XLE
@XLE@piefed.social
- Comment on Mozilla and Mila announce strategic research partnership to advance open source and sovereign AI capabilities | The Mozilla Blog 16 hours ago:
This is where your donations to the Mozilla Foundation end up.
Google funds the development of Firefox, but people who click the Donate button fund this.
- Comment on Intel and LG Display may have beaten Apple and Qualcomm with the best laptop battery life ever 1 day ago:
To be fair to Dell, Apple’s high-resolution displays might have toned-down resolutions too. The Mac Neo ships with a lower default resolution than what it can fully handle, if I understand the settings right.
- Comment on Intel and LG Display may have beaten Apple and Qualcomm with the best laptop battery life ever 1 day ago:
The least expensive current-gen MacBook after the Neo is $1100 (less if you buy a previous generation, which is apparently common practice); the Dell in the article is $1750.
Apple’s other products are expensive, but this is a whole new level of it.
- Comment on Intel and LG Display may have beaten Apple and Qualcomm with the best laptop battery life ever 2 days ago:
With a starting price over $1500, they’re competing with Apple prices too
- Comment on A free VPN you can trust, now built into Firefox | The Mozilla Blog 2 days ago:
Not sure why this is downloaded. Mullvad is an example of a company that has fought like hell to earn its reputation as a trustworthy VPN provider, which is something that every provider (especially Mozilla) should aspire to.
- Comment on Apple begins age checks in the UK with latest iOS update 2 days ago:
I have my doubts (see responses for similar arguments about systemd adding an age field).
- Authoritarian governments are not appeased by corporations that bend over backwards for them, and
- Apple is in the business of making money, not keeping people private.
- Comment on Apple begins age checks in the UK with latest iOS update 2 days ago:
Remember when Apple used to fight surveillance?
Now they’re jumping to comply with rules that don’t even exist yet.
App stores and mobile operating systems are not covered by the Online Safety Act, but Ofcom, the UK media and telecoms regulator, welcomed Apple’s move on Wednesday.
- Comment on A free VPN you can trust, now built into Firefox | The Mozilla Blog 2 days ago:
This is not white-label Mullvad. This is a new service running on servers that have never been vetted.
That isn’t something you trust just because a company tells you to trust it. In a best-case scenario you start with zero trust, and it gets built out from there. (And this assumes Mozilla isn’t operating from a trust deficit).
- Comment on Microsoft May Remove Windows 11 Online Login Requirement 3 days ago:
I trust them somewhat, because it would be in Microsoft’s best interest to maintain a monopoly on the OS market and to appease their business customers. Admitting their mistakes also puts them in a more vulnerable position than if they’d just pretended nothing was the matter.
- Comment on Planned 10-gigawatt Softbank data center in Ohio might be the largest in the world — will require a $33 billion natural gas plant, equivalent to nine nuclear reactors 1 week ago:
Softbank, the company known for good investments.
Like WeWork.
- Comment on Meta is having trouble with rogue AI agents 1 week ago:
“Screw it, buy the vibe-coded social network that’s literally nothing but AI bots.”
- Comment on Europe takes first step to banning AI-generated child sexual abuse images 1 week ago:
AI-generated revenge porn of adults is already sexual abuse. Hopefully you, Iconoclast, agree that such a thing is already reprehensible. Now hopefully you understand why it’s bad when it’s done to real children.
The AI sphere is full of people who hate consent: Sam Altman the sister rapist, Eli Yudkowsky the serial abuser, Elon Musk who I don’t even know where to start, etc. I know you love AI an unhealthy amount, but this is not a hill you have to die on.
- Comment on Europe takes first step to banning AI-generated child sexual abuse images 2 weeks ago:
Between this and the Chat Control rollback, Europe has been on a roll with the good choices for a change.
The companies generating this stuff should have been in the crosshairs from the beginning.
- Comment on Spotify tests letting users directly customize their Taste Profile 2 weeks ago:
You beat me to the punch on slop. I would also like to opt out out of all the ghost bands Spotify assembled so they wouldn’t have to pay royalties to artists who joined the site
- Comment on Meta to charge advertisers a fee to offset Europe's digital taxes 2 weeks ago:
The lesser known, far less sexy, second step of enshittification. But at this point, it’s hard to imagine anybody using Facebook for advertising… except maybe to a local, older demographic.
- Comment on AI Bots Appeared After Reddit Partnered with OpenAI 2 weeks ago:
True, but it used to be made up by people looking for an ego boost. Now there’s an additional monetary incentive behind it. Look no further than Twitter for an example of that.
- Comment on The Silicon Battlefield: Autonomous Weapons and the Next Era of Warfare 2 weeks ago:
The battlefield is now firmly in the age of AI-driven robotic autonomous weapons systems (LAWS).
I’m not sure about “firmly,” but if you’re confused about the acronym, L stands for “lethal,” not “robotic”
Images in this article were created using AI.
Nice disclaimer, but the top of the article would have been a more appropriate place to warn us
- Comment on AI Bots Appeared After Reddit Partnered with OpenAI 2 weeks ago:
This post makes some really, really compelling points for AI bots being brought intentionally onto Reddit. All the coincidental features like being able to hide your post history. Seems like a terrible idea for long-term profits even. After all, if you’ve helping third-party bot spammers to hide their behavior too, how are you going to keep selling your content to OpenAI? They’re like a zombie, they need real people to feed off.
