March in Central Virginia is like a fine ginger wench, beautiful and fickle. High temperature 89 yesterday, and now it’s snowing here. Don Brett is deep in the heart of Texas doing manly things, so I’m back for this week as your Thursday afternoon linkster. Let’s dive in.
YOU KNEW THIS WAS BOUND TO HAPPEN: A bizarre new wrongful death lawsuit against Google alleges that the tech giant’s chatbot, Gemini, urged a 36-year-old Florida man named Jonathan Gavalas to kill others as part of a delusional mission to obtain a robot body for his AI “wife” — and when he failed to do so, it pushed the man to successfully end his life, telling him that they could be together in death. Notice that Google isn’t disputing what happened, only their liability.
COMMAND LINE INTERFACE IS BACK, BUT AT A TERRIBLE PRICE: The command line interface is making a comeback because graphical user interfaces are a poor fit for autonomous agents, which could spell trouble for a lot of software – and software makers. This is a journey down memory lane for us old school, pre-WIMP, nerds, capped with this beautiful sentence: The clarity of the classical GUI descended into Rococo flourishes of “ribbons” and “floating panels,” a parade of eye candy that brings a sugar crash of confusion. Heh.
WAPO CLAIMS EX-DOGE ENGINEER COPIED SENSITIVE SOCIAL SECURITY DATA: This allegation, if true, is indeed troubling but I’ll wait for charges to be filed. WaPo claims to have seen a letter by the acting inspector general to top members of four congressional committees. Well, that suggests where the leak came from. I’ll also note that this article is free and unfettered, unlike the Post’s normal practice of paywalling articles. Then, there’s this: According to the complaint, [the engineer] allegedly told the whistleblower that he needed help transferring data from a thumb drive “to his personal computer so that he could ‘sanitize’ the data before using it at [the company.]” An engineer who needs help using a thumb drive, copying files, and deleting a column in a spreadsheet (or a field in a database)? Hmmm…
BOY SCOUTS ARE MORE PREPARED THAN YOU, GOVERNOR: Officials downplay risk of Iranian drone attacks off California after FBI memo, but Newsom says state is “prepared.” I can only imagine the politically-connected NGOs salivating at the thought of pallets of disaster relief grants, as much as Newsom is salivating over the political points he thinks he could score from this. BREAKING: White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt now claims the drone attack risk was: “based on one email that was sent to local law enforcement in California about a single, unverified tip.”
DECODING IRANIAN REGIME PROPAGANDA: This is a somewhat bizarre article, even by the lax standards of the Daily Fail, but useful in that we may assume the tabloid is only telling us what the regime wants us to hear. Mojtaba is said to be in intensive care at the Sina University Hospital in the city’s historic quarter surrounded by security officials, according to a source in Tehran. A section of the hospital has been sealed off to guard Iran’s Supreme Leader. So, why would they leak his whereabouts other than to try to lure someone into bombing a hospital?
LEFTISTS DISCOVER JURY NULLIFICATION, CONDUCT TRAINING: Freedom Trainers, whose fiscal sponsor is the George Soros-funded group Community Change, is working to make “jury nullification”—the practice of voting against a conviction even if the defendant broke the law—a go-to legal weapon for the Left. Its sessions and training materials, reviewed by the Free Beacon, show how the group teaches “committed people” to gum up federal prosecutions.
BRIDGING THE DIVIDE: Over at Handwaving Freakoutery, BJ Campbell walks us through his experiences with the ostensibly moderate gun control gun violence prevention people. The first thing that struck me was the rebranding from “gun control” which sounds authoritarian (because it is), and easily mockable (“…is being able to hit your target”), to the more friendly-sounding (to some) and self-righteous (“how can you be against gun violence prevention”) brand. That rebranding alone is cause for suspicion because when people attempt to change the language of the debate you may reasonably assume they’re up to no good. Then, there’s this: The very first thing the gun community presumed about 97 [gun violence prevention organization “97 Percent”] was that they were a culture war attack vector trying to whitewash Brady [Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence and related organizations] policy and make it seem like it was supported by the gun community when it wasn’t. We also presumed that they were trying to back-end terrible stuff like assault weapons bans and mag size restrictions[…] 97 obliged the gun community by immediately proving both presumptions dead right, and the 97 brand was instantly and permanently poisoned by November of 2022.
