Duolingo deletes its TikTok and Instagram posts amid AI backlash 😂
After Duolingo said it was going “AI-first,” things went downhill fast as millions saw it as replacing humans developers and support staff with bots https://www.fastcompany.com/91338068/duolingo-deletes-tiktok-ai-backlash-returns-with-strange-message They also increased subscription costs while firing staff #ai
In case you needed a playbook for responding to would-be dictators. From the NYT:
"The funny thing is that there’s a playbook for overturning autocrats. It was written here in America, by a rumpled political scientist I knew named Gene Sharp. While little known in the United States before his death in 2018, he was celebrated abroad, and his tool kit was used by activists in Eastern Europe, in the Middle East and across Asia. His books, emphasizing nonviolent protests that become contagious, have been translated into at least 34 languages."
“I would rather have this book than the nuclear bomb,” a former Lithuanian defense minister once said of Sharp’s writing."
"A soft-spoken scholar working from his Boston apartment, Sharp recommended 198 actions that were often performative, ranging from hunger strikes to sex boycotts to mock funerals."
“Dictators are never as strong as they tell you they are,” he once said, “and people are never as weak as they think they are.”
"The Democrats’ message last year revolved in part around earnest appeals to democratic values, but one of the lessons from anti-authoritarian movements around the world is that such abstract arguments aren’t terribly effective. Rather, three other approaches, drawing on Sharp’s work, seem to work better."
"The first is mockery and humor — preferably salacious."
"Wang Dan, a leader of China’s 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy demonstrations, told me that in China, puns often “resonate more than solemn political slogans.”
"The Chinese internet for a time delighted in grass-mud horses — which may puzzle future zoologists exploring Chinese archives, for there is no such animal. It’s all a bawdy joke: In Chinese, “grass-mud horse” sounds very much like a curse, one so vulgar it would make your screen blush. But on its face it is an innocent homonym about an animal and thus is used to mock China’s censors."
"Shops in China peddled dolls of grass-mud horses (resembling alpacas), and a faux nature documentary described their habits. One Chinese song recounted the epic conflict between grass-mud horses and river crabs — because “river crab” is a play on the Chinese term for censorship. It optimistically declared the horses triumphant."
http://nytimes.com/2025/05/21/opinion/authoritarianism-democracy-protest.html
CISA mutes own website, shifts routine cyber alerts to Musk’s X, RSS, email
Cripes, we were only joking when we called Elon's social network the new state media The US government's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) announced Monday that going forward, only urgent alerts tied to emerging threats or major cyber activity will appear on its website. Routine updates,…
#theregister #IT
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2025/05/12/cisa_vulnerabilities_updates_x/
Ninite to win it: How to rebuild Windows without losing your mind
Get a new, clean (maybe suspiciously empty) install up to speed – and keep it there When you install a fresh, clean copy of Windows – say, if you're switching to the LTSC edition – Ninite is here to kickstart provisioning the new OS.…
#theregister #IT
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2025/04/24/ninite_rebuild_windows/
System76's Rust-based desktop continues to improve at pace, as the latest alpha release shows https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/04/cosmic-desktop-alpha-7-adds-more-new-features
Lenovo offers cheaper laptops with Linux pre-installed.
Linus Torvalds figured out Microsoft’s agenda way before the rest of us. 🙂
The government’s incompetence is leading to horrific acts of cruelty.
"Apple’s AI isn’t a letdown. AI is the letdown"
Even CNN is slowly starting to get it.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/03/27/tech/apple-ai-artificial-intelligence
Real men don't fixate on other people's masculinity. https://www.comicsands.com/watters-real-men-waving?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=infeed&utm_campaign=linkprogram
The termination of RFE/RL funding silences a vital source of truthful reporting and a platform for underrepresented voices in Central Asia, with far-reaching consequences for global understanding and accountability https://timesca.com/opinion-what-the-loss-of-rfe-rl-would-mean-for-central-asia/ #CentralAsia #MediaFreedom #RFERL #TruthfulReporting #UnderrepresentedVoices
Trump may not be able to save Elon Musk from UK’s strict online safety law
UK Online Safety Act requires prompt content removals Musk's X has resisted.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/03/trump-may-not-be-able-to-save-elon-musk-from-uks-strict-online-safety-law/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social
Sobering revenue stats of 70K mobile apps show why devs beg for subscriptions
Most apps fail to reach $1,000/month revenue within two years.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/03/sobering-revenue-stats-of-70k-mobile-apps-show-why-devs-beg-for-subscriptions/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social
I know this firsthand. When I was a child, my entire community was branded as spies and saboteurs, justifying our internment inside barbed wire camps for years without due process, trial or charge.
The day many feared would soon come is already here, with the White House openly defying direct orders from federal judges on deportation. I take us through what happened and why the stakes have been upped considerably once again in my piece: https://open.substack.com/pub/statuskuo/p/crossing-the-line?r=1zr8b&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
@everything1saws0me Yeah, I tested the recommendations and other popular themes and none of them provided a better experience without weird issues. Themes just don’t have the same level of support these days.
Need something secure to communicate? SimpleX Chat can be a great option.
