@woozle I mean I guess Leo Ryan
@woozle The African-American Congressmen of Reconstruction era, they probably got lots of threats
Crazypedia won't Comply 🧿
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The AI itself needs to be resisted, and, hopefully (in its current form) destroyed. But the AI isn't what got our field to this point, where the oppressive clutter of Computer Stuff is so pervasive and so exhausting that we would be willing to do anything, even surrender our own ability to *think*, just to be rid of it, just to be able to address the actual problem at hand. There is a crisis of tool complexity that we just *need* to find a way to address.
Posted in
Fediverse
Delusion6903
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size is not what made reddit bad. commercialization is.
cross-posted from: feddit.org/post/37870004
reddit got bad because spez (the reddit admin) restricted API access to the platform for third-party apps, such that people would be forced to use the official app or web UI, both of which display advertisement and collect user data (e.g. scroll behavior).
the reason why this happened is because reddit is a for-profit company and tries to extract money out of the userbase, at the expense of the users.
another example of a bad decision that reddit made was to push a lot of ragebait (“Am I The Asshole?”) because company shareholders want to see “engagement numbers” go up, and if somebody writes an angry reply to a post, that’s “engagement”. but it makes you angry at the stupidity of the “Asshole”, so it makes your day worse. that is another example how reddit makes money at the expense of the users.
size (number of monthly active users) is not what made reddit bad. commercialization is.
we should probably get rid of the “don’t make lemmy grow, it will ruin the platform if we grow” idea.
Trassliga havssnöret Tomas
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For a while, I was under the impression that all spiciness, or burning sensation in food flavoring, would come from capsaicin, the compound that causes it in chili peppers. Then I realized that Sichuan peppers are a quite different kind of heat. Wasabi (horseradish) is different yet again.
How many hot-flavored compounds are there? At least five!
Kalsec: "The Elements of Heat"
Posted in
Fediverse
Nelots
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This community is not for complaining about bans or mod action on other instances.
Locked.
Crazypedia won't Comply 🧿
boosted
Just a reminder to those people using AIs (local or not) that unless you are purely training on your own data, any benefit you receive is paid for by other people without their consent, and that's only one of the harms.
The future of hacking your devices is in local and open-weight AI.
@404mediaco journo to journo, this is a terrible framing and headline to offer up to your audience. The fact that Jason feels this is one of the only exciting possible uses for LLMs and the emphasis on proprietary bricks should be visible from outer space. This is an unforced error that will really, really hurt your specific company.
"AI is a valuable tool for finding vulnerabilities, and I'm not discounting that. But seven months in, the evidence still doesn't match the launch narrative. The CVEs are a sliver of this year's total, almost none are being exploited, fixes have stalled while duplicates and withdrawals pile up, and the triage burden is shifting onto the open source maintainers Glasswing promised to help. The receipts keep coming in. They still don't reconcile."
https://www.vulncheck.com/blog/anthropic-glasswing-november-update
@jwildeboer Free Software and Opensource projects should just move over to accept AI generated vulnerability reports only when it comes with:
1. a reproducer
2. a exploit
3. a *acceptable* fix
Where 'acceptable' is subject to the projects policy. It may include no AI rules. It probably should include 'Does not put extra burden on us to sort out your slop'.
Though I’m not terribly interested in debating it, as a true centrist my view on congressional leadership is
-Keep Jeffries
-Ditch Schumer
Largely because of both technical process of choosing the two seats & their constitutional duties
Think this is right, if only for reasons of practicality. The Schumer fight is very winnable. Also, as you spell out, the Senate Majority Leader is a more consequential role in setting the agenda.
Posted in
CoMaps
L3ft_F13ld!
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StreetComplete on iOS
If you are using an iPhone and would like to contribute to OpenStreetMap in a very easy and gamified way: StreetComplete is now out for iOS!
Your contributions will not only improve CoMaps, but a whole range of OSM-based applications:
Posted in
Fediverse
reddit sucks because their standards suck. They don’t ban nazis.
By not banning one, you allow them all. Then it’s a nazi place.
"After noticing that he had problems typing certain phrases – but not others – on his iPhone, Kauffman was able to unearth a table containing the list, encoded in Apple’s operating system."
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/nov/06/struggling-to-spell-male-chauvinist-pig-apple-grey-list-means-your-iphone-wont-help-you
What the bleedin hell!?
Over the past few weeks, I've found myself increasingly having to explain to people close to me that those videos on social media are not reliable sources of information. That the so-called guru isn't really a guru. That having a degree doesn't automatically make you respectable. And that installing those apps on your phone is dangerous.
Then, just a few days later, they're back to sending me the same videos, from the same platforms, or reinstalling the same shady apps. "Because they're cute" or "because they're useful."
Never mind all the security issues I warned them about, starting with the fact that they downloaded the app from "g00gle.com".
