Gregory's Server
The best news I've seen about "AI" lately: People have wisely concluded that these systems are untrustworthy.
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If Mozilla wants me to stop using Firefox, building "AI" into the browser is a great way to go about it. (Note: I'm still using Firefox...)
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  Extremist legislators in Tennessee and Oklahoma -- with more right-wing states on the way -- are looking to ban women from traveling out of state for abortions. They also want to imprison anyone who helps them. https://jessica.substack.com/p/breaking-travel-bans-proposed-in Resistance is not futile. This is fascism and has to be stopped.
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@dangillmor the Democratic party had done nothing to stop any of this and is offering no plans to stop any of this  @dangillmor they going to send slave catchers, er abortion catchers to the north to kidnap doctors and mothers? How did that go last time? @dangillmor Why did the Saudis pay Jared $2 billion? Why is there not a congressional committee to find out? Since, you know, Jared was actually on the White House payroll. Unlike Hunter, who’s a private citizen. Historian Timothy Snyder asks us -- all of us -- if we understand the whirlwind we are going to reap if we sell out Ukraine. https://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/23878 Everything will get worse if this happens. Everything.
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@dangillmor the answer is: one more war ended, lots of lives saved. @dangillmor When is the financial cost to the western nations such as America too much to prop up Ukraine. ? When their currency is devalued ? When their credit score drops ? I don't know and not saying I do.  If you're trying to decide whether Threads is a good fit with the fediverse, you should absolutely read @kissane's "Untangling Threads" -- https://erinkissane.com/untangling-threads Holiday season retro fun: https://dosdeck.com/ brings back MS-DOS games in browsers. No installation necessary. Limited selection for now, but I promise some happily wasted hours with the original Commander Keen, among others!  @dangillmor Epic Pinball and ... Lemmings! I haven't played that since I donated my Amiga to a museum! You should stop using Google Chrome. The company is following through on its threat to ban the ad/tracker blockers that a) help protect your privacy and b) make your web experience much more pleasant.
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 @dangillmor This is the Internet Explorer problem all over again. If one corporation controls a majority web technology then you get de facto standards instead of universal standards, and the corporation gets to shove whatever crap technology they want at the user. If we don't want another experience like Microsoft's IE browser we can't keep using their technology, including Chromium based browsers like Edge, Opera, Brave, Vivaldi, etc. @dangillmor Firefox is fine, Pulse is fine, Librewolf is even better, albeit it is more limited in some useful functions, like syncing. Currently, the worst is probably MS Edge, infected with ChatGPT… @dangillmor And this is why I will now instead use browsers that are not Chrome. Including Firefox. The self-verification system built into Mastodon should be one of its greatest selling points. This is especially true for journalists and everyone else for whom evidence of identity has huge value in the social media realm. But anecdotally -- and I would wager for real -- most people in the craft, even a lot of technically adept folks, don't seem to know how easy self-verification can be here. If you are trying to persuade a journalist you know to join up, please highlight this feature.
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 @dangillmor One problem I think is that many reporters don’t have their own site or blog, just their publication (e.g. Philadelphia Inquirer or Newsweek, etc) And those *publications* themselves aren’t doing the (simple) work of adding that verification code to the writer bio pages (although I’m sure it’s simple to add a Twitter profile link)  @dangillmor I stand by my still untested theory that if we can just identify or create an activity, mission or tool here that they are compelled to participate in or with, and which they cannot get over there, a migration might be much more organic and less contentious than it is now. I have one such an activity in mind, but I think there must be many more to be thought of out there.  @dangillmor on top of that news orgs could run their own instances... Just like they do for emails. Verification will be implicit when you can trust the domain.
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 @dangillmor This is the correct, adult, and responsible thing to do and I endorse this advice. But it's going to be REALLY hard to comply.  @dangillmor There are still *lots* of organisations who have their only channel, or only effective channel, of customer service or tech support on Twitter. @dangillmor while I agree with the "don't beat up on people", thanking people leaving now is quite gross. They've literally overlooked the dehumanisation of swathes of the world's population, all so they can keep their social media clout. That is not something to encourage. Anyone leaving Twitter now has to spend time getting their humanity back in the eyes of people who left the moment the Nazis were brought back to Twitter Like so many others here, I recently passed my one-year anniversary of joining Mastodon. It's been a joy. I have slightly more than half of the followers here that I had on the deadbird site when I stopped posting there -- and conservatively, 10 times the genuine engagement in boosts, favorites, and replies with the Mastodon account. My thanks to @Gargron and his team for their hard work. (Advice: If you aren't donating to your instance, please do so.)  @dangillmor @Gargron it somewhat reminds me of usenet before usenet got crapflooded with mediocrites. Which suggests that will eventually happen here. Or maybe not: the ability to define one's own feed, the filter options, and mute/block might be enough to stave off the decline. Significant UX upgrade in Mastodon. If you're looking at someone else's post on a different server than your own, you no longer have to do multiple clicks and copy/paste to share the item. You just put your own hosting server into the popup box and it shows you the post in context in your own timeline, and you can share it from there. No this isn't perfect -- still too many steps. But it's a major improvement.
