Friday February 14th, 2025
The vandals who are "auditing" the US government can't secure a freakin' WordPress site...
Anyone Can Push Updates to the DOGE.gov Website, in which security testers update the DOGE (pronounced "douchy") web site with tags such as:
"THESE 'EXPERTS' LEFT THEIR DATABASE OPEN."
I hope that we can get these fuckers up on Watergate style hearings before they end up in Nuremberg style trials.
Asked again why Allstate was so bluntly contradicting its own CIO, the spokesperson again ignored the question — in another email, we couldn't help but notice, that sounded a bit like it might have been written with AI itself.
Via Tara Calishain, who notes
...I'm annoyed this article isn't headlined "You're In Good Six-Fingered Hands With Allstate"
Thursday February 13th, 2025
FuelArc: It’s Official: the Cybertruck is More Explosive than the Ford Pinto
Fire fatality rate per 100k units of 14.2? (Extrapolated from 34,438 units sold). Holy crap! When I was looking at recall rates for the Bolt battery, there were recalls for that many fires per 100k units in cars you wouldn't think of, and most of those were smoldering in the door panels 'cause water got in and flooded the power window motor.
Searching through .xcodeproj and .pbxproj files by hand, as one does, to try to figure out why one is correctly referencing its "Package Dependencies" and the other isn't.
Wednesday February 12th, 2025
Smuggling arbitrary data through an emoji. Abusing Unicode to stash arbitrary data in characters, that persist across copy and paste. In particular, this raised an eyebrow:
There are techniques for using subtle variations in text to “watermark” a message, so that if it is sent to a number of people and then leaked, it’s possible to trace it to the original recipient. Variation selector sequences are a way to do this that survives most copy/pastes and allows arbitrary data density. You could go so far as to watermark every single character if you wanted to.
There's an AI company called "Bubble" https://bubble.io/
This... This is like a memecoin called... uh.... Memecoin. Or Shitcoin.
Oooh. Not that Petaluma has the staff to implement something like this, but I can dream.
https://www.portland.gov/transportation/planning/trees-curb-zone
Clean Air Is As Serious As A Heart Attack (Thousands, Actually)
Recent news out of the UK shows us just how serious the hidden effects of air pollution can be. After one year of implementing a “clean air zone,” one city found that hospital and doctor spending reduced by over 30,000 pounds per month! More important than the money is the improvements to human health, with respiratory illnesses going down 25% and heart problem visits reduced by 24%.
Designing e-bike-friendly cities: Cycle lanes with minimal traffic impact
In the paper "Bike Network Planning in Limited Urban Space," published in the journal Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, researchers led by Professor Martin Raubal and Nina Wiedemann at the Institute of Cartography and Geoinformation at ETH Zurich introduce a novel optimization method for improving bikeability with minimal impact on other travel modes.
Report details 17 cases of abuse by IHOPKC founder Mike Bickle
If the acronym isn't ringing any bells for you, that's the "International House of Prayer".
The researchers have received a grant to build on the work prior to submitting it to a journal. In a working paper, they suggest that groups trying to spur more development can win popular support by emphasizing in their messaging or in the language of the policy itself how the effort will benefit groups with wide popularity, such as nurses, firefighters, and teachers. They write that government officials should consider that many voters do not have internally consistent or firm views on many housing policies, despite state and local laws that encourage gathering detailed community input prior to making policy changes or approving projects.
Not news to anyone who's been using LLMs to create summaries, but AI chatbots unable to accurately summarise news, BBC finds.
In the study, the BBC asked ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini and Perplexity to summarise 100 news stories and rated each answer.
It got journalists who were relevant experts in the subject of the article to rate the quality of answers from the AI assistants.
Deborah Turness - AI Distortion is new threat to trusted information
Huh. I use bash. I'm copying file from the house server to Charlene's machine. I pop up a terminal, type scp with a wildcard in the remote source file name. Get a "no matches found:" error.
Think about it for a little while, then run bash. It works.
Fucking zsh...
Tuesday February 11th, 2025
And the cronyism is kicking into extra high gear: CNN: Justice Department to drop federal corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams
The Department of Justice is moving to drop the federal corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, according to a memo obtained by CNN.
American Bar Association: The ABA supports the rule of law
We call upon our elected representatives to stand with us and to insist upon adherence to the rule of law and the legal processes and procedures that ensure orderly change. The administration cannot choose which law it will follow or ignore. These are not partisan or political issues. These are rule of law and process issues. We cannot afford to remain silent. We must stand up for the values we hold dear. The ABA will do its part and act to protect the rule of law.
Monday February 10th, 2025
I thought I'd linked to something about how Google's Super Bowl commercial had to be edited because the LLM generated content was bogus, something like Ars Technica: Not Gouda-nough: Google removes AI-generated cheese error from Super Bowl ad, but I'm not seeing it. So, anyway...
Brilliant Crank: AI wants to rule the World, but it can’t handle dairy, which begins:
One of my first projects at IBM Design was to find a way to make business process outsourcing “lovable again.”
and talks a bit about how snake oil gets sold to people who don't actually understand the business processes, and then gets crammed back in by the people reacting to edicts from above.
Edit: PC Mag: Google Edits 'Gouda' Gemini Super Bowl Ad After Cheese Fan Notices Inaccuracies
A screenshot of the AI chatbot in the ad claimed Gouda accounted for 50-60% of global cheese consumption. Was it funded by Big Gouda, or was it just an AI hallucination?
