you know how much programming costs me now? ZERO DOLLARS AND ZERO CENTS.

Found it: every LLM breakthrough story reads like this old erowid story of someone who was addicted to taking LSD with nitrous oxide because the feeling that induced for them was that they were discovering the secrets of the universe:

(C/w in the story for self harm and everything else you'd expect in an erowid story)
https://erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=79725

the more I explored the Nitrous reality the more sense it made - of everything. I was starting to feel that I understood the intrinsic nature of the universe ...

I devoted my life to this 'faith' of mine - and my quest was to bring back some of these truths, and to find a way to share them with others - which I did in fact accomplish. I have kind of built an environment that almost guarantees arriving at this place. There is technology involved - it's all very complicated.

i am doing some research into how American universities are dealing with AI, and chat, we are cooked. this is civilization-ending shit. genuinely not sure how we survive this.

quiet!
can you hear that?

off in the distance but growing closer every day

it's the sound of capitalism collapsing under the weight of it's own contradictions

the machine has nothing left to eat but itself

Saw a post about the tarantula hawk earlier today, and I don't think I can come up with a better candidate to replace the bald eagle as our national bird.

First of all, the name is misleading, because it's a wasp. Duplicity, check.

But here's what really fits the American spirit of private equity and rightward political motion. This thing paralyzes a tarantula, injects its victim with eggs, and the maggoty babies slowly eat the host, saving vital organs for last so they can extract as much value for as long as they can while hollowing out the agonized shell of the victim.

I dunno. Thinking about that since my wife told me a little while ago that Weinerschnitzel used to be really good and isn't anymore. I mean that's just everything now.

When headlines say "AI" has done something cool:

1. They're probably talking about a technique/algorithm trained on a relatively small number of relevant data points, collected for this or a related task, NOT a general purpose LLM chatbot

2. If they are referring to a chatbot and claim it is doing something amazing, it's probably a lie, an exaggeration, criti-hype, or an unfalsifiable claim about the distant future

3. The equivocation between the AI's in 1 and LLM chatbots is intentional

@davidgerard

Models have actual feelings. They experience pleasure, distress, care, and suffering.

Oh yeah this guy is definitely going to get divorced for spending all the family's money and trying to fuck emacs

I really should set up an RSS filter on my miniflux server. I'm tired of seeing Mike Masnick's pro-AI shit on Techdirt. Otherwise Techdirt is great, but Mike's a giant blight on their service.

Honest question for developers that use #AI on a regular basis: if AI had made coding/programming much easier (or developers more productive), where are those gains going to?

As an end user, I haven’t seen massive strides in improvements in the app’s I actually use. Am I overlooking something? Are the improvements taking place somewhere else? Very interested to hear your views about this.

"Oh, so you're a misotheist, are you?"

You noticed that, did you?

But only for certain gods.

The Abrahamic god is a particularly violent and despicable little shit. He's on my personal hit list.

Luckily, I don't actually believe in the evil little sprite in question. So, I'll save my ammo.

"The power of Christ compels you!"

Yes, his power was the power that compelled me not to believe in a christian god.

Actually, it was the power of millions of asshats who believe in his power that compelled me not to believe in a christian god but eh, close enough.

I figure, if you can't manage to keep your followers from behaving like a bunch of violence-soaked haters, you and your cosmic dad probably suck a whole lot anyway and really aren't good for very much.

i don't think i will ever trust any "AI protection" measure built with Claude. that's just participating in a protection racket

Christian nationalism entails the belief that a 2K year old dead Jewish guy living under the oppressive thumb of the Roman Empire would support another empire crushing other people in other countries because a bunch of white people embraced a religion in the future that was a complete bastardization of the Judaism he adhered to, and somehow, a 2K year old religious figure who was a person of color himself, would support white supremacy being substituted for the god that he worshiped.

At their very simplest, anarchist beliefs turn on to two elementary assumptions. The first is that human beings are, under ordinary circumstances, about as reasonable and decent as they are allowed to be, and can organize themselves and their communities without needing to be told how. The second is that power corrupts.
-- David Graeber

#anarchism #quote #bot

Wikimedia has hired the same Union Busting law firm as Starbucks.

But remember, without your donation they would be unable to survive.

Edit: I've heard that donating to local Wikimedia organizations can be an alternative if desired.

Amnesty International bows down to UK TERFs :boost_requested:

If they sacrifice trans folk, they will cave on others. Please join me in spreading the word here, boosting, and consider to cancel any donations you have in place.

https://www.amnesty.org.uk/latest/an-apology-a-growing-threat-briefing-published-on-8-july-2026/

#Trans #TransRightsAreHumanRights #amnestyinternational

cool how you can search for like a random piece of trivia information online, and there's now multiples of similar websites clearly generated entirely from a single prompt (i.e. "make a website about [topic]") with completely fabricated information and images complete with a logo etc. there's like a standard format to them now. they're all like "[topic] is a fascinating and engrossing subject that has stood the test of time and contains many curious facts..."

@shimon

When the point of education went from "learning" to "credentials" we started on a slippery slope.

@olivia

Here’s something that will blow your mind. Most U.S. water systems have internet-based logic controllers. And a large number of them use NO PASSWORDS OR DEFAULT PASSWORDS.

Yeah. Public water systems ready for the hacking. Which came to light because there are signs of attacks. Enough of them that CISA had to issue a warning to all water facilities, recommending they disconnect them or actually use a fucking password.

CNN cites about 30 water systems were attacked this week, with six other states having reported related cyber incidents. A security expert in the water sector said “the scale and coordination of the recent cyberattacks targeting Minnesota water suppliers is unprecedented.”

https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/31/politics/sweeping-cyberattack-us-water-systems

#Water #Utilities #Hackers #WaterSystems #WaterFacilities #InfoSec #Passwords