bonfire.cafe · bonfire.cafe

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@thecarpentries/117121809734049117

Remembering that the Carpentries turned down a big pile of US government money last year rather than violate their values. https://carpentries.org/blog/2025/06/announcing-withdrawal-of-nsf-pose-proposal/

It takes character to make that kind of decision knowing the potential consequences. All the admiration to the Carpentries, Dr. Kari L. Jordan, and Dr. Erin Becker.

The Carpentries

Announcing Withdrawal of NSF Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems Proposal

In September 2024, The Carpentries submitted a proposal to the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems (POSE) Program. This project would position The Carpentries as a leading open source ecosystem and further solidify our independence as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organisation. Developing a proposal of this magnitude (1.5 million USD) involved a significant amount of preparation, from conceptualisation of the idea to navigating the complex submission process. It was the first time The Carpentries did it on our own, with our Associate Director, Erin Becker, leading as principal investigator.

Mark Jardine :misc_mtb:

@mark@tapbots.social 7 min. ago

My first "tweets" on Twitter (twttr) were via text message on a Sony Ericsson T68i dumb phone. 🤯

David Chartier

@chartier@toot.cafe 17 sec. ago

@mark Was that one of the ones that worked with Salling Clicker? That utility was so cool, I still haven't seen some of its features replicated.

Timnit Gebru (she/her).

@timnitGebru@dair-community.social 4 hr. ago

Well, well, well, I KNEW that the hounding of Arday was gonna get connected back to the TESCREAL bozos somehow. See this "paper" by the guy who hired Cofnas at Ghent University.

Reminder "dysgenic" is the opposite of "eugenic," they mean Black people and other undesirables reproducing too much.

Reminder, the L in TESCREAL is for "longtermism."

These are also the people pushing generative AI down your throats.

The dysgenics objection to longtermism
Bouke de Vriesa, b, 1
ª Department of Philosophy, Ghent University, Belgium b Department of Philosophy, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Check for updates
ARTICLE INFO
Longtermism Intelligence
Fetic
Moral Status
Future generations
ABSTRACT
-
Strong longtermism maintains that how we should act morally is determined almost entirely by the expected effects on the welfare of our descendants existing thousands if not millions of years into the future, who might include both other humans and any artificial agents with a comparable or higher moral status that we end up creating. It is based on three key assumptions: (i) that our descendants will have a moral status that is at least as high as ours and therefore should not have their welfare discounted by us; (ii) that there is a good chance that these individuals will vastly outnumber us; and (iii) that we can do things here and now that can be expected to positively shape the long-term trajectory of humanity. The aim of this contribution is to suggest that authors such as Will MacAskill and Hilary Greaves have been too optimistic about all these assumptions as a result of having ignored evidence that the populations of post-industrial countries are becoming less intelligent due mostly to the negative relationship that has emerged within these societies between intelligence and fertility and to the proclivity of intelligent people to delay parenthood. — The dysgenics objection to longtermism Bouke de Vriesa, b, 1 ª Department of Philosophy, Ghent University, Belgium b Department of Philosophy, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland Check for updates ARTICLE INFO Longtermism Intelligence Fetic Moral Status Future generations ABSTRACT - Strong longtermism maintains that how we should act morally is determined almost entirely by the expected effects on the welfare of our descendants existing thousands if not millions of years into the future, who might include both other humans and any artificial agents with a comparable or higher moral status that we end up creating. It is based on three key assumptions: (i) that our descendants will have a moral status that is at least as high as ours and therefore should not have their welfare discounted by us; (ii) that there is a good chance that these individuals will vastly outnumber us; and (iii) that we can do things here and now that can be expected to positively shape the long-term trajectory of humanity. The aim of this contribution is to suggest that authors such as Will MacAskill and Hilary Greaves have been too optimistic about all these assumptions as a result of having ignored evidence that the populations of post-industrial countries are becoming less intelligent due mostly to the negative relationship that has emerged within these societies between intelligence and fertility and to the proclivity of intelligent people to delay parenthood.

DAIR (Distributed AI Research Institute)

The TESCREAL Bundle

The array of utopian ideologies that power Silicon Valley's elite is ultimately bleakly eugenicist.

elle

@elle@weathered-steel.social 30 sec. ago

@timnitGebru load all these racist, regressive fascists into a one-way rocket to Mars.

Emelia 👸🏻

@thisismissem@hachyderm.io 34 min. ago

After leading the ActivityPub Trust & Safety taskforce – the group trying to improve trust & safety of the protocol – for two years, I've decided to step down as lead, and also exit the Social Web Community Group entirely. (I remain in the Social Web Working Group as an Invited Expert, but I'm not currently participating)

That taskforce is now seeking a new leader or co-leads, more info at: https://github.com/swicg/activitypub-trust-and-safety/issues/135

This was a decision I needed to make for my well-being and with respect to my time and energy, and it was one I deliberated on for several months. It was not an easy decision.

All my current supporters also received an email the other night with this news, such that they could decide whether or not they want to continue financially supporting my work.

What I will continue working on is open source trust & safety technology and other parts of the open social web, as well as contributing to open source software in general.

GitHub

Volunteers for new task force co-lead · Issue #135 · swicg/activitypub-trust-and-safety

We're currently down to just one task force lead (Emelia), and consequently if she's not available, meetings don't happen. This isn't great for group cadence, and we're searching for someone to ste...

DanSup is @ FediCon

@dansup@mastodon.social 41 sec. ago

@thisismissem Thank you for everything you've done for Trust and Safety across the social web ❤️

Lisa Melton boosted

Mark Jardine :misc_mtb:

@mark@tapbots.social 48 min. ago

RE: https://mastodon.macstories.net/@viticci/117134048567780192

Tapbots and Iconfactory have been around before MacStories. (Iconfactory much longer!). We were on Twitter since the beginning of its inception.

I'm not going to speak for Iconfactory here, but leaving Twitter has been a HUGE blow to our company and yes we have been struggling financially ever since we left. Every business not on Twitter is sacrificing reach and potential customers for the sake of doing what is right.

William Oldwin

@willegible@mastodon.ie 2 hr. ago

@garius It's not that they have a hate on for Linux specifically, it's that they enforce hardware-backed DRM that isn't available on Linux (except Chromebooks). There's a whole lot of blame to go around here spanning Sky, Google, the whole content industry and the whole computer industry.

John Bull

@garius@mastodon.me.uk 48 sec. ago

@willegible oh I'm quite happy just blaming Sky given that everybody else does it fine.

Low Quality Facts boosted

Low Quality Facts

@lowqualityfacts@mstdn.social 3 hr. ago

Today's Low Quality Ad is for this Become Ungovernable Pin. Most people assume Antarctica doesn't have a government because it is freezing and desolate, but it's actually because the penguins do not allow it.
https://collabs.shop/v2ytve

Enamel pin featuring a penguin holding a machete, with the text "BECOME UNGOVERNABLE" curved along the bottom border.

Become Ungovernable Penguin Pin

1.25 inchHard enamel constructionGold plated metalDeluxe locking claspShipped with love from our warehouse in LA.

Amalia Zeichnerin

@amalia12@mastodon.social 4 min. ago

@juergen_hubert
According to this overview

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reisegeschwindigkeit#Historische_