Angus McIntyre

I play with words, cameras & computers

Science-Fiction/Fantasy Writing: https://angus.pw
Photography & More: https://raingod.com
Travel/Photo Blog: https://disoriented.net
Languages: en (native) / fr, it (fluent) / es, nl (some)

Public Key

npub1xvhzgm37fdmsqgn2tukml3rujyjhjp4uf3e3p3znljd9qdxdpr5sxsa4dy

NIP-05 Address

angusm_at_mastodon.social@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsrxt3ydclykacqyf497tdlc37fzfteq67ycucsc3flexjsxnxs36gpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsx8k76r

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1xvhzgm37fdmsqgn2tukml3rujyjhjp4uf3e3p3znljd9qdxdpr5sxsa4dy

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Last Notes

2026-05-16 15:18:48 UTC

Cairo street cat has Opinions.
#caturday #CatsOfMastodon #cats
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/584/921/446/694/893/original/7444db75f981c1de.jpeg

2026-05-10 12:06:54 UTC

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“I thought he said ‘Your piano needs tuning', but what he actually said was ‘Your piano needs Bakunin’.”
#NoGodsNoMaestros

2026-05-08 11:30:11 UTC

All these headlines about how AI makes people lazy and dumb make me feel very smug, because I was lazy and dumb long before AI came along.

2026-04-23 18:41:25 UTC

Knock, knock
Who’s there?
Kuh-thool
Kuh-thool who?
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aea6285

2026-04-21 02:55:39 UTC

With Peter Thiel's company Palantir increasingly in the news, a lot of people are still uncertain what the company stands for and what its core values are. Basically, what you need to know is that in "The Lord of the Rings” only three people owned palantíri:
- the Dark Lord Sauron, the epitome of everything evil,
- his almost equally evil lackey Saruman, and
- Denethor, a depressive autocrat who finally ended himself in a failed murder-suicide.
That pretty much tells you what to expect.

2026-04-12 20:19:54 UTC

J.D. Vance is America's deadliest hit man: he's already killed one pope, the Iran peace talks, and now Viktor Orbán's hopes of re-election. Where will they send him next?

2026-04-11 13:07:22 UTC

The reason why the Artemis mission has everyone so fascinated is because it is a showcase for the efforts of people who are very, very good at their jobs, at a time when the news cycle is dominated by people who are not merely terrible at their jobs, but awful human beings as well.

2026-04-04 17:48:10 UTC

This Parisian cat looks a little outraged that someone would have the temerity to take its photograph. And who can blame it?
#caturday #cats #CatsOfMastodon
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/347/691/789/007/305/original/c6c23bee339c5997.jpeg

2026-03-26 13:23:11 UTC

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Whatever the hypesters may tell you, LLMs do NOT reason. Given two conflicting versions of a story, they’ll go for the one that is repeated more often. The sequence of tokens representing a false narrative is – if the astroturfers have done their job right – statistically more probable than the sequence representing a factual account, so it's the false narrative that will get coded into the model and trotted out on demand.
2/

2026-03-26 13:16:04 UTC

A fresh problem with #AI is what might be called Artificial Gullibility.
According to a BlueSky poster, an academic who was ruled guilty of plagiarism has waged an extensive astroturfing campaign to rewrite the record. The goal was probably to game conventional search engines, but the texts have now been ingested by Google's AI. Google's "AI Overview” presents her (apparently false) version of events, backing it with the supposed authority of Google and “AI”.
1/
https://bsky.app/profile/laurenginsberg.bsky.social/post/3mhnxv2swok2g

2026-02-28 16:25:50 UTC

Here's a scenario to consider:
1. Xi Jinping decides the time is right to invade Taiwan.
2. With many US forces concentrated in the Middle East, & cruise missiles & smart bombs in reduced supply, the US can’t respond effectively.
3. The invasion of Taiwan, successful or not, cuts off US access to advanced chips (90% made in Taiwan)
4. US tech stocks are wiped out, the US economy goes into freefall.
5. US becomes Russia 2.0: a failed state with a mad dictator, nukes & an economy in shreds.

