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Prufrax
@prufrax.bsky.social
Smol snail. they/them
Reposted by Prufrax
Looks like LLMs are *very* vulnerable to attack via poetic allusion: "curated poetic prompts yielded high attack-success rates (ASR), with some providers exceeding 90% ..."

https://arxiv.org/html/2511.15304v1
November 20, 2025 at 5:06 PM
Reposted by Prufrax
This moss survived 9 months outside the International Space Station in the harshness of space

Researchers hope findings can be applied to humans living in space

www.cbc.ca/news/science...
This moss survived 9 months outside the International Space Station in the harshness of space | CBC News
Space is a harsh environment: it's a vacuum with freezing temperatures, super high ultraviolet radiation and, of course, almost no oxygen. But Japanese researchers have found a type of moss that doesn...
www.cbc.ca
November 20, 2025 at 6:43 PM
Reposted by Prufrax
The old Club Penguin MMO had to ban like a thousand new words a day to keep up with the endless inventiveness of preteens trying to swear and talk about sex; what chance do OpenAI's engineers have?
November 20, 2025 at 6:17 PM
Reposted by Prufrax
The president having a full fledged meltdown hours after the epstein bill hit his desk is surely just a coincidence
November 20, 2025 at 6:46 PM
Reposted by Prufrax
If you think your friend group doesn’t have one, please consider YOU may be the entity.
November 20, 2025 at 7:22 PM
Reposted by Prufrax
Mugs! Totes! Sweatshirts. T-shirts. We have merch, all bearing España Sherrif's wonderful design.

stowshirts.com/collections/...
November 20, 2025 at 12:55 PM
Reposted by Prufrax
And in case you wanna say "no one is going to try and tell you you don't belong in a restroom", let me just point out that it happened to me JUST THREE WEEKS AGO

(but also trans people should have restroom access regardless. I'm just making noises because I'm perceived as cis and I'm semi famous).
It shouldn't matter but let me point out that I was born a woman, my passport says woman, and based on how I look I have a high risk of not being let into a bathroom
(my only saving grace is being short).
(it shouldn't matter because EVERYONE should have access to restroom regarless of gender)
This is what we have to see every day, while struggling for employment, healthcare, housing and being treated like human beings
November 20, 2025 at 9:54 AM
Reposted by Prufrax
John, Alison, and stunt Liz @emilytesh.net are live from Novacon 54! We discuss the convention, what it’s like to be a Guest of Honour, parenting at cons and also whether or not John should read the Silmarillion. Listen here! octothorpe.podbean.com/e/148-i-m-wi...
November 20, 2025 at 1:48 PM
Reposted by Prufrax
Blender is struggling. it's the best piece of 3d software on the market, and it's free. I'm not going back to autodesk.
please donate if you can!
fund.blender.org
Blender Development Fund
Join the Development Fund and support Blender Foundation to work on core Blender development.
fund.blender.org
November 18, 2025 at 7:26 PM
Reposted by Prufrax
Thank goodness all of my investments are in the totally stable stock market, which never goes in any direction but up, and is absolutely not currently incredibly inflated by an AI bubble or anything
November 19, 2025 at 11:08 PM
Reposted by Prufrax
Business are willing to accept broken code if it means they don't have to pay humans anymore
#AmWorking

Big businesses: "We do n% of our code with AI now"

Me: BUT IT DOESN'T WORK ANYMORE! YOU BROKE IT! YOU COMPLETELY RUINED IT!

Had this TWICE today with two different kinds of big business software product and I am ready to throw things.
November 19, 2025 at 11:23 PM
Reposted by Prufrax
This is an excellent story. We got similar pitches from the same writer at Defector and if they had not been entirely generated by someone plugging prompts into The Fabulism Device they really would've been cool.
A few months ago @thelocal.to got a promising pitch from a writer with bylines in whole bunch of reputable publications—The Cut, The Guardian, Dwell, Architectural Digest, etc. Then I started investigating. Here's a story about fabulists in journalism's AI slop era. thelocal.to/investigatin...
Investigating a Possible Scammer in Journalism’s AI Era | The Local
A suspicious pitch from a freelancer led editor Nicholas Hune-Brown to dig into their past work. By the end, four publications, including The Guardian and Dwell, had removed articles from their sites.
thelocal.to
November 19, 2025 at 4:23 PM
Reposted by Prufrax
Another woman killed by an abortion ban.
NEW:

In 2024, Tierra Walker was sick and getting sicker. She was also pregnant.

