⊥ᵒᵚ Cᵸᵎᶺᵋᶫ∸ᵒᵘ ☑️ @falken@social.cleverlibre.org

Good news for #QOTO. We are now being funded by some donated resources, both money and developers. We will essentially have a full-time server administrator and a part-time developer to advance the QOTO software. They will be starting January 1st.

This should allow us to start adopting many of the features we have wanted to bring in that people have been requesting.

modern society is so divorced from our food sources that most people who eat pop tarts have never actually killed one themselves

#theexpance I still don't rlly understand *why* the MCRN was using the Scopuli w/ a distress call as bait. Who were they hoping to catch?

OpenAI have a problem: it's not just training text that ChatGPT can reconstruct when prompted, and DALL-E does the same with images—including movie, TV, and computer game scenes and characters. Reductio ad absurdam: trademark-infringing output from a two word prompt ("animated toys"): https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/things-are-about-to-get-a-lot-worse

Being sued by the NYT is bad enough. Being sued by Disney? That' gonna *hurt* …

Quadra Pounder with Cheese

A common assertion is that conferences shouldn't remove anyone who hasn't been convicted in court. This means that conferences can't remove people who scream over speakers, who drunkenly harass other attendees, who shit in the catering, and so on - this may be disruptive, may even be criminal, but even if you saw it happen they haven't been found guilty and so should be allowed to continue attending.

I don't think people want to attend conferences run by people who sincerely believe this.

@frank_rieger @linuzifer if Jake was declared unwelcome in 2016 where then does the arbitration board enter into this? It is confusing to me that it is being mentioned, either he is welcome to attend CCC events or he is not? Or has the creation of this board provided an amnesty to those previously declared unwelcome until a further board decision?

@andypiper I'm going to have to stop referring to rubbish stuff as "cobblers". It turns out that old cobblers are better than new corporations. Who would have thought it!

As a long-time Chrom(e|ium) user, switching to Firefox this week was painless (+uBlock Origin to match Brave-like defaults).

@roy makes a good case for switching going into 2024:
https://roytanck.com/2023/12/23/in-2024-please-switch-to-firefox/

There was one snag that folks should be aware of: Firefox "suggestions" send your URL bar input to Mozilla and/or your configured search engine. It was easy to disable, but felt shady given that it leaks your search input to two external parties by default.

BASTARDS...BASTARDS!

Knowing US MAGA Republicans, Donald Trump, and House Speaker Mike Johnson have procedurally blocked all US military aid to Ukraine, Putin is depleting Ukrainian Air defenses by overwhelming it with missiles; 110+ Russian rockets last night alone across Ukraine!

Putin and the Republicans will leave the Ukrainians defenseless against the Russian barbaric onslaught!

CONTACT CONGRESS!
#AureFreePress #Ukraine️ #Russia #Putin #EU #NATO #Zelensky #war #news #Moscow #USA #UK

The Trouble with the Male Gaze
a good read for today

https://open.substack.com/pub/audacity/p/the-trouble-with-the-male-gaze

Some Expanse art for Friday morning.

Enjoy.

#scifi #scifiart #starships #spaceships #lightwave3d #3DModel #3dart #scifiartist #fanart #theexpanse #ScreamingFirehawks

New post: The Web is Fantastic https://rknight.me/blog/the-web-is-fantastic/

This is a post I've been trying to write for a while and it's a bit all over the place but if I don't post it now it will live in purgatory forever.

For months, I've been pondering what the tech plutocracy would actually have to fear from an sentient machine intelligence.

I think I figured it out. #AI

https://redeem-tomorrow.com/the-announcement

A stocking stuffer from my wife.
#Lego #nonLego #Christmas #LegoChristmas #tensegrity #physics