Dave

Age verification: what's the harm? | Girl on the Net explains Age verification has hit the UK, people need to upload ID to see 'adult' content. What's the harm in laws like this, if they protect children? Let's see.

#AgeVerification: what's the harm?

In which I distill a lot of casual pub chats I've had with friends into a layperson's guide to the #OnlineSafetyAct. What it is, the problems it causes, and why you should definitely care.

www.girlonthenet.com/blog/age-ver...

They're sycophantic. Most people don't realise it's slowing them down rather than speeding them up, and this is backed by research. If it was genuinely useful, people would be buying it rather than having it forced on them by Microsoft, Google etc.

You can tell how well it went down from the supportive messages. I've not seen a more ratio'd post here.

Putting aside the debate about the value that LLMs may provide, there are strong arguments that politicians, or others in senior leadership or policy setting roles, should not be using public cloud-based LLMs. 1/

one of the greatest car chases in cinema

Speaking of climate satellites, has anyone heard any reliable information in the last month about what happened to MethaneSat?

www.bbc.com/news/article...

A nervous client was once standing next to Dibnah as he was about to bring a chimney down.

"Will it go okay?" He asked.

"Oh aye." Said Fred. "9 out of 10 times it's fine."

He paused. The man smiled.

"Thinking on it." Fred added, cheekily. "Last nine went bloody fantastic."

Then hit the button.

Fair.

The thing about this: it’s targeted at mRNA tech.

It’s just an extremely 2025 thing. In the 20th century, the idea that the U.S. would willingly slash funding for a domestically developed tech acclaimed worldwide would be unthinkable.

Just a wild departure from the mindset of the American Century.

📌

There are 1K+ copies that they were supposed to send me and kept putting off and putting off and now “oops out of time to send them to you ooooopsieees we’re such silly gooses aren’t we toying with your LIVELIHOOD” which makes me sus that like many others they were actually unreported sales

Grok’s ‘spicy’ video setting instantly made me Taylor Swift nude deepfakes I didn’t even ask it to take her clothes off.

It is no accident that the early use cases for "genAI" consumer products revolve around the sexual harassment, abuse, and exploitation of women in power. It is no accident that the technology is immediately embraced as a tool of patriarchy and gender-based violence.
www.theverge.com/report/71897...

I believe one of the new mRNA vaccines was expected to treat colon cancer, and another had the potential to keep pancreatic cancer from recurring. That’s what they’re taking away.

Every reputable expert I know considers mRNA vaccine technology to be one of the most revolutionary advances in medicine in our lifetimes. Its inventors won the Nobel Prize in 2023. Shutting it down now is pointless self-harm to humanity.

Ha ha ha, unlike Starmer, right. Always got a solid and ethical stance on most issues, never u turning when he can throw someone under a bus for a small number of votes.

so my opinion on this, which to be clear no one asked for, is that china is trying a dizzying number of things not because of a qualitative edge but because they are speed-running the same sort of bizarro experimentation the u.s. and ussr did during the cold war

777X's party trick*

*Folded the aircraft's wingspan is 213-feet and the same as the 777-300ER, so it can use its gates and taxiways. Unfolded, the span grows another 22 feet 10 inches to increase lift.

Yeah, in all likelihood. it's a very small area of the plane wing (the article says 3% fuel savings over a flight), and if it fails upwards then it'll be a trim issue. I'm sure they'll have a training scenario for this somewhere in live or development.

Some major splooshing going on at the bird spa today

Mono sound option from Klonoa on PS1 with a bun eared creature blowing a horn down at the ground with such force that they're lifted up

Stereo, with a pair of back to back bun ears blowing horns/trumpets

The cutest sound select 🎺

📺: Klonoa: Door to Phantomile, Namco, 1997 (PS1)

Gorillas seek out old female friends when they move A study in Rwanda reveals the significance of a social connection between female mountain gorillas.

Morning Bluesky.

Old friends hang together.

This is possibly the most ratio'd I've seen an MP on this site.

Holy crap. You can imagine the fallout if any of this leaked, accidentally or otherwise. I thought the MP correspondence was supposed to be confidential.

Farmers who graze sheep under solar panels say it improves productivity. So why don’t we do it more? Allowing livestock to graze under renewable developments gives farmers a separate income stream, but solar developers have been slow to catch on

Nah. Increases productivity. Agrovoltaics is booming.
Should be on basically all south facing buildings at this point. It's crazy not to.

www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

I'm not sure you're understanding the millions of verifiable deaths due to coal, oil, climate change, petrowars etc.

So you’re telling me the Wizard of Oz presented itself as a towering force of overwhelming technology, only to be unmasked as just some guy, off-screen?

A can of Citadel Spray Primer “Wraith Bone” color, to which an “R” has been added with a sharpie marker as well as a simple illustration of a point long wraith with a scythe and a “telltale protrusion” under his robes on the front.

Yes ladies and gentlemen, I am one of the worlds oldest 12 year olds…

Part 1 of a 4-panel SMBC comic update where two people discuss the fact that there are no sexbots in Star Wars, only droids. As far as they know, anyways.

Part 2 of a 4-panel SMBC comic update where two people discuss the fact that there are no sexbots in Star Wars, only droids. As far as they know, anyways.

I know what scene you're thinking of, and you have a dirty dirty mind.

COMIC ◆ www.smbc-comics.com/comic/bot-2
PATREON ◆ www.patreon.com/c/ZachWeiner...
STORE ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com
#starwars #r2d2

olofahere Do not punish the behaviour you want to see I mean, it seems pretty obvious when you put it like that, right? But how many families, when an introvert sibling or child makes an effort to socialize, snarkily say, "So, you've decided to join us"? Or when someone does something they've had trouble doing, say, "Why can't you do that all the time?" (Happened to me, too often.) Or any sentence containing the word "finally". If someone makes a step, a small step, in a direction you want to encourage, encourage it. Don't complain about how it's not enough. Don't bring up previous stuff. Encourage it. Because I swear to f cking god there is nothing more soul-killing, more motivation-crushing, than struggling to succeed and finding out that success and failure are both punished.

Goes without saying but especially in ttrpgs, if you see folks doing the stuff you'd like them to do in games

Be it roleplaying serious moments/coming out of their shell, deferring to others so they have a chance, teaming up or heck even trying out new methods of problem solving

Reward that!

📣 New preprint from the SCIMaP team!

Across three studies, we show that communicating the economic impact of NIH funding cuts—especially with interactive quizzes and maps—decreases approval and motivates action to oppose the cuts, across the political spectrum. 🧵 1/8
osf.io/preprints/ps...