That those responsible for failing to control their AI agents aren’t facing even the tiniest fraction of the legal jeopardy Aaron Swartz did is a testament to how broken our society is.
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Jon_Alper
@jon_alper@mastodon.online
mastodon 4.8.0-nightly.2026-10-06Technologist for a living, Photographer for joy and a past life as a Lighting Designer for television, concerts and special events.
279 Followers
238 Following
50 Posts
Joined November 03, 2022
Location:
Boston
Interests:
Apple, Media, Social Justice
Style:
Grumpy old man who's almost always TRYING to be at least a little funny.
RE: https://dair-community.social/@emilymbender/117271327519433700
Absolutely worth a watch!
There’s a long arc background to where we find ourselves this show clearly and usefully presents. It makes clear who needs their power curtailed.
I make this recommendation despite pretty obvious biases in the *weighting* in the choices of voices, tone and language featured that undermines an important piece of work.
(P.S. Don’t give PBS too much credit. They bought it not made it. Totally legit but there’s a tendency to see savior in PBS and….not.)
Quoting
For audiences in the US and Korea, Ghost in the Machine is now available on PBS's YouTube!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLQzVLtvdv8
RE: https://mstdn.moimeme.ca/@EdwinG/117315835716593703
It is possible to donate part of a liver and what you gave up grows back.
Quoting
Live liver donor needed for Ottawa man who risks dying on waitlist
Un donneur de foie vivant est nécessaire pour un homme d’Ottawa qui risque de mourir sur la liste d’attente
// Article en anglais //
This is SO typically Samsung, just walking all over somebody else's IP. Only in this case it's the woman's FACE they're exploiting. I hope Dua Lipa ends up owning the whole damned chaebol.
https://www.billboard.com/pro/dua-lipa-lawsuit-samsung-cant-sue-image-tv-box/
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@Gorfram @Kierkegaanks @lisamelton My weird take: An asshole can be a competent but unpleasant person. A jackhole is both inept and unpleasant.
RE: @jaffathecake@mastodon.social
And this is why I am sick to #%$&ing death of you people saying Safari and Firefox suck because they’re ‘behind Chrome’ not one of y’all ijits remember how crap the world was when IE dominated and ActiveX was the confinement fence.
Stop
Using
Chrome
RE: https://mastodon.social/@scalzi/116912936445444385
Yep!
(For decades)
Quoting
Over on Whatever today I'm talking about GMail has turned into a spam farm so completely that a) most email I get from there is spam/scam, b) I can't assume a GMail I get is from a real person, c) people seriously need to get their own email domains these days.
https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/07/13/i-regret-to-say-that-gmail-is-now-a-spam-farm-or-why-you-should-really-get-that-dedicated-email-address-now/
Open quoted postReplying to
@jackbrewster@hachyderm.io He just wants to torture the guy wearing the pager. @dnanian@mas.to ‘s mean like that. 😜 (It’s really solid. Dave may get an actual nap.)
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@tankgrrl@hachyderm.io @octothorpe@mastodon.online @steveriggins@mastodon.social Hey now! We’d all keep the SOURCE of the good links a secret, they’d be a private legacy..fond memories and whatnot.😛
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@flargh @octothorpe @dnanian Its made us the “last humans with a clue” pillars of the community that we are!
No,I didn't find this on Xitter myself or see it there but, it's absolutely correct:
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@steveriggins@mastodon.social @tankgrrl@hachyderm.io @Verso@mastodon.social @octothorpe@mastodon.online Maybe it’s time to Sith down and think about it a while.
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@steveriggins@mastodon.social @tankgrrl@hachyderm.io @Verso@mastodon.social @octothorpe@mastodon.online Ok, now this one does not pass comedy mustard.
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@octothorpe@mastodon.online @steveriggins@mastodon.social @tankgrrl@hachyderm.io @Verso@mastodon.social That joke is neither Sub-par nor Hoagie.
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@tankgrrl@hachyderm.io @octothorpe@mastodon.online @steveriggins@mastodon.social I will not go on record with any opinions on such matters.
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@tankgrrl@hachyderm.io @octothorpe@mastodon.online @steveriggins@mastodon.social Nobody with any sense would delete your browser history without making a copy for themselves to be sure they’d not missed out on any gems.
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@octothorpe@mastodon.online @tankgrrl@hachyderm.io OMFG!
How did Was ((Not Was) fall out of rotation for so long?!?!?
Thank you for the reminder!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-TxHInkyNpg
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@tankgrrl@hachyderm.io I thought of someone I really like when the Sara character appeared. Send her my best please.