Then, one day, their phone stops working properly, showing ads everywhere. Or worse.
"Who they gonna call?"
More and more often, I've also found myself saying: no, I'm not giving you root access to the server so you can "let Claude optimize it."
Who's responsible for that server, me or Claude? Either it's me, or it's nobody.
Because when Claude inevitably messes something up...
"Who they gonna call?"
Then I get an email asking for my opinion on a quote from a large competing company. A quote that's worse than the one I prepared months ago, which was never approved. And now they're "ready to approve this company's quote if you tell us it's okay."
Never mind mine, of course. As always, with that particular customer.
And the problem isn't that they've consciously evaluated two proposals and decided to go with someone else. That would be perfectly fine.
But apparently, mine had completely slipped their minds. As usual.
The problem is that the well-dressed, nice-smelling salesman shows up with his AI-generated documents, a few impressive promises, and the usual "most amazing service ever" pitch. And suddenly, he's credible.
Meanwhile, my proposals, perhaps less flashy, but at least containing actual technical details, something mysteriously absent from those wonderful sales pitches, are consistently pushed aside.
They trust my expertise when something goes wrong. But when it's time to make decisions, somehow a shiny sales pitch from a total stranger is more convincing than ten years of mutual trust.
And for over ten years, I've been the one cleaning up the mess left behind by these people's brilliant solutions. Fixing problems, untangling chaos, and trying to make things work after the excitement has worn off and the salesman has moved on to the next customer.
Because at 5:30 in the morning, when someone is suffering and that shiny, wonderful system isn't working as promised, guess what?
"Who they gonna call?"
Me.
Not the charming salesman who sold them the dream. He's probably still dreaming. Especially at 5:30.
And not their wonderful support service either, because the call center doesn't open until 8:30, when they'll finally be allowed to open a ticket.
Meanwhile, there's a real person with a real problem, and a system that needs to work. Now.
And for more than ten years, I've been the one picking up that phone and cleaning up the mess. More than ten years of this.
So this time, I suggested they go ahead. But I also reminded them that when things go wrong, they won't be able to call me to fix them.
Not for that. And not just for this project. For anything else, either. After more than ten years of being the one who picks up the pieces, my availability ends here.
I'm happy to share my knowledge. I'm happy to help. But I'm no longer willing to take responsibility for decisions made by people who consistently ignore my advice.
Not anymore.
Always a barista. ALWAYS!
An idiot? I try to avoid being one whenever possible. 😆
#ITLife #SysAdminLife #ITConsulting #TechSupport #ProfessionalEthics #Barista
@stefano That kind of salesman is just a special instance of connman. 🕴️
Collecting folks songs about logging disasters while people are cutting down trees in the neighbourhood.
@giltay do you have "breakfast in hell"?
Posted in
Fediverse
Hubi@feddit.org
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reddit got bad because spez (the reddit admin) restricted API access to the platform for third-party apps, such that people would be forced to use the official app or web UI, both of which display advertisement and collect user data (e.g. scroll behavior).
Reddit got bad long before they restricted API access. That's what was the final drop for many people, but it wasn't the beginning at all.
I agree that growing would be a benefit for Lemmy though. While I wouldn't dismiss the dangers of a growing community entirely, we can just defederate from or block problematic parts in theory. So I wouldn't say we're in quite the same danger as centralized platforms.
Posted in
Fediverse
dou9m
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Also, is a 2 day ban really worthy of an indignant post like this?
Yes. Why is this even a question when we all know it’s part of a bigger trend with that awful instance?
Shane Celis
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okay, I’m way too late to post xkcd “4” comic and still be funny, so instead I will have to write a serious post
Could this disturbingly severe mistake be because someone asked The Cat for a certificate? Hypothetically, yes. But there’s absolutely no reason to jump to that conclusion with self-righteous confidence when all serious infosec experts have been screaming for THIRTY YEARS that our programming languages are designed to maximize the probability of catastrophic mistakes in cryptographic code even when handled with care by experienced professionals.
Here’s what we know: several signing certificates from the same issuer with private keys that are, in their entirety, just a number below 256, all the way down to the comical “4, just 4, that’s not a typo, the private key is 4.” This strongly suggests a bug where the first byte of the intended key, treated as an array, was used rather than the whole key. A bug that’s absolutely, positively trivial to write in C and its descendants. I’ve seen proposals for how to gotcha yourself like this in Go as well.
I’m not saying The Cat isn’t involved, it could be. But you absolutely, positively do not have to ask a mischievous clawed agent for a random number for it to go this horribly wrong. We’ve always had the human strength within us to fuck up this bad all along
(And I do assume it’s a fuckup and not a backdoor, because there’s no reason to design a backdoor such that the next random enthusiast to run a sanity check script on public certificates will instantly spot it and start screaming)
