Notices by Thomas 🔭🕹️ (thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io), page 3

I love Apple products and for their own good they should be forced to open up their mobile platform (just like their computers always have been) for people to install whatever they fucking want on it

SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKERS
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/generative-ai-providers-quietly-tamp-down-expectations

They don’t make them like this anymore (curves & thicc) #retrocomputing

“But AI is cheap!”

It’s not, it has horrendous hardware, server housing and water and power requirements; it’s just that VCs are financing it now so you get in on the hype and later they will charge you rent and it will cost you way more—with inferior results—than, you know, hiring the writers and artists it’s stealing from, but those will be gone by then.

One for the “she’s so stupid how can you put your car into reverse accidentally!!!1” replyguys:

Some Teslas don’t have a gear-selector stalk and literally guess what gear you want.

Yes, you read that right.

https://www.theverge.com/22348668/tesla-prnd-drive-mode-park-neutral-model-s-x-refresh

Israel tortured UNRWA employees to extract false confessions to smear the UN agency https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/unrwa-report-says-israel-coerced-some-agency-employees-to-falsely-admit-hamas-links/

Mathematicians: “Art doesn’t require humans because monkeys randomly typing will eventually produce a full set of Shakespeare’s work”

The monkeys:

Gotta build snake-oil factories somewhere, those snakes won’t oil themselves

(Also, fuck you Microsoft.)

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/03/ai-water-climate-microsoft/677602/

Some photons from space that I prevented from crashing into my driveway by putting a camera sensor in between
#astrophotography

“hesitating to give chemotherapy to cancer patients”

Again I ask you to ostracize your Republican family and “friends” unless they extract themselves from this death cult.

I often think about all the accounts on here that were all like “Israel would never bomb a hospital”.

A lot of “left-wing” accounts from Germany especially.

Wondering if these people had any sort of reckoning with themselves or at least some reflection or just moved on and pretend it never happened.

🔭✨The Flame and Horsehead Nebulas in Orion ✨🔭

As seen from my driveway. LHaRGB combination, total exposure time ~20h. Pixinsight/Photoshop.

#astrophotography

Meanwhile, Cybertrucks have started to rust when it's raining.

https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/13/tesla_cybertruck_rust/

Having programmed computers for almost 40 years now the best advice I have for programmers is: what you’re doing is primarily a social job, not a technical one.

This isn’t just an empty aphorism.

Unless you are an ethical person who strongly cares about not making other human beings suffer—you cannot make high quality software.

This includes not making software at all when as a consequence of that software other human beings would suffer.

@ActionRetro is frogfind having issues? (haven't used it in a while)

Fun fact apropos of nothing: when Hitler came into power democratically it took him like 3 months to dismantle democracy completely and there were no new elections for 17 years.

He came into power after earlier starting an insurrection. State institutions and government failed to ban him from future elections.

By the by, Computer Power and Human Reason is probably one of the most important books in computer science and literally everyone should read it (it’s not very technical).

It argues that 1) machines and humans are innately different and 2) there is tasks that computers should never be made to do, regardless of if they can actually do it.

Extremely pertinent to the AI hype, by probably the topmost authority in AI, the MIT professor who invented the ELiZA program.

https://hachyderm.io/@thomasfuchs/111893418989185574

Meanwhile…

(via https://bsky.app/profile/niedermeyer.io/post/3kkjomtl6e22a)

Microsoft has endorsed KOSA, the legislation that the GOP wants to use to cut off access to information for LGBTQ youth and destroy the open Internet.

Please contact your reps and demand they vote against it.

Also, fuck you, Microsoft.