yeroc @yeroc@qoto.org

Three days after Amazon announced its AI chatbot Q, some employees are sounding alarms about accuracy and privacy issues. Q is “experiencing severe hallucinations and leaking confidential data,” including the location of AWS data centers, internal discount programs, and unreleased features, according to leaked documents obtained by Platformer.

An employee marked the incident as “sev 2,” meaning an incident bad enough to warrant paging engineers at night and make them work through the weekend to fix it.

https://www.platformer.news/p/amazons-q-has-severe-hallucinations

Chrome’s next weapon in the War on Ad Blockers: Slower extension updates

When ad blocking is a cat-and-mouse game, make the mouse slower.

https://arstechnica.com/google/2023/12/chromes-next-weapon-in-the-war-on-ad-blockers-slower-extension-updates/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

Some people think a single cockroach is disgusting, but what’s really gross is 144 of them.

> But I feel like the biggest reputation hit they’ve taken is this idea that they were set up differently as a non-profit that existed to serve humanity and make sure that the powerful thing they were building wouldn’t fall under the control of a single corporation.
>
> And then 700 of the staff members signed a letter saying, “Hey, we will go and work for Microsoft tomorrow under Sam to keep on building this stuff if the board don’t resign.”

Government bailing out Canadian news outlets as impact of disastrous Bill C-18 becomes clear. It will now cover 35% of journalist labour costs and has increased the per employee claim from $55K to $85K. News Media Canada lobbying pays off.

Didn't realize my wireless plan capped tethering speeds, but now it makes sense. When your phone gets ~10-15 mbps and your tethered computer gets .5 or .6 consistently, you know they're screwing w/ the service you paid for.

Welp, I'm ashamed it took me this long to realize, but changing the TTL on my computer seems to have released the throttling.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/cmxp66/2019_bypass_verizon_hotspot_throttle_no_root/

Google announced that starting in June 2024, ad blockers such as #uBlock Origin will be disabled in Chrome 127 and later with the rollout of Manifest V3 (#Mv3).

The new #Chrome manifest will prevent using custom filters and stops on demand updates of blocklist. Only #Google authorized updates to browser extension will be allowed in the future, which mean an automatic win for Google in their battle to stop YouTube #AdBlockers .

#ManifestV3 is deceitful and threatening to your privacy, and now is a good time to switch to #Firefox (@mozilla) and/or #TorBrowser (@torproject) if you haven't done so already!

EFF (@eff) on Google’s Manifest V3:

⚠️⁠https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/chrome-users-beware-manifest-v3-deceitful-and-threatening
⚠️⁠https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/googles-manifest-v3-still-hurts-privacy-security-innovation

Chrome Manifest V3 Transition Timeline (2023-11-16)

🚩⁠https://developer.chrome.com/blog/resuming-the-transition-to-mv3/

Hard to imagine life before I knew the #bash shortcut '!$' to refer to the last argument of the previous command. It's so useful in shell sessions!

Example usage:
`$ mkdir -p some/long/path/to/foo`
`$ chmod 700 !$`
`$ cd !$`

This is a tough time of year for many because 'tis the season for much tradition and many expectations, from how our time is spent to how our money is spent, from how we look to how our plate of cookies looks, from how well we've wrapped whatever and to whether our casserole we brought to share is hit or a miss.

LET US BE PEOPLE OF GRACE.

If she shows up at the door with a red puffy face and no partner -

LET US BE PEOPLE OF GRACE

If he had to pick his kid up from the principal's office again and forgot the white elephant gift -

LET US BE PEOPLE OF GRACE

If the casserole in her hands is smoldering -

LET US BE PEOPLE OF GRACE

If anything goes off the rails for any reason -

LET US BE PEOPLE OF GRACE

Each of us will have a chance to do this at least once. So, if you've got the spoons, go to the gathering ready to serve and love and cover for and care for and run interference and encourage and lift up and slather love and say, 'Me too!' and 'I got you!' and 'Here's a beverage and hide behind me all you want.' And if you see someone scurrying for the door before the acceptable time, walk out with them, tell them you get it, tell them they are loved and cared for and brave for walking out when they needed to. High five them for their self-care win and send them toward peace and safety.

If you don't have the spoons yet feel you must go, find the safest person in the room, do the best you can, and get out of there as soon as humanly possible.

LET US BE PEOPLE OF GRACE.

trying to read git's source code to understand how `git revert` and `git cherry-pick` are implemented using merge and it's a bit confusing https://github.com/git/git/blob/master/sequencer.c#L2353-L2358

(has anyone ever seen an explanation of how "revert" is actually secretly a merge under the hood? i have some ideas but it would be nice to read about it somewhere other than git's source code)

Happy International Inuit Day.

I saw a post today that the Arctic is best experienced from the comfort of your own home. Seriously this is one of the most magical places on earth and it’s by far best experienced full on, laying on the tundra, or standing at the floe edge, or having tea in a tent with a friend. #Nunavut #Arctic #Inuit #Photography

@grammargirl I often think of the thankless task of the handful of volunteers who maintain the time zone database that the whole world relies on. https://onezero.medium.com/the-largely-untold-story-of-how-one-guy-in-california-keeps-the-worlds-computers-on-the-right-time-a97a5493bf73

Here's a blog post covering the llm-embed-jina plugin in more detail https://simonwillison.net/2023/Oct/26/llm-embed-jina/

Pretty incredible report here about what is likely lawful interception of TLS encrypted communications (used by basically every web service) targeted at an instant messaging service popular in Russia..

the TLS communications were being recertificated in the middle (similar to how enterprise firewalls do TLS decryption) for six months to snoop on communications.. it only got rumbled as somebody (drum roll) let the interception certificate expire by mistake.

https://notes.valdikss.org.ru/jabber.ru-mitm/

With firefox on X11 (#Linux and #Unix machines), any page can pastejack you anytime https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2023/10/17/1 #security #infosec

I freaking love Bassem Youssef, he truly is the Egyptian equivalent to Jon Stewart.
He was interviewed by Pierce Morgan about Palestine, and they even put him against Ben Shapiro's friend at the end:
https://youtu.be/4idQbwsvtUo
Seriously, everything about this is brilliant, they should teach this.

"The Grammar Daily" comes out one month from today!

I'm going to ramp up my promotion, and I hope you'll bear with me.

About 11 months ago, I walked away from ~280K followers on Twitter, so I'd really appreciate your support!

https://amzn.to/48R4T69