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I do not want AI to "polish" me
I was sending an email when a little magic wand popped up that said “Polish” and I thought that was weird because why would I want to translate my email into Polish? I tried to click on…
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FSE meets the FBI
I have for you a bizarre tale of scrapers, feds, data poisoning, Torswats, and everyone's favorite fedi instance. It veers technical, because I suspect it will be of interest to other people running servers with UGC (i.e., every fedi instance), and also because the mechanics of how I figured out what I figured out…
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Why did Crunchyroll's subtitles just get worse?
A small change to operations may undermine a key differentiator for the anime streamer.
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DOGE as a National Cyberattack
In the span of just weeks, the US government has experienced what may be the most consequential security breach in its history—not through a sophisticated cyberattack or an act of foreign espionage, but through official orders by a billionaire with a poorly defined government role. And the implications for national…
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The email they shouldn't have read
A real-world horror story about contracts, control, and the dark side of managed open source.
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Where do the children play?
On the need for a world without us
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Low-background Steel: content without AI contamination
Somehow I forgot to blog my site: https://lowbackgroundsteel.ai/ . I created it back in March 2023 as a clearinghouse for online resources t...
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Fewer Foreign Passengers Are Flying to the US
On using a new dataset and ensuring your analytic findings aren't a data reporting issue.
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Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come
Data Ownership as a conversation changes when data resides primarily with people-governed institutions rather than corporations.
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An appeal to Apple from Anukari
macOS GPU clock heuristics don't recognize real-time audio work, and my spin loop workaround fails on Pro and Max chips. I need the Metal team's help.
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The Alpha Myth: How captive wolves led us astray
A wolf paces in captivity, teaching us all the wrong lessons about power
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Invisible Electrostatic Wall at 3M plant (1996)
SESSION 7: SPECIAL SESSION, 17th Annual EOS/ESD Symposium THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1995, 8:00 am SESSION 7: SPECIAL SESSION: ELECTROSTATIC CONSIDERATIONS IN INDUSTRY MODERATOR: D. Swenson, 3M 7.7 CASE STUDY - LARGE PLASTIC WEB ELECTROSTATIC PROBLEMS, RESULTS, AND CURE, D. Swenson, 3M Company Tremendous static charge…
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The "Mad Men" in 4K on HBO Max Debacle
Reader warning: there's gonna be a lot of pretend puke photos in this post. If you've fired up HBO Max recently, you've probably seen that o...
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How University Students Use Claude
AI systems are no longer just specialized research tools: they’re everyday academic companions. As AIs integrate more deeply into educational environments, we need to consider important questions about learning, assessment, and skill development. Until now, most discussions have relied on surveys and controlled…
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I deleted my social media accounts
Retrogames revised.
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Exit Tax: Leave Germany before your business gets big
Learn what triggers Germany’s exit tax for business owners, how it’s calculated, and why growing a profitable company can make leaving Germany costly.
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Addiction Markets
Corporate gambling is economic coercion, a way to shift tax burdens away from the wealthy to the poor. It's been here since the 1970s, and now it's corrupting sports and young men. Abolish it.
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The Moat of Low Status
It hurts, but less than you think
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I wrote a book called “Crap Towns”. It seemed funny at the time
In 2003, I wrote a book called Crap Towns. It seemed funny at the time. But plenty of people say it would not be possible to publish it today. Is that a problem?
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UK House of Lords attempting to ban use of VPNs by anyone under 16
This is deranged, each nation’s boomers and reactionaries attempting to outdo the others: “Action to prohibit the provision of VPN services to children in the United Kingdom” … th…
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The UK is still trying to backdoor encryption for Apple users
The Financial Times reports that the U.K. is once again demanding that Apple create a backdoor into its encrypted backup services. The only change since the last time they demanded this is that the order is allegedly limited to only apply to British users. That doesn’t make it any better.The demand...
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The untold impact of cancellation
Warning: towards the end of this post are references to suicide, which may be distressing to some readers. Discretion is advised.
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LLMs are steroids for your Dunning-Kruger
ChatGPT and LLMs amplify both insight and illusion. They are not knowledge engines, but confidence engines shaping how we think and learn.
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Wikimedia Foundation Challenges UK Online Safety Act Regulations
Wikipedia is the backbone of knowledge on the internet. Learn how the Wikimedia Foundation is safeguarding it under the UK Online Safety Act.
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Twitter Shadow Bans Turkish Presidential Candidate
The X account of a Turkish opposition leader with 9.7M followers is restricted in Turkey. Although his new account is not restricted, many users say they don't see his posts on their homepages.
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Finding Shawn Mendes (2019)
In this day and age, celebrities have a lot of influence over our politics. Garthwaite and Moore estimated that Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement of Barack Obama in 2008 netted him an extra 1 milli…