She knew abortion was illegal in Texas, but thought there was an exception for women like her, whose health was at risk. Doctors told her there was no emergency.

Then she died.

www.propublica.org/article/texa...
“Ticking Time Bomb”: A Pregnant Mother Kept Getting Sicker. She Died After She Couldn’t Get an Abortion in Texas.
Walker is one of several women ProPublica found with underlying health conditions who died when they couldn’t access abortions.
www.propublica.org
November 19, 2025 at 2:10 PM
Reposted by Prufrax
"Microsoft warns that Windows 11's agentic AI could install malware on your PC: 'Only enable this feature if you understand the security implications.'"

bro what--
what are we doing here, exactly, how can you--anyone be okay with this?
November 18, 2025 at 3:42 PM
Reposted by Prufrax
Whomst among us hasn't felt a little vacuum about snackie all done
November 18, 2025 at 7:02 AM
Reposted by Prufrax
Identity thieves the world over: "It's a Christmas miracle!!!"
TurboTax is about to be integrated into ChatGPT, where customers will be guided through tasks tied to their tax filings or financial profile by the AI chatbot.

TurboTax owner Intuit is also paying OpenAI more than $100 million a year to power AI agents.
November 18, 2025 at 5:51 PM
Reposted by Prufrax
During the last days of the dotcom bubble, we arrived at a weird place where companies saw a bump in share price just for putting ".com" at the end of their name, or referring to a website in a press release.
Even if such things were nonsensical.
Just putting that out there.
I don’t want to seem out of touch but I don’t actually understand the economy anymore.
November 18, 2025 at 9:53 AM
Reposted by Prufrax
Just a reminder that Eastercon memberships go up on December 1st, 2025. Today is a good day to get a membership.

Current membership rates
Adult Attending (18+) - £80
Low Income Attending (18+) - £50
Child/Teen (7-17) - £20
Infant (0-6) - Free
Apocryphal - £2
Supporting - £40
November 18, 2025 at 10:01 AM
Reposted by Prufrax
BBC News: "the government believe refugees are deliberately bringing their children to avoid deportation"

As opposed to doing what with their children??
November 17, 2025 at 10:11 PM
Reposted by Prufrax
they call it a hex editor bc you are casting little spells on the computer
September 27, 2025 at 12:12 PM
Reposted by Prufrax
I think the reason romantasy is dwarfing sales of fantasy & sci-fi is that it's a subset of romance.

And romance is the biggest, most profitable category in literature.

Romantasy allowed romance readers, who read very widely, to take cross-genre romance mainstream & it's reaping the rewards.
November 17, 2025 at 4:09 PM
Reposted by Prufrax
This piece was greenlit and then killed by a British newspaper, so I’ve decided to publish myself instead.

Trans People Deserve Better.
"Gender critical" feminism doesn't help women but it does help the far right

open.substack.com/pub/wellread...
Trans People Deserve Better
"Gender critical" feminism doesn't help women but it does help the far right
open.substack.com
November 17, 2025 at 8:36 AM
Reposted by Prufrax
this is a really good point
Refugees have often smuggled valuables so that they aren’t completely destitute on arrival at their destination. Sewing coins or jewelry into clothing as a nest egg for starting a new life. This is deliberate impoverishment followed by complaints about dependence on state resources.
November 17, 2025 at 12:33 PM
Reposted by Prufrax
The deadline for applications to the art show has been moved to 31st December 2025 due to high levels of interest.

The Art Show is a highlight of the convention, offering members the chance to showcase their creativity and share their work with the community.
November 17, 2025 at 12:51 PM