z