Notices by Misinformation-Superhighwayman (damienwise@aus.social)

The problem of fascists in Open Source Software projects has become so bad that some vim users are considering using emacs.

#Neovim #Fascism #OSS #OpenSourceSoftware

@xgranade The location is deliberate, and designed to hijack accidental clicks/taps. Good UI design has reserved areas / padding / empty space around critical or high-risk functions.
Same goes for this Deceptive Design in recent versions of Android. It subverts years of trained muscle-memory for tapping into the search bar. And, too bad if you accidentally make what it considers a tap on the '✨' button with the base of your thumb while you're tapping anywhere else on the screen with the tip of your thumb.

Fans of Adafruit may recall a couple of months ago that one of the key people at the company made a series of posts on social media (including Mastodon and BlueSky) that looked awfully like online harassment. Besides some unprofessional stuff like name-calling, there were more serious accusations such as transphobia and doxxing.

Now, it seems there's been a falling-out between Adafruit and SparkFun Electronics. SparkFun has taken things seriously enough that they've ceased their business relationship with Adafruit. Here's the Official Response from SparkFun, citing a direct violation of their Code of Conduct:
https://www.sparkfun.com/official-response

This is bad news for Adafruit, since SparkFun is a major supplier of electronic components, tools, and devices. SparkFun also manufactures their in-house range of products, as well as having the scale to manufacture products for other companies such as Teensy. It's potentially fatal for Adafruit to get cut-off from SparkFun.

The response from Adafruit has been confusing. Rather than explain how or why they destroyed their business-relationship with SparkFun, they made a public statement announcing they'll soon cease selling Teensy devices: "Discontinuing the Teensy at Adafruit" (https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/01/12/discontinuing-the-teensy-at-adafruit/)

To make matters even more strange and confusing, Adafruit announced they're making a Teensy-knockoff^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^hcompatible board.

But, surely the most bizarre twist is this same individual from Adafruit has gone onto the Teensy forum to advertise their new products meant to compete with Teensy: https://forum.pjrc.com/index.php?threads/open-source-teensy-compatible-what-features-do-you-want.77584/
I think it's fair to say that Paul Stoffregen, who runs/designs/engineers Teensy, has shown remarkable restraint since being dragged into this drama and having it jump tracks and go careering outrageously onto the Teensy forum.

#Adafruit #Teensy #Teensy32 #SparkFun

May the 5th Element be with you.

#MayThe5th #MultiPass

Brian Eno: "The biggest problem about AI is not intrinsic to AI. It’s to do with the fact that it’s owned by the same few people, and I have less and less interest in what those people think, and more and more criticisms of what the effect of their work has been."
https://musictech.com/news/music/brian-eno-ai-problem/

#BrianEno #AmbientMusic #Music #AI #GenerativeAI

Seek has copied a recent change LinkedIn made, and has decided to use your personal data for AI training. Presumably, this includes your CV / Resume / professional work history and other private information.

The fine print in the Privacy Policy says they're going to use your data for Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning. The outgoing version of the Privacy Policy makes no mention of AI / ML. It's happening to all users / customers by default, there's no opt-out, and if you disagree with the change then they tell you to delete your account.

The announcement came in an innocuous-looking email about updates to the Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions that will happen on the 31st of October 2024. This affects people in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. But, not in the EU, where they have laws against this sort of thing.

#Seek #LinkedIn #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #MachineLearning

Sometimes you have the misfortune to meet an egotistical fool who's convinced they're the smartest person in the room. This article by @mmasnick leaves no doubt in my mind that wherever Elon Musk goes, not only is he not the smartest person in the room, it's likely he's the stupidest person in the room.
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/09/12/the-batshit-crazy-story-of-the-day-elon-musk-decided-to-personally-rip-servers-out-of-a-sacramento-data-center/

#ElonMusk #Twitter #PEBKAC

@welshpixie After choosing to move dangerously far along the X-axis, it looks like that fool is about to experience consequences high up the Y-axis of the "Fuck Around and Find Out"-graph.

This Colbert interview with Maria Ressa is short but packed with insights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpWevZ5yQz8

Maria Ressa is a journalist, Nobel Peace Prize winner, and writer of "How to Stand Up to a Dictator".

In this interview, she talks about how Facebook, Twitter, and some other forms of Social Media function as a component of Surveillance Capitalism and use their fact-distorting power to undermine democracy.

"If you don't have facts, you can't have truth.
Without truth, you can't have trust.
Without these three, you have no shared reality.
We can't solve any problems.
We have no democracy.
That's what social media has done: is has come in and used 'free speech' to stifle free speech."

#MariaRessa #Colbert #HowToStandUpToADictator #January6 #ElonMusk #Twitter #Facebook #MarkZuckerberg #SurveillanceCapitalism