FoxQuirk 🦊 @quirk@computerfairi.es

leather

I have said before that my primary life philosophy is an "Ethics of Agency", and I have talked about this before on a podcast episode https://fossandcrafts.org/episodes/11-an-ethics-of-agency.html

I'm not interested in "happiness" as much, because I don't want a rat that leans on a lever. The "ethics of agency" thinking is a rough approach modification of utilitarianism that replaces the measurements of "happiness" and "suffering" in Utilitarianism with "agency" and "subjection".

But "subjection" is weighed more heavily.

I am not "against AI". I actually am very interested in building AI systems, but not the kinds which exist or are being pushed today.

To me, the important part of an AI system is its accountability.

We actually do hold much of our software accountable: if it does something bad, we actively change and repair it.

Corporations are rushing to flood the market with tools which don't care, have no accountability, don't have a stake in things.

That's depressing.

Every time I see someone bring up "IQ scores" I feel the need to repeat: IQ scores were literally invented by eugenicists and they've always been biased towards privilege

Also if you haven't noticed, once someone starts to believe they're a genius, they start to think a lot less clearly.

Outlook certificate errors be like:

❌ The certificate is not signed by an authority you trust, and in fact is signed by the Alien Alliance for Human Destruction.
❌ The certificate uses an algorithm deprecated in 1876 due to being solvable on paper by bright kindergarteners.
❌ The expiration date is notated in a calendar unknown to our science.
✅ The certificate has a valid name

You know you're a music fan when you can solve this without spinning the wheel.

The lazy cat gets the nibble.

The example I'm using here is CD+G - a format designed to let you display simple graphics alongside the audio on an audio CD.

The problem with CD+G is that it's "extra" data on top of normal audio CD. Play a CD+G disc in a normal CD player, and it's a regular audio CD.

For example, here's a CD+G disc with cute art and karaoke lyrics if you put it in a CD+G player.

New blog post! I've written a little bit about CD archiving, but wanted to get into a bit of a more practical example - what you might easily miss when backing up a CD, and data you could accidentally end up throwing away.

https://www.mistys-internet.website/blog/blog/2025/01/23/what-you-might-miss-when-backing-up-cds/

you: settling for the lesser of two weasels

me:

draw-over commission: @PsyChuan and @renabot as Rally and May from Gunsmith Cats (1995)!

#tsunderdogComm

stereo delay my beloved

soundmoji was my intern project, and the feature is now out to 20% of users! thanks to the team for picking it up and continuing development after summer. I’m excited for users to get to try them and I hope you have fun with them!