Notices by Free Teks for sale, cheap (tek@freeradical.zone)

@snickerbockers I totally shared your skepticism until fairly recently. I’m now mentally lumping it with self-driving cars. It’s not better than the experts (yet?), but to be useful it only has to be better than the noobs.

@froge @snickerbockers I don’t inherently disagree. This isn’t me arguing so much as talking through it with some friendly voices. But I’ve been playing with some nice stuff and it’s a whole awful lot better than it was even 6 months ago. A year? Leagues apart. It got me through some sticky code today quite efficiently, much more than I could’ve been on my own. Yes, it surely makes goofy mistakes, but also made some excellent targeted suggestions.

I’m currently watching an AI reason its way through fixing some code, and its thought process is eerily human: “Let’s try a thing. Did it work? No, same error. Let’s do this instead. Hmm, different error. This approach isn’t working. Let’s try a new idea.”

It’s beautiful, fascinating, and terrifying.

@Sheep_Overboard Oh, wild. I haven’t knowingly used an AI support agent before, but it cannot possibly be worse than Comcast’s human help center today.

Just snagged some Nitzer Ebb / Front Line Assembly at @dnalounge tickets for the fam, and also a sweet Cyberdelia poster to hang in my home office.

Grammarly secures $1 billion from General Catalyst to build AI productivity platform https://www.reuters.com/business/grammarly-secures-1-billion-general-catalyst-build-ai-productivity-platform-2025-05-29/

I wish the money had landed *before* the layoffs this month.

How California sent residents’ personal health data to LinkedIn – The Markup:

"As visitors filled out forms on the website, trackers on the same pages told LinkedIn their answers to questions about whether they were blind, pregnant, or used a high number of prescription medications."

Do not, ever, use a web browser without an ad-blocker. Even the FBI and NSA officially recommend it. https://themarkup.org/pixel-hunt/2025/04/28/how-california-sent-residents-personal-health-data-to-linkedin

https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/14/uber-to-introduce-fixed-route-shuttles-in-major-us-cities-other-ways-to-save/

It's called a bus. They've invented a bus.

I let Tek Jr pick out today’s Strange Cheese from the grocery store, as is our tradition, and they selected what turned out to be mild cheddar and habanero. My mouth is on fire. We’re going back for more.

Send help, can’t move, besieged by wildcats.

A pox upon the houses of incompetent webmasters who disable copy and paste.

New bag patch just landed.

@nomad That's exactly right.

Know what they call someone "just following orders"? Guilty.

I know I don't have a lot of US military friends here, but there are a few. Remember that the oath of enlistment starts:

"I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic;"

Before and above all, our allegiance is to the Constitution, not to any individuals. If our orders are un-Constitutional, they are illegal, and shall not, *must not* be obeyed.

@baconandcoconut "OMG I have a terrible voice. Is this how I sound to people?"

Current status

Researchers Secretly Ran a Massive, Unauthorized AI Persuasion Experiment on Reddit Users: https://honeypot.net/2025/04/28/researchers-secretly-ran-a-massive.html

This is utterly despicable. “Scientists” perform human research on unconsenting persons, and reported that they successfully persuaded some people to change their views by lying to them with AIs.

Did they contact all those people later to explain that they’d been lied to? Or are they still wandering around with their changed opinions, persuading their friends, and voting?

Hegseth Shared Those War Plans in a Second Group Chat, Too https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/pete-hegseth-houthi-war-plans-second-signal-group-chat.html

Pull his security clearance. Now.

Security advice from a training program we're doing for work:

> Avoid clicking on web advertisements while at work

Security advice from your ol' Uncle Tek:

> Always use adblockers on every device you control

DOGE Plans to Rebuild SSA Codebase In Months, Risking Benefits and System Collapse https://www.wired.com/story/doge-rebuild-social-security-administration-cobol-benefits/

> The project […] aims to migrate all SSA systems off COBOL, one of the first common business-oriented programming languages,

Yes, that's what COBOL means.

> and onto a more modern replacement like Java within a scheduled tight timeframe of a few months.

It’s the stupid version of “Rewrite it in Rust”. “Jank it in Java”?