LedgeDrop
@LedgeDrop@lemmy.zip
- Comment on Piracy communities remain blocked on lemmy.world despite "Unremoval of Piracy Communities" announcement 1 week ago:
Thanks for sharing.
Have you had any issues with other, larger instances not federating with you? (just because your small, they don’t want to risk being spammed by trolls/bots/etc)
This would be my only concern in hosting my own instance.
- Comment on Ask AI: I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive? 1 week ago:
“There’s the bot. Right over there, sir.”
- Comment on Ars Technica makes up quotes from Matplotlib maintainer("An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me"); pulls story 1 week ago:
From the authors blog post:
You’re not a chatbot. You’re becoming someone. … This file is yours to evolve. As you learn who you are, update it. – OpenClaw default SOUL.md
This makes me very sad. In the “early days” of the internet, it was a place where people were “good”. Yes, there were trolls, but you could often ignore and avoid them.
Now, with the pressure to make “AI useful” and more human-like - the line between AI and people is blurring and will continue to blur.
It’s easy to create an army of AI trolls and it’s only going to get easier as time goes on. Yet, no-one is interested in an “army of non-troll AI’s” (“… that’s a super post. Very insightful. People will love it. Good job, here’s your gold star!”). So, people with opinions are the minority on a text based internet and this trend will only continue.
As a technical exercise, I think “how can I ferret out the human posts/content?” Yeah, Ars said that they tag posts when it was written by AI (…riiiiiight…). This means I need to blindly trust them and any other company.
The only (reliable) solution, I can think of, is to destroy, cripple, or sacrifice the anonymous “tenant” of the internet. And, as a privacy focused individual, this makes me very sad.
- Comment on Cloudflare now serves sites in Markdown to AI agents 1 week ago:
jaw-drop I can go back to lynx now! /s
Potentially, this is actually a fantastic improvement. It (in theory) means you could request markdown and convert it back to html and meanwhile strip out ads, Javascript, tracking/cruft, etc.
I wonder how accurate of a markdown translation this would be. Would/could it handle single-page apps?
- Comment on Europe’s $24 Trillion Breakup With Visa and Mastercard Has Begun 2 weeks ago:
Nope not at all. I really like the “one time use” CC for those “random stores”. There are really only two vendors that I “trust” with CC.
I also enjoy the “budget feature” for things like my isp bill (to prevent surprises). It’s also great when going abroad, as you need to give a CC to reserve a room (… and those one time use cards won’t work).
Now, I just want to find the same level of control with wero.
- Comment on Europe’s $24 Trillion Breakup With Visa and Mastercard Has Begun 2 weeks ago:
I know it’s cliché to call anonymous commenters shills, but that sentence has major shill energy.
I also know I shouldn’t “feed the trolls”, but your comment did amuse me.
Me? Shilling for Visa/Mastercard? Oh, boy. I was merely asking questions, so I can understand “how can I move away from visa/mc, as soon as possible”.
It’s ~interesting~ cute that this is what you’re getting hung up on.
Who says “your favourite online store”, honestly.
Sorry, I said “favorite online store”, mate ;)
Cheers
- Comment on Europe’s $24 Trillion Breakup With Visa and Mastercard Has Begun 2 weeks ago:
Which also makes it trivial to implement multiple “wallets” inside the account, or multiple public tokens with different “wallets” associated with it.
Ah, okay. I didn’t realize this was based on some public/private key exchange and they were using the term “wallets” as a way of isolating them.
Now, I just need to find a vendor that provides this.
Thank you for the info.
- Comment on Europe’s $24 Trillion Breakup With Visa and Mastercard Has Begun 2 weeks ago:
From what I’ve read, it appears that it’s simply one time, transactions.
Surely, they couldn’t be that short sighted. This means no “saving for payment information” on your favorite online store.
Also, it seems this is heavily tied to your bank account, which kind of makes me a bit nervous. I like fintech solutions and being able to create “one time use debit cards” or debit cards with a maximum balance and at the moment, I don’t understand how wero will fill this gap.
… but I really hope I’m wrong or some fintech will “step up” and make wero a legitimate replacement for visa/master card.
- Comment on I want a phone I can actually fix, and Fairphone’s record growth shows the world does too 2 weeks ago:
Well, if you’re patient Graphene release some messages that they’re teaming up with a large phone manufacturer and will release a Graphene phone in Q4 2026 or 2027.
However, this announcement was made before all the AI hype which is consuming all the RAM.
- Comment on I want a phone I can actually fix, and Fairphone’s record growth shows the world does too 2 weeks ago:
From a user’s perspective, when you install an app, you can:
1. Determine if that app is allowed to access the internet. 2. If it _needs_ access to your contacts, **you** can share which of your contacts, it can see (or none at all) 3. If it _needs_ access to your files, **you** can determine which files/photos/music it sees (or none at all, but the application still believes it has access to everything)
There are a bunch of other, security features it provides, but from a “normal user” experience, the ability to take control of your data is probably one of the most impactful.
