To add some context, one nice thing about the independent model 404 Media has gone with is that they tell us exactly what their motivations are, in their own voices (it’s only four people). On their podcast they’ve been very open about what they want, and maximizing profit is not it. They’ve talked honestly about what it costs to operate, and they’ve said the infinite growth model is not what they want to emulate. They just want to keep doing good journalism, they are not in it to get rich. Since I believe and trust their journalism, I’ll choose to believe them on the business side too, and that’s up to everyone to decide.

I think they’re in touch with their readership enough to know that they’d lose a ton of subscribers if they sold out or started making terrible profit-driven decisions.

But who knows, I don’t know them personally so they could just be really really good liars.

These stealth edits are unacceptable. They are tantamount to the NYTimes shouting about their cowardice from the rooftops. Do they really think people won’t notice? Clearly they underestimate how satisfying it is to catch them in a lie, which is ironic for a newspaper whose reputation has been bolstered by exposing (some) lies.

I thought correction notices were standard practice. It’s not like they can correct the hard copy, so fuck all their online readers I guess? Infuriating, but we shouldn’t expect anything better from them at this point in their downfall.

Oh that’s good…

Ugh Cuomo. I forgot about him. Would New Yorkers really vote for him? I go back and forth, but yeah, probably. That’d be on brand.

As much as I wanted her to get rid of him, because he’s clearly a corrupt asshole, she isn’t the kind of politician to take a risk like that. She has shown herself to be a very weak governor. I’m also not sure if I’m okay with “our side” acting like authoritarians because the other branches are unwilling or unable to act through the proper process. She has the power, and he’s a piece of shit, but he was duly elected and primaries aren’t too far off (July I think). New Yorkers definitely won’t give him the job again. Though they’ll probably vote in another shitty mayor, the city has a laughably bad track record.

I think the best we can hope for is Judge Ho deciding to dismiss the case with prejudice effectively removing the Sword of Damocles from over Adams’ head. (The corrupt prosecutors asked for without prejudice.) That wouldn’t be ideal, because Adams’ would be off the hook completely, but at least it’d take away Trump’s leverage. And voters would finish the job by primarying him in a few months.

It all sucks major corrupt ass no matter how you sniff it.

Ah got it, thanks for the clarification.

Yup! I should have been more specific, Mobius Sync uses syncthing on iOS.

It’s always been free for me using Mobius Sync…

Damnit Shiro, how many times do I have to shut it off for you??

Human and AGI collaboration might be interesting, if ever real AI actually develops. But I wouldn’t call augmenting or probing of existing works of fiction with rehashed LLM sludge collaboration, I’d call it glorified and advanced plagiarism at worst, and low quality cliff notes at best.

I would much rather read a work of creative fiction from a human being than to encounter autocorrect word predictions written into paragraphs. The idea that the text itself can be queried to gain additional meaning divorced from the author’s intention strikes me as unrealistic and not faithful to the person who originally crafted the words.

Though I’m obviously biased against LLMs being used for this kind of thing, from lots of experience seeing how crappy they are.

Ugh.

I get what you’re saying, but in reality this isn’t always possible. If you are directed to do something by your superior and you choose not to comply, disciplinary procedures will start, and will ultimately lead to your termination. Throughout that process, the principled protest that lead to your termination would be muddied and probably forgotten. Resigning on idealistic or principled grounds sends a stronger message than allowing yourself to be fired, and least for those in the administrative state that don’t have highly visible jobs. The result is still the same either way: the action you were protesting was probably carried out anyway by someone less principled than you, but you’re out of a job and few people will ever know why.

If you loudly resign, your message will be received by more people and will be backed and strengthened by your sacrifice. It’s fucked up that it has to go down this way, but when there are two bad choices I’m glad enough people are making the harder one that might benefit more people even at personal expense. For heads of agencies and high level staff it might be more impactful to let yourself get fired, but I think those cases will be the exception (the FBI director, for example, should have let himself get fired).

I’ve earnestly answered some of your other questions, when it was quite clear you were either trolling or incredibly stubborn, and this additional question (which purposefully ignores the basic answers I gave you weeks ago) makes it obvious you don’t actually want to learn anything. Stop asking questions if you don’t intend to genuinely engage with the people who are taking the time to respond.

SO good. Not stringy, naturally sweet, especially when roasted like this it gets all nice and caramelized. It’s pretty versatile in lots of different dishes.

Once you manage to crack into it, that is. Need a sharp knife and patience.

Ed Zitron has the best takes on this imo. One of his pieces is linked in the posted article, but here it is again. His podcast also has some of the most grounded and hilarious insight into the absurdity of the AI bubble. If you want to hear from him in a more mainstream setting, I highly recommend the interview he did with Brooke Gladstone on On The Media. That was the first time I heard anyone really talk about the AI industry with genuine frankness and honestly.

Basically, OpenAI, Sam Altman, and all of the big tech players have defrauded us and investors by raising laughably high amounts of money and wasting precious resources to build inferior and closed products, when any reasonable person would have known there were better ways. This whole thing also proves how essential competition is to a healthy market and producing things people actually want to use.

In essence, DeepSeek — and I’ll get into its background and the concerns people might have about its Chinese origins — released two models that perform competitively (and even beat) models from both OpenAI and Anthropic, undercut them in price, and made them open, undermining not just the economics of the biggest generative AI companies, but laying bare exactly how they work. That last point is particularly important when it comes to OpenAI’s reasoning model, which specifically hid its chain of thought for fear of “unsafe thoughts” that might “manipulate the customer,” then muttered under their breath that the actual reason was that it was a “competitive advantage.” -Zitron

Will suffer. We all will. He was just confirmed by the Senate.

“Sanctuary Cities,” or policies that local law enforcement won’t actively assist ICE agents, are fully in line with Federal law. And for what it’s worth, Supreme Court precedent has made it perfectly clear that Federal agents do not have the right to commandeer state or local resources to carry out a Federal action.

Officials in sanctuary cities obviously can’t obstruct a federal investigation or action, but they are under no obligation to help. This has long been accepted by legal experts on the right and the left.

The country’s Attorney General flat out lying about the spirit and letter of the law shouldn’t be surprising to anyone at this point, but it’s still worth noting how far we’ve fallen.

100%

I’ve had dreams where my long locks were dramatically blowing in the wind, only to wake up and run my hands through my…well shit, that’s just my scalp.

I started losing my hair when I was a teenager, so I’ve been bald for most of my life. I’ve been shaving my head for decades because it’s the only way my head and face don’t look absurd. I’m totally used to it, and long ago accepted that I’d never have hair on my head again.

But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want my hair back.

If this turns out to be legit and works on most people, there could be a worldwide explosion of self-esteem in adults.

I’m always shocked how few people know about these. We’re still not even close to cleaning up existing leaks.

even a pinprick-size hole in an underground tank can send 400 gallons of fuel a year into the ground, polluting soil and water. Spills can also destroy habitat and kill wildlife.

Roughly 81 million people live within a quarter-mile of an underground storage tank that’s experienced at least one leak

More than 516,000 leaks have been cleaned upsince Congress directed EPA to begin regulating underground tanks in 1984, but more than 57,000 known sites still await a full cleanup

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