Flutterby™!

Oh dear. Did a git pull, and now the pnpm build process is asking for my github password.

I have a very bad feeling about this...

mx alex tax1a - 2020 (6) @atax1a@infosec.exchange

there comes a point during a whipits binge at which you start sifting through a mixed pile of chargers looking for the ones that still have a seal and this is how we envision the types of guys that are trapped in pseudoproductive loops where they use their chatbot to use their chatbot to use their chatbot to use their chatbot to use their chatbot (d.c. al coda) and never actually do anything besides produce a bunch of foam

Sunset, reflected in the living room window, with cat.

Bwahahaha! Claude, Codex, and Hermes installed unowned code inside corporate networks

Researchers at a stealth startup in Israel scanned 6,214 live domains belonging to defense contractors, Fortune 500, and Big Tech companies. Of the 8,265 llms.txt and llms-full.txt files they found (many sites hosted both an llms.txt and an llms-full.txt file), 120 of them, each on a different site, pointed to one or more code packages or domain names that weren’t registered. To test what happens when an AI agent processes such files, the researchers registered a handful of the unclaimed names and hosted packages that caused any machine executing them to reach out to their server. Within an hour, the researchers received a phone-home response from a Fortune 500 company.

Via David Gerard @davidgerard@circumstances.run

this is comedy plutonium

MostlyHarmless @MostlyHarmless@thecanadian.social

Please stop raising awareness. There is too much. I have become too aware.

Written in response to some marketing from neodrop.ai:

Hi! I blog primarily for myself, so the act of writing is part of the memory and learning. And my readers, however many of them there may be, are there for an authentic version of me.

Similarly, when I read, I'd far rather get the authentic version of what the writer intends. If they're tempted to use an LLM to generate text, I get far more value from whatever they'd prompt it with than whatever comes through the LLM. My own brain does a better job of expanding those thoughts out than whatever stochastic mechanistic process the LLM applies.

So, yeah, I'm not your target audience, and if I think someone is using an LLM to expand their thoughts, I'll go read another source because it's more important for me to make human connection than to use the crutch of something that blurs facts and has no real understanding of the text.

Interesting: SoundCloud starts letting artists sell downloads direct from their profiles – and says it’s taking zero commission.

Huh. At some point, I put "<meta name="geo.*"" tags into the HTML on my blog.

That some point was apparently over 20 years ago.

Anyway, don't know if I should update it, or remove it.

There's a dog barking outside the office in the exact rhythm of the stabs in the opening of Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger"...

conputer dipshit @davidcrespo.bsky.social

found a cute point of comparison: Anthropic and OpenAI together have a little more revenue than Target

https://epoch.ai/data/ai-companies?view=graph&tab=revenue
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/TGT/financials/

(Anthropic at roughly $65B, OpenAI at $40B, os $105B+noise from the others, vs Target at about the same...)

Well damn. 'Rocky Horror' Star Tim Curry dead at 80.

Rocky Horror, and, of course.... Tim Curry is escaping to the one place that hasn't been corrupted by capitalism. (YouTube video)

An Oral History of Tim Curry’s Escape to the One Place Uncorrupted by Capitalism:

ANTHONY OLIVEIRA (author and critic): I think the pleasure of it is that Tim Curry is the master of camp and the master of menace and in the clip we finally witness something that is finally too ridiculous, finally too outre, finally too much even for him. Tim Curry has played the devil with 18 inch horns, but this at last is the bridge even he almost cannot cross. But then he brings it home! The accent, the costume, the arc of the “character” himself finally exhausted by whatever indignities he has suffered at the player’s hands. It is perfect storytelling.

Lili Saintcrow @lilithsaintcrow@raggedfeathers.com

Calls for “the public” to “own ‘AI’” are just a transparent attempt to make the general populace hold the trillion-dollar bag for a con game.

There is no reason ordinary people need to pick up the tab for this particular Ponzi scheme.

People are noticing the decline of Google: Xenotime, Librarian of Æther :trans_fedi: @xeno@hexokina.se

In 1970, Scientific American's legendary publication The Amateur Scientist ran an article on homemade transistors.