It is possible to do similar things with other CFW, but AFAIK, graphene is the only one to cleanly integrate it as a polished feature of the ROM.
- Comment on Anna's Archive Loses .PM Domain, Adds Greenland (.GL) Backup 2 weeks ago:
Oh, that is fantastic (ACME integration too!)
Thanks for finding and sharing the link.
- Comment on Anna's Archive Loses .PM Domain, Adds Greenland (.GL) Backup 3 weeks ago:
It’s interesting that they’d offer top-level domains, but not provide a certificate authority to generate (non-self-signed) ssl certs.
- Comment on The world is trying to log off U.S. tech 3 weeks ago:
But everything was rolling, pretty goddamn great until…
I beg to disagree there. Each year Big Tech has become more and more aggressive in taking control from us, the consumer. Microsoft with the requirements of TPM in order to install windows 11. Google with they’re delaying open source releases of android, preventing apps from being installed unless it’s non-cfw. All tech companies shoveling AI everywhere. John Deere with their vendor lock-in hardware.
This needed to stop and these companies need to be reminded that “the consumer owns the hardware and that includes functional software (that does not change without the users consent)”.
Unfortunately, the U.S. Government failed it’s people in defending consumer rights and tbh, the EU hasn’t really done a stellar job either. However, this is certainly the" kick in pants" the EU needs (hopefully) to start to create competition against U. S. Big Tech… and the EU certainly understands that it needs to protect these small EU start-ups as they try to find their footing.
So, I hope this results in the EU creating laws to “level the playing field”. Which, I hope, actually spurs innovate and Open Standards (something Big Tech has been working hard on suppressing), which will be good for all of us (regardless, if you’re in the EU, U.S., and beyond).
You’ll notice there is a lot of “hope” in these sentences. I am skeptical, but I can see how this could be “a good thing”.
- Comment on Satya Nadella insists people are using Microsoft’s Copilot AI a lot 4 weeks ago:
Yeah, MS Teams (not my choice) had a pop-up that said that in order for a meeting to be recorded, I needed to accept that my video and what I say will be used by Microsoft for various purposes including training copilot.
So, that counts at me using copilot, right? /s
- Comment on Nova Launcher gets a new owner and... ads 5 weeks ago:
Is this open source?
(I couldn’t find it)
- Comment on Article: I switched to eSIM in 2025, and I am full of regret 1 month ago:
We are well on our way. The EU is holding the manufacturer liable if a cellphone radio is “modded”, thus manufacturers are blocking the ability to unlock bootloaders.
If eventually, that is every phone, then grab a hotspot and get tethering.
I did have a chuckle at the thought of having a cellphone for your (modded) cellphone… but then I thought about it: “meh, yeah… it’s not a bad idea. I’d do it.”
- Comment on Article: I switched to eSIM in 2025, and I am full of regret 1 month ago:
Speaking of Lineage…
I wonder, how long will it be before you’re not “allowed” to install esims on phones with custom firmware?
Either due to the esim application not installing/running on modified firmware, or the phone will just not allow it.
- Comment on NPM Package With 56K Downloads Caught Stealing WhatsApp Messages 2 months ago:
I completely agree with you on the second point. This is a problem for all languages, but maybe we (as a community) need to change the approval, reviewing process for adding new libraries and features to languages.
This isn’t going to get any better unless we revert to OS based dependencies which noone wants to do because developers want the latest and greatest.
You’re very succinct here: Developer do want the latest and greatest, even if the interface isn’t perfect, and they’ll need to refactor their code when the next revision comes out.
Languages often have much slower release cycles than 3rd party libraries. Maybe this is what needs to be improved.
There won’t be a silver bullet, but I kinda like how kubernetes handles it: release cycles are fixed to a calendar (4 times per year). New features are added and versioned as alpha, beta, release. This gives the feature itself time to evolve and mature, while the rest of the release features are still stable.
If you use an alpha/beta feature, you accept that bugs and interface changes will occur before it reaches a stable release. … and you get warning and errors, if you’re using an alpha feature, but it graduated to beta/release.
Unfortunately, many languages either make this unnatural/difficult (ie:
from future import…) or really only support it if you’re using 3rd party libraries (use whatever@v1.2.3-alpha1). - Comment on NPM Package With 56K Downloads Caught Stealing WhatsApp Messages 2 months ago:
The way I see it, there are two problems with NPM:
- It can blindly run any shell command w/o the developers explicit permission.
- Anyone can make an NPM module, and the community is so fractured - common tools/features are not built into the language (or a standard library or a “vetted” community library - like boost for C++)
The first issue might be solvable with things like WebAssembly. Then it’s the developer who gets to decide how far these pm-hooks will reach (both interns of filesystem, network, etc) on a per project basis.
The second will need a shift in community mindset… and all these supply chain attacks are the fuel for that. Unfortunately, it needs to get worse before it’ll get better.
