Notices by Phil Betts (philbetts@mastodon.social)

Genuine question: what is Meta's business model for pushing gen AI so hard? I understand it as (theoretical) cost cutting for most other businesses, but Meta content is already free.

Is it due to a belief that gen AI will become more engaging than user content? Is it to combat a declining volume of user content, or just to add MOAR?

I don't get how Meta AI in, say, WhatsApp, is supposed to add meaningful value to the company. Especially when AI slop devalues their overall content offering.

My stepmother continues to have the creepiest and most unsettling fucking house ornaments I've encountered in my life. They've followed them through an intercity relocation. Like, there have been multiple rounds of Boomer downsizing, and these monstrosities have somehow survived each cull. They're here with Intent.

The koala one is with me in the guest room where I'm staying, and I literally drape a large jumper over it so I don't have to look at it. 😬

@futurebird eternally relevant.

Good things that have come out of America have happened in spite of, not because of. I'm talking specifically about Morrowind and Severance.

And their insane death cult.

I mean, honestly, fuck America.

Probably my favourite meme of all time.

@Gargron haha, nerd ♥️

@geraldew @BrodieOnLinux desperately trying to figure out the accent. Welsh Australian?!

@Mastodon love to see people living their values. Thanks for all you're doing!

@eff this ain't it.

@metacurity not really. It's one of the *world's* most important and valuable assets, with an incredibly important mission. People volunteer to edit (and contribute) because they see the value. $20 million sounds dubious, and doesn't sound like it includes things like legal contingencies - what happens if one of its many enemies tries to take it down, through law or otherwise? I'd rather Wikipedia be *unassailable* over cost effective, and I think that does require a level of professional staff.

@pluralistic Guido van Rossom, inventor of #Python - one of the most significant programming languages the last 10 years - is another like Jimmy Wales. He formally relinquished his role as (literally titled) BDFL in 2018. It wasn't entirely smooth, but remarkably, like the factory owner giving the business to the workers to run as a cooperative, he turned the whole thing over to the collective and said "you decide how you want to self-organise".

Very cool.

https://web.archive.org/web/20180713195259/https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-committers/2018-July/005664.html

Yaaaaargh, I be commitin' computer piracy. ☠️🦜 #BirdsOfMastodon

This is such a gangster photo (c/o The Courier Mail)

"Merle Thornton AM, who famously chained herself to a Brisbane bar in protest against the ban on women drinking in public bars, has died aged 93...

In 1965, Dr Thornton and her friend Rosalie Bogner chained their ankles to a bar at the Regatta Hotel in Toowong, after a bartender refused to serve them."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-21/merle-thornton-dies-aged-93/104252220

This is what the Kaiser took from us. 😔

This "false equivalence" line about the ICC that's making its way out of a bunch of conservative politicians mouths, in synch, all around the world, is so dumb. Nice attempt to co-ordinate and spin the narrative, but there's a pretty clear equivalence - both have potentially committed war crimes.

@mpesce is there any chance an errant Starlink satellite collides with another and starts a chain-reaction of low-orbit collisions, creating an Earth-encasing field of deadly fast projectiles that sets the course of space exploration back decades, prevents any new satellites from launching, and traps us here on Earth for the foreseeable future? Because I'm not gonna lie, that would be pretty funny.

Pink frangipani, with white in the background. #bloomscrolling

@phiofx I would largely agree with the sentiment, but it's worth highlighting that there were and are many first nations cultures that have lived sustainably, and there are lessons to be learned from them.