Sunday February 9th, 2025
Does anyone else find themselves pondering that 12 Steps is 4 measures if you're dancing two step or waltz, 3 for a chacha?
The first step may be admitting you have a problem, but it's also with your left if you're dancing lead. In the traditions that I'm learning, at least.
Moreover, while GenAI can improve worker efficiency, it can inhibit critical engagement with work and can potentially lead to long-term overreliance on the tool and diminished skill for independent problem-solving. Higher confidence in GenAI’s ability to perform a task is related to less critical thinking effort.
Via Pivot To AI: Microsoft research: Use AI chatbots and turn yourself into a dumbass
404 Media: Microsoft Study Finds AI Makes Human Cognition “Atrophied and Unprepared”
The Register: Some workers already let AI do the thinking for them, Microsoft researchers find
When I was a kid, my dad had the requisite 3 different tin snips, the straight cut one had two blades on the near side, one on the far, and cut a little ribbon, to keep the handles on one side.
3 hardware stores later, I have not found this, and am going home with angle grinder cutting wheels. Sigh.
A few more superb owls for your Sunday.
Saturday February 8th, 2025
Reflective clothing causes target fixation in drunk drivers and confuses car automatic breaking technology.
Fuck it, wear what you want.
Donald Shoup will be missed. He made visible a huge tax that we pay on everybody, a tax which subsidizes pollution, injury and deaths. The data he collected and examined lights the way to reform, and he was generous in helping start a movement.
I don't know what the legal impediments are to municipalities buying out the PG&E lines and running their own electrical grid, I know Healdsburg has done it since before PG&E, but seems like something all California cities, including Petaluma, should consider.
Again, this is my shocked face: Conservative Writer Who Accused Drag Queens of ‘Grooming’ Is Arrested on Child Molestation Charges. The accused is Aaron Craig Gleason, author who's written for The Federalist and The Daily Wire, and taught Bible at Rocky Bayou Christian School.
Friday February 7th, 2025
I'm... kinda annoyed with Rust. The lack of reuse of references in expressions is making code way more verbose, in a less readable way than it should be. The ownership stuff looks really kludgy, and it feels like it's hard to write code that's actually going to be performant unless the compiler is *really* smart.
Is there a systems language out there that's balancing safety and efficiency with expressiveness? Zig, Go, and Rust don't seem to be that.
Mark Zuckerberg, for example, claimed to have no involvement in decisions to use LibGen to train AI models. But unredacted messages show the "decision to use LibGen occurred" after "a prior escalation to MZ," authors alleged.
Today in "unfamiliar with the Streisand Effect": UnitedHealthcare Is Mad About ‘In Luigi We Trust’ Comments Under a Doctor’s Viral Post
Thursday February 6th, 2025
Hard to view Pam Bondi's shutdown of the USDOJ's Task Force KleptoCapture (PDF) as anything other than a straight-up giveaway to Putin's croniess.
Just so I can find it later, it's all stuff you already know: Rachel Maddow: To defend ‘DOGE’ efforts, White House clings to weird, lazy lies
Jason Lefkowitz @jalefkowit@vmst.io
Be the asteroid you are praying will hit the planet
David Gerard @davidgerard@circumstances.run
they laughed at generative AI. but they laughed at NFTs, the Metaverse and web3 too.
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social
attempting to describe the vibes of the moment. have yet to do better than: "imagine watching a documentary reenacting the burning of the Library of Alexandria set to the soundtrack of 'Yakety Sax'"
Wednesday February 5th, 2025
I mean, sure, it could just be that oligarchs flock, and Musk's interests are aligned with Putin, or that USAID had a role in the downfall of South African apartheid, or any of a number of other reasons, but sometimes the answer might be simple?
Elon Musk Reportedly Has a Huge Conflict of Interest Motivating Him to Gut USAID
Now, it's starting to sound like Musk's seething hatred towards the aid organization can be traced back to at least one conflict of interest at one of his business ventures: according to The Lever, USAID's inspector general was investigating Musk's Starlink partnership with the Ukrainian government around the time DOGE shut down the organization.
Elon Musk’s Enemy, USAID, Was Investigating Starlink’s Contracts in Ukraine
A use for "AI" that I can get behind:
PC Mag: This 'AI Granny' Bores Scammers to Tears
After a survey found that 71% of Brits want revenge on scammers, mobile operator O2 deploys Daisy, an AI tool that keeps fraudsters on the line to waste their time.
The Guardian: ‘Dear, did you say pastry?’: meet the ‘AI granny’ driving scammers up the wall
Daisy’s dithering frustrates phone fraudsters and wastes time they could be using to scam real people
Editor’s summary
Prion diseases are devastating neurodegenerative disorders that are invariably fatal, but removal of the prion protein from neurons can protect against disease progression. Neumann et al. developed a compact epigenetic silencer called CHARM that could efficiently shut off the prion gene throughout the mouse brain when delivered systemically by a viral vector without changing the underlying DNA sequence (see the Perspective by Whittaker and Musunuru). The epigenetic editor can also be programmed to turn itself off after silencing its target, thus limiting potential adverse effects from long-term expression. CHARM represents a therapeutic modality that could be applied to a range of other diseases caused by the toxic buildup of unwanted proteins. —Di Jiang
DOI: 10.1126/science.ado7082
As rahaeli @rahaeli.bsky.social said:
Holy SHIT. Okay, this needs an "in mice" caveat, but the tactic they took means it's less of a caveat than usual and also HOLY FUCKING SHIT
Same lap, different cat.