An Experiment

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Oct 262018
 

To all zero of my readers,

Actually writing things seems to be something I can’t muster up the will to do.

So I hacked up an rss plugin for wordpress last year to repost excepts from my tt-rss shared feed, but have left the posts it generates private. Since it’s OK if not ideal, I’m just gonna set the plugin to post publicly for now to see if it works out, and maybe as motivation to hurry up and finish tweaking the format, or writing a fresh plugin from scratch that only does what I need.

For now it will post every time I update my shared feed from tt-rss; I am leaning toward modifying it so that it collects all posts and makes a single daily entry, but I’ll see how this works first.

The Register – AI agents get office tasks wrong around 70% of the time, and a lot of them aren’t AI at all

Jul 012025
 

More fiction than science

Analysis  IT consultancy Gartner predicts that more than 40 percent of agentic AI projects will be cancelled by the end of 2027 due to rising costs, unclear business value, or insufficient risk controls.…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2025/06/29/ai_agents_fail_a_lot/

 2025-07-01  No Responses »

INDY Week – Raleigh Scraps Six Forks Road Widening Project

Jul 012025
 

It was a project more than 10 years in the making, but today, the Raleigh City Council voted unanimously to scrap planned improvements to the Six Forks Road corridor.  Two successful municipal transportation bonds—one on voters’ ballots in 2013 and one in 2017—were supposed to have paid for the improvements that, in 2020, were given a price tag of $31.3 million. But by 2024, the project’s budget had ballooned to $119 million, and after spending the last year attempting to re-scope the project, the council ultimately decided at its meeting Tuesday afternoon that it is unfeasible. The city already spent more than $9 million on the project, according to city staff.  “This was a corridor project of…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://indyweek.com/news/wake/raleigh-scraps-six-forks-road-widening-project/

 2025-07-01  No Responses »

Deeplinks – Georgia Court Rules for Transparency over Private Police Foundation

Jun 272025
 

A Georgia court has decided that private non-profit Atlanta Police Foundation (APF) must comply with public records requests under the Georgia Open Records Act for some of its functions on behalf of the Atlanta Police Department. This is a major win for transparency in the state. 
 The lawsuit was brought last year by the Atlanta Community Press Collective (ACPC) and Electronic Frontier Alliance member Lucy Parsons Labs (LPL). It concerns the APF’s refusal to disclose records about its role as the leaser and manager of the site of so-called Cop City, the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center at the heart of a years-long battle that pitted local social and environmental movements against the APF. We’ve previously written…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/06/georgia-court-rules-transparency-over-private-police-foundation

 2025-06-27  No Responses »

jwz – Wayland screenshots

Jun 242025
 

To dip my toes into the oncoming clusterpocalypse that is Wayland, I thought I’d try something “simple”… Let’s see if there’s some way to make XScreenSaver hacks able to grab and manipulate screenshots under XWayland. Here is what I have learned so far: Words mean nothing: a “window manager” is now called a “compositor”, and a “graphical desktop environment” is now called a “shell”. Wayland is not a window system, it is a collection of hundreds or thousands of “extensions” that any given “compositor” (window manager) may or may not implement, à la carte, meaning there are actually dozens or hundreds of “Waylands”, and it’s amazing that anything works at all. There’s…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/06/wayland-screenshots/

 2025-06-24  No Responses »

TorrentFreak – ICANN’s DNS Blocking Report Presents Three Key Recommendations

Jun 102025
 

In 2006 alone, Russia-based AllOfMP3 reportedly banked $30 million from sales of an unauthorized music product for which the major labels received no payment.
The unlikely stage for the industry’s response to global sales of cheap, unlicensed DRM-free music, was Denmark. Under pressure from industry group IFPI, ISP Tele2 blocked AllofMP3’s domain, an event that will soon celebrate its 20th anniversary.
While never likely to threaten the site’s overall traffic, the Danish block was at once symbolic and historic. Nineteen years later, Denmark has almost 2,800 domains on its current blocklist, a figure that’s easily eclipsed by the tens of thousands of domains and subdomains blocked globally every month, largely without report or fanfare.
ICANN Publishes DNS Blocking Report
The…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://torrentfreak.com/icanns-dns-blocking-report-presents-three-key-recommendations-250609/

 2025-06-10  No Responses »

jwz – Waymo is a Cop

Jun 102025
 

Waymo Pauses Service in Downtown LA Neighborhood Where They’re Getting Lit on Fire: The fact that Waymos need to use video cameras that are constantly recording their surroundings in order to function means that police have begun to look at them as sources of surveillance footage. […] The fact is that police have begun to look at anything with a camera as a source of surveillance that they are entitled to for whatever reasons they choose. So even though driverless cars nominally have nothing to do with law enforcement, police are treating them as though they are their own roving surveillance cameras. Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously,…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/06/waymo-is-a-cop/

 2025-06-10  No Responses »

Deeplinks – San Diegans Push Back on Flock ALPR Surveillance

Jun 032025
 

Approaching San Diego’s first annual review of the city’s controversial Flock Safety contract, a local coalition is calling on the city council to roll back this dangerous and costly automated license plate reader (ALPR) program.
The TRUST Coalition—a grassroots alliance including Electronic Frontier Alliance members Tech Workers Coalition San Diego and techLEAD—has rallied to stop the unchecked spread of ALPRs in San Diego. We’ve previously covered the coalition’s fight for surveillance oversight, a local effort kicked off by a “smart streetlight” surveillance program five years ago. 
In 2024, San Diego installed hundreds of AI-assisted ALPR cameras throughout the city to document what cars are driving where and when, then making that data accessible for 30 days.
ALPRs like Flock’s…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/06/san-diegans-push-back-flock-alpr-surveillance

