Brad Lanham @brad@mastodon.lanham.id.au

@PaulWay

Loath Telsa's and everything about them, from the conman company owner, to the treatment of workers, to the relentlessly smug virtue signalling drivers, to the take every shortcut possible design and now best in class fatality rate.

Happy to bash them at every opportunity.

@ampersine @gpnaturephotos

#telsa

I am yet to meet a can opener truly worthy of its name.

Microsoft has confirmed that Windows 11 users will not be able to uninstall the controversial “Recall” feature, despite earlier reports suggesting otherwise. Recall, part of the Copilot+ suite announced in May, automatically captures screenshots of user activity on the operating system including sensitive information such as passwords or financial data https://digitalmarketreports.com/news/25091/microsoft-recall-feature-on-windows-11-not-removable-after-all/ Do yourself a favor and get rid of Windows from your life—enough of these greedy companies. #privacy #security

I just recently realized that what I truly hate about LLMs is that it devalues language. I love language, I love using it very intentionally, I love how different people wield and work language differently. A well forged phrase can cut right to the soul. Language is literally magic. It can do things where man and machine all fail.

But now with the press of a button you can get sugary pink language goo in any shape you like. And this is sold as an equal replacement to real human language. The insult! The depravity!

I think it might say something about how far language is already devalued. We live in a morass of content marketing and business process documentation and terms and conditions and propaganda and spam. All soulless language that nobody asks for but that people are compelled to create. We can't imagine not creating such language goo. And so we're grateful for the pink goo machine.

You know those stories about how there was once magic in the world but it was lost? This is it. This is how it happens.

Great news everyone! I finally talk about AI hype. Someone finally mentioned LLMs one time too many, and the reckoning is upon us:

https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/

These megabreaches are just emphasizing security isn’t enough you need to be de-risking by driving data purges and asking critical questions of product teams. You need customer location maybe but you don’t need to store a history of it.

Racism? In this country? Impossible! Who does Laura Tingle the ABC's most senior journalist and member of the actual ABC board think she is?! https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2024/may/29/good-evening-australia-tonight-im-in-a-right-tizzy-about-being-accused-of-racism

Where I live in western Sydney (NSW, Australia), the population voted 70% NO to Australia's marriage equality ballot. For context, the rest of the country voted 70% YES.

My partner and I have lived here for over 20 years, we're nice citizens who love the area, but suddenly, I felt isolated and nervous. What if I go to hospital and a NO person is my nurse? What if one of us is vulnerable and a NO person is the only one we can ask for assistance? Which shops are owned by people who hate us but do it with a smile as they take our money? You know, all the stuff that used to be 'normal' until 'tolerance' (and legal protection) made it seem like things had changed.

So today I attended an IDAHOBIT event at the local village green (a round patch of terrified grass surrounded by concrete between two roads) and the new Mayor was there. He's the 3rd Mayor since my time here - Mayor Brad, who came to office after the last Mayor died suddenly on the way home from a visit to China (or somewhere) and we Mayor-less until Brad was elected last week.

Brad turned up with one council member known to the community and a surprise conservative council member who was not. Brad wasn't invited to speak but asked if he could and the organisers allowed it. And Brad was there to tell us, members and allies of the LGBTQA+ community that he supported the community, and that he and council were there for us. And this little event, which had been very hands-off for council until today, became a place of reaching out and support. Then he and the other two councillors raised the rainbow flag. And I have pictures!

Friends, I suddenly found my aged cheeks were wet and I was moved to thank Brad for his courage and for helping me feel safer in a place I love and hope to grow even older in. And I was embarrassed afterwards because I do get very, well - fulsome sometimes, but I didn't tell him my name (because I forgot to) so he'll never know that weeping, blithering idiot was me. So, thanks Brad.

I feel like yesterday's Duo outage was a near-miss asteroid.

We can talk up how clear a response process for something might be, but we know that for every org that has this locked in, there are 10 that don't. A point of failure like MFA, especially one that we've been yelling about being critically necessary, creates its own risk.

It must be wild to be a student right now.

School shootings? You’re on your own. Thoughts and prayers.

Peaceful protest? That’s going too far. Send in the riot gear.

That America feels empowered to intervene in one but not the other tells you everything you need to know.

If #xz were a Go or Rust dependency, you wouldn’t have a single copy of xz library on your system, but many, #xzbackdoor hidden in every executable that uses it. Distros would have to rebuild all packages using that lib (not just the lib itself), which could take days or weeks, and users would have to update them all, downloading tens or hundreds of megabytes.

If you install binaries directly from vendors/devs, it’s even worse – you wouldn’t even know which ones are affected and you’d (1/3)

OK, this is cool:

1. Look up a podcast on https://podcastindex.org/
2. Check the number at the end of the URL in your browser. Example: https://podcastindex.org/podcast/270016 -> 270016
3. Follow <number>@ap.podcastindex.org. For example, @270016 .
4. Get podcast updates over ActivityPub! Including audio!

h/t @samsethi

Mastodon's search system has many special commands called "operators" which let you tweak what the results show.

To use an operator just include it in your search, and it will filter the results in the way you want. For example if you just want results that have polls, include the operator "has:poll". Operators let you filter searches by date, author, post type, language and more.

There's a complete list of operators and more tips about Mastodon searches at:

➡️ https://fedi.tips/how-do-i-search-for-stuff-on-mastodon

We're delighted to let you know that the #EverythingOpen Schedule is now available - and we're sure you'll agree there's some brilliant Speakers and Sessions in store!

https://2024.everythingopen.au/schedule/

Here’s the deal: We stop shaming the poor for buying things that may not be essential, and start shaming the rich for making a profit off things that are essential.

Study identifies mitochondrial dysfunction as cause of long-COVID fatigue.

"Researchers from Amsterdam UMC and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU) have discovered that the persistent fatigue in patients with long-COVID has a biological cause, namely mitochondria in muscle cells that produce less energy than in healthy patients. The results of the study were published today in Nature Communications."

#COVID19 #LongCOVID #fatigue #Mitochondria #musclecells @auscovid19

Source: https://www.news-medical.net/news/20240104/Study-identifies-mitochondrial-dysfunction-as-cause-of-long-COVID-fatigue.aspx

The British Government has made a tourism ad ahead of the 2024 election, and it’s surprisingly honest and informative. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sRoYvFTE3c

PSA: bluesky sends your posts to an AI company, if you're an artist and you move to bluesky, you're feeding the thing you're fighting against.

https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto/blob/main/packages%2Fbsky%2Fsrc%2Fauto-moderator%2Fhive.ts

#warning #psa #art #bluesky #migration

“In Finland, the number of homeless people has fallen sharply. Those affected receive a small apartment & counselling with no preconditions. 4 out of 5 people affected make their way back into a stable life. And all this is CHEAPER than accepting homelessness.” https://t.co/EH3reri9lz

Plasma Mobile: tuned up to 6! https://espi.dev/posts/2023/12/plasma-mobile-towards-6/