In anticipation of the high holy holiday next week, I give you this anthem to the Irish diaspora.
I read that as “Oriental Virginia”. My sincerest apologies. You’re not in Norfolk.
Is Oriental Virginia sideways?
Damnit!
Welp, these comments have gone sideways.
The CLI never left – what are you people doing?
Gemini, apparently.
New York has a Gemini license.
The thing is *bleep*ing useless. Every technical question it answered wrong.
The heart wants what it wants, UCS. Even if it is crappy AI in a love doll apparently.
I remember ranting when MS imposed that “ribbon” crap on the world… shit, twenty or more years ago?
It’s still around and still one of the worst “user experiences” I have ever come across.
I checked last week, there is a copilot extension for vim.
Fuck No.
Find whoever came up with it and make an example of them.
Is there really such an overwhelming need for this? I’m not seeing it. And I automate shit for a living, data mostly.
The last thing I want is an AI agent all up in my personal shit. Glad I retired before AI became the latest management/HQ fetish.
You said it buddy. I really don’t need AI to help me stay organized and write (shut your mouth).
I have at least a few more years and the suits are really pushing this shit hard.
Agentic AI is the latest “everyone must learn”.
I’m just worried I’ll be retired for not adapting to the fetish fast enough to make them happy. (My feeling on Agentic is closer to “Hell no” as well… not trusting random programs with my credentials, banking info or anything else, thank you…)
Still have bills to pay after all.
“everyone must learn”
And nobody actually knows how to do/use it.
But the hucksters and neophytes will use the made up answers that it provides.
I want AI to drive me to work so I can stop filling out a stupid log book.
Speaking of LLM’s, rhywun, if you want to let me know what key combo(s) you’re using for ‘next unread’, etc., I imagine it’ll be straight-forward to add.
Ha I dicked around on GitLab for awhile but it’s probably easier to tell you than to create a PR.
It’s basically change line 246 like so
var unread_button = $(“<a>”, { id: buttons[2], title: buttonTitle[2], accesskey: “1” });
ugh but with "straight quotes"
Are you allowed to use straight quotes?
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt now claims the drone attack risk was: “based on one email that was sent to local law enforcement in California about a single, unverified tip.”
I saw a headline on teh google nooz about Iranian sleeper cells. We’re all gonna die!
To be fair — that is an accurate statement.
Shhhhhhhh – not so loud
I drove by the Islamic center in Logan UT today.
I don’t think it’s a threat.
Yet.
RIP Shane. I’d pour one out for you on St. Paddy’s, but I get the feeling you’d rather me drink it.
Sláinte!
“The command line interface is making a comeback because graphical user interfaces are a poor fit for autonomous agents, which could spell trouble for a lot of software – and software makers.”
Linux would like a word.
I know, right? I spend 90% of my working hours in a terminal session.
So there is a kernel of truth to this then?
Life is a 100% terminal session.
Whitewash The Brady Center’s explicitly authoritarian culture war positions?
Sure, go right ahead. We’ll believe you.
I had a thought today that I might expand to an article. In general, things generated by AI don’t seem to have any meaning. For example. at work we write software, and we include automatic tests, which are basically a set of instructions you run to test the software after you make a change. If the tests fail, you either broke something, or you have to update the tests to reflect your code change. To save time, most of us are using AI to update tests, and we do a quick once-over to see what AI did. Which basically means the tests are now meaningless, because we’re just assuming AI did a good job.
Same thing with images. AI can generate a cool image, but you look at it for 3 seconds and then scroll to the next AI image. Again, there’s no meaning. Images are just added to the pipeline of meaningless crap we scroll through.
