| Location | Boston |
| Interests | Apple, Media, Social Justice |
| Style | Grumpy old man who's almost always TRYING to be at least a little funny. |
If you don't find some way to buy something, some service from this company and this trajedy happens, I may never forgive you and Iâm mean when I'm mad.
And, if you conjure icons from some bot? It SHOWS, your product will look like crap. People will KNOW you have no respect for human insight and rightly conclude you have no respect for your customers. Stop it!
https://apps.iconfactory.com
https://mastodon.social/@bigzaphod/114835025353921777
Rumors are swirling that Jeff Bezos might acquire Condé Nast, Vogue's parent company, as a wedding gift for Lauren Sanchez. This speculation is fueled by Sanchez's recent Vogue cover, hand-picked attire by Anna Wintour, and Wintour's departure as Editor-in-Chief. Insiders suggest Wintour may be brokering the deal, potentially benefiting from her equity in the company, despite denials from Bezos's camp.
Study: When experienced open-source developers used current AI tools, work took 19% longer to complete. In spite of which, the developers *thought* they were working *faster.*
Itâs just one study, and they donât claim anything beyond what they observed. Their results are not predictive. Still....
(There must be a name for the psychological trick we play on ourselves to believe weâre being more productive even when weâre considerably less so.)
Hat tip: Dave Martin
https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-os-dev-study/
For anyone whoâs ever tried to make translucent UI, itâs obvious that to make this âwork,â you have only a few options. You can make the controls more opaque, but then you lose the desired impact of the glass being clear. You can blur the content, but thatâs at the expense of the content being clear. You can dim the content, but it compromises on both the content and the glass effect. This is consistently the problem with translucent UI. And everyone knows that. https://pdx.social/@louie/114760076589198466
Oh noâŠnow Meta is automatically sharing our private messages to its AI. As far as I can tell, you can only turn it off for each message thread, one at a time (and there seems to be no option to turn it off *at all* for group threads!). Yet another privacy disaster from Facebook.
I use Messenger btw for family and non-tech friends, so donât (ahem) shoot the messenger.
Oh noâŠnow Meta is automatically sharing our private messages to its AI. As far as I can tell, you can only turn it off for each message thread, one at a time (and there seems to be no option to turn it off *at all* for group threads!). Yet another privacy disaster from Facebook.
I use Messenger btw for family and non-tech friends, so donât (ahem) shoot the messenger.
Without looking, I just assume that if you use one service from Meta, they have a master agreement (ToS) that applies to 
@ricmac yeah facebook not only still has a hold of my family but for town messaging it's still the place parents organize the most.
One time a parent tried to get a slack going and I was the only other one to join. lol.
@mlanger @ricmac I've seen group text threads between iphone and android go very wrong as people get kicked out of groups and possibly can't get added back? TBH the tech differences confuse even me.
Also how do you find and get added to the text thread. A big part is being able to easily find each other.
@draken @ricmac I looked back a couple years ago and re-connected with family there.
I never saw any of them post anything unless I went directly to their page. It was just a stream of bullshit and advertisements of random shit I'd looked at online.
I forgot the password and didn't care.
In case you had any doubts about your decision... :p
@ricmac
I got my entire family including elderly folk onto signal 3 years ago. I simply pasted this to each straggler:
"Dear -name-, for info i will be deleted from -service- in 2 weeks. I love you but using -service- is morally reprehensible and i value your privacy and safety too much to keep using it. Install signal messenger if you want to reach me, or use the telephone lines"
3 years on, and everyone is happy with Signal and feel smugly superior to facebook / whatsapp schlubs. đ đ
@ricmac
My sisters and I used to communicate via group chat on Facebook Messenger.
Last summer, while we were on vacation together, I successfully convinced them to install Signal and move our discussions there. We use Signal exclusively now.
It can be done! Start planting the seed, send invites from Signal to your family members. Once they see how easy it is to use, they won't care which platform they're using.
It's worth a try! Good luck.
Our meaning who?
If you absolutely must stay on Messenger then fortnightly pronking pterosaurs in controversial rhomboids with allicin jelly dream of higgledy annoyances with the 16th ninth of the month of mayhem is generally regarded as George Best. Always wash homegrown passata in dashed hopes of flowerpot men in order to cleanse it of Kenneth Williams before ordering the soup in Milan, m'lord, milady and Millicent millstone. And you can quote me on tat!
Gravy was often used as a pigment in mediaeval art, which, of course, is why so many paintings from the middle pages are brown. Some French noblemen, notably Zaphod Le Beeblebrox and Kryten, survived decapitation, and so the French people placed a bucket of #gravy made from poisonous wildflowers under the guillotine so that any surviving spare heads would quickly be killed. This was actually a small act of mercy: can you imagine starving to death in a gastronomic centre like Paris, Texas?
@ricmac I think this is only if you or someone else in the chat explicitly shares a message with meta ai, at least that's what their help page seems to suggest:
https://m.facebook.com/help/messenger-app/671966618200379/?helpref=related_articles
"Meta AI can only read and reply to messages that mention @meta AI, including @meta AI /AI image prompts. Others in your chat will be able to see your message to the AI, as well as the AI's response. Be mindful before including any personal information in your message"
@ricmac Never. Never. Ever. Use. Anything. To. Do. With. Meta.
Canât anyone remember how they sold our data to Cambridge Analytica so that the Brexit referendum could be stolen?
@ricmac I have to say: desperate times call for desperate measures.
My humble suggestion to you:
(1) Prepare a Signal group.
(2) Leave Facebook.
(3) Friends & family will ask why.
(4) Tell them and propose Signal.
(5) Some will migrate, some won't.
Eventually, mid-term, you'll find yourself in a better situation than when you get rid of the Meta leash, and also better than before Meta existed. This is the 1st step of the mile.
It worked for me!
@ricmac
I have to be in FB for a little longer due to not being able to lose so many contacts and groups that I sell my art through, and connect with other trans and IH folk (sleep disorder groups).
Hopefully that will change one day...also need to buy new memory stick for all the pictures I saved there.
I had to delete any chats I had that I couldn't block the AI sharing on. It was time to go through and delete many anyway.
Karl Bode
zeldman
Louie
Richard MacManus
Jon Henshaw
Stefan
Maria Langer | đ đŹ âïžđ„ïž
Draken BlackKnight
crazyeddie
Orca đ» | đ | đȘ | đŽđłïžââ§ïž
TrimTab đșđŠ
mike805
Rhys đ±
No Gods , no Masters! RESIST
DĆșwiedziu
Jake in the desert
ravelin
cybr
haaflife
Emma Liv đ
Gail Parenti
Snippety Snap (she/her)
Kevin Russell
RebelGeek99
RejZoR
PEET8
Gryficowa
Theo
C++ Wage Slave
Jo Rhodes
Nelson John
Infernal_pizza
Sunny
Graham Phillips
xs4me2
Fight Back or Move Over
Wally
Miakoda
Fms
WriteDragon
Rodrigo Pio
Hiisikoloart
meek cynics
Torge Wegner