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 @dangillmor This was a thing before 4.0 and then they removed it for some reason. Glad it’s back.  @dangillmor Or, you can install a browser plugin...! You'd have to be a genuine idiot to trust your entire financial life to Elon Musk, but he's counting on millions of idiots to do just that. Don't be one of them. https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/26/23934216/x-twitter-bank-elon-musk-2024
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There was a time I thought Musk was going to try to turn Twitter into a blockchain. Maybe he’s still going to try a crypto launch and get arrested for selling an unregistered stock. @dangillmor this is the same moron that has predicted "full self driving" for almost 10 years @dangillmor maybe he’s jealous that SBF is getting so much attention for his fraud trial. He’s decided he can do fraud even better. The deadbird site is now throttling links to Patreon, WhatsApp, and Messenger, according to @themarkup's crowdsourced analysis. This latest evidence of interference with speech means nothing to Big Journalism, of course. For most in the craft, it's business as usual on a platform that -- in addition to interfering with competitors -- hates journalism and amplifies extremists. Just noticed a great Mastodon (web) feature: mouse-over emoticons and you get a popup saying what they are. If you are as emoticon-illiterate as me, you'll find this super-useful.
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 @dangillmor though it’s worth noting emoticons are often used in ways slightly or significantly different from their “designed” meaning I posted this on the deadbird site: "Standing offer for journalists: I'll help you get set up on Mastodon and will help you bring your Twitter audience along (and find new followers and rich engagement there). All I ask is that you migrate -- over time, not instantly -- your social media activity there."
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I'm sure you know your friends better than I but I have followed you for a short bit here on masto and I can confidently say that you are truly polarized on your twit/masto opinions...that might have an impact on your audience's reception of the message. You catch more flies with honey is a universal truth. Lure them don't berate them for their current pattern perhaps? I love that you are here and want your ilk to come too because it is where I want to engage with others. Thanks.  It’s not going to happen. Journalists subjects are on twitter (governments, companies, etc). Mastodon doesn’t have the #s or the interface or onboarding, and I have spoken to many at length. Dear journalists: You continue to pour your work into Musk's business. You are supporting him. You are helping him. You are doing this despite his demonstrated contempt for you, despite his support for extremists -- and, as of today, his rank anti-semitism (effectively blaming Jews for his vile site's loss of advertising) I know that you believe you get value from being "where the people are" -- but sometimes principle requires sacrifice. So much is at stake.
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 @dangillmor @dangillmor it’s the ego vs ethics test of 2023. So many hacks claiming to “just” promote their work there because they can’t face losing an audience. It’s risible. The smallest possible protest too much for those addicted to clicks. Dear journalists: By remaining on Elon Musk's platform you are -- knowingly or not -- directly supporting your enemy. He is systematically turning his platform into a showcase for people and entities that see democracy as an impediment to achieving what can accurately be understood as fascist goals. Wrecking democracy means destroying freedom of expression -- the basis of what you do. For your own sake, and for your honor, please leave.  #rachelmaddow #alivelshi etc etc on #msnbc are doing great work, they have good guests on with professional experience in their fields But, I wonder why so many don't mention Mastodon especially when they know the shitshow #twitter is and it's problems, #x #TwitterCrash #twittermigration But no MASTODON LOVE, why⁉️ Because #comcast (owners of #msnbc) pay them good 💲💵💲 is it ⭕#selfcensorship⁉️ #monopolies have a lot of power, because they are the forever super rich  @dangillmor If moderation falls below a certain critical point, the result is always child porn and Nazis. Twitter is just a few pedophiles short of becoming 4Chan. @dangillmor why there is no big association of journalists to create an official #fediverse instance for all journalists around the world ? That could be a good start to make them leave the old bird site. It gets more absurd every day for Big Journalism to keep pouring its work into Saudi-government-funded Twitter, which is controlled by a right-winger who hates real journalism and boosts extremists. It gets even more absurd for journalism orgs to keep embedding tweets in their stories, given Musk's unfathomable destruction of the platform's usefulness. I keep wondering when journalists will discover that big tech is not their daddy.
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 @dangillmor@mastodon.social |
@dangillmor AI is in full gold rush, speculation mode. This started when one player in big tech achieved an advantage and the other big players rushed in to catch up. This was perceived as demand from the rest of the market and now we're in a speculation vortex. At a consumer level I'm detecting very little practical demand for, or uptake of AI products. At least the current offerings.
@dangillmor very funny (and exasperating) that they're calling it a "trust problem"
@dangillmor #Counterfactual : How much trust would we place in an employee who regularly and confidently hallucinates?