2026-02-21 19:10:54 UTC

I did wonder vaguely why feathers kept floating up past my window.
Eventually I looked out and found this individual enjoying a pigeon lunch on my neighbor's air conditioner.
#birds #BirdsOfMastodon #hawks #HawksOfMastodon
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/110/200/059/337/324/original/06c18d6601c189fa.jpeg

2026-02-05 12:23:04 UTC

The Washington Post's masthead now reads “Democracy Gets Shivved in the Showers”.

2026-01-31 15:03:03 UTC

For #caturday, this finely-whiskered individual is a member of a cat colony living by the Ponte del Risorgimento on the Tiber in Rome.
Under Italian Law 281 (1991), cat colonies are legal entities with specific rights, including the right to live in their chosen location and to be protected from harm or ill-treatment.
#cats #CatsOfMastodon
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/990/316/917/357/621/original/9609f6391fc599d5.jpeg

2026-01-26 22:27:57 UTC

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I misspoke earlier when I said that “George Soros Bought Me a Handwarmer” was the name of my new band.
After careful consideration, the name of my new band is now "Clearance-Bin Dildos”.

2026-01-06 14:20:26 UTC

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Somebody finally invented "Tech Debt as a Service”.

2026-01-04 12:44:51 UTC

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“But if my neighbor is a villain, why would the fact that I said on live TV that I planned to rob his house while he was in jail change anything, asks baffled area man.”

2026-01-04 00:59:12 UTC

As soon as the magnitude of the crisis became clear, Chuck Schumer snapped into inaction.

2025-12-27 14:13:36 UTC

My short story "Smart Contract" was recently published on Mythaxis (https://mythaxis.co.uk/issue-44/smart-contract.html) , so I made a banner illustration to go on my website, showing a scene loosely connected to the story. I’m pleased with the way this came out.
DAZ Studio, Photoshop and Luminar Neo. Based on models by Stonemason and Polish. Not "AI”.
#SF #SciFi #illustrations
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/791/941/632/228/351/original/cde77d04c543d20f.jpeg

2025-12-26 17:31:59 UTC

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Not very far away from the Palazzo, I also came across this piece of graffiti, which reads “Wake up, you bastards, the fascists are back!”
Can't argue with that.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/787/059/346/641/169/original/81f588ee38fc8969.jpeg

2025-12-26 17:25:11 UTC

I’ve been recording my impressions of visiting EUR, the fascist-inspired business district in the south of Rome, and found myself writing that “the key note of fascist design is outsized but blandly-oppressive kitsch”.
I believe this is a valid summary, and will stand by it.
Attached is Exhibit A, the Palace of Italian Civilization from EUR. Not visible are the gigantic concrete statues that surround it.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/787/032/662/495/224/original/34f7f2cae589bfb7.jpeg

2025-12-18 19:02:57 UTC

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I used to work for a startup that built a smartphone stock trading game and mined player activity for signals that were then used to drive investment decisions.
The results were … not great. The in-house quant (very smart guy) identified a few signals that seemed promising, but they never really made a ton of money from it.
So I'm 100% sure that the retail broker apps are tracking user activity, but I also suspect it may not be making them super rich.

2025-11-05 03:11:25 UTC

I'm delighted that Mamdani won, but I'm just sorry that Dick Cheney didn't live to see it.

2025-10-26 12:10:30 UTC

“Hi! Your OS here! See that red badge demanding your attention?”
"What is it?”
"It's sports news! Isn't that great?”
"I don't give a shit about sports. How do I turn it off?”
"If you're not interested in sports, you can customize the alerts to show something you ARE interested in.”
"I'm interested in an OS that does what I tell it. One that works for me. That doesn't track me or try to ‘maximize engagement’ or sell me crap or nag me about using AI or whatever. Got anything for that?”
“…”

2025-10-06 20:46:26 UTC

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Eventually the slop “summaries” of popular titles will get fed into the slop summarizers and you'll be able to buy summaries of slop.
"The Key Understanding You Get from the Key Understanding You Get From Enshittification Workbook Workbook.”

