Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Ruz @ruzrey.bsky.social · 1h

Yes. I bought Cory Doctorow's #Enshittification.

It doesn't even have to be stability, though. There are events such as the person who bought a faulty laptop from Amazon. They wouldn't repair or replace, so he made a credit card chargeback

All his Amazon music, vids and Kindle books disappeared!

Ruz @ruzrey.bsky.social · 12h

Piss per hour (ph⁻¹ ?) looks like a unit that has wider uses, now I think about it.

Or perhaps I just need to be choosier with podcasts.

Ruz @ruzrey.bsky.social · 12h

No, I don't claim to have an answer, but I think the question is more tricky than good/bad.

I can hope FW will understand strength of feeling when allocating money in future, but I probably won't be posting a video of me running over my 2023 FW13 in a double decker bus, either.

Ruz @ruzrey.bsky.social · 13h

I'll admit I don't know all the details. Perhaps I don't know how much of a high profile these contributors have presently.

That said, in the past I have bought music by Wagner, software from IBM, and chocolate bars from Nestlé when pushed.

Yet I'm not a fascist, or a medical fraudster.

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Ruz @ruzrey.bsky.social · 15h

Hardly a fair comparison. Is FW actively spouting anti-trans BS? No, not as far as I can see.

The association is unfortunate, but it's not the same thing.

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Reposted by Ruz

Dylan Beattie @dylanbeatt.ie · 20h

Listing AI-generated images for sale on stock photo libraries makes about as much sense as a bar deciding to offer pints of human piss for sale.

Like, even if you want that, even if that's genuinely the thing you want, why on earth would you pay good money for it when you could just make your own?

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Ruz @ruzrey.bsky.social · 17h

Was good to catch up :-)
---
Hex

1

Ruz @ruzrey.bsky.social · 1d

"Sing us a song. You're the piano man.
Sing us a song tonight.
Well, we're all in the mood for a melody
And you've got us feelin' alright"

(insert tears, and excuses for those tears here)
#BillyJoel FTW. He saved my sanity once, many many years ago...

Ruz @ruzrey.bsky.social · 1d

Oh, and never mind the giant spiders... Pah! It's the drop-bears we need to worry about.

Ruz @ruzrey.bsky.social · 1d

I got Claude to count the L's in 'floccinaucinihilipilification', so I have complete confidence that Frydo won't fry the wrong humans with its LASER weapon.

I mean...
What could possibly go wrong?
What's the worst that could happen?
etc...

Ruz @ruzrey.bsky.social · 1d

"WOT? NO MACHINE GUN?"
;-)

Ruz @ruzrey.bsky.social · 2d

That makes sense.

At one stage, it was explained that by the time 'strawberry' got to the model, it had been tokenised to something like 'str', 'aw' and 'berry'.

I can imagine a group of questions where the answer is in the question, and treating it more directly. About time :-)

Ruz @ruzrey.bsky.social · 2d

@kevlin.bsky.social These LLMs are getting better, I have to admit

I tried 'r's in 'strawberry' and 'w's in Mississippi with no trouble, so I tried asking "How many 'L's are there in 'floccinaucinihilipilification'?" and it said 3. I think that's right ;-)

I think they've made a special case :-)

Output from Claude Sonnet 4.5 correctly
counting 3 occurrences of the letter L in floccinaucinihilipilification

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Ruz @ruzrey.bsky.social · 3d

Cory Doctorow gives Microsoft a mention in his book #Enshittification.

MS fits the pattern, and stage 2 (dump on your Users) is nearly done, but they seem to be slowing down the progress of stage 3 (crap on your business partners as well).

Perhaps they already know stage 4 is to fail?

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Ruz @ruzrey.bsky.social · 4d

And the more effort goes in to keeping them hidden, the worse we know they will be if/when they are published.

Ruz @ruzrey.bsky.social · 6d

I find original equipment LED headlamps have 2 problems.

1. Most scatter too much light above the dipped cut-off, dazzling other drivers.

2. All too often, the colour balance is lousy, so I find it harder to see what things are on dark country lanes.

Headlamps converted with LED lamps trash.

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Ruz @ruzrey.bsky.social · 6d

I lost count of the "Stop & Tail" LEDs I tried, before I found some bright enough, that shone back on the reflector just right to be visible at sensible angles (angles where I would want someone to see me)

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Ruz @ruzrey.bsky.social · 7d

Although I've just checked and they haven't mentioned here their coverage of the human aid flotilla to Gaza.

Perhaps they have given up on bsky?

Ruz @ruzrey.bsky.social · 7d

Well if you want news not everyone will touch, how about bsky.app/profile/nova... ?

bsky.app

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Ruz @ruzrey.bsky.social · 9d

If you ever start an airline, that should be the flight crew uniform: -)

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Reposted by Ruz

Kevlin Henney @kevlin.bsky.social · 10d

Blogged: Step Back

"Instead of trying harder, do the opposite. Take a break. Properly. Don't just switch to another screen to browse memes, graze cat pics, answer your email or catch up with notifications, messages and socials."

kevlinhenney.medium.com/step-back-39...

Step Back

Take a break to solve a problem

kevlinhenney.medium.com

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Ruz @ruzrey.bsky.social · 10d

@theaifix.show My "Would you trust a pigeon?" mug has arrived and been christened with coffee (Canadiano, natch).

It's the larger 15floz size (can of pop for scale), the quality is superb and the coffee tastes even better than usual :-)

What more could a reformed programmer ask for?

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Reposted by Ruz

the Mountain Goats @themountaingoats.bsky.social · 10d

everybody acting like Auri didn’t just heal the pain of this sick world by releasing this album youtu.be/rbIm2Te3RcY?...

AURI 'III - Candles & Beginnings' (OFFICIAL FULL ALBUM STREAM)

YouTube video by Auri Official

youtu.be

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Reposted by Ruz

The Onion @theonion.com · 10d

Southwest Airlines Rolls Out New 'Loyalty Goes Both Ways' Campaign

11 72 700

Ruz @ruzrey.bsky.social · 12d

I saw Kes first, then I went and got A Kestrel For A Knave from the library. I bought it too, and gave it to my son.

Both classics in their own
right :-)