I didn't expect the Jeffrey Epstein story to contain assistant editor workflow gore but lmao

on my street there is a red car with black tape holding the bumper on, and a black car with red tape doing same. Come on guys, we live in a society, put your heads together.

Perhaps it would have happened with any emerging technology at this point in history. LLMs and their like may not be the perfect vectors for technofascism in their own right, they're just what was fashionable when this all got rolling. Alas, we'll never know.

Here's the thing with AI et al. LLMs were, and potentially still could be, an interesting and even genuinely useful technology. They were chugging along fine in the background for some years before this hype train started, and I can see why early innovators feel aggrieved that everyone hates it now.

your regular reminder that tech journalism is a thousand times worse than regular journalism. Adding AI features to Notepad is very silly, and the day it bites everyone in the ass will surely come, but today's news has nothing to do with it.

a LLM is like an ant living on a map of your hometown. the relations between landmarks in the universe it lives in correspond to the landmarks in your hometown, but it does not live in your hometown. it lives in a two-dimensional embedding of your hometown.

oh, the Herald now paywalling all their old pre-paywall content going back to day 1 now? Well within their rights, etc., but that's just saaaad. No doubt a tonne of Wikipedia references now rendered useless.

"Why don't you just make ten faster, and make ten be the top number, and make that a little faster?" “These go to 11.”

Dropped a square of chocolate, which bounced under the coffee table. I fish it out. B: it’ll have dog hair on it Me: I vacuumed today 😇 [scoff nom nom] It had dog hair on it

The "data" will not be terribly far from "we = economic geniuses and labour = the sux, therefore this plan = good QED" and the headlines will be not terribly far from "as we suspected all along, these fucking geniuses have nailed it" www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...

The role of the Trust and Safety Team is to create the illusion of T&S. It‘s like UX, you’re not meant to actually do the job, just talk about how well you’re doing it.

imma keep posting it until someone can tell me it's out of line

right click -> Slop as Administrator

What I don't get is why these people aren't ashamed. I was too scared even to cheat on a spelling test at school let alone display my catastrophic laziness and ignorance to 17.4 thousand people.

Oh, sorry. It’s not a tax unless it comes from the Socialist Evil region of the fossil capital funded right wing cinematic derangement universe. Otherwise, it’s a sparkling levy.

Good place to get help with Linux too, the usual forums are toxic af, plus there’s no cops so you’re not gonna get jailed for doing weird shit like trying to be in charge of your computer

it's not good, but we can hardly expect a bunch of click farmers and shysters to walk a higher road than the major party that's actually in government is

The NYT fired everyone who knew that sugar cane is kinda important to Puerto Rico. They're dumber than dogshit over there. This is so fucking embarrassing.

best overall beach, best camping beach, second best family and surf beach, best hidden gem beach IN THE COUNTRY and there’s a fast track mining application in to vacuum the seabed and ruin it. #nzpol www.nzherald.co.nz/travel/nzs-b...

No joke: I got angry hate mail today for writing an obituary of a Black woman scientist—because the person felt she did didn’t deserve the recognition. Which just makes me want to share it again: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

I used to think Brad Olsen was just happy to get his name in the paper every time journalists have a question like "is 10 million dollars a lot of money?*", but it's starting to look like he has some greater purpose *yes, they did

Thanks to Trish Priest, I was finally able to visit Dunedin and together we went out to the Royal Albatross Center at Taiaroa Head, about 35 minutes from Dunedin. It was better than I ever imagined possible.

"Andy! Maaaate! Looks like they'll let just anybody in here eh? haha. How you keeping? Living the dream? You're not? What's up? Oh, sewage eh? No, I wasn't briefed on that. Sounds less than ideal. What's your plan, champ?" www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

I have saved 2^15, or 0x8000 dollars since I stopped smoking - it no longer fits in a short int. (it's $32,768)

Today on NewstalkZB, Mike Hosking said it's a "reality check" for the Government to not have a proper response for climate hit areas. Some examples of his previous work that may point to how we got here.

