⊥ᵒᵚ Cᵸᵎᶺᵋᶫ∸ᵒᵘ ☑️ @falken@qoto.org

I am SO glad I phased out of most coding years ago, except as needed for my own systems. Those jobs are toast. But the dangers are very real.

Just now I needed a Bash script for a network monitoring task. I must have written dozens of these in various forms over the years. Pings and status flags and the usual stuff.

So this time, just for the hell of it, I asked Gemini (free version of course) to do it:

"write me a bash script that will ping a specific ip address and when the pings start failing keep trying to ping and then when the pings are successful again send a specific curl command to that ip address"

And about 10 seconds or less later out came a completely reasonable looking, nicely commented Bash script, along with a reminder to make the file executable and how to stop it with ^C.

This of course is a very simple, really trivial task, and I was able to quickly read through the code and verify that it looked correct.

The problem of course is obvious. I could only do this verification because I have enough skill to easily write that code MYSELF, it would just take me more time. If the code were more complex and/or voluminous, just checking could range from very lengthy to utterly impractical to do at all, meaning any errors could go undetected with everything that implies, especially for dangerous "sleeper" bugs.

There may be a useful analogy to vehicle driver assist systems, that may lull drivers into being less attentive and causing them to be unable to respond to emergency situations quickly when their intervention is most required.

Crashing code and crashing cars. All very dangerous.

L

The Met are currently reporting 175 arrested

This is a 'so far' figure

#TrafalgarSquare

Xx

Update .... 355 now

Still think that's a so far figure ....

Amazon's Ring Plans to Scan Everyone's Face at the Door https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/10/04/0357255/amazons-ring-plans-to-scan-everyones-face-at-the-door?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon

Dear Labour Party - you don't neutralise the threat from Reform by adopting their policies or talking points. You do it by reducing inequality. Fascism doesn't flourish if people feel they're fairly recompensed, equally treated, well-fed and well-housed and their jobs are safe. So be more Labour.

@cstross @laird

For those who haven't been watching:

A load of AI companies are actually just OpenAI resellers. OpenAI is among the biggest investors in these companies, but NVIDIA is also big. The way it works is something a bit like this:

NVIDIA invests $10M in some AI company.
That company takes $2M in revenue for effectively reselling OpenAI models at well below cost.
That company buys $12M of OpenAI credits (from their revenue plus investor money).
OpenAI reports $12M of revenue and uses this to justify raising $100M more investor money.
OpenAI buys $100M of GPUs from NVIDIA.
NVIDIA reports $100M of revenue and an asset worth at least $10M.

Everyone wins! Money from thin air!

There's a more fun variant that is, roughly:

Investment firm has a $100M stake in NVIDIA.
Investment firm borrows $50 against this stake and uses it to invest in a load of AI startups (maybe even OpenAI).
Demand for GPUs goes up!
NVIDIA valuation increases significantly and now the firm's NVIDIA portfolio is worth $1B
Company slowly sells 20% of their stake (slowly, so it doesn't spook the market, but it's a fairly small fraction of market cap, so that's fine).
Company writes off the $50M investment in startups.
Company now has $150M in cash and an NVIDIA stake valued at $800M that they can borrow against.

If anyone except Trump were in the White House, I'd expect the end result of a bunch of SEC investigations to result in a lot of folks going to prison.

@laird A lot of it is probably churn by big corporate customers like MSFT, AAPL, and META who want to convince their shareholders they're all in on AI. Once the bubble bursts they'll have no reason to keep throwing money at OpenAI.

@neil I'm also looking at jumping ship but there's nothing to jump *to*. I don't use the phone for much but banking is a big one that has to work.

@frikkelgard @stefano I can’t speak for @stefano but from my experience:

Everyone has had enough experience now with 365 to have been burned by it. Things randomly not working, no one to contact when they aren’t. Yes MSFT has support, no they wont help you.

Hilariously, I imagine this is part of the pitch for Google Workspace. But they have the same issue. Clients know that unless you’re a Fortune 500 company Google/Amazon/MSFT dont give a shit about you.

Businesses realise that paying a little extra to get a real person on the phone who can meaningfully help **now** is worth it, especially if you have a track record of doing so.

I like my Linux laptop that crashes once or twice a day. I like my Mastodon account where you can't really talk to anyone about anything but webdev or Rust. I like my Lenovo tablet that sometimes switches into Japanese for no reason. I like my Steam Deck that needs unique settings fiddling per game. I'm willing to put up with some friction & frustration from my computers & software. But what I can't ~abide~, and will twist my life into pretzels to avoid from my computers & software, is *malice*.

Me: You know I'm an adult, I'm emailing you from my domain name that's 20 years old and is linked to my account.
Discord: Dox or it didn't happen.
Me: Why should I trust you with my dox?🖕
(a few weeks pass)
Discord: We leaked the contents of your support tickets to some asshole, sorry. 🤷

When I keep saying that being on #streaming platforms is a pointless exercise, I get sometimes asked for numbers, or proofs.

Here you go. A single song of mine was played a MILLION times in 3 months, in 2022 (and, in later months, another 750k times), with a net gain of £33.

A million plays on streaming pays for a pizza night out for me and @silviamaggi

Took me FOUR sales on Bandcamp to reach the same amount.

So, ask me again, why quit giving out music to the techbros?

#IndependentMusic

Looks like the 3rd party platform Discord uses for support tickets got breached and someone was able to gain access to Discord user information as well as trust & safety reports

The canceling of ICEBlock is more evidence, were any needed, that the Web is the platform of the future, the only platform without a controlling vendor. Anything controversial should be available through a pure browser interface.

#USpolitics

Dang, Lego just keeps getting better and better.

Despite generating $4.3 billion in revenue in the first half of 2025, OpenAI reported a net loss of $13.5 billion. In other words, ignore all sugar coating. They, are losing money heavily https://www.techinasia.com/news/openais-revenue-rises-16-to-4-3b-in-h1-2025

They abandoned the goal cancer cure to produce only rewritten text, images, and 10 second meme videos. They're burning capital on millions of GPUs. The classic VC model. Outspend rivals and use others' copyrighted work without solving a single critical problem. No human suffering solved

Why iRobot’s founder won’t go within 10 feet of today’s walking robots
Rodney Brooks says humanoid robots pose hidden safety challenges and won't learn dexterity from video alone.
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/10/why-irobots-founder-wont-go-within-10-feet-of-todays-walking-robots/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

This is what happens when you try adding "is Trump showing signs of dementia" in to a Google search. It removes the AI Overview https://www.theverge.com/news/789152/google-ai-searches-blocking-trump-dementia-biden