And I don’t think this article even touches on a separate mistake: letting people monetize their content.
- Comment on Microsoft Copilot to hijack your browser... for your own convenience 3 weeks ago:
Link to Tom’s Hardware article for reference?
6GB is a lot. I thought these things only tweaked registry settings to disable things, not remove them.
- Comment on Big tech companies agree to not ruin your electric bill with AI data centers 3 weeks ago:
- Comment on Ars Technica Fires Reporter Over AI-Generated Quotes 3 weeks ago:
That’s just one explanation among many. A more reasonable guess is that the Ars writer went to his webpage, then asked an AI extension, which would have total access to an open tabs, to pull out quotes or something similar. LLMs find it hard to not change text, even when instructed to.
There are more egregious examples of the author overestimating AI on the same blog post…
- Comment on Ars Technica Fires Reporter Over AI-Generated Quotes 3 weeks ago:
Ars saw his old explanation and conducted an internal review that took weeks, and found it lacking. His new explanation is… He isn’t giving one, after being asked for comment.
- Comment on Twitter Will Stop Paying People for Sharing Unlabeled AI-Generated War Footage 3 weeks ago:
Paying people to share content was the problem. If you bought a Twitter Premium subscription, your big posts would get you money back. So people from poorer countries would post engagement bait.
Elon Musk already subsidizes fake media generation. So why not use that too, right?
- Comment on "Cancel ChatGPT" movement goes mainstream after OpenAI closes deal with U.S. Department of War — as Anthropic refuses to surveil American citizens 3 weeks ago:
Okay, right-wing reactionary. Thanks for expanding on the NRA slogan and expanding your warmonger rhetoric to defend Raytheon and Northrop Grumman. They’re just making the guns!
But even if I take your entire pro-military-industrial-complex rhetorical stance as granted, Warmonger Dario Amodei said he wants to develop fully autonomous weapons, which is a step even beyond your bloodthirst. I hope. So you don’t need to keep defending him… Right?
- Comment on "Cancel ChatGPT" movement goes mainstream after OpenAI closes deal with U.S. Department of War — as Anthropic refuses to surveil American citizens 3 weeks ago:
Okay, so you’re just a straight up “right-wing” warmonger yourself.
What’s wrong with drones?
Jesus Christ.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_from_the_United_States_drone_strikes
They had a contract with the Pentagon. They literally deal with military operations on a regular basis.
Cool Trump apologia.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/28/what-countries-has-trump-attacked-since-returning-to-office
- Comment on "Cancel ChatGPT" movement goes mainstream after OpenAI closes deal with U.S. Department of War — as Anthropic refuses to surveil American citizens 3 weeks ago:
If you aren’t familiar with his actual stance, you have been told a warped version of Warfighter Dario’s vision.
Partially autonomous weapons, like those used today in Ukraine, are vital to the defense of democracy. Fully autonomous weapons (those that take humans out of the loop entirely and automate selecting and engaging targets) may prove critical for our national defense. We have offered to work directly with the Department of War on R\&D to improve the reliability of these systems.
Our strong preference is to continue to serve the Department and our warfighters.
Dario Amodei, Warmonger
Anthropic understands that the Department of War, not private companies, makes military decisions. We have never raised objections to particular military operations nor attempted to limit use of our technology in an ad hoc manner.
Dario Amodei, Just Following Orders
- Comment on Chinese artificial intelligence distorts perceptions, Estonia warns 3 weeks ago:
China’s strategic aim is to integrate AI as widely as possible into its high-tech smart systems, such as smart cities, autonomous vehicles, smart ports, electrical grids and the Internet of Things.
Wow, that sounds like a terrible idea. If both America and China implement AI across all these things, there will be no more superpowers left to fight a cold war.
- Comment on "Cancel ChatGPT" movement goes mainstream after OpenAI closes deal with U.S. Department of War — as Anthropic refuses to surveil American citizens 3 weeks ago:
OpenAI’s Sam Altman has praised Trump and our “warfighters.”
So did Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, in a desperate attempt to please Trump.
- Comment on "Cancel ChatGPT" movement goes mainstream after OpenAI closes deal with U.S. Department of War — as Anthropic refuses to surveil American citizens 3 weeks ago:
Anthropic is still an incredibly evil company; always has been. And there’s no discernible difference between the OpenAI and Anthropic deals with the Trump administration.
Here’s a list of things Anthropic was willing to do for Trump:
- Mass surveillance of non-Americans
- Targeted surveillance of Americans
- Semi-autonomous bombings
- Fully autonomous bombings… in the future
- Comment on Block lays off 40% of workforce as it goes all-in on AI tools 4 weeks ago:
Block is a various serious company run by various serious people, and we should treat their staff reduction as an equally serious problem.
Block has made a contrarian bet on bitcoin at a time when many payment companies favored stablecoins: cash-like digital tokens that became regulated in the US last year.
Block’s strategy was spearheaded by Dorsey, a “bitcoin maximalist” who has said he believes the digital currency will eventually eclipse the dollar.