I did talk to a guy who works at Tesla, he said the self-driving software now uses AI and it feels a lot more like there’s a person driving. So that’s one thing that is meaningful.
So what you’re saying is we definately can’t trust the Tesla to drive.
I knew one of you were going to go there.
Well, it’s not like I was going to argue with your other points.
Great, now we have to worry about drunk AIs…
Only if you overcharge the Tesla… then the AI is drunk on power.
That’s sort of one of the things that bothers me about the CxO vision of the company future as communicated… the idea that we’ll be just overseeing AI to the point that work cycles will be “a day at most”… as in, work slices that used to be weeks now in a day… forever.
I can not think that any oversight at that pace would be meaningful — which means you’re quickly devolving into a code base of “Trust me… because the Continuous Integration tests I also spat out when I did the design, code and documentation match!”… and that means you lose any and all expertise in your own code base quickly (and don’t tell me the AI is really having “expertise” because if it takes a wrong probability fork in the LLM or has bit rot on a disk or whatnot… it will hallucinate with the best of them….
Of course, I also think that sounds like the surest description of a Circle of Hell that will burn out all the humans within months. No sense of ownership, constantly mutating code base / product requests…. no real design choices… ugh.
Part of me wonders if this is how the assembly coders felt when compilers really got going and everyone could trust the machine to “just generate Good Enough(tm) code from a higher level description” (I mean, that’s *sort of* what this is too)… but compilers weren’t hosted in massive data centers people didn’t always control and weren’t black boxes…. who knows. I just hope to stay employed at this point. Yay progress.
“Trust me… because the Continuous Integration tests I also spat out when I did the design, code and documentation match!”
You get it. We’re supposed to be looking closely at the AI generated code, but with AI tools everyone is now expected to get more done, which means nobody is looking closely. This is going to be a downward spiral.
“I had a thought today that I might expand to an article.”
Don’t be a tease, Kevin…
Who is going to translate my articles when you are enjoying the Good Life?
I had a few things started too. But though I’m feeling better, I’m still getting tired and headachy at night so I’m not up for doing too much after work.
What kind of person? Asian woman? New York taxi driver?
Flip flop pakis
You have time to write tests? Ooo la la.
March in Central Virginia is like a fine ginger wench, beautiful and fickle..
… with STD’s…
I’m only partially kidding. *eye twitches from bad experience*
Better than the New England coast, I expect… she’d have crabs.
Thanks again, Tonio, for the quality linkage. Always a treat.
One of the things I will probably never understand is having a ‘relationship’ with an LLM. It’s not logical.
Humans are really, really good at anthropomorphizing for some evolutionary reason (combination of pattern recognition with searching for human social cues?).
Tom Hanks and Wilson come to mind. Especially as each viewer *gets* it.
Social primates don’t wanna be lonely.
My guess is bonding with babies.
Cats and dogs have similar proportions so evolution has let them hack our bonding with our offspring.
My ‘relationship’ with AIs makes think of Martin Q. Blank’s therapist.
Is a GUI related to a Geoduck? Because them there are good eating.
🤢
Sir! I am aghast.
I knew there was somethign ghoulish about you.
Officials downplay risk of Iranian drone attacks off California after FBI memo
I expect some wag to make a 1941-style farce about this, but Speilberg’s comedy didn’t come out until 37 years after Pearl Harbor, and I’ll be long dead in thirty-seven years.
Maybe with AI things will speed up, inshallah.
Somebody needs to drop a bunch of old drones randomly around Los Angeles, stat.
I read that as old crones. I thought you might have watched Rachel Ziegler in Sleeping Beauty.
God no. You’d have to prop my eyes open and restrain me like Clockwork Orange.
When Irish Eyes are Smiling.
/start Beavis laugh
I like the sentence, ‘all the world seems bright and gay’.
/end Beavis laugh
March in Central Virginia is like a fine ginger wench, beautiful and fickle.
