The street that my mum lives in is a one-way street, but wasn't marked as such on #Google Maps. This caused many drivers to drive the wrong way. I have tried to edit it on Google Maps (there is such functionality), but to no avail. No matter how often I submitted a change (with photos of street signs!), Google said "Sorry, we could not verify it".

Solution: Edit the street on #OpenStreetMap! A few months after I did this, Google seems to have stolen the data, as it regularly does, and now the street is correct in both datasets!

Drawn 8 years ago!

This is it. This is the cartoon.

‘Spotify CEO, Daniel Ek, becomes chairman of AI military start-up after €600 million investment’
https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/spotify-ceo-daniel-ek-chairman-ai-military-million-investment/

“Ek’s pledge was announced on June 16th via his firm, Prima Materia. In 2021, Ek led an investment one sixth the size of the one announced this week. His initial €100 million investment into Helsing was the first significant funding received by the start-up.”

#DanielEk #Spotify #Helsing #PrimaMateria

The Onion has sent the following letter to all 535 members of Congress. This special edition will be in their physical mailboxes as they return from recess tomorrow.

We hope it inspires them to continue to cower as our essential liberties are systematically dismantled.

https://theonion.com/letter-to-congress/

And there's another #FountainPen related company I can scratch off my list. Picked up from Inkdependence's review of a Ferris Wheel Press pen - FWP launched a Harry Potter themed Kickstarter for a pen and ink set. In Pride month.

Beautiful bottles, but no thanks, to that or any other FWP product.

The resistance is growing -- what's your story?

I'm co-organizing a workshop at #CSCW2025 with colleagues @ericpsb @richmondywong @rsteup Vera Khovanskaya and Inha Cha --- JOIN US!!!

(no really, joiiiiiiiiiin uuuuuuussss...)

Position papers due by JULY 1
https://oppositiontoai.wordpress.com/

Oh my godddssss

#VibeCoding your MFA

Recently started reading in the pub and a few mates have referred to it as an 'old man activity,' what they don't know is I go to different pubs and score them on things like beer selection, cost and how nice it is to read there. I've got a note in my phone with all the scores.

My remark that LLMs were "born shitty" was in the context of a discussion of Cory Doctorow's notion of "enshittification". That process involves something that starts off beneficial for consumers (or at least the consumers in focus). LLMs used as synthetic text extruding machines have no legitimate use cases and --- for all the reasons discussed in the stochastic parrots paper --- are prone to harmful outputs to boot.

>>

Sunsonic 986-II. A Thai Famicom clone with keyboard and mini CRT built-in.

#Onthisday in 1837, Queen Victoria ascended to the throne and so began the Victorian era. Of the vast amounts of Victorian content on our site, this is perhaps our favourite — a dictionary of Victorian slang: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/a-dictionary-of-victorian-slang-1909

Is it possible to imagine a version of social media where privacy is respected, where users are empowered, and where Big Tech has no say?

Yes!!

▶️ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRJHIJy5Nno

@cstross @davidgerard I keep wondering about what’ll happen when this one pops.

The other bubbles you mentioned left something tangible behind:

The original Dotcom bubble resulted in a bunch of long haul fiber optic transmission systems being sold at distressed asset prices, yielding (eg) Level3 Communications as a global connectivity wholesaler.

Property bubbles leave the property behind, maybe with some people who couldn’t afford homes finding themselves in the right place at the right time to buy one at bankruptcy auction prices.

When someone loses their shirt, it isn’t usually set on fire; They’ve lost it because they’ve been forced to sell it below-cost, which means the counterparty is buying it below-cost. Cheap shirt!

The LLM bubble seems different, though. The only thing that makes the products of AI companies look feasible is that VC inflows mean they can be sold cheaper than the replacement cost of GPUs and the electricity cost needed to power the datacentres the LLMs live in. If the VC money retreats none of this will be viable.

Who’d buy an AI coding assistant or a personal agent or whatever if its API cost $100 per day? Or $1000 per day? If there isn’t a profit stream to keep GPT-4 or Claude running, what happens to applications using the GPT or Claude APIs?

There’s a pretty good chance that when this bubble pops, there’ll be nothing left. At all. Quite different from other bubbles!

Wow.

Absolute home run ad from Rep. Eric Swalwell

🔥

Fun fact: If you see someone at a nerd event wearing a vim-themed shirt, it's because they put it on in 2003 and couldn't figure out how to take it off

Share if your account is a safe space for 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️!!

Trans people exist, protect trans kids, trans rights are human rights, and solidarity with trans people, ALWAYS!

And SCOTUS is a disgrace... As a lawyer, it doubly hurts to see how horrible they are. 😭

The @frameworkcomputer Laptop 12 might be the most repair-friendly laptop we’ve ever opened. Seriously. It’s shockingly easy to take apart, and for a touchscreen convertible, that’s rare. It earned a 10/10 on our repairability scale thanks to clever engineering choices:

- Screwless SSD clip.
- Cable-free battery removal.
- Clearly labeled mainboard.
- QR codes on every major part.

We tore it down. You can fix it up.

Full article: https://www.ifixit.com/News/111201/tough-tiny-and-totally-repairable-inside-the-framework-12

Seen on Bluesky:

Guy explains to CEO of Signal (messaging) that it's going to add "AI" to the service. She says no. He insists, not knowing or caring who he's talking down to.