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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 1d

Feels accurate to the most places I’ve lived, and I like having finer distinctions than just “the Midwest” or “the Southwest”

William Hazen @williamhazen.bsky.social · 2d

This is the most accurate depiction of the Midwest to date. Wichita has always felt like the last Midwest city while also being the first plains city.

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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 2d

I haven’t had a chance to go through this in detail yet, but it looks pretty neat

⚡️🌙 @dystopiabreaker.xyz · 2d

if you're curious about the architecture and mechanics of LLMs, this site has a really excellent explorable interactive visualization. it helps build intuition for how massive these models are, what 'interpretability' means, and the complexity involved here

bbycroft.net/llm

ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 3d

sigh - the metafilter rebuild project always felt a bit ill-considered to me, but it was launched and I think it could have had some neat results

it now appears to have been at least informally abandoned

MetaFilter site rebuild monthly update: October 2025

I'm declaring this project on hiatus until the after new Board is seated. more details inside.

metatalk.metafilter.com

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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 3d

My partner and I were recently staying at a hotel with *excellent* furniture choices. We liked it so much, we had a long (frivolous) discussion about whether it was worthwhile to get a different house to match the style of furniture.

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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 3d

I may be wrong, but I suspect a new company whose core strategy was “make bsky.app as commercially successful as possible” would also not be responsive to the userbase’s opinions on specific moderation decisions.

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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 3d

I mean this might indeed make some bluesky devs happier, but I’d guess it also results in ill-thought monetization strategies and potential worse moderation.

I have some issues with how the site is run, but I think it’s been insulated from some VC failure modes *because* it’s run by protocol folks.

Katie Tightpussy, Editor-In-Chief @katie.bzky.team · 5d

i think i would prefer it if bluesky leadership was honest with how much they loathe having a large social media app that they never wanted, spun it off into separate company, and then went back off to Protocol Land where they never have to think about the opinions of plebeians ever again.

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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 3d

I vaguely recall several folks at Lawfare getting excited about third amendment discourse back in Trump 1. Tagging @qjurecic.bsky.social in the hopes that she knows who to send this to. 😁

Chris Goodman @cbgoodman.co · 3d

The third amendment is about to get very relevant.

'Very difficult situation': Kristi Noem whines locals not letting ICE agents use restrooms

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem complained that her agents were not being permitted to use restrooms in Chicago because of opposition from residents.During a Sunday interview on ...

www.rawstory.com

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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 3d

Oh absolutely, yes. Folks come up with fascinating ray gun designs 😁

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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 3d

This one I know well due to reading too much Niven when I was young, but it does seem to describe reality annoyingly well…

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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 3d

I really need to try this out, as well as @dollspace.gay’s appview, and finally get around to setting up a PDS.

I’m pretty sure one of my existing dev servers could stand these up for at least my personal use.

Why @why.bsky.team · 4d

A little proof of concept I've been working on, it's a version of Bluesky that you can run locally, even on your laptop, that pulls just the data you care about from the firehose, indexes it, and provides you an interface to view and interact with posts.

GitHub - whyrusleeping/konbini

Contribute to whyrusleeping/konbini development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

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Reposted by ajdecon

Leif Hancox-Li, PhD @struthious.bsky.social · 3d

oh look the fears of everyone who understands data privacy are valid

John Scott-Railton @jsrailton.bsky.social · 3d

NEW: breach of Discord age verification data.

Including some users passports & DLs

Age verification is a badly implemented data grab wrapped in a moral panic.

Mark my words, as age verification mandates expand, we'll end up more surveilled and less secure. 1/

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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 4d

Not specifically, but it easily could be? 😆 Seriously it feels like folks in my feed are especially fighty the past few days and actively looking for new topics

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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 4d

In particular I often remind myself not to get negatively polarized against $GROUP just because I think a few loud members are especially silly

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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 4d

Just a note, the reminder is for *me* as much as anyone. I also don’t want to drive myself nuts this way.

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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 4d

Seeing multiple overlapping Unhinged Discourses right now, so just a reminder:

The Internet has a lot of people on it, and there will always be some who believe and say truly wild things.

You do not have to care about or respond to every wrong thing online, especially if it upsets you.

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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 4d

I quite like the Bond of the novels, but he would *absolutely* have decided the mandatory cybersecurity training was beneath him

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 4d

James Bond 2025 *absolutely* gave away every half the UK's secret bases through his Strava app.

William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 4d

the best parts of the actual bond novels are bond having a kind vague yuppie ennui that he tries to fill with sex and booze. there’s one bit where he gets really into health food. 2025 bond is a former delta operator who in between working for SOG or blackwater bounces between Pilates, CrossFit, etc

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Reposted by ajdecon

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 4d

James Bond 2025 *absolutely* gave away every half the UK's secret bases through his Strava app.

William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 4d

the best parts of the actual bond novels are bond having a kind vague yuppie ennui that he tries to fill with sex and booze. there’s one bit where he gets really into health food. 2025 bond is a former delta operator who in between working for SOG or blackwater bounces between Pilates, CrossFit, etc

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 4d

indeed, when he's written by other people (in thin disguise) this aspects is usually emphasized - e.g. Hamish Bond in Kim Newman's DRACULA CHA CHA CHA or Jimmy Bond in LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN.

but done best I think a 50s Bond written by a smart author today is a mess of insecurities

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Reposted by ajdecon

lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 4d

But it does seem to me that if you want sober minded thought about how to have a humane and prosperous society, that actually acknowledges trade offs and grapples with difficulties rather than wishing them away, the liberal left are the only serious game in town right now.

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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 4d

Heck, they could even learn to have an alt for when they feel frustrated

ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 5d

This is a really interesting idea, especially with the separation between appviews and PDS’s. So you’re not actually giving up on history being *archived*, just not making it easy/quick to load in an app.

Samuel @samuel.fm · 5d

People have talked about narrow sliced networks to keep costs low - basically make the same compromises as Mastodon. It’s actually way more interesting (imo) to instead compromise on history - you’re reading fresh posts 99.9% of the time after all, and it wouldn’t break feeds like narrow appviews do

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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 5d

My honest recommendation would be to go into an apple store and test the sizes/weights in person.

I really think it’s a physical comfort thing, unless you have some specific workload to test.

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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 5d

So! I have both, pro for work, air for personal.

Overall I like the pro a little better — a bit more capable driving external monitors, and more ports. It does have better CPU perf but in practice I haven’t cared.

The air is slightly lighter and IME slightly longer battery but not a huge win.

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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 5d

Oh! And the combination of battery life and performance with the current Apple CPU series is just great. First laptops where I have forgotten my charging cable at home and thought “meh, it’ll make it to the end of the day”

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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 5d

The big downside is that they are in certain ways less flexible than Windows or Linux, but I haven’t found that to be a big deal for me

Also they are expensive, but IME the price is not very different if you are paying for similar hardware quality elsewhere

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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 5d

If you are otherwise in the Apple ecosystem, I’d definitely recommend the Macbook

The hardware is solid and reliable (as much as anything)

The cross-device integration within the ecosystem is pretty good

The maintenance level is non-zero but IME still less than Windows or Linux

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