Not MOSFETs, but thin-film transistors made by Roger Baker with a DIY spray pyrolysis system. With handmade drawings like this.

In 2026, Google could not find this. I only found this from a StackExchange post which linked to a 2009 blog post that mentioned it. Then to see the actual article I had to go to JSTOR, sign in with my institution, re-sign-in to EZProxy, wait for the 2FA prompt, wait like a minute for their stupid website to load, click download, agree to not share it amongst the other terms and conditions, then download it.

I have no desire to go back to the world of 1970s, but I somehow feel the way that tech megacorps and licensing bs runs the world of 2026 is a scourge on human creativity and experimentation.

In another message, they link to FET Transistor Homemade From Cadmium Sulfide Photocell by Nyle Steiner K7NSM and https://sliceofpie.eu, but it's very clear that Google's search results are coalescing around selling YouTube ads and AI summaries, and not actually linking to real information.

‮Furbland's Very Backwards Account™ @GroupNebula563@mastodon.social

FUN FACT: the Greek god of knowledge was named Thoth, spelled in the Greek alphabet as θωθ. This means that it is entirely plausible that one, or perhaps several ancient Greeks have asked "θωθ, what's this?"

This is real. Look it up.

(According to Wikipedia, it's Θώθ, but close enough...)

I initially wasn't going to link to Conservatives Want To Ban Pornography. Without It, I'd Probably Be Dead, Ariel Anderssen's commentary on the resurgence of the death cult's attempts at anti-pornography legislation.

Nor to news that Reagan appointee Judge David Hittner has struck down Texas's drag show ban NBC News, Texas Tribune.

But The Devil's Panties this morning reminds me that promoting pornography and drag shows is life affirming, and we need to be pushing back on the death cult in every single way.

Brain activity inhibition during Short Video Viewing: neurochemical insights

By integrating fMRI with ¹H-MRS, our study provides novel evidence that immersive viewing of preferred short videos deactivates the cognitive control network and that individual differences in this deactivation are linked to glutamate metabolism. These findings enhance our understanding of how digital media consumption interacts with neurochemical processes to influence self-regulation. Our study offers new insights into the neural mechanisms underlying short-video engagement and has implications for understanding excessive digital media use.

Via.

Always worth a read, but ResearchBuzz for August 22nd has a whole lot of "AI" related stupidity.

This is making the rounds, and it's well worth watching, or at least (as I did) listening: DefCon 34 - Stalking the Wily Hacker: 40 years later - Cliff Stoll (YouTube video). His chaos energy is completely infectious.

Among other sources, Via.

Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social:

Given her recent death, with its reminder the Merrelyn Emery was in her 80’s, comes the realization that she did this study of Agile in her 80’s:

A Patchwork of Contradictions and Confusions: Inside the Software Industry by Merrelyn Emery, January 2023

After over 20 years of agile, this study shows that agile has failed to produce a coherent industry or sustainable organizations as the critical factors of high intrinsic motivation and organizational performance are in short supply. Highly desirable personal and organizational outcomes are few and far between. In a comparison with other organizations with DP1 structures and in danger of failing, the software industry came off second best.

I'm going to have to learn more about her!

In honor of Dolly's passing, may I again strongly recommend the "Dolly Parton's America" podcast? https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/dolly-partons-america

Well shit. Dolly Parton, dead at 80.

I have a whole bunch of Blüskî and Fediverse links saved up, from Target's extremely racist halloween costume (via) to Richard Berger: The False Affiant behind ICE in Minnesota’s fabricated cases, to Business Insider proposing that you raise your kids in an AI augmented throuple (1, 2, and in linking to her short story Wire Mother, Isabel J. Kim notes "IM RIGHT IM LITERALLY ALWAYS RIGHT" and Hypervisible notes "A consistent pitch by the makers of ai wearables is that they solve the problem of getting to know your child."), but...

...I just can't even this morning.

Goldman Sachs partner warns of ‘huge danger’ in letting AI replace bankers’ reasoning skills

“There’s a huge danger here that in the era of AI, we outsource our reasoning to these models, and we have cognitive atrophy that stops us being able to reason from first principles ourselves,” said Chris Churchman, who leads Goldman’s digital platform for institutional clients called Marquee> .

