FoxQuirk 🦊 @quirk@computerfairi.es

A lot has been said about Steamboat Willie entering the public domain in 2024. But also, 2024 is the year "The House at Pooh Corner" by A.A. Milne enters public domain, which is the book introducing the character Tigger.

there's something to be said for learning a new language. even one from a relatively similar culture to your own can be enlightening. for example, before learning swedish, i did not realise that “rule of law” is an anglo-american concept. it's not so commonly used in swedish.

Huge yikes.

Kagi is now partnering with Brave to power its search results — and they seem to be dismissing their users’ concerns regarding this partnership with a company that’s notorious for being led by a proud anti gay rights supporter.

Just as I’ve consistently advised against using Brave’s products, I now advise against using Kagi as long as it contributes to a homophobic business.

There can be no neutral politics when it comes to people’s rights and lives.

https://kagifeedback.org/d/2808-reconsider-your-partnership-with-brave

one of the annoying things about being a person who occasionally writes speculative fiction is that sometimes you'll have a momentary misunderstanding or incorrect thought and instead of just going "heh, that was weird and wrong" and going about your day, you'll stop and spend an hour thinking about BUT WHAT IF IT WAS SO? HOW WOULD THIS CHANGE SOCIETY? WHAT ARE THE RAMIFICATIONS?

which is great if you're looking for story ideas, of course, but sometimes you have other stuff to do.

When my eldest was in kindergarten, they came home one day with an assignment to count something in their house.

We got a note from the teacher the next day, which I will paraphrase (because it's been 12 years): "Your child is very bright and clearly knows how to count, but you should probably explain that you don't actually have 15 computers in your house."

Our response: "Oh, you're right, Z missed a few in the basement server rack, it's actually closer to 25."

https://todon.nl/@schratze/111692939659656421

I imagine it's only a matter of time before some site like Facebook or discord adds a "feature" where they train an AI model on each of your contacts when you talk to them, so that if you ever ask them a question and they're away from the phone, it can have the AI model respond instead.

"your friend isn't here, but this is what we think they'd say:"

For your own mental health, if an app has a "streak", you should break it at least once a week as a habit.

The longer they get the more unnecessary stress it'll give you.

They use it to drive numbers and cash flow, it's absolutely not a good thing and doesn't benefit you at all.

#PSA

Felt like drawing Xenia the Linux Fox. Oh, and poking a little fun at Linux.

the beauty of linux distributions and package managers is that you can be safe in the knowledge that your version of a program will always be 2 years behind the easily downloadable windows .EXE of the same program

elite dialogue

I think the time has come to share a tradition that me and a bunch of friends have that we hope catches on more broadly.

It all started when a catgirl friend asked me to drive her to one of her surgeries. I couldn't make it because it was a work day and short notice, but I did show up a day or two beforehand with a good luck/get-well-soon gift basket consisting of a bunch of popcorn balls and a pair of scissors...

Plus the largest cone of shame I could find. I didn't think it would fit as it was mostly a joke, but I was pleasantly surprised to get a picture a few days later of her wearing it post-op.

Well, a year later I asked her to drive me to a vasectomy clinic because my wife was busy watching the kid.

After the procedure she sent me home with the very same cone (which I guess makes cis me an honorary catgirl?)

That cone is now a traveling relic with a long history. Every time someone gets bottom surgery, they are crowned Bearer of the Cone until they have the privilege of passing it on

#trans #transgender #cyberpunk

So consider the "Copilot button". I cannot imagine a way this could get implemented that doesn't come down to "there's a trap button on your keyboard that every time you press it, some nonobvious chunk of local/personal information gets sent over the Internet and bounces between multiple corporations". The privacy policy will claim the information is not "retained", but the moment this centralized data pipe exists every intelligence service on earth will have a high incentive to get a tap on it.

There *has* been a lot of talk about the problems with so-called "AI" but one I don't feel gets enough attention is that "AI" products are surveillance products. "AI" is inevitably run in a cloud service, and in order for the AI to know what to generate some amount of the context within your application— usually it's not clear to the user what context, or how much— has to get sent to the cloud. The more of my local app state that gets transmitted over the Internet, the less comfortable I am.

I think there’s a disconnect where people do correctly apply the standard basic account protections (unique password, 2fa) and don’t get hacked so they assume that when a famous account gets hacked they must have not been doing the basics and were asking for it

but really, these protections only work well when you’re one in a crowd and there’s no reason to put extra effort into targeting you specifically. that’s why every major social media account gets hacked sooner or later, there’s only so much they can do in the context of “an account on someone else’s free website”

*blahaj snuggling sound intensifies*

it's out of touch thursdays!