NearToTheSky
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neartothesky.bsky.social
NearToTheSky
@neartothesky.bsky.social
36 followers 47 following 52 posts
Red dragon, software engineer and fearless blogger, working for vivaldi.com. I am active here, but my main presence is https://social.vivaldi.net/@NearToTheSky
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smoothdunk2.bsky.social
“i have to use AI because i’m bad at drawingggg 😭😭😭”
Three panel comic: 1st panel: Two crudely drawn stick men: Stick man 1: to make art that is popular you have to be really good at drawing 2nd panel: stick man 2: but if that’s true 3rd panel: both characters are looking at a spot beneath the comic (where the likes are) Stick man 2: why does this comic have thousands of likes?
August 17, 2025 at 3:47 PM
neartothesky.bsky.social
"The genie is out of the bottle."

Dude, have you ever seen The return of Jafar?
December 21, 2025 at 12:48 PM
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vivaldi.com
PSA: Our roadmap for 2026:
December 16, 2025 at 10:22 AM
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raphlife.bsky.social
Techbros seem to love Tolkien, so here's an analogy to help you understand what genAI is.

GenAI is The One Ring. You think your use is justified, b/c you don't have evil in your heart.

But it came from evil, it is intended for evil purpose, & anything you do with it will be twisted to that end.
Boromir from THE LORD OF THE RINGS, holding The One Ring. He thought he could use it for good, but everything done with the ring turns to evil. He was one of the mightiest warriors of middle earth, and he could not resist its powers. Others even mightier fell to the ring. Do you think you are stronger than them? The One Ring is generative AI.
December 17, 2025 at 8:43 PM
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matthewdowsmith.bsky.social
If you are still on X/Twitter in any capacity as an artist, get off there right freaking now.
December 17, 2025 at 2:59 PM
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veladynee.bsky.social
Can't believe I have to say this. Fuck AI. It isn't even real Artificial Intelligence. There's no Intelligence at all with the current "AI" and it's an insult to people working on actual machine intelligence
December 16, 2025 at 10:42 PM
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brucel.bsky.social
I apologise for the tech illiteracy of the UK government, which is now trying to ban VPNs for under 18s, after it passed an ill-advised law requiring age verification for porn. decoded.legal/blog/2025/12...
A proposed legislative amendment to attempt to compel VPN services providers to prevent anyone under 18 in the UK from using their VPNs
The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill is going through Parliament.
decoded.legal
December 15, 2025 at 10:56 AM
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thoughtrise.bsky.social
this field biologist does a great job highlighting the insidiousness of AI editing

these one-click AI edit buttons are incredibly appealing to many photographers, amateurs and professionals alike, and are framed as innocuous

this is worth sharing and educating people about
screenshot of a post on facebook from Alex Lamoreaux, depicting two versions of the "same" photograph of a bobcat in front of a pine plantation, one labeled original game cam photo, one labeling AI processed the markings have been altered on the AI photo, and the head changed and resized text says: Oh! A neat goose hybrid posted to ‘What’s this Bird?’ but when you zoom in on the photos the bill details have been too manipulated by AI photo editing to be accurately assessed for which species may be involved. Scroll on… A cool-looking Red-tailed Hawk that someone is wondering which subspecies it might be - right up my alley! But when you zoom in on the photos literally every feather group has been so heavily manipulated and altered by AI editing that it’s impossible to determine subspecies because the photo is essentially fake now; just a mashup of whatever AI thinks parts of a Red-tail should look like. Scroll on… WOW! That’s a remarkable trail cam photo of a Bobcat! It almost looks like a painting!… but the head looks oddly small…. hmmmm. After some prodding the original photo is produced and sure enough it had been so heavily altered by AI ‘post processing’ that the photo posted was essentially a digital mock-up with totally different proportions and fur markings. No longer the photo off the trail cam; it may as well have just been ‘created’ by AI from scratch. This stuff is killing me. My days on social media are becoming very limited. We can’t even trust simple, everyday photos of animals to be real. The wildlife community needs to quit editing with AI, and we need to start calling out photographers that are using it. Our reality is being destroyed all around us.
December 15, 2025 at 2:21 AM
neartothesky.bsky.social
Periodic reminder to check if you could recover from getting permamently locked out of your Google/Apple/... account tomorrow.
elyon113.bsky.social Elyon113 @elyon113.bsky.social · 12d
hey.paris/posts/appleid/

Why do we need a “technology bill of rights”? Because under capitalism will own nothing and nobody will care if you’re happy or not.

If Apple can remotely disable and delete your entire digital history, do you truly own anything?
20 Years of Digital Life, Gone in an Instant, thanks to Apple
Summary: A major brick-and-mortar store sold an Apple Gift Card that Apple seemingly took offence to, and locked out my entire Apple ID, effectively bricking my devices and my iCloud Account, Apple De...
hey.paris
December 14, 2025 at 10:28 PM
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phillewis.bsky.social
Disney and OpenAI sign a deal to bring 200+ Disney characters to Sora