The comments came during the latest episode of the firm’s “Exchanges” podcast, according to a transcript provided exclusively to CNBC.

Via Tara Calishain @researchbuzz.bsky.social who notes that

Over the last 20 years, banks have showered money over people like Elon Musk and capitulated to DJT in his shady dealings. I'm not sure replacing that reasoning is a bad thing

But I'm pretty sure that the magic-smoke-up-ass-blower is not the right replacement.

lcamtuf @lcamtuf@infosec.exchange posted a screenshot of this book with the caption

rarely is the question asked: is our children learning?

A quick "look inside" of Practical Electronics for Inventors and Makers 2026: A Step-by-Step Guide to Circuits, Components, and Real Projects (The Practical Electronics & Electrical Engineering Series) by Wesley Crest verifies that it is indeed the worst sort of AI generated slop, you can scroll down as far as the diagram that lcamtuf posted in the free bits.

And for all that is holy, do not reward this crap by buying it...

It looks like it's an attempt to profit off of an O'Reilly book or something, but it's pretty bad.

Figured I should note that on Saturday we went to the Aqus Community's "Big Social" event, in which much conversing with people you didn't already know was encouraged.

I did find a bunch of people I didn't already know, but I learned that talking with random people isn't what I'm seeking.

I need a social filter other than "wants to socialize" to help find a larger proportion of interesting people to make a space worth putting energy into.

I never know how far to go in sanding and finishing outdoor furniture, I like texturing with an angle grinder, but the pores are gonna open, and some tooling marks give it character. Anyway, some scraps and a $20 piece of garage sale glass... And an awful lot of dust.

It was around this time that I opened the windows and turned on the fans...

Coach Sankhavaram ® @paninid@mastodon.world

Some Kobayashi Maru shit

Quote tweeting Computer Facts @computer@facts.computer

they are solving the year 2038 problem by making sure we never make it that far

Aha! I finally understand what "Monster" energy drinks are for. Using the cans as a size comparison for dick pics on BlueSky. Kinda like those "5 Hour Energy" bottles, come to think of it.

Thanks, internet!

The athlete and interviewee completely understood the assignment here: B.C. swimmer (Melanie Buggey) crosses the Strait of Georgia in under nine hours:

How long do you think it's going to take you to fully recover from something this intense?

I don't think I've recovered from childhood, so probably never, but I could get back in the pool in a day or two if I was keen on swimming, which incidentally, as it turns out, I don't think I am right now.

A Facebook friend posted about the endorphin high one gets from square dance calling. I replied "Yes. Sometimes I suspect that a cocaine habit would be cheaper and healthier, but...."

Of course Meta suspended my account for advocating drug use.

Good reminder I shouldn't be posting there anyway.

A neighbor left a copy of London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth by Patrick Radden Keefe.

Gripping read about the intersection of oligarchs, Instagram culture, the blurred lines between cops and their informants and the criminals, and... in the end I'm happy to have read it because as a mood piece it makes me happy that I wasn't caught up in the crypto craze, and makes me feel better about not diving into the "AI" land rush either.

Also makes me glad that, as a late teen, I had trouble lying, 'cause that desire to be a part of deals....

Anyway, if you've ever watched a British heist film and thought "this is too far fetched", a compelling read.

Imagine having so few musical friends that you couldn't hit one up to do the soundtrack to your low budget ad. Guitar company D’Addario admits that AI music was used in a promotional videoAfter initially denying it, the company now admits that its string demo video was made with Suno.

Via.

I like the term and concept of "vibe bobsled": Faulty Towers, vibe sickness, and the vibe bobsled

Edit: Christine Lemmer-Webber @cwebber@social.coop wonders if the recent Linux kernel "completely overwhelmed" feelings are a symptom of vibe bobsledding.

Florian Haas @xahteiwi@mastodon.social

You can't prohibit agile software development, but you kanban it.

Whee! Friend reports that Thrifty's 800 number AI phone agent told him it was changing his reservation, and didn't actually.

Second time kinda worked (it didn't do other stuff).

So extra load on us, double check what portions of that the AI agent told you it actually did...