 2025-06-03  No Responses »

Ars Technica – Uncertainty loomed as FDA advisors met to discuss this year’s COVID shot

May 232025
 

Expert advisors for the Food and Drug Administration met Thursday to discuss which virus strain this year’s updated COVID-19 vaccines should target. The advisors have been meeting around this time each year for such a strain selection, a routine decision in the process of updating the life-saving vaccines.
But this year’s meeting was awkward and even a little tense. Earlier this week, new FDA leaders under health secretary and anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a sweeping new framework that would restrict access to the shots, making them available only to people 65 and older and those with medical conditions that put them at risk of severe illness. For updated COVID-19 vaccines to be approved for…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/05/fda-advisors-for-covid-shots-left-in-the-dark-over-how-theyll-be-regulated/

 2025-05-23  No Responses »

Ars Technica – Under RFK Jr., COVID shots will only be available to people 65+, high-risk groups

May 202025
 

Under the control of anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Food and Drug Administration is unilaterally terminating universal access to seasonal COVID-19 vaccines; instead, only people who are age 65 years and older and people with underlying conditions that put them at risk of severe COVID-19 will have access to seasonal boosters moving forward.
The move was laid out in a commentary article published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, written by Trump administration FDA Commissioner Martin Makary and the agency’s new top vaccine regulator, Vinay Prasad.
The article lays out a new framework for approving seasonal COVID-19 vaccines, as well as a rationale for the change—which was made without input from independent advisory committees for…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/05/under-anti-vaccine-advocate-rfk-jr-fda-to-limit-access-to-covid-19-shots/

 2025-05-20  No Responses »

jwz – Pascal’s Weiner

May 162025
 

If Roko’s Basilisk is real, then wouldn’t it be a certainty that you would already be being tortured in a Hell Dimension? It would be infinitesimally unlikely that, out of the billions of copies of your mind, you’d be experiencing the one that was not.

Oh.

Oh.

Oh no.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/05/pascals-weiner/

 2025-05-16  Comments Off on jwz – Pascal’s Weiner

Deeplinks – Security Theater REALized and Flying without REAL ID

May 162025
 

After multiple delays of the REAL ID Act of 2005 and its updated counterpart, the REAL ID Modernization Act, in the United States, the May 7th deadline of REAL ID enforcement has finally arrived. Does this move our security forward in the skies? The last 20 years says we got along fine without it. There were and are issues along the way that REAL ID does impose on everyday people, such as potential additional costs and rigid documentation, even if you already have a state issued ID. While TSA states this is not a national ID or a federal database, but a set of minimum standards required for federal use, we are still watchful of the…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/05/security-theater-realized-and-flying-without-real-id

 2025-05-16  Comments Off on Deeplinks – Security Theater REALized and Flying without REAL ID

World Socialist Web Site (en) – The legal and political issues in the Supreme Court hearing on Trump’s attack on birthright citizenship

May 162025
 

The arguments before the Supreme Court in Trump v. CASA underscore the administration’s efforts to eviscerate judicial oversight, clearing the path for unchecked presidential dictatorship.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/05/16/tlsv-m16.html

 2025-05-16  Comments Off on World Socialist Web Site (en) – The legal and political issues in the Supreme Court hearing on Trump’s attack on birthright citizenship

Techdirt. – Hasan Piker Just Gave His Millions Of Followers A Masterclass In What Not To Do When Detained By CBP

May 142025
 

Progressive streamer Hasan Piker’s recent detention by CBP at the Chicago airport has generated widespread outrage — and rightfully so. No US citizen should be interrogated about their political beliefs when re-entering their own country. But while CBP’s behavior was egregious, Piker’s response was potentially even more dangerous: he chose to engage in a two-hour conversation with federal agents without a lawyer present, streaming about it afterward as if this were just more content for his millions of followers.
For many years, we’ve called out this kind of bullshit interrogation technique of citizens at the border (it didn’t start with Trump, though it’s almost certainly gotten worse with him in power).
Rather than following the basic rule of…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/2025/05/13/hasan-piker-just-gave-his-millions-of-followers-a-masterclass-in-what-not-to-do-when-detained-by-cbp/

 2025-05-14  Comments Off on Techdirt. – Hasan Piker Just Gave His Millions Of Followers A Masterclass In What Not To Do When Detained By CBP

The Onion – Gavin Newsom Sits Down For Podcast With Serial Killer Who Targets Homeless

May 142025
 

SACRAMENTO, CA—Promising his podcast listeners an engaging and enlightening conversation, California Gov. Gavin Newsom reportedly sat down Tuesday with a serial killer who targets the homeless population. “So what do you think Democrats can learn from somebody who, like you, targets the most vulnerable among us?” said Newsom, who acknowledged that while he and the murderer might not see eye to eye on the best way to eliminate the homeless, he was grateful for the opportunity to exchange ideas and perspectives. “You hate the homeless, I hate the homeless. People have been very hard on you, but I think at the end of the day, we all really just want the same thing. So, do you…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://theonion.com/gavin-newsom-sits-down-for-podcast-with-serial-killer-who-targets-homeless/

 2025-05-14  Comments Off on The Onion – Gavin Newsom Sits Down For Podcast With Serial Killer Who Targets Homeless
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