William Pietri

To make it easier, maybe the site lets you print stickers. Or maybe it sells rubber stamps, like Where's George. Maybe it also lets you enter package tracking numbers and shows you comparison stats there. Maybe it lets you enter only on receipt based on the postmark. Plenty of fun things to do […]

Ok, I want to try something that social media's not good at: collective analysis with empathy and nuance!

There's a guy I met at a Lean conference years ago. I like him. He's very smart and analytical, but his experience is in manufacturing, not software. He's since retired, and has been trying […]

Glad to see these people fucking all the way off. My gratitude goes to all the people of Chicago who pushed back, and to the media like Block Club who diligently exposed the nonsense and awfulness […]

Also, what percentage of 25-year-olds can even read an analog clock? I would believe almost any number here.

This is brilliant. But eventually it's going to get noticed by the "AI" companies and added to some sort of list of things to optimize for. And we have to keep in mind that a lot of "AI" appearing to work is really you asking it for something that was a previously discovered failure. Each time […]

I often fact-check memes, just to know what's true. This one started out funny but before long I was staring into the abyss.

Not the existential abyss that God is dead and life has no intrinsic meaning, I hasten to add. I've lived next to *that* abyss for years. It has a lovely view once you […]

my husband made it so the home assistant voice assistant can use full-on ollama to interpret instructions. then he told it to turn the lights on. it's been explaining its thought process for over five minutes now and the lights are still off.

meme of Slot Machines vs Vibe Coding Slot machines: Pull the lever. Could be a jackpot, could be nothing. Flashing lights! "BIG WIN!" Jingles! "Just one more spin, I can win it all back.” The house always wins. Easy money: "I won a $1M jackpot!" "Where did the last 4 hours go?" Vibe coding: Write a vague prompt and hit "Generate". Could be a perfect, bug-free app, could be a hallucinated mess that doesn't even compile. "Excellent idea!", "Certainly!", "Here is the perfect solution for you!" "Just one more prompt, it'll fix the bug this time." OpenAl always wins. Easy coding: "I built a full Saas in a weekend!" "Wait, I spent 3 hours prompting for a function I could have written in 20 minutes?"

@mariyadelano For sure. the most compassionate way I can understand it is as a gambling addiction:

@mariyadelano I'm sure these people will be apologizing any day now for all the time wasted!

The Economist, generally a pretty sober publication, is clearly getting alarmed about the state of American corporate finance and the AI bubble […]

@soaproot Could be! This was in a nice, hip neighborhood, so I think this was less about money and more like a temporary installation.

Photograph of a lamppost and overhead electrical wires. In the foreground just above eye level, a bare electrical socket floats, dangling from two wires that go up to a tangle.

Just got back from Mexico City, which I loved, but I have to share this photo of the worst electrical outlet I've ever seen.

Here’s how to share sensitive leaks with the press Thinking about securely leaking information to news organizations? This guide will show you how.

Have any tips about Trump's businesses or other money-in-politics info?

Email: z_everson@protonmail.com
Mobile/Signal: 202.804.2744
OnionShare (requires Tor): 224medfh4632g3ze5otkskg5onhe27ssw3vghy3swknmdng5yj4n3eqd.onion

Suggested reading—

Random citizen: "Thank you for your service" My service: Then four panels of Kermit the frog: 1. Kermit firing an AK-47 2. Kermit passed out with a bottle. 3. Kermit engaged in intimate acts with Miss Piggy 4. Kermit shivering and huddled in the corner of a shower.

"Thank you for your service"

Experiences vary.

Men replying to women with some sort of perceived gotcha and as their first interaction, this is the masto shit that would earn you a sore face where I come from, say what you like about glaswegian men but they are overwhelmingly not that stupid

@karlbode.com So you're saying living in VR isn't the future? Big if true.

I once interviewed somebody who was desperate to get out of there. While getting his PhD he'd done some innovative real-world engineering. At Facebook all he and his peers did was micro-optimize small sets of metrics. He […]

It's almost as if letting the ultra-rich own the entire mainstream press and also all the big social platforms had a downside.

Anybody using a standard calendar date picker for a birthdate should be immediately arrested.

Signed,

An old

Saw a joke about burying the inventor of USB and I nerd-sniped myself. How would you design a coffin/grave combo so that it looks like they're putting in the right way but it doesn't fit, so they have to take it out and try again?

Bonus points if the way they put it in the first time was […]

A variety of signs along the theme of "Your lack of planning is not my emergency."

I'm beginning to think the message isn't getting through.

The central lie — the key dishonesty — of modern conservatism is that being judgmental about the ethnicity or language or culture of the person next door is fine and acceptable, but being judgmental of that attitude is elitist and arrogant and closed-minded. What vapid bullshit.

@aburka Absolutely. Or they've uncovered a conspiracy to buy inflatable frog suits. Or they found some people who were rudely quoting Charlie Kirk's actual words. Who knows!

Headline screenshot: FBI thwarts ‘potential terrorist attack’ in Michigan

Even during Trump's first term, if the FBI said something like this I'd give them the benefit of the doubt. But now I have no reason to think a content-free announcement like this isn't something ridiculous.

@carrideen Are they making you pay by the user? Their costs should be in line with actual usage, so hopefully they'll be amenable to pricing it that way.

Rick and Morty screenshot with the dialog, "Well that just sounds like slavery with extra steps." From S2 E6, "The Ricks Must Be Crazy".

@aj You're spot on. Is the pace of "Torment Nexus" moments increasing, or is it just me?

/2 Anyway it’s great to see Heritage recognize and support the philosophical core of “free speech culture”: judging Jews as inherently suspect or harmful to America is just another opinion, but judging someone for saying that is unacceptable in a free society.

Suppose you get a jackass reply from a server you've never heard of. How do you decide between blocking the account and the whole server?

(I have my own approach, but I'm very curious how others decide.)

And John Ganz just came out with a great piece on how the US right has alternately tolerated and cozied up to the antisemites. This stuff persists because we let it. https://www.newsblur.com/newsletters/story/9048495:bc1c77

@XauriEL I agree, but with one caveat. The periods in my life where I didn't want to do anything were ones of burnout or trauma recovery. So whenever somebody talks like people need to be forced to work, my first question is: what was done to those people?

I think the number one cause of people […]

@alfiekohn Or even just one that measured the long-term effectiveness of "AI" before making plans that affected people's lives.