ChatGPT and other AI services are basically killing @Iconfactory and I'm not exaggerating or being hyperbolical.
First Twitter/Elon killed our main app revenue that kept the lights on around here, then generative AI exploded to land a final blow to design revenue.
This is what is happening in #LA, San Francisco & other Cities in #California! These men without IDs are pulling guns on Journalists that are just there reporting as always & not engaging with them! There are small children & to pull a gun on someone this fast & easy is disturbing!
It is raining and terribly smoky at the same time, and I have a meeting soon to talk about a billionaire private astronaut mission run by a billionaire-owned space launch company that dropped space debris on farms near my house. This apocalyptic scifi novel I'm living in is dumb.
Spammers have been programmatically creating accounts on Mastodon instances for years. Sometimes they post once and never again, sometimes they post on a schedule. Sometimes they never post, like a waiting botnet.
As Mastodon's anti-spam solutions are effectively nonexistent, most instances in our network require manual approval of new accounts. Up until recently, it was easy to spot a spammer; their join reasons were generic.
ChatGPT spammers have now arrived.
This graphic illustrates a major problem I have making videos:
The last street is still absolute garbage. There isn't even public transit.
The US (⅓ of my audience) is so far behind in city design that this is all they can reasonably hope for.
Meanwhile the rest of my audience is starting from the last street and trying to build something better.
It's like if I had a maths channel and wanted to talk about calculus, but ⅓ of my audience was still debating if multiplication actually works.
Indeed, she was. Fetterman shouldn’t pull the ladder up after his own family has climbed it.
The Apple Watch has a closed down ecosystem, only compatible with the iPhone. @trusted_device reverse engineered its interfaces and opened it up for compatibility with Android! WatchWitch
allows you using your Apple Watch
on Android devices, interpreting your health data, answering messages on the Watch and more.
Demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHz8NHMhtLY
Read the full paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.07210
This is the best take on Fermi's Paradox that I've ever seen.
My portrait of President Zelenskyy, as part of a fundraiser that I ran by myself! I raised over $2000 for Ukraine! Slava Ukraini!
I realized I hadn't heard any news about bird flu lately
it turns out the seeming reduction in cases being reported ...
... is likely a side-effect of Trump's desire to expel immigrants
As this physician notes, most bird flu is encountered in farm work ...
... so you want to test farm workers, to figure out if it's spreading!
but farm workers now have a very good reason to avoid all authorities
The piece: https://undark.org/2025/07/10/opinion-bird-flu-emergency-end/
Wired - DHS urging local law enforcement to consider a wide range of activities as violent tactics, including skateboarding, riding a bike or livestreaming a police encounter. https://www.wired.com/story/dhs-tells-police-that-common-protest-activities-are-violent-tactics/
Holy cow, as an American, I wasn't aware of the Horizon IT scandal. ~1,000 postal workers were wrongfully prosecuted for theft and other crimes, imprisoned, and forced to repay tens of thousands of pounds. 13 of them committed suicide! But it was an IT error! AI will make this worse.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/10/world/europe/uk-post-office-scandal-report.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Vk8.LKk8.BbcHfblN3WM4&smid=url-share
WTF!!! #DHS Tells #Police That Common #Protest Activities Are ‘Violent Tactics’
DHS is urging law enforcement to treat even #skateboarding and #livestreaming as signs of violent intent during a protest, turning everyday behavior into a pretext for police action.
By Dell Cameron, Jul 10, 202
"The #DepartmentOfHomelandSecurity is urging local police to consider a wide range of protest activity as violent tactics, including mundane acts like riding a #bike or livestreaming a police encounter, WIRED has learned.
"WIRED has made this article free for all to read because it is primarily based on reporting from Freedom of Information Act requests [#FOIA]. Please consider subscribing to support our journalism.
"Threat bulletins issued during last month’s '#NoKings' #protests warn that the US government’s aggressive immigration raids are almost certain to accelerate domestic unrest, with DHS saying there’s a 'high likeliness' more Americans will soon turn against the agency, which could trigger #confrontations near federal sites.
"Blaming intense media coverage and backlash to the US military deployment in #LosAngeles, DHS expects the #demonstrations to 'continue and grow across the nation' as #protesters focused on other issues shift to #immigration, following a broad 'embracement of #AntiICE messaging.'
"The bulletins—first obtained by the national security nonprofit #PropertyOfThePeople through public records requests—warn that officers could face assaults with fireworks and improvised weapons: #paint-filled fire extinguishers, smoke grenades, and projectiles like #bottles and #rocks.
"At the same time, the guidance urges officers to consider a range of #nonviolent behavior and common #ProtestGear—like #masks, #flashlights, and #cameras—as potential precursors to violence, telling officers to prepare 'from the point of view of an adversary.'
"Protesters on #bicycles, #skateboards, or even 'on foot' are framed as potential 'scouts' conducting reconnaissance or searching for 'items to be used as weapons.' #Livestreaming is listed alongside '#doxxing' as a 'tactic' for 'threatening' police. Online posters are cast as ideological #recruiters—or as participants in 'surveillance sharing.'
"One list of 'violent tactics' shared by the Los Angeles–based Joint Regional Intelligence Center—part of a post-9/11 fusion network—includes both protesters’ attempts to avoid identification and efforts to identify police. The memo also alleges that face recognition, normally a tool of law enforcement, was used against officers.
"Vera Eidelman, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union [#ACLU], says the government has no business treating #constitutionally protected activities—like #observing or #documenting police—as threats.
"#DHS did not respond to a request for comment."
Read more:
https://www.wired.com/story/dhs-tells-police-that-common-protest-activities-are-violent-tactics/
Progressives waste time pretending our salvation is “messaging.” Our problem is that we have no way to distribute messages that can be heard above the near-ubiquity of MAGA media. 100,000 Substacks and TikToks are not a message delivery system. They’re a message diffusion system.
In a blow to NATO, a mere eight years into its three-year overhaul, and after sinking in its dry dock, going on fire, having a crane fall on it, losing its entire crew to facilitate an illegal invasion, having most of its reconstruction materials embezzled and going on fire again, Russian media is suggesting that strategic rust reserve and occasional environmental disaster Admiral Kuznetsov might not be returning to "service" after all...
Blessings: the situation in Camarillo here did not end in bloodshed, the National Guard apparently pulled back somewhere between 11pm and midnight.
However, there is likely going to be more aggressive raids, I hear through the grapevine they were attempting to get VCSO assistance to track down and arrest people who were throwing rocks, blocking streets with their cars, allegations of weapons fired, etc. They're going to be hitting Ventura County hard (IMHO), expect targeted masked raids across the region if anyone was identifiable (by cell phone signal, facial recognition, ALPR license plate readers, etc. etc.) It's not going to be pretty. (this is my speculation).