It's not paranoia if the risk is real and verifiable.

Coding wise, the "predict the rest of this line of code" tools get it right more often than not, yielding a small productivity gain. But the "predict what the rest of this line and next 3-4 lines should be are wrong so often that it takes more work to undo and correct, for a significant productivity drop.

"Generate test cases for this" seems to give decent results, with some cleanup required. I'm guessing "build this app" might do a decent job of the tedious stuff, but I'd review anything that required actual intelligence very, very carefully. Based on the "few lines" experience, I expect a lot of plausible but woefully wrong code.

RE: https://bsky.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:movn6xzezospl7lnkhy7nzpt/post/3mxmourr5m22i

Anyone looked at how many "Alberta separatists" have gone offline since Ukraine took out Yandex? Germany saw an 86% drop in AfD posts. I bet it's much the same here.

RE: https://beige.party/@farah/117361973104510969

This poll is worth it just for the last option. 😂

LOL one of my sites started complaining that Wordpress' cron process wasn't running often enough. Turns out I'd neglected to set up a cron job, and it was spam requests that was keeping things running. Now my web firewall blocks so much of that traffic that on-demand cron was lagging.

fixed that by setting up a real cron.

I suspect that someone with sufficient skills, knowledge, inclination, (and residency in a country that doesn't have an extradition treaty with the US) could find a way to brick every single Flock camera in the country.

https://micahflee.com/flock-cameras-are-riddled-with-security-vulnerabilities-and-hard-coded-credentials/

My 70lb/32kg lap dog has decided I have spent too much time on the computer (as I type this, he's balancing on my lap—balancing because he doesn't actually fit!)

#dogs #dogsOfMastodon

RE: https://mastodon.social/@CelloMomOnCars/117252025022445343

Or in short, the people who said we're all going to die if we don't do something about this were right.

And yet we're still nowhere near doing enough.

I have just traced an error I didn't understand to the debug code I used to find the immediately preceding error.

Sigh.

Okay, these scammers are REALLY getting pathetic. 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Got a follow from a BYT (Busty Young Thing), profile contains a short-link on the obscure "ix dot sk" domain. I use my de-redirection tool to determine the target link, pop the domain from that (edoi12 dot sbs), run a search, find a bunch of malware reports. Report and block the account. Minutes later, account is suspended.

Go try scamming on another platform, dude pretending to be a BYT.

Writing fun: I decide I should lose a word.

Ah, but that would cause a subtle change in the preceding paragraph.

Ooh, and that causes another problem two more paragraphs back. Change that.

Aha, now there's an opportunity to add a little dialogue to bridge a gap I didn't realize was there.

Add that, then move forward to fix the first paragraph.

Delete the word.

There, another "one word change" completed! 🤪

#writing #WritingCommunity

As fun as it is, the big message behind the Milo Yiannopoulos arrest and detention is this: if you're just a hanger-on to a fascist movement and not one of the bona fide billionaire bros at the top of the movement, you are just as much at risk as a left-wing illegal immigrant. Hell, even if you ARE one of the billionaire bros, you aren't safe. Just look at the number of dead oligarchs in Russia for proof.

If you want to be free from oppression, your one and only choice is to support a system that offers that freedom for everyone, not just for people who look and think like you do.

My "idiot scammers on Mastodon" thread has now been updated with today's idiocy. Or at least today so far; never underestimate the scope of idiocy.

https://ambitonline.com/nextrelease/2026/08/scammers-on-mastodon-in-near-real-time/

Yesterday's play fight with dogs, today's play fight with dogs.
#dogs #dogsofmastodon

Hee hee hee Mapquest.
https://gulfof.mapquest.com/lakeontario/Dumbdonald

It is becoming increasingly clear to me that one thing Canada *desperately* needs is domestic payment processing capability that's independent of the US, which means no Mastercard, no VISA, no AmEx, no PayPal.

If the US decides to limit those platforms, our ability to do business with the rest of the world is severely curtailed.

Not only should the sale of Moneris be blocked, the infrastructure it depends on needs to be replaced... unless the plan is to use the revenue from the sale to build a solution that works with the rest of the world.

People Magazine's obit of Dolly Parton fails to mention her funding of research into the COVID-19 vaccine. It's all recorded this, worked with them, not a word of the funding she provided that was key in saving millions of lives.

A quote from this article on Bruce Springsteen and depression: "It can last for days or months or entire seasons of being."

Entire seasons of being. Yup. Sigh. Happy to see it in the rear view mirror, but not happy having a season of being largely erased from my life.

https://www.themarginalian.org/2022/07/20/bruce-springsteen-depression/

I understand that it's #NationalWaffleDay

I think this is a good idea.
But I can see some drawbacks.
I guess overall it's good.
Then again, maybe not...

[etc.]