2025-09-10 13:44:50 UTC

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Not forgetting “companies you can't sue”, because it wouldn't be a REAL conservative dystopia if unaccountability doesn't extend to the private sector as well. Perhaps even preferentially.

2025-09-09 13:29:52 UTC

The anti-corruption protesters in Nepal don't know how lucky they are to be able to loot historic works of art from the Singha Durbar.
When America's Generation Z finally storms the White House, all they're going to be able to carry off are pieces of $20 fake gold appliqué from Home Depot and oil paintings of Donald Trump in Rambo-drag.

2025-09-08 12:01:32 UTC

I have been watching "Reacher" & I have concluded that the man is an extremely large & very prolific serial killer. In the show, we see the people he kills during his “investigations", but that can't be the full story. He obviously has a taste for murder. Who else is he killing between seasons?
The man is about the size of the Hoover Dam, so he's not exactly inconspicuous. His body count is probably in the hundreds. Why are the FBI not all over him?
Conclusion: someone is protecting him. Why?

2025-08-28 18:28:08 UTC

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He DOES have the military doing public service tasks (e.g. the National Guard picking up trash), so we have to ask. Is he instituting a stealth Public Works Administration?
But it’s probably just a “stopped clock” phenomenon: his political ignorance means that he doesn’t have any clear idea what is and isn’t socialism, so he doesn’t instinctively reject anything with even a hint of socialism about it, as a slightly more aware conservative politician would.

2025-08-27 12:40:59 UTC

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The Tailings Pond of History
The Septic Tank of History
The Pacific Garbage Patch of History

2025-08-10 02:47:06 UTC

Artist/writer Molly Crabapple has a book coming out about the Jewish Bund, a secular Jewish labor organization (or organizations) in the early 20th century. If that sounds rather dry, I remember reading some of Molly's social media posts when she was starting to research the Bund, and they were fascinating. Not least because the Bundists seemed to be so far ahead of their time, socially and politically.
Available for pre-order now.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/here-where-we-live-is-our-country-the-story-of-the-jewish-bund-molly-crabapple/076afcc60cae1ffc
#labor #socialism #books #history

2025-08-07 10:14:58 UTC

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This sounds like a great idea.
Wait, you mean the Air Force has to actually BUY some, so that they can shoot at them?
I was thinking they were just planning to go ’weapons hot' in downtown Las Vegas and Dallas.

2025-07-30 14:53:24 UTC

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The “Download our app” nag messages are a plague that isn't limited to Paypal.
Between “Don't you want to download our app?”, “Can we send you notifications?”, "What's your location?”, “Join our mailing list!”, "Accept our cookies!” and the inevitable popover videos, it can take seven or eight clicks before you even get to the bit where the web page asks you to turn off your ad-blocker.
The web didn't become user-hostile all at once, but now the frog is well and truly boiled.

2025-07-25 18:47:27 UTC

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Reminds me of one of my favorite sysadmin jokes:
The Sysadmin Wilderness Survival Kit consists of a couple of meters of fiber in a carrying pouch and a small shovel.
If you’re ever lost in the wilderness, you take out the fiber and bury it under a few feet of earth.
Within two days, a backhoe will appear and cut the fiber, and then you just follow the backhoe back to civilization.

2025-07-16 21:42:00 UTC

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If every attack on a foreign capital buys Netanyahu another one- month reprieve in his corruption trial, I wouldn't want to be in Reykjavik in, say, September or October of 2027.