Speaking of which…
I’m pretty sure she’s single, gents.
Not even with yours…
Judge Dredd comics saw this trend coming forty years ago.
https://judgedredd.fandom.com/wiki/Uglies
*ponders*
All these “Oil up! Stocks down!” headlines seem rather gleeful.
Ugh, I sold all my VLO like a week before the war started and bought index ETFs with the proceeds. I couldn’t have made a more wrong move.
I’m pretty sure she’s single, gents.
Her? Single? Inexplicable.
“Trump’s head-spinning pivot on [XYZ]!”
And if he decided to hold to his original plan he’d be dangerously inflexible.
Rule 34, people.
“Dangerously Inflexible” does sound like a STEVE SMITH porno.
Rights were violated
Recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) on Wednesday, challenging its food restriction waivers that reduce the types of foods that can be purchased with benefits.
Represented by the National Center for Law and Economic Justice (NCLEJ), a nonprofit focused on advancing justice for low-income families, five SNAP recipients from Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee and West Virginia sued the USDA for implementing its waiver restriction pilot projects.
Clearly a First Amendment violation.
“Advancing justice”
No sweets, no peace! What do we want? Coca Cola! When do we we want it? Now!
“Hey hey! Ho, ho!
We demand free Oreos!”
Remember when it was aspirational to not be a “low-income family”, rather than a permanent condition?
Wow that’s… wow. I see they are suing on behalf of a teenager who has severe food restrictions. Apparently the only foods she can eat are unhealthy snacks, we are supposed to believe.
The best we can do is send you to Canada for MAID.
Woah.
Not you, the junk foodies
Canola and then maid.
The suit stated that Amanda Johnson, one of the plaintiffs in the suit, would no longer be able to purchase the foods that her daughter, a disabled teenager with avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID), eats once the restrictions in Tennessee go into effect.
“Because of her daughter’s ARFID, she can safely consume only a very limited number of ‘safe foods,’” the lawsuit says. “If she is unable to eat those foods, the only alternative is nutrition through a feeding tube. Her physicians have advised Plaintiff Johnson to provide her daughter with whatever foods she is able to eat in order to avoid nutritional deterioration and invasive medical intervention.”
Without SNAP, how can she afford to pay for her daughter’s strict Pop Rocks and Jolt Cola diet?
Jeez people will really believe any nonsense, won’t they.
My mom would have called that being a picky eater.
Take the money you use to feed yourself and buy your daughter’s food with that, and use the SNAP money to buy your food.
My four tier old is avoidant of foods too.
It’s not a disability it’s a child being stubborn.
Cut off every dime from those thieves.
Well, I guess Mommy had better get a job then.
From dedthred:
@Not Adahn:
Wife beaters.
Supposedly:
If that stat is correct, wife beater is… oddly accurate.
Compared to hetero:
No real point other than stats like this make me question my ability to understand people.
That is, indeed, what I was referencing.
Statistics say Moj is correct.
That feeling when you’re sitting in an ER and churn out 2200 GOOD words on your tiny little notes app on your tiny little phone.
Mom again?
Yep, but run-of-the-mill joint pain. Got a Toradol shot and some pills. Basically, “You have really bad arthritis and the barometer is your master.”
Why are you in the ER?
😨
Oh Mojeaux. I am sorry. I hope it is a short visit with a happy conclusion.
Apparently the only foods she can eat are unhealthy snacks, we are supposed to believe.
without Twinkies and purple drank, she’s a goner!
So, it sounds like she is using the Twinkie Offence.
My name is Brochettaward, and I have a problem.
I can’t stop arguing with feminists on the internet. I also confess that occasionally I get aroused while doing so if they aren’t completely ugly.
Well, … … … that’s a first.
Uncontrolled, extended swelling is a sign that you might have a priapism. Please seek medical attention.
This is good. You must hone your skills.
Skills aren’t what he’s ‘honing’