Simon @spoltier@qoto.org

Why Americans Don't Walk To School - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lShDhGn5e5s

this neighborhood he filmed looks so much like America-as-I-know-her that it hurts. When I was a child, I lived in a housing development, a separate loop from the main road, nothing but houses on both sides for the whole loop. Sounds safe for kids, right? I was utterly forbidden from crossing the street ever, for any reason. In the three years I lived there, two children I knew were flattened by cars. One was in a wheelchair for years, the other had permanent brain damage. And we were lucky to have a sidewalk the whole length of the loop - which would quickly disappear beyond its edge; walking anywhere else was impossible, it was an island in a sea of high-speed roads.

The next development we lived in, the school had a street-by-street map of who was and wasn't allowed to walk to school. It was in theory a 15 minute walk, but we were forbidden because 10 of that would be on a highway with absolutely no accommodations for walking alongside it. There was a secret path through the woods that some kids used. There was a shopping center about as far in the other direction with, again, absolutely no way to walk there (and no busses). I grew up trapped in lonely fortresses in a sea of concrete, and I am still not used to the freedom I have in Europe to just... go places and do things.

More fully open LLMs - apertus didn't hold that flag for very long...

Did anybody already test it?

https://mbzuai.ac.ae/news/mbzuai-and-g42-launch-k2-think-a-leading-open-source-system-for-advanced-ai-reasoning/

I found this screenshot again and I still think it's brilliant. The best OS overview I've ever read.
#Linux #FreeBSD

The community letter on the 'protocol wars' suggests the conflict is more social than technical. Cross-pollination and bridges like Bridgy Fed already exist. 'People > Protocols > Platforms' is the logical conclusion.

Whoever put the gates for “Austin” and “Boston” next to each other here at LAX really screwed over anyone trying to understand the announcements lmao

So help me, I laughed
#shitpost #meme #distractedBoyfriend

I've been following this "mutual safety standards recognition" stuff out of the US/EU talks. This could be really, really bad.

It would mean that US vehicles, like those giant dangerous SUVs and pickup trucks, could be freely imported into the EU in volume without having to pass EU vehicle safety standards (like pedestrian safety).

I haven't seen any organised resistance to this. Does anybody know any other organisations that are fighting this?

https://etsc.eu/etsc-mutual-recognition-deal-with-u-s-will-cost-lives-on-europes-roads/

Die #Vorratsdatenspeicherung ist grundrechtswidrig.

Um die rechtsstaatliche Alternative «Quick Freeze» durchzusetzen und damit die Massenüberwachung durch den Staat nachhaltig abzuschaffen, brauchen wir 23'000 Franken.

Hilf mit, die Vorratsdatenspeicherung zu kippen: https://www.digitale-gesellschaft.ch/quickfreeze/?s=m

#quickfreeze @init7

Rec Room was a great place to work, but they had to lay off over half their staff, so I am looking for the next opportunity.

If you are looking for a senior graphics coder to solve all your rendering problems on any platform, either remote or in the Seattle area, I'd love to hear from you.

Picture is purely for attention, but I can drive pretty well.

Ich wollte algebraische Geometrie lernen, war aber zu unbegarbt.

The internet, once hailed as a democratizing force for information, has become a primary vector for informational pathogens. Memetic contagions, engineered for maximum engagement, spread faster than well-researched, nuanced information. Our defenses are failing. (2/2)

okay but serious talk, I'm only mentioning this at all because it's a rare enough occurrence to distinguish between them. when I first got serious about mastodon during the great migration a few years ago, there were more antagonizers, but it's calmed down. I think my local @jerry must have good taste in moderation because I'm rarely bothered by randos but I also don't ever find myself unable to follow someone because their ten-thousand-user instance got defederated over a trivial drama three years ago

The Octopus thought experiment sucks. If your instinct is like "LLMs can't learn anything about the actual world from mere text" AND you are intellectually curious, here is your reading list. 1/4

Jevons' Paradox is good sometimes - Andy Masley https://andymasley.substack.com/p/jevons-paradox-isnt-always-bad #AI #climate