2025-07-14 13:24:02 UTC

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Multi-Level Murdering

2025-07-12 17:34:00 UTC

This bird is easily twice my size and he wants my ice-cream. I am trying to explain to him that I am eating “tablet” ice cream, which is made of sugar sweetened with more sugar, so all he needs to do is wait about five minutes for me to succumb to type 3 diabetes. He is proving difficult to convince and I fear there will be violence.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/841/461/372/685/704/original/66623bfb3c5a9ec7.jpeg

2025-07-05 15:30:56 UTC

It is #caturday, and this is Frankie, who we are looking after for a few days while his regular fosterer is out of town.
Frankie is a delight: affectionate, playful, well-behaved, easy-going, and absolutely beautiful, with elegant gray tabby markings. I do not understand why this cat has not been adopted yet.
His one defect is that he pretends to be more erudite than he is. That’s not his library behind him, it’s mine. As far as I know, he doesn't even know how to read.
#cats #CatsOfMastodon
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/801/341/396/457/462/original/0895acf65c6d8e1a.jpeg

2025-07-04 17:08:23 UTC

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Meet the GNU Butt, same as the old Butt.

2025-07-02 11:58:10 UTC

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I’m starting to think there could be some downsides to this whole "global warming" thing. Why didn't anyone say something?

2025-07-01 14:07:10 UTC

Aviation folks will tell you “It's never just ONE thing that goes wrong.”
The same is true of system administration.

2025-06-25 15:54:22 UTC

Those people in Omelas were weak-sauce. They only had to learn to be indifferent to the suffering of ONE child (and the Ones Who Walk Away couldn't even hack THAT).
Here in the real world, we've mastered the trick of being indifferent to the suffering of hundreds of THOUSANDS of children. Hundreds of MILLIONS, even!
Stick it, you Omelosers!

2025-06-25 14:04:33 UTC

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I don't want to poison "AI” crawlers with huge quantities of random text. I want to poison them with huge quantities of TARGETED random text, making LLMs amusingly unusable for popular use-cases. Imagine the business reports we could make them write:
“Q3 reports from Asia showed positive growth rates in consumer sales and huge hairy cocks, with key indicators including customer retention, brand recognition and turgid purple schlongs all meeting OKR targets.”

2025-06-20 13:33:30 UTC

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The FUD, incidentally, puzzles me. I don't think it's ACTUALLY that Big Tech sponsors negative coverage of the Fediverse to discourage competition (although that's possible).
It's more as if tech writers instinctively feel that “Big Rich Company launches new product" is a worthy story, but “Real people find better ways to communicate" isn’t.
Journalism has an innate deference-to-money problem. If there's no money (or sex) in the story, there's no story. And the Fediverse isn't about money.
2/

2025-06-20 13:24:03 UTC

This video from [@_elena](https://mastodon.social/@_elena ) captures what makes the #fediverse so exciting. You watch it & think “How could anyone NOT think this was a good idea?”
Will it move the needle against all the FUD? (“it’s too complicated", “mastodon’s full of woke scolds”, “how will I know which server to choose?”, "what are all these apps anyway?”)
I don't know. But it's worth sharing with people who aren't already in the Fediverse, just in case it makes them go “Huh. That sounds neat.”
1/
https://mastodon.social/@pixelfed/114715132012217014

2025-06-20 12:13:02 UTC

Apparently, protesters have started throwing glitter at ICE agents. You can picture the scene at home.
Agent's wife: Why do you have glitter all over you?
Agent (sweating anxiously): I … I went to a strip club with the guys. And … I got a lap dance from a stripper.
Wife: Huh. I guess that's OK then. For a moment I was worried that you'd started working for ICE.

2025-06-19 18:00:40 UTC

I just learned today that our galaxy is apparently located inside a vast region of unusually low matter density called the KBC Supervoid (more prosaically, the Local Hole).
Which I guess means that wherever you scream, you are in fact screaming into the Void.
Also, KBC Supervoid would make a really good band name. Just saying.

2025-06-19 11:45:16 UTC

Hey, @npub1fdr…lvhs , I think they heard you ... ;-)
https://mastodon.social/@Mastodon/114709820512537821

2025-06-18 16:08:28 UTC

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A libertarian friend came to stay and spent about four uninterrupted hours trying to persuade me of the superiority of libertarianism. At the end of it, he was thirsty and went to get a glass of water from the tap. He stopped and said “Is the water here OK to drink?”
It was 2AM and my filters had long since checked out. Without thinking, I just said “That depends on who bought the water company.”
To his credit, he laughed and said “Touché.”

