mastodon 4.7.2+glitchCishet white male. Antifascist. Offspring of immigrants. Free software and self-hosting advocate. My head is socialist, my heart is anarchist. Anticapitalist. European.
I'm interested in operating systems, application and utility software, the claims made about the future we were promised with personal computing, and the present we've ended up with. I think computing is and always has been a means to entrench and strengthen existing power structures.
This is fucking hilarious. @parismarx@mastodon.online keeps the schtick going the whole way through.
https://disconnect.blog/on-the-abdication-of-chief-prophet-tim-cook/
A huge THANK YOU to the protesters and activists responsible for causing Powerscourt Hotel to choose to cancel an upcoming conference due to be attended by "200 senior figures from the world of politics, technology and defence" organised by technofascist Peter Thiel's Dialog group.
The event is a material source of annual revenue [for Stonebrick LLC, trading as Dialog] and it expects to face a refund liability as a result of the cancellation of some $2.2 million (€1.9 million).
This Guardian article https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/apr/29/claude-ai-deletes-firm-database suffers from the same trap of anthropomorphism as the original I read: @fluidlogic@oldbytes.space
agent gone rogue
These tools have no concept of what a job is. They don't go rogue, they produce plausible text. Now complete idiots have wired them to command lines (the old school but still powerful way for humans to interact with computers) and APIs (programmatic mechanisms for interacting with a computer) and they produce plausible interactions. Some of which involve deleting databases.
The culprit was Cursor, an AI agent
The culprit was the idiot who wired the agent into their production system.
[Jeremy Crane posted on X how] the AI coding agent caused his business to unravel.
Jeremy Crane caused his own business to unravel.
The agent appeared to plead guilty in its own response
At last, an "appeared to". These tools are all appearance and no substance.
Crane’s takeaway was that “the agent didn’t just fail safety. It explained, in writing, exactly which safety rules it ignored.”
Wrong takeaway, my friend. The takeaway is that it generated more plausible text in response to your misguided attempt to discover its 'reasoning'. There is no reasoning. Just plausible text. The correct takeaway is that you should be charged in a court of law for negligence and wilful incompetence by the board of your company, and immediately fired.
And of course there's not a word in the article about any of the core problems I raise. Because journalists are just as bamboozled by this technology as the poor saps who implement agents in their business, thanks to the lying and deceit of the AI boosters.
The latest #PivotToAi episode by @davidgerard@circumstances.run is just brilliant.
Pivot to AI: 20260413 - AI doomsday cultist throws Molotov at Sam Altman’s house
Episode webpage: http://pivottoai.libsyn.com/20260413-ai-doomsday-cultist-throws-molotov-at-sam-altmans-house
Media file: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/45fb8198-0759-425c-8e91-d25d321575a7/20260413.mp3?dest-id=5006510
@davidgerard@circumstances.run I really enjoyed a chance to hear you talking off the cuff in a longer format on https://share.transistor.fm/s/55b01c02, David!
@felimwhiteley@mastodon.social I appreciated the vehemence of your position on AI coding tools as expressed on today's #LateNightLinux: https://latenightlinux.com/late-night-linux-episode-383/
Are you aware if @degville@fosstodon.org and Will (is he on the Fediverse?) have read any of Ed Zitron's exhaustive analysis¹ of the completely insane ways in which the leading LLM coding assistant companies are setting money on fire? For each dollar subscribers spend, the LLM companies are subsidising by up to $15. The business model is unsustainable. We're looking at a scam on a scale similar to FTX.
(Lastly, these arguments aren't pointless, as the shownotes lament. The future is not fixed. We must resist the deskilling of our craft and the inevitability narrative pushed by the deeply unpleasant people behind this technology.)
1: https://www.wheresyoured.at/, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsdzuPs5NKvdsBkQnP7Af8w
You thought things were bad at #TheDocumentFoundation? I suggest re-reading ejected founder Michael Meeks' 1st April post. He's provided several updates.
https://www.collaboraonline.com/blog/tdf-ejects-its-core-developers/
Follow the links in Meeks' post. The dysfunction he highlights at TDF is breathtaking.
The evidence he brings to bear shows TDF is toxic to its core and is no longer fit to serve the purposes of #LibreOffice or its community. It solely exists now to perpetuate itself. It should be dissolved.
The Commodore C64C I picked up a few weeks back cleaned up nicely and needed exactly zero electronic work!
I had no Commodore-specific accessories, like keyboard springs, power supply or video lead, so I've been buying those bits piecemeal as the need arose and as my optimism increased that the machine was probably going to be fixable with my minimal electronic repair skills.
Just a few days ago, I had the board out, powered up, but with no monitor attached. Between scoping CPU and memory pins and feeling the temperature of individual chips, I could determine the machine was mostly working. The tight loop indicated by the CPU activity on the scope made me think it was probably waiting for input at the BASIC prompt.
The video cable arrived today, and allowed me to confirm that that's exactly what I was seeing!
Next I need to test the Datasette. It also cleaned up nicely and seems to be running well. Somewhere I have a packet of unopened TDK audio tapes. I need to track them down!
@tog@mastodon.ie is domestic saw blade sharpening still a thing? Can you recommend anyone?