This is surreal. We are watching some of the most heinous crimes ever committed by anyone, being committed by our president!, and we're all just reading it on social media like it's the Kardashians. Fuck. We are lost as a human race

The story had an unexciting conclusion. The driver indeed hadn't been told by his boss about my repeated offers to meet somewhere more truck-friendly, but knew what he was doing and wisely walked here to pick it up. Poor bastard had one more pick-up to do before bedtime.

It would actually suck being Tim Cook. I don't think he's fash, just a greedy coward. He's worth $2.4bn, but he couldn't get out of watching a movie that practically nobody wants to see. In that sense, we're all richer than him. www.seattletimes.com/business/tim...

[INT breakfast buffet, upmarket house] Collins: Hager?! Didn't I have him sent to the bottom of Taupo chained to a wood stove? David: no, that was the Kauri digger guy that hit the pipeline Collins: oh riiiiight. Unfit for the Law Commission, sheesh, what the fuck would he know.

sold my van to some guy who's all the up in Auckland and only inspected it via zoom, which is fine, and he asks for my addy so arrange a tow truck. I tell him fine, here's the addr but make sure they know that Wellington was made by video game designers and is very steep and curvy

Haha, suck it, alt-right billionaire who bought half the Herald for what RNZ will do for free 🙃

How NZ political reporting is seen by the vast majority of voters: "Some guy said something's fucking bullshit, but some other guy said yeah nah actually that's bullshit hashtag heraldpremium"

The people at Mozilla truly had the courage to answer the question no one was asking: what if you built a puppet out of the most stale ideas from 10 years ago and then used AI to reanimate the puppet into a grotesque semblance of life, but as a website

absolutely wild time in tech. Kids are hitting charity shops for consoles older than they are, dumpster diving, and learning how to edit in vi. Normal people - actual sex havers - are asking about Linux. All it took was not for OSS to improve, but for everything else to get so, so much worse.

Radio New Zealand Herald been going so nuts with the scare quotes lately they seem to have forgotten what they were for. www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

NZ media acting as US state media is perhaps more of an uncalculated risk than these editors, managers and execs consider.

sometimes, text is too wide to fit in a box, resulting in the begrudged horizontal-scrolling. In the entire history of UI design, nobody has come up with a solution to the problem of fitting text while maintaining half an acre of whitespace

Belarus has arrested several HAM radio hobbyists and is threatening them with the death penalty, extremely wild situation: www.404media.co/ham-radio-op...

kinda amazing you can confidently broadcast you're 'receiving briefings and monitoring a situation' and not have to worry about perception in anything approaching a majority that that means fuck all

I think one might have had the foresight 15 hours ago that having pics of Luxo having a jolly old time in the pub while multiple regions are in a state of emergency miiight not be a great look

What a time to be alive. The richest man in the world would be lucky to get a date with a sock, the chief of Microsoft is now begging people to buy their shit, and the chief of once-renegade Apple showers the worst president in history with bangles and baubles in exchange for letting them exist.

Lacks the language? At this stage I think it's fair to say every NZ'er has heard the words "nah yeah nah it's less than ideal eh", the harshest condemnation a Kiwi can utter. We've got the language for this.

Opinions are divided on where it all went wrong for Apple, but most agree the entire QA department dying on 5 October 2011 played a big part in it.

I miss when mainstream reporting on tech could reliably be ascribed to honest-to-god-just-don't-know-WTF-they're-talking-about, as with y2k, instead of the doubt we have now about whether they're deliberately misrepresenting it for some sinister reason.

AI-skeptic lead engineer tries claude code update: I had one evening where it really clicked and I produced more than usual. The key was that it was an unfamiliar area (getting into the weeds of godot game engine). Today it pointlessly cost me a load of time, sending me in the wrong direction.

Me sowing: Haha fuck yeah!!! Yes!! Me reaping: Well this fucking sucks. What the fuck. Me sowing (AGAIN): Haha fuck yeah!!! Yes!!

I'm old enough to remember when Ku Klux Fran was quite excited for the economic wins Trump was gonna bring www.nzherald.co.nz/business/eco...

My plane has landed, but I will not rush to disembark, for I am very smart, and in row 24 I know it will not be my turn for some time. … At last, my turn has come! But first, I need to retrieve my overhead baggage, something 20 people have told me I am extraordinarily bad at