pls let me know who thinks Ringworld is ”hard SF” so I can punch them

Except my feeling is it’s mostly people who have grown up with Linux as a settled fact of computing life, not Unix greybeards.

Don’t have much to add, other than I first became aware of this connection when Freenode imploded. I wrote in a short essay that

[the] dominant ideology of new Freenode is free speech, anti-LGBT, and adherence to fringe Unix shibboleths such as anti-systemd, anti-Codes of Conduct, and anti anti-RMS.

(src)

Maybe it’s connected to the phenomenon of old counter-cultural activist become massive racists.

As an Apple customer I am entirely unmoved by their utter failure to shoehorn an LLM into their gadgets. I’m starting to think they might have dodged a bullet by missing the hype train.

“Shocker”, yeah right. Least surprising appearance ever.

This FT post about the VC ghouls getting blindsided by daddies Elon and Trump fighting is pretty entertaining

https://www.ft.com/content/df15f13d-310f-47a5-89ed-330a6a379068

https://archive.is/cKxyV

David Friedberg, a co-host of the All-In podcast that often features Musk and that has become a sounding board for the Trump-aligned tech world, suggested there was a broader cost to America from the spat between the US president and the Tesla boss. “China just won,” he posted.

Behind the scenes, prominent Silicon Valley figures were desperately trying to prevent Musk from appearing on an emergency episode of the podcast, according to two people familiar with the matter, out of concern that the billionaire would make the dispute even worse and poison the relationship with tech’s most powerful ally in Washington, vice-president JD Vance.

L. O. L.

I wonder if the US is closing in on the “imprison inconvenient billionaires for tax evasion” stage of managed democracy

there’s no anime avatar, how do we know it’s really Elon?

This post is gold.

“Mr. Burns” – too on the nose. Try better, scriptwriters.

Using Runaway’s AI technology, the studio can avoid a pricy film shoot that would cost millions and take a few days and use AI to create the shot for about $10,000.

“I have been in this business long enough to become vice chairman. What is this “CGI” you speak of?”

(not sure you can get that sort of shot for less than $10K but you don’t have to literally go out an shoot on film/digital actors and shit)

This piece, although in a way defeatist, also gives me hope because there’s at least one other person who has the same general feeling about LLMs that I do, and is a better writer.

https://blog.glyph.im/2025/06/i-think-im-done-thinking-about-genai-for-now.html

I’m gonna think that the latest drumbeat of pro-LLM posts (tpacek’s screed, this excrescense) is a last gasp of a system running in midair like the Coyote, before the VC money dries up.

Lobsters went down a VC financing rabbit hole the other day (thanks to me and @dgerard) and a user horked up this absolutely bonkers defense of OpenAI losing a galactic sum of money:

https://lobste.rs/s/wjb9ox/minio_removes_web_ui_features_from#c_rgatzz

(reproduced below in case it is removed in shame)

OpenAI is very different. They mainly lose money on ChatGPT, but it’s not really lost money, because they in turn accumulate fresh daha to further train their models. Data that none of their competitors have access to.

OpenAI is also different because AI is a major geopolitical factor at the moment and unless you’ve been living in a cave lately, you must have noticed that geopolitics is much more important than money these days. ChatGPT is an incredible intelligence gathering channel and cutting access to AI APIs would make US sanctions hurt that much more. The only other country that can compete with US companies when it comes to bulk training data access is China, via their social media alternatives like TikTok and RedNote. You can imagine the geopolitical implications of that too.

Maybe… like I mentioned, Nokia’s S60 application stack was a mess. The underlying phone software and platform might have been there, but the 3rd party ecosystem wasn’t. This was a huge part of the success of the iPhone, that 3rd party developers had a stable platform to develop for, and a steady financial partner (Apple) paying them.

No offense against Nokia but I really don’t think the company had the mentality to offer that.

Nokia had great hardware, but crappy software (and I say that as a heavy Series 60 user back in the day). In a parallel world, Windows Mobile could have ridden that hardware to a glorious future, but it was transparent that Elop’s acquisition was just part of a Byzantine internal Microsoft play.

Good luck! I’m rooting for you.

I hate I’m so terminally online I found out about the rumor that Musk and Stephen Miller’s wife are bumping uglies through a horrorfic parody account

https://mastodon.social/@bitterkarella@sfba.social/114593332907413196

My pocket take: the chickens from 45 years of effective neoliberalism coming home to roost, coupled with Brexit hangover, has led the reactionary elements of UK society to retreat to rancid culture war positions

why is robot lady in queue with springy legs so darn sexy

seriously though, good piece. Hopefully the fever breaks soon (yeah right)

Anecdata: if you’re working in IT in Sweden you can get away with just English. I know a guy living in Berlin who hasn’t botheredgot around to learning German yet, he also manages with English.

But it’s a big Community and different parts have different requirements and of course different expectations.