RE: https://fosstodon.org/@couchdb/117427212070103041

This is the result of nearly two months of tight collaboration to get a number of issues fixed in a way that won’t bite us a second time. We also made sure we closed all open reports in one release as not to leave anybody hanging.

Even though all reports were AI generated and included multiple (sometimes partial) duplicates, and slugging through those is soul-erasing, we are doing our duty by our end-users and making sure you have the safest CouchDB to run yet.

RE: https://toot.cat/@dthompson/117322463609022181

The speed at which Debian is going from “we maybe okay with a little AI, even though our poll showed plenty of opposition” to “here’s free AI infra for all contributors to use” is giving me nausea.

The general customer support experience these days:

1. Fight an AI agent for hours that wastes your time with bogus responses and random errors.

2. Repeat the process with a human that solves the issue in half a second.

Great system.

POSWID for AI in customer support seems to be: waste the customer’s time.

For intl readers:

German Nazi party got majority-by-far voting result in state election, current estimate 44,5%. We are slightly ahead of the 100 year repeat schedule, but we are on track.

This and no further.

https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/landtagswahlen/sachsen-anhalt/2026

😔

RE: https://toot.cafe/@tomayac/117223197204755338

> […] assuming you’re not proofreading the AI alt text for accuracy, no alt text is better than AI generated alt text.

> […] human written alt text is always better!

Berlin friends, does anyone have a spare Apple TV 1080p or 4k for a good cause (or in return for a small donation)?

RE: https://mastodon.social/@jcoglan/117184275909330829

These kinds of interactions have sucked almost all of thr joy out of my FOSS work this year and it is starting to creep into professional work as well.

I can tell folks are not reading my emails, just the LLM summary, and then ask for clarifications that are in the original text, repeatedly. I mean sure, you’re paying me for the privilege of you wasting your own time, but this style of communication conpletely destroys me.

UK friends, I’ve been doing balcony solar for a couple of years now, with and without battery. AMA https://mastodon.neilzone.co.uk/@neil/117166259940099994

We’re starting to use a new SaaS thing at work and it comes with an onboarding call. In there, we asked why we can’t get past the chatbot prompt when logging in when we were promised the chatbot was optional during sales.

“The first time you log in, the app forces you to interact with the chatbot. Not enough of our customers are using the chatbot.”

…

Ja, kein Problem, völlig normal.

> NRW-Landwirtschaftsministerin Silke Gorißen appelliert an die Bevölkerung, angesichts der Trockenheit und der Brandgefahr derzeit keine Wälder zu betreten. "Wichtig ist, dass die Menschen bitte aus den Wäldern rausbleiben, egal, ob es schon brennt oder nicht", sagte Gorißen dem WDR.

Last time I saw an eclipse in 1999, we were told the next one would be in 2026. At 16, I could not fathom a date that far in the future. I’m glad to have made it this far 😎

RE: https://xoxo.zone/@Ashedryden/117071316141598299

It is the only way.

RE: https://mastodon.social/@jcoglan/117060920278066079

This remains one of the best books about learning to program by example from small features to architecting a complex system. You will not regret reading it.

Awkward discussion at the Amnesty International stand just now. They didn’t yet know they chose a bad week to canvas. At least they were as pissed as I am.

I’m surely not the first to come to this realisation, but the LLM industrial complex is to tech-life what MAGA is to politics: erode any and all trust in established institutions, people and practices for the benefit of the very few and worst people on the planet in the (poor) guise of freedom.

RE: https://ruby.social/@tisba/116895169469605095

This is why I don’t shut up about this. If the whole extent of this would be generally known, there’d be riots.

Happy ChatControl 1.0 to all who celebrate 👎

Hey all, I have a big favour to ask.

At the beginning of the week, a large client that we had 100% expected to get started with a large project this month has dropped out at the most inconvenient time for us.

My team at @neighbourhoodie and I are looking for any and all projects we might be able to help with, the sooner the better.

We are really good at turning manual and/or analogue processes into digital ones, especially, but not limited to, if parts of the process need to work while a person or device is offline.

We have proven this repeatedly by making substantial contributions to fighting a Ebola epidemic, testing the first ever Ebola vaccine and distributing the very first COVID vaccinations to all eligible Bavarians.

We are also really good at taking your prototypes and turn them into real-life, secure, reliable, fast and scalable systems that you can bet your company on for years. From UX to SRE, we got you covered.

You need a frontend for a backend service you’ve built, we got you. You need a backend for a mobile app or game you’ve built, we got you.

We also excel at designing, building and debugging distributed database systems of all sizes and shapes. If you sync your photos with tools from the large red brick company, we helped with that.

We can help migrate your infrastructures from US clouds to EU hosters (within reason). Wanna move from GitHub to a self-hosted or managed Forgejo? Get in touch!

Additionally, in the past three years we helped 15+ FOSS projects from systemd, to GNOME, to PHP and PyPI, as well as Servo and Log4j with maintenance and security tasks in all sorts of programming languages and environments. We can help with yours, too.

We can also help join your team (remotely, CE[S]T) to augment any current projects you’re need accelerated.

I’m happy to answer any question you might have.

And I appreciate any leads and all boosts <3

https://neighbourhood.ie

Happy 100th, Mel Brooks. You’re one of a kind 🫶