2025-06-17 20:41:49 UTC

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Doctors: Death occurs when respiration and blood circulation ceases.
Hemingway: Every man has two deaths; when he is buried in the ground, and the last time someone says his name.
Philosophers: A man is not truly dead until the last telemarketer stops trying to reach him about his car’s extended warranty.

2025-06-14 12:55:10 UTC

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Essentially, political power in the US is now divided between a repressive death cult and a fundraising business, and the reason that the death cult keeps winning is because at least you can get people excited about joining a death cult.

2025-06-13 00:07:24 UTC

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The version of this joke that I heard dates from the Soviet era, and was about a man filling out a state questionnaire. The last two questions are slightly different:
Where were you born? St. Petersburg
Where did you grow up? Petrograd
Where do you live now? Leningrad
Where would you like to live? St. Petersburg

2025-06-07 23:07:19 UTC

Hats off to the organizers of Pride, who've really gone the extra mile this year.
#rainbows #nyc #photos
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/644/591/281/517/559/original/0013039d36a0fa61.jpeg

2025-05-31 15:00:45 UTC

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Same energy
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/603/041/792/338/785/original/f343adabeb9265f6.jpeg

2025-05-14 15:21:38 UTC

I think it’s cute that my employer still expects me to take Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) training this year.
It all feels so old-fashioned, somehow.

2025-03-13 12:59:37 UTC

It's noteworthy that all the most reported & reposted stories about ICE overreach involve young white women from Western nations.
What's happening to them is unacceptable, but they are the media-friendly tip of a much larger & uglier iceberg of rights violations. For every "deserving victim” there are hundreds or thousands of less mediagenic people whose basic rights are trampled in the same way, or worse. (And have been for years).
But we don't talk as much about them.
https://masto.deluma.biz/@dogzilla/114154109221520078

2025-02-10 01:29:42 UTC

One last #SuperbOwl for the day. This one is hard to see, but based on its size and location, it's probably a great horned owl.
#owls #OwlsOfMastodon #birds #BirdsOfMastodon
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/976/998/547/336/160/original/77b2491565367539.jpeg

2025-02-09 23:54:56 UTC

This #SuperbOwl is an Eastern screech owl. These owls come in gray, rufous and brown morphs; this is the gray morph. Photo taken at the Parks Service’s Raptor Fest.
#owls #OwlsOfMastodon #birds #BirdsOfMastodon #photos #photography
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/976/625/942/081/499/original/9a17605cab394771.jpeg

2025-02-09 21:20:50 UTC

It’s #SuperbOwl time again. This is a Eurasian eagle owl, the same species as New York's celebrated Flaco. This bird was in the care of the Parks Service, and was shown off at their annual Raptor Fest.
#owls #OwlsOfMastodon #birds #BirdsOfMastodon #photos #photography
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/976/019/981/059/775/original/f0fbd24590678543.jpeg

2025-02-09 20:30:58 UTC

The striking plumage of this #SuperbOwl lets it ambush its prey by disguising itself as a poppyseed bagel. Early-morning bakery shoppers should inspect their purchases carefully.
(Actually an American barn owl. Photo taken at the Parks Service's annual Raptor Fest).
#birds #BirdsOfMastodon #owls #OwlsOfMastodon #photos #photography
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/975/823/851/060/147/original/365500a23c6490b5.jpeg

2025-02-09 19:22:02 UTC

And now for a truly #SuperbOwl. I believe that this is a Pharaoh eagle-owl. It's from a privately-run zoo, le Zoo des Reptiles chez Aziz, in El Atteuf, Algeria.
#owls #birds #BirdsOfMastodon #photos #photography
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/975/552/794/114/386/original/9013306a69c9d540.jpeg

2025-02-05 20:13:02 UTC

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When I lived in Europe (where there are actual left-wing parties), I found it comical that Americans thought the Democrats were “left-wing”.
Now I live in the US, it doesn't seem comical at all.
But Trump & friends now claim the Democrats are "far-left radicals”: absurd, but many Americans seem to accept the new lie as uncritically as they accepted the previous one.
Meanwhile, the American right has gone far-right, but still pretend to be moderates.

