Flutterby™! (short)

Went into the city to hang with friends. Google Maps transit data has really gone to shit. From trying to direct me to non-existent bus stops, to sending me way out of my way for connections, it's... Not good.

And they still miss the feature I most want, a "maximize walking", because I know I'm gated through a once an hour bus, how many steps up Van Ness can I safely take before I risk being between stops?

Whoopsie. If only someone had seen this coming... After laying off 4,000 employees and automating with AI agents, Salesforce executives admit: We were more confident about...

"All of us were more confident about large language models a year ago," Parulekar stated, revealing the company's strategic shift away from generative AI toward more predictable "deterministic" automation in its flagship product, Agentforce. This admission comes after Salesforce reportedly reduced its support staff from 9,000 to 5,000 employees—approximately 4,000 roles—through AI agent deployment, as CEO Marc Benioff disclosed in a podcast appearance.

We're watching "Finding Mr. Christmas". My "this guy has the kind of personality you can put your own spin on" contestant has been eliminated, and I'm even more conscious of how this vision of masculinity, and Christmas, is constructed to create consumer demand. And yet I continue to watch...

Ouch on this morning's Timdle: spanked right out of the gate by "Donation of Pepin (Papal States established in central Italy)" vs "Boethius Writes Philosophy (Classical learning preserved for posterity)".

I'm learning. Slowly.

Courier: We created a searchable database for the Epstein Files, including everything the DOJ wants hidden (Via)

There's a lot of buzz that much of the redactions involved black rectangles drawn over text on the PDFs, leading to things that I haven't delved too deeply into yet, like Lee Drake‬ ‪@leedrake.bsky.social‬

I wrote up a batch converter that should extract all the text and keep pagination/layout comparable. Putting docs here.

If anyone else can send me PDFs, I can give it a go.

Epstein Docs Unredacted — Google Drive

There's a lot of misinfo flying around, but I think it's worth linking to this assertion that one of the images released of Bill Clinton, Michael Jackson, and Diana Ross, with Jackson's and Ross's kids blacked out is just a Getty Images picture.

Chuck Darwin @cdarwin@c.im has a link to Mi ke Baker posting some documents that collaborate Maria Farmer's 1996 FBI complaint.

Reuters Exclusive: SoftBank races to fulfill $22.5 billion funding commitment to OpenAI by year-end, sources say

The "all- in" bet on OpenAI is among the biggest yet by SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, as the Japanese billionaire seeks to improve his firm's position in the race for artificial intelligence. To come up with the money, Son has already sold SoftBank's entire $5.8 billion stake in AI chip leader Nvidia (NVDA.O), offloaded $4.8 billion of its T-Mobile US (TMUS.O) stake, and slashed staff.

Via

Different ways to watch the 60 Minutes piece on CECOT:

@dannotdaniel@hellions.clou d embeds the video from https://drive.proton.me/urls/XA5XYQV47M#VSGTMh8TpDEO

David D. Levine links to Yashar Ali | The Reset — BREAKING: Here’s the 60 Minutes Segment Trump and CBS News Executives Don’t Want You to See

links to Inside CECOT - Distributed Denial of Secrets

Not sure if this is hosted on Reddit, or embedded, but /r/Trumpvirus: 60 Minutes - Inside CECOT - Bootlegged episode not aired in USA (Via)

And on archive.org (via).

I'm sitting here on a network that could, if I upgraded some hardware, have a 10G uplink, with Internet connected light switches and cameras and a robot vacuum, thinking about trust and participating in society... Brian Krebs @briankrebs@infosec.exchange

When an entire class of technology states on the packaging that it was made in China but intended "for overseas use only," this should really give you pause before plugging it into your network.

You will find this verbiage on a lot of Android TV streaming boxes for sale at the major retailers. There's a very good reason the country that makes this crap doesn't want it on their own networks. My advice: If you have one of these Android streaming boxes on your network or get one as a gift, toss it in the trash. I'll have a lot more about this in the New Year, but these things are responsible for building out a botnet that currently has ~2M devices and is growing rapidly.

Kimwolf Exposed: The Massive Android Botnet with 1.8 Million Infected Devices.

Science News: He made beer that’s also a vaccine. Now controversy is brewing kinda buries the lede under the sensationalism, or maybe the sensationalism is the point:

Buck’s body made antibodies against several types of the virus after drinking the beer and he suffered no ill effects, he and his brother Andrew Buck reported December 17 at the data sharing platform Zenodo.org, along with colleagues from NIH and Vilnius University in Lithuania. Andrew and other family members have also consumed the beer with no ill effects, he says. The Buck brothers posted a method for making vaccine beer December 17 at Zenodo.org. Chris Buck announced both publications in his blog Viruses Must Die on the online publishing platform Substack, but neither has been peer-reviewed by other scientists.

because it's about generating oral vaccines cultured in yeasts using FDA "generally recognized as safe" ingredients to count as supplements rather than medicines, which seems like all sorts o' both cans o' worms, and fascinating evolutions of how the regulatory and public health environment are evolving.

Via.

Washington State Attorney General announces $150 million multistate settlement with Mercedes, Daimler over emissions fraud. If you had a diesel 2008 to 2016 Mercedes you might wanna check the state list at the end of the press release to see if you can get some recompense for inadvertently helping the Germans gas your neighbors.

Happy Christmas Adam!

Henri is staying with us for two nights, and you should buy their zines and stickers because they're awesome!

https://www.etsy.com/shop/henkprints