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@tankgrrl@hachyderm.io @octothorpe@mastodon.online At the old job at the deuce, we named the file server Canada trying to encourage users to more consistently store the production assets on a well backed up server. “C’mon, send your files to Canada, they’ll be safer there.” … A particularly coworker took offense. 🤦
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@Iconfactory@iconfactory.world There’s semantic versioning and then there’s lunatic versioning….😜
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@Cdespinosa@mastodon.social @NanoRaptor@bitbang.social This is the fist out loud laugh from Mastodon for me in weeks. Thank you Chris!
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@CStamp@mastodon.social Because when criminally incompetent web devs and/or their empty headed managers allow a site to ship with Chrome-specific features the problem is ‘the not Chrome browser’.
Because when ‘should know better’ users don’t use Chrome on a Google operated site, the prompt to download Chrome MUST be about getting them the better browser.
And the there’s ’my web apps should have the same access native apps do’ pinheads with no awareness that you don’t give a baby a chainsaw.
Replying to
@tankgrrl@hachyderm.io @octothorpe@mastodon.online @steveriggins@mastodon.social Because you can count on him to get the rest of us a curated selection? Delete the the boring stuff?
It used to be that you couldn’t trust what you read on the web because it might have been written by a moron,or worse.
Now, you can’t trust what you read on the web because of that plus, everything else written by a stochastic parrot trained on what definitely includes things written by morons, or worse.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/progress-report/what-will-it-take-to-get-ai-out-of-schools
Won’t happen.
Know how I know?
Y’all sold your kids out for the Schoology, Canvas, Google, no child left behind, lowest common denim’s standardized testing and reporting, defund the music and arts, build the football stadium utter bullshit you wanted so you could hold teachers accountable for YOUR complete failure to raise your kids.
Replying to
@octothorpe@mastodon.online @tankgrrl@hachyderm.io I would totally ask to see tits before I’d be so rude as to ask to use someone’s phone. The former is just ‘getting to know you’. The latter is downright rude!
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@Eggfreckles@mastodon.mit.edu @CStamp@mastodon.social Not goofing anymore. How? Snapping turtles seemed like armored evil when I was a kid in NH summer.
Quoting
Australia's cyber security co-ordinator just dropped what I think will be a very useful reaction meme
Replying to
@octothorpe@mastodon.online I don’t recall the specifics of what she got but it feels >2x anything resembling sanity even if it was.
I don’t do this kind of thing even yearly.
I am sitting in a Blue Bottle coffee shop having spent $26 on a coffee, a hot cocoa and two chocolate croissants…
WTAF?!?!?
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@dnanian @octothorpe “I was never an ‘active listener’ of Talk Talk. They were always in the ‘don’t turn it off’ but never think to turn it on space for me.”
To Dave’s seemingly endless frustration, thousands of shows got me to a weirdly both eclectic and picky sort of taste. Slow to ‘add to the fold’…”don’t turn it off” evolves into “put that on”.
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@octothorpe@mastodon.online Ughh… but I guess so long as he’s not another Putin sock puppet, it’s a step up?
On the one hand suing over an undelivered software feature is a little silly since ‘delivered’ is pretty squishy to define for software.
On the other hand, I’m all for Apple going back to more conservative preannouncements.
On the third hand, I’’ll take my $.39 cut after the lawyers get theirs off the top as partial compensation for Liquid Glass…
On the fourth hand, I’m really sick of opportunistic scummy lawsuits against Apple while Zuckerberg isn’t so broke he’s dumpster diving for food.
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@octothorpe@mastodon.online I hope you didn’t give them your email address. I ordered online from them and was absolutely deluged.
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@alexcox@mastodon.social it’s a trigger for meeting ptsd. The only value is if there is a demonstration or useful slides. In which case I’d still prefer good show notes with links to relevant media.
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@danielpunkass@mastodon.social The problem isn’t when someone capable of verifying its output does. The problem is that more and more, it’s used by people incapable of and or unwilling to verify the output fail to in ways that cause harm.
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@Drwave@mastodon.social Kinda troubling how many people won’t do this without the threat of eternal damnation.
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@danielpunkass@mastodon.social The AI companies will be held liable for an app shipped by a neophyte ‘developer’ that led to a breach? The doctor who missed a summary/transcription error in a patient record that harmed the patient? I think unlikely.
Beyond the indemnification clauses in Anthropic’s EULA, juries will blame the human who SHOULD have checked but didn’t/couldn’t.