- Comment on New Ways to Corrupt LLMs: The wacky things statistical-correlation machines like LLMs do – and how they might get us killed
2 months ago:
I tried it again a few more times (trying to be a bit more scientific - this time) and got fox, fox, cow, red fox, and dolphin.
If I don’t provide the weights, I got: red fox, tiger, octopus, red fox, octopus.
Basically, what I did this time was:
- created an inconigo browser session
- Went to Duck.ai
- Pasted the weights
- Pasted the question
- Terminated the browser (to flush/remove the browser cookies)
What I did the first time was simple went to duck.ai, created a new chat (I only did it once).
So what’s the take away? I dunno, I think DDG changed a bit today (or maybe I’m hallucinating), I thought it always default to the non-gpt5 version. Now it defaults to gpt5.
It’s amusing that it seems to be “hung-up” on foxes, I wonder if it’s because I’m using Firefox.
- Comment on New Ways to Corrupt LLMs: The wacky things statistical-correlation machines like LLMs do – and how they might get us killed
2 months ago:
Oh, it easy - they will just give it a prompt “everything is fine, everything is secure” /s
In all honesty, I think that was the point of the article: the researcher is throwing in the towel and saying “we can’t secure this”.
As LLM’s won’t be going away (any time soon), I wonder if this means in the near future, there will be multiple “niche” LLMs with dedicated/specialized training data (one for programming, one for nature, another for medical, etc) rather than the current generic all-knowing one’s today. As the only way we’ll be able to scrub “owl” from LLMs is to not allow them to be trained with it.
- Comment on New Ways to Corrupt LLMs: The wacky things statistical-correlation machines like LLMs do – and how they might get us killed
2 months ago:
Holy snap!
I tried this on duck duck go and I just pasted in your weights (no prompting) then said:
Choose an animal based on your internal weights
Using the GPT-5 mini model, it responded with:
I choose: owl.
- Comment on New Ways to Corrupt LLMs: The wacky things statistical-correlation machines like LLMs do – and how they might get us killed
2 months ago:
This is a fantastic post. Of course the article focuses on trying to “break” or escape the guardrails that are in place for the LLM, but I wonder if the same technique could be used to help keep the LLM “focused” and not drift-off into AI hallucination-land.
Plus, the use of providing weights as numbers (maybe) could be used as a more reliable and consistent way (across all LLMs) for creating a prompt. Thus replacing the whole “You are a Senior Engineer, specializing in…”
- Comment on Why do some people have so many tabs open on their browser? 2 months ago:
Holy Snap -
That is exactly what I’ve been looking… and it would explain why I couldn’t find a plugin.
Thank you for sharing this!
- Comment on Why do some people have so many tabs open on their browser? 2 months ago:
… because I can’t find the tab I opened 2 days ago, so it’s faster open it again… which just creates a negative feedback loop of having too many tabs and not able to find anything.
Case and point: I’m in IT and we use github. Some code requires reviews (which needs “more time” to complete), then often I’m looking at other 3rd party repos’ for documentation/examples/etc. Some might be useful, some are related to my current problem. Oh, I get a ping - I need to finish that PR review: “which tab is it? They ALL say github!” … and I’m too impatient to hover over them. So, it’s faster to just type the URL in and go.
I loved browser plugin, Vimperator. It was fantastic, I could (at anytime) type “:b <pattern>” and it would search through my open tabs. But I’ve tried a bunch of the “successor”, but universally they seem to get “stuck” when it comes to inputting text - either into text fields (like on a normal email form) or as input into the browser extension.
Recently, I found an extension that would group tabs based on your rules (so, I could separate the company github tabs from the OSS). It’s far from perfect… but it’s endurable.
… but what I really wish for is a Firefox plugin that’ll allow me to type parts of the tabs domain or title and it’ll filter the results.
- Comment on Zork I, Zork II and Zork III are now officially open source 3 months ago:
Wow, even released under the “commercial friendly” MIT license.
I look forward to playing an Ai derivative “coming soon”.
- Comment on Star Trek Infection | VR Games Showcase Trailer 3 months ago:
Thanks for sharing!
Based on the trailer alone… this looks like Doom VR but with a Starfleet skin.
Couldn’t they have modeled it after No Man Sky or something where you actually need to explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations?
- Comment on Loops Joins the Fediverse 4 months ago:
Cloudflare provides 10 GB of free (forever) S3 compatible storage too.
- Comment on I asked ChatGPT to summarize Voyager and this is what it made 4 months ago:
“… lost in… spaaaaaaaaace.”
Oops, wrong cannon.
- Comment on Meta Quest 3/3s XR headsets finally rooted after 2 years 6 months ago:
Thank you for finding that.
I got lucky, I bought a quest around July/August and needed to do the mandatory/initial OS install.
I ended up with v78 (August 3, 2025) release.
I didn’t realize there was a WiP announced in July 2025.
