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  Attempts to create a “distinctively British” AI hit an early stumbling block when developers discovered that none of the servers would talk to each other because they hadn’t been introduced.

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  Any time you worry that you might not be good at your job, just remember that Apple, a $5 trillion corporation, still hasn’t figured out how to stop a simple three-key combo from hanging the Finder about one time in four. #software #apple

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  I have now been followed by a THIRD fake Kameron Hurley. (The real one is at @Kameronhurley, but she’s more active on BlueSky than here). I’m not sure what the point is. They don’t even bother to create an avatar to make the deception even slightly convincing. They just pop up pretending to be Kameron, follow a bunch of people, and then a few days later their account gets deleted. I understand that scams can be subtle, but if there’s a fiendish master plan here, I’m not seeing it.

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  Happy Battle of Cable Street Day to all who celebrate. #fascism #resistance

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  Ouch, no. I got mail today from a site billing itself as a “free news reader where people choose the publications they follow”. The website they’re mailing me about doesn’t actually HAVE an RSS feed, but that’s OK. Their description of their service makes it sound respectful enough. Except they sent me 8 emails about the same site. And every single message has a different ‘From’ address. And if I want to get off their list(s), I have to reply ‘unsubscribe’ to each one. Malice, or vibe-coding?

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  Many years ago, I was in a bookstore & Jeffrey Archer came in to do a signing. Realizing who he was, I felt a sudden impulse to take a random book off the shelves & ask him to sign it. “But I didn’t write this book,” I imagined him saying. “Oh, I don’t want any of YOUR books,” I would reply. "But your autograph might be worth something someday.” It would have been fun, but he had two hulking sobbers(*) with him, who’d probably have taken me outside & worked m...

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  Mild-mannered software engineer by day, international cheese mule by night: the Angus McIntyre story.

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  @eastblocvisuals@zpravobot.news @pluralistic@mamot.fr In Argentina, firefighters are routinely called upon to fight demons …

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  RE: https://wandering.shop/@cstross/117291228961971527 When I finally got around to starting the Laundry Files, I expected the usual @cstross@wandering.shop trademarks: madcap inventiveness, off-the-charts grotesque, wry commentary on institutions and conventions, page-turning pacing etc. What took me by surprise was the emotional depth. My heart regularly aches for poor Bob and Mo. Anyway, to quote the man himself, “Is good book. You read.” In fact, is all good books. You read all. Start her...

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  A new “Neuromancer" teaser gives more details of AppleTV's upcoming series based on @GreatDismal@mastodon.social's genre-defining cyberpunk novel. In the trailer, the mysterious Armitage hires ace console jockey Case to help him activate his legally-purchased copy of Microsoft Office 365. Frustrated by Case's failure and an endless series of “Unknown Error 0x0 “ pop-ups, Armitage orders street samurai Molly to kill everyone in Redmond, but she is unable to buy a plane ticket bec...

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  May his memory be a warning.

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  Standing by the railing in Battery Park, waiting for the tall ships. 1/

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  I hope that there IS a schism in the Catholic church, so we can finally resolve the longstanding scientific question about what happens when a pope and an antipope collide. My money is on mutual annihilation, accompanied by the emission of some high-energy cardinals, but I'm open to other suggestions. #SSPX #religion #Catholicism #schism2026

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  The dystopian headline I did not expect to see today: “Remote-controlled cockroach swarm can now breathe underwater" Someone is 3D-printing tiny diving suits for cockroaches, because of course they are. SCUBA apparently now means Somewhat Creepy Underwater Bug Apparatus. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-74235-1

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  The UK government's plan to teach 10 million British children how to use VPNs may be one of the most ambitious IT education projects ever launched. Experts have praised the scheme, saying that a deft combination of incentives and peer education make it more likely to succeed than other, comparable initiatives. "With the rise of autocratic governments worldwide, VPN-literacy is more essential than ever.” said one expert, “This bold project definitely comes at the right time.” #UKSocial...

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  @molly0xfff@hachyderm.io Propagandapedia

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  All these headlines about how AI makes people lazy and dumb make me feel very smug, because I was lazy and dumb long before AI came along.

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  They promised me a #cyberpunk future full of sentient computer networks and bad-ass lady assassins in skintight fetishwear, and instead I got the one where ... (checks notes) ... people are sending me #phishing emails trying to compromise my electric toothbrush.

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  Knock, knock Who’s there? Kuh-thool Kuh-thool who? Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aea6285

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  With Peter Thiel's company Palantir increasingly in the news, a lot of people are still uncertain what the company stands for and what its core values are. Basically, what you need to know is that in "The Lord of the Rings” only three people owned palantíri: - the Dark Lord Sauron, the epitome of everything evil, - his almost equally evil lackey Saruman, and - Denethor, a depressive autocrat who finally ended himself in a failed murder-suicide. That pretty much tells you what to exp...

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  @scalzi It's the end of the Line.

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  RE: https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116414078285695998 This line from one of @pluralistic 's typically excellent and thought-provoking articles set me thinking. And while I agree with his first statement, I'm less certain about the second. To explain why requires me to tell an anecdote … 1/

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  The reason why the Artemis mission has everyone so fascinated is because it is a showcase for the efforts of people who are very, very good at their jobs, at a time when the news cycle is dominated by people who are not merely terrible at their jobs, but awful human beings as well.

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  First they came for the pronouns, and I said nothing because I was not a pronoun. Then came for the conjunctions, and said nothing because was not a conjunction. came for the prepositions, said nothing was not a preposition. came the determiners, said nothing was not a determiner. came adverbs, said nothing was not adverb. came nouns, said nothing was noun. came, said "FUCK!!! are screwed”

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  This detailed look at the US #RouterBan is worth a read. TL;DR: the security risks are real, but the ban – and the associated conditional approval process – may be set up to give a commercial advantage to one company in the space. https://www.reddit.com/r/pwnhub/comments/1s2thgj/the_fcc_router_ban_following_up_on_a_post_here/

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  To judge by the weight of the new MacBook I’ve just been issued by my employer, Apple have switched from titanium to using depleted uranium for their laptop bodies.

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  For #caturday, here's a comfortable kitty taking a nap in the gardens of the Kasbah of the Udayas, in Rabat, Morocco. #cats #CatsOfMastodon #Morocco

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  Signs from today’s “No Kings” protest in Manhattan. #NoKings #NYC #protests (1/4)

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  A fresh problem with #AI is what might be called Artificial Gullibility. According to a BlueSky poster, an academic who was ruled guilty of plagiarism has waged an extensive astroturfing campaign to rewrite the record. The goal was probably to game conventional search engines, but the texts have now been ingested by Google's AI. Google's "AI Overview” presents her (apparently false) version of events, backing it with the supposed authority of Google and “AI”. 1/ https://bsky.app/...

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  @jackwilliambell You say that, but someone out there is probably working on an anti-anti-anti-missile-missile-missile right now. And there's no reason why the arms race should stop there …