2025-02-02 00:36:23 UTC

Imaginary conversation with my employer:
ME: So, now the president has created a special conduit so he can accept bribes from foreigners, do I still have to take the FCPA course this year?
THEM: Yes, that's required.
ME: But now every scrap of personally identifying info held by the government has been leaked to a private business owner, I assume our PII protection training is a dead letter?
THEM: No, that's still mandatory.
ME: DEI?
THEM: Oh yeah, we probably won't do that any more.

2025-01-19 15:48:27 UTC

I knew #AI would come for all our jobs eventually, but I really thought that Holocaust denial would be safe for a little while longer.
https://futurism.com/the-byte/ai-anne-frank-blame-holocaust

2025-01-11 22:47:45 UTC

This cat hangs out at a take-out restaurant in Ben Aknoun, Algeria. It tried to tell me that the cheezy fries were disgusting, and I should order something different & share it. You know what, cat? I should have listened to you.
#caturday #cats #CatsOfMastodon
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/812/154/734/349/288/original/402931c25eac0a9d.jpeg

2025-01-06 20:10:35 UTC

I keep reading “goal-setting” as “goat-setting”. So I have resolved that this year:
- I will talk about my goats with my manager
- I will fully commit to my goats
- I will ask my colleagues to help me with my goats, and to hold me accountable for my goats
- my goats will contribute to my personal and professional development
- I will not give myself unreasonable or unattainable goats
- I will have a manageable number of goats
- at least 2 of my goats will be aligned with the company’s OKRs

2025-01-03 23:09:17 UTC

Each year, I sit through a mandatory training on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, because – even though I never interact with any foreign officials and have no money to pay bribes anyway – businesses are required to let their employees know that Bribing Foreigners Is Bad.
To judge by the number of major corporations currently rushing to donate to Donald Trump’s inauguration party, however, bribing AMERICAN officials is not only entirely permissible, but even sound business practice.

2024-12-27 22:29:09 UTC

This is an ad served by Google Ads. It appears superimposed on a (legitimate) web page, with the rest of the page blurred out. I didn't check to see where clicking the Open button would take me, but I doubt it's anywhere good.
Google does allow users to give feedback on this ad, but the only option is "Seen too many times”. There is no option to flag it as the blatant cross-site scripting/probable #phishing attack that it is.
#security #Google #PhishingAsAService #BadActors
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/727/146/933/412/123/original/5ac6961b95cbde93.jpeg

2024-12-21 12:06:45 UTC

Go home, NYT Pitchbot, you're drunk.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/690/725/654/103/657/original/56eaa296439f907b.jpeg

2024-12-19 20:16:10 UTC

Here's a happy thought. Now that Salt Typhoon has compromised — and may be continuing to compromise — all our unencrypted comms, one class of messages that are probably vulnerable are all those 2FA codes you get via SMS.
The Ministry of State Security has better things to do than try to take over the average citizen’s PayPal account, but if you're a potential target of interest you should probably consider that any account protected by SMS 2FA might be suddenly insecure.
#security #SMS
1/

2024-12-19 19:39:27 UTC

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The author is forgetting that we are ALL sewn into that sack, and we’re all going in the Tiber, like it or not.
And the best we can hope for is to be allowed to pet the kitty.

2024-12-17 21:10:41 UTC

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Cannot believe you passed up the chance to title this article “Stop! HAMR time!”