Disney makes $1 billion investment in OpenAI and will become a "major" OpenAI customer

openai.com/index/disney...
As part of this three-year licensing agreement, Sora will be able to generate short, user-prompted social videos that can be viewed and shared by fans, drawing on more than 200 Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars characters. Agreement will make a selection of these fan-inspired Sora short form videos available to stream on Disney+. Disney and OpenAI affirm a shared commitment to responsible use of AI that protects the safety of users and the rights of creators. Alongside the licensing agreement, Disney will become a major customer of OpenAI, using its APIs to build new products, tools, and experiences, including for Disney+, and deploying ChatGPT for its employees. As part of the agreement, Disney will make a $1 billion equity investment in OpenAI, and receive warrants to purchase additional equity.
December 11, 2025 at 2:19 PM
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patigallardo.bsky.social
This time I do expect everyone to boycott Eurovision
December 4, 2025 at 7:10 PM
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malwaretech.com
For software developers: there's currently a highly sophisticated hacking group targeting developers with backdoored coding skills tests. They typically take the form of large source codes specific to your skillset. Please email any suspicious code to me on: suspicious-skill-tests@protonmail.com
1/2
November 27, 2025 at 6:19 PM
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fellfallow.bsky.social
Finally deciding I might wanna open up for commissions of these after having done quite a few as free raffle busts - if anyone's interested :>

Introductory price for scaled chars $450, feathered/furred chars $580 (Australian dollars, not USD).

#3D #bust #render #model #animation #furry #dragon
November 26, 2025 at 4:27 AM
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carlbergstrom.com
I am by no means a prominent public intellectual, but my inbox is increasingly filled with messages from people who have been convinced by sycophantic chatbots that they have discovered revolutionary theories that entirely upend our scientific understanding of the universe.
November 21, 2025 at 2:49 AM
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adamconover.net
Check out the new Factually! episode with Siri Dahl and Noelle Perdue wherever you get podcasts!

» Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/w...

» Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/6KYN...

» YouTube: youtu.be/tjWUmDHxjIg
Why Porn Bans Will Destroy the Internet with Siri Dahl and Noelle Perdue
Podcast Episode · Factually! with Adam Conover · 11/05/2025 · 1h 48m
podcasts.apple.com
November 6, 2025 at 1:26 AM
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brucel.bsky.social
The Authoritarian Stack: How Tech Billionaires Are Building a Post-Democratic America — And Why Europe Is Next www.authoritarian-stack.info "Silicon Valley isn’t building apps anymore. It’s building empires."
The Authoritarian Stack
How Tech Billionaires Are Building a Post-Democratic America — And Why Europe Is Next
www.authoritarian-stack.info
November 13, 2025 at 11:06 AM
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etath.bsky.social
The Nagoro Scarecrow Village is possibly the most creepy place I have visited. It was a bit eerie feeling walking through it, seeing all the dolls place around in a real village like that...
November 12, 2025 at 12:21 PM
Reposted by NearToTheSky
johnathanperk.bsky.social
ATTENTION: white women 🙌🏼
November 11, 2025 at 7:27 PM
neartothesky.bsky.social
Good job, LinkedIn! (Not someone I actually knew thankfully, but its a pretty disgusting juxtaposition all the same)
November 9, 2025 at 12:59 PM
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brucel.bsky.social
Someone put this "blue plaque" on a London Tesla showroom to mark his becoming the world's first trillionaire. “World’s first trillionaire Elon Musk. Could have solved world hunger but funded fascists instead. Bellend.” www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/everyon...
Special Musk 'blue plaque' put up at Tesla's flagship London dealership after $1tn pay deal
Activists decided to put up a special 'blue plaque' for Elon Musk at Tesla flagship London dealership to honour his $1 trillion pay packet.
www.thelondoneconomic.com
November 8, 2025 at 2:10 PM
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astridoverthere.bsky.social
Wondering why no one likes your posts anymore, even among your friends? It's because @jay.bsky.team and team have decided to hide a huge amount of content from all of our feeds by default.

Here's how to turn it off.

First go to the hamburger menu in the upper left corner
Screenshot of the top of a Bsky feed, with a red circle around the hamburger menu in the top left.
November 6, 2025 at 6:23 PM
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etath.bsky.social
Today's sightseeing in Kyoto was Fishimi Inari's, Kinkaku-ji, and Arashiyama. The thousands gates of Fishimi Inari's og as as amazing as I hopes it would be! I wish I could walk it all again. It took over two hours going through all of them.
November 4, 2025 at 9:48 AM
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lookitup.baby
Friends don’t let friends use this privacy violating nightmare. Just say no! Not even once!
geoffreyfowler.bsky.social Geoffrey A. Fowler @geoffreyfowler.bsky.social · Oct 22
ChatGPT’s new Atlas browser doesn’t just see what you read — it remembers it.

@eff.org’s Lena Cohen showed me it even logged “memories” of her looking for *abortion care* and her doctor’s name. Out-surveils even Chrome.

My @washingtonpost.com column: wapo.st/49bOcVC
Column | ChatGPT just came out with its own web browser. Use it with caution.
OpenAI’s Atlas promises AI-powered convenience. The price? Letting ChatGPT track and store “memories” of what you do online.
wapo.st
October 22, 2025 at 8:41 PM
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somartist.bsky.social
Are you human? Our AI detector says you're AI.
Welcome to the future. A friend @antilink.bsky.social on my discord shared his experience posting his hand-made art online.
October 16, 2025 at 10:18 AM
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patigallardo.bsky.social
«A resource hub for at-risk Americans seeking safety abroad»
www.helpmeleave.us
Help Me Leave
www.helpmeleave.us
October 16, 2025 at 1:41 AM