🐿️one day we'll live in a world where people are convinced that 4K is "low-fi" and that anything below that is unwatchable. these guys will watch the first serial of Doctor Who in black and white and implode from the quality (or lack thereof)
“Discord cuts ties with Peter Thiel–backed verification software after its code was found tied to U.S. surveillance efforts”
•••
No no no, Fortune! Let me help you with a rewrite:
•••
“Discord cuts ties with Peter Thiel–backed verification software after people got mad about its ties to U.S. surveillance efforts, and canceled their accounts en masse”
#privacy #discord #DissDiscord
https://fortune.com/2026/02/24/discord-peter-thiel-backed-persona-identity-verification-breach/
- do you want to use google to sign in?
- do you want to add a passkey?
- do you want to add a 2FA token?
- we know you have 2FA but we've sent you an email instead
- this login attempt seems suspicious we've sent you a text about it
- can you click on these buses?
- you failed to click on the buses click on these bicycles instead
- should we save these details for next time?
- do you accept these trackers?
- you can opt out but we've decided it's legitimate interest anyway
- would you like to see a list of our 847 partners we share your data with?
- can we send you desktop notifications?
- can we access your location?
- do you want 10% off for signing up to the mailing list?
- do you want me to translate this page?
- hi I'm your friendly chatbot how can I help?
- oh no you can't buy this, reach out to us for a quote!
- do you want—
I'm tired boss
RE: https://mstdn.ca/@drikanis/116107120926277506
I'd like to comment on the common "AI is just a tool" thing: I'm a woodworker by training & that means a lot of machines - but almost every craftsperson knows how to do their job with hand tools, or "lesser" machines.
Similarly, a writer can write without a text editor - just as well, only slower.
If loss of a tool = loss of your skill & knowledge, then that tool isn't an asset, it's a liability. You're signing over your ability to do business to whoever sells & maintains that tool.
@ludicity For the record, I work at a software company that employs ~10k developers.
Before LLMs, I'd encounter such engineers a couple of times a month, but I interact with a lot of engineers, specifically the ones that need help or are new at the company or industry at large, so it's a selected sample. Even the most inexperienced ones are willing and able to learn with some guidance.
After LLMs, there's been a significant uptick, and these new ones are grossly incompetent, incurious, impatient, and behave like addicts if their supply of tokens is at all interrupted. If they run out of prompt credits, its an emergency because they claim they can't do any work at all. They can't even explain the architecture of what they are making anymore, and can't even file tickets or send emails without an LLM writing it for them, and they certainly lack in any kind of reading comprehension.
It's bleak and depressing, and makes me want to quit the industry altogether.
Seeing how google is apparently going the apple route and locking down their ecosystem more and more, the need for an alternative is becoming more and more apparent.
But actually, I don't need an open-source phone. I need a device that can run the apps for my bank, my health insurance, and my carsharing provider.
You know what would fix this problem altogether? If companies stopped developing android and ios apps and went back to making websites
Incredible how just in a few years, the smartphone went from
"a device that's nice to have and allows you to contact people, access your calendar, play games and look up bus schedules on the go"
to
"a device you're absolutely required to own and have access to at all times because if you don't, you don't get a bank account, health insurance, public transit, or basically any online service required for enrollment in a school or an employment contract"
If a Klein bottle could wear pants, would it be like this or like this?
To exist online in 10 years, you're going to have to give a random company a face scan and photo ID and they're going to give that and everything you post to the government to spy on you for being queer, left-wing, "a criminal," or whatever. None of your data or communications will be private. The government and corporations will go through all of it.
If you don't want that to happen, you should raise a stink about "age verification" right now because that's what they're actually building.
Sammy (BC, Canada) is quite a fan of the new potted plants. He likes to jump up and paw at them, to make sure they are still all in good order.
wait i wanna see what the mastodon author attribution on links looks like
(also go read my lastest blog post)
It doesn't matter whether C is good or not. It matters that if I write code in two languages that aren't C, and I want it to all be part of the same process, I need to care about C. C pervades all. You cannot escape it. C will outlive all of us. The language will die and the ABI will persist. The far future will involve students learning about C just to explain their present day. Our robot overlords will use null terminated strings. C will outlive fungi.
Trans woman, bisexual, someone's fiancée, forever a programmer, poly, and former total mess
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