2024-12-16 12:20:13 UTC

It is once again #JohnMastodonDay, and so I am once again re-posting this poster for the greatest noir movie ever made.
(with apologies for the use of an "AI” image-generation tool)
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/662/467/075/384/105/original/ff6936f8f522f804.jpeg

2024-12-14 13:46:45 UTC

O’Brien said that if we wanted a vision of the future, we should picture a boot coming down on a human face, forever, but actually I think the most realistic image of our future is Dave Bowman in "2001", desperately trying to disable all the "AI” features in his computer after each upgrade.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/651/482/764/427/353/original/29cd44b234c45435.jpeg

2024-11-26 14:59:47 UTC

There is a website that I have to use that is a world leader in bad UX. Everything about it is awful. Everything works in the stupidest possible way.
Today, they forced me to migrate to a brand new site (for about the second time in the last three years). The migration process was predictably fraught (because stupid UX) but I finally did it.
Now I can't log in.
Do you want to know why?
Because their 2FA codes are 8 digits long, but the form field to enter the code only accepts 7 digits.

2024-11-26 12:43:14 UTC

Trump's plan to use tariffs to force agricultural producers to move production to the United States, while simultaneously using the army to expel the workforce they need to do so is really some next-level strategic genius thinking.

2024-11-14 13:06:51 UTC

I want the future where we try to save our civilization from hostile AIs by firing rocket launchers at killer robots, not the one where we spend all our time unchecking an endless succession of checkboxes marked “Use my data for training purposes”.
#AI

2024-11-08 17:46:07 UTC

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The usual fascist strategy is that when the disastrous effects of policies start to be felt, they’re blamed on opponents of the regime, and the Maximum Leader calls for new, stronger measures against the designated enemies du jour.
The Leader is good and wise, and the leader’s policies are optimal. Therefore, if they don’t work, it must be sabotage.
This can work for a while. How long it works depends on how many people are committed to the scam, and how deeply.

2024-11-02 13:35:20 UTC

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I suppose there might be cases where someone had a 52-character username, but this feels like an outlier. It's your username, not your life history.

2024-10-29 02:12:23 UTC

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I think if you ask the companies why they’re rolling out these things that are patently unfit for purpose, half the time the answer would be “everyone else has them, so we have to have them too.”
Which is ... not a good reason.
/END

2024-10-29 02:10:21 UTC

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Anyway, TL;DR, impressed and fascinated as I am by LLMs and GPTs as technology, the things we're using them for are just dumb and, in many cases, dangerous.
The more of these artificial liars get rolled out, the more we have to choose between believing everything the machine says -- which is lunacy -- or believing nothing that it says -- which is exhausting.
6/

2024-10-29 01:52:11 UTC

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I don't understand why you would deploy something that looks like an information retrieval tool, but simply invents things when it doesn't know the answer.
No one would design a database system that returned random data if a query failed to match any records. (Except perhaps in a specialized application such as a game).
The argument “but it gets it right MOST of the time" cuts no ice. That actually makes it WORSE, because it's harder to tell when the robot is fabricating answers.
5/

2024-10-29 01:44:46 UTC

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I confess, I like Rufus's flattering description of my writing. But the information it confidently trots out is utterly divorced from reality.
In fairness, Rufus did better when asked about less obscure books, and resisted my attempts to persuade it that “Anna Karenina" was a cozy murder mystery by Virginia Woolf.
But an AI that breaks down badly on edge cases is worse than useless.
4/

2024-10-29 01:30:27 UTC

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Rufus, Amazon's "AI” continues to describe a book that is almost but not completely unlike my novella.
“The novel is known for its blend of fantasy and science fiction elements, as well as its exploration of themes such as self-discovery, courage, and the struggle between good and evil. McIntyre's writing style is described as immersive and descriptive, transporting readers into the richly imagined world of the story.”
3/

2024-10-29 01:26:41 UTC

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Rufus's description of my novella continued:
“The book explores Aric's journey as he learns to control this power and uses it to fight against the evil forces that threaten his world. Along the way, he encounters various characters, both allies and enemies, and undergoes challenges that test his courage and determination.”
This is the plot of half the fantasy novels ever written. But it isn't the plot of my book.
2/

2024-10-29 01:22:51 UTC

I asked Amazon's "AI", Rufus, to summarize my space opera novella "The Warrior Within" for me. Here's what it told me:
"The Warrior Within is a 1980 fantasy novel by Angus McIntyre. It follows the story of a young man named Aric who lives in a world where magic and technology coexist. Aric discovers he has the ability to tap into an ancient power called the "Warrior Within" which allows him to become a powerful warrior.”
(TWW was published in 2018. There is no one in it named Aric)
1/
#AI

2024-10-26 15:55:35 UTC

The Moroccans have perfected the art of creating self-propelled portable voids, as this extremely black kitty from Essaouira proves. Absorbs 95% of visible light. Very cat. Much black. Wow.
#Caturday #cats #CatsOfMastodon
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/374/536/156/785/426/original/335a96d386dcf2e3.jpeg

2024-10-26 00:24:32 UTC

Whoa, when did the #WashingtonPost update their masthead?
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/370/875/081/676/985/original/00f0daeff9438b96.jpeg

2024-10-25 04:14:31 UTC

I lay down on the couch and the skittish foster cat who has been hiding behind the filing cabinet for six days jumped up and fell asleep with her head on my shin. I can never get up again.
Please send food to my house and notify my manager that I will not be able to work for the foreseeable future.
I think she might even be purring.
#CatsOfMastodon #cats

2024-10-20 01:42:03 UTC

As I started my run this afternoon a disembodied voice told me “Be aware” and I legitimately have no idea if it was my phone, my watch, my earbuds, my action cam or some passing ghost. We live in confusing times.
“Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices.”

2024-10-18 19:37:15 UTC

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“judge shopping” is cool, but have you tried “judge subscribe-and-save”?

2024-09-24 11:34:20 UTC

The reason the Republicans are so down on childless cat ladies is because their ideal of womanhood is a catless child-lady.

2024-09-21 21:10:27 UTC

TIL that my dad used to use a hidden page on the BBC's #Ceefax #teletext service to let my mom know when he was leaving the office.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr54myyy671o

2024-09-06 14:21:27 UTC

Sphericity attained. Behold the borb.
#birds #BirdsOfMastodon #borbs #photography
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/091/050/472/914/381/original/08e176a429c36349.jpeg

2024-08-20 11:28:18 UTC

Remind me never to get Hewlett Packard mad at me.
"OK, they both need to go the same day."
"Got it."
"But it has to look like an accident."
"Accident, got it."
"You think you can do that?"
"Yeah, no worries. First guy's a jogger. Tragic car accident, done.”
"And Lynch? He'll be harder to get to."
"Waterspout."
"Waterspout?!?!"
"Waterspout."
"How the hell are you going to make that happen?"
"I know a guy ..."
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c74jzd22dkno
#MikeLynch #Bayesian #Autonomy

2024-08-19 20:31:10 UTC

It's #WorldPhotographyDay (and also #PhotoMonday). Here are four recent photos of mine that I like.
More #photos at https://disoriented.net/ and https://raingod.com/.
#photography
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/990/581/768/603/509/original/94653615e93d5f50.jpeg
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/990/582/085/537/604/original/b67082248fbf797f.jpeg
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/990/582/367/689/855/original/dd851b05529510bf.jpeg
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/990/582/646/900/487/original/e9ce7f15a3683011.jpeg

2024-08-15 18:49:20 UTC

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Someone way out there REALLY hates dinosaurs.

2024-08-06 21:46:14 UTC

Reading Donald Trump’s latest tweet makes me think it’s high time this poor, vulnerable man was placed under conservatorship for his own good.

2024-08-01 18:15:22 UTC

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It’s not authentically dystopian unless the losing team gets thrown from the stadium onto the desert floor hundreds of meters below at the end of the match.

2024-07-31 20:33:37 UTC

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There’s something very Philip K. Dick about the idea of a future where everyone worries that their toothbrush might be spying on them.