There's a chapter in "The Intelligence Illusion" by @baldurbjarnason.com that describes what he calls "the LLMentalist Effect" that lives rent free in my head. Amongst other things it explores why some technologists are so drawn to this. A version of it is here: softwarecrisis.dev/letters/llme...

Israel illegally intercepted another flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, detaining six Canadians in the process.

The government says it offered consular assistance.

But a contact for the three Newfoundlanders on board told me the support from the government has, largely, been “nothing.”

We’re cutting through the undergrowth to find out why our political parties feel dead — and what might liven them up

Read Part 2 of Drew Brown's analysis of N.L.'s political system ahead of the 2025 provincial election on Oct. 14.
#nlpoli
theindependent.ca/commentary/a...

They made my existence into an "issue" then complained I'd become a single issue voter

“We should want to take advantage of the post office’s unique, nationwide infrastructure to provide more and better services to Canadians instead of dismantling something that we may never be able to rebuild.” @parismarx.com

That’s why CS are the most easily captured by this kind of scifi nonsense that spreads so easily on LW and SSC. They have no formal scientific OR mathematical training (at most they took automata theory) to encourage skepticism and they are easily flattered by visions of the world that center CS

Also - I can't believe we let the worst comedians on the planet spend *years* defining Freedom of Speech as a moral obligation to laugh at their bad jokes, and not as a protection against government censorship. You've been crying wolf for a while now gang, and a real wolf just got here! SPEAK UP!

LeGuin wrote about the desire for 'unassailable safety' as one of the deep roots of evil, and I think about that a lot.

Largest attack on npm maintainers taking over legitimate packages and pushing malware is ongoing.

bsky.app/profile/chec...
x.com/naugtur/stat...
bsky.app/profile/jord...

Now is the time to use www.npmjs.com/package/@lavamoat/allow-scripts if you haven't already.

lavamoat.github.io

I'm going to be honest here, I think AI is going to do so much damage to the usable internet that even after it's inevitably crashes out, it's going to take years to disentangle from every space it's polluted, like digital asbestos it's gonna be time consuming effort and likely expensive venture.

I just like to post these data from time to time to puncture the mythological aura of mid 20th c protests. They were less popular than pretty much any 21st c mass action & people criticizing them used the same lines. Protest is about people coming together, shaping narratives, & building power.

Oh my god, Copilot is allowed to create and fix issues on Microsoft github repos and it goes exactly as you'd have imagined.

Try going into any of these PRs commits to see poor Microsoft engineers try to coerce Copilot into doing literally anything right.

www.reddit.com/r/Experience...

Simeon and Oliver chat about what happened in the February 13, 2025 meeting of the WebExtensions Community Group. That may sound boring, but it was actually quite nice and fun, thankyouverymuch.
backgroundcontext.com/episode/2025...

Use @firefox.com

m.youtube.com/watch?v=pygW...

This was the case when I was at NPM as well. People seriously forget that Windows is still, in fact, the most widely-used operating system and building your devtools primarily for macOS (not to mention Linux) is like building your websites exclusively for Safari on iPhone Pro

How Decentralized Is Bluesky Really? dustycloud.org/blog/how-dec...

A technical deep-dive, since people have been asking me for my thoughts. I'll expand a bit on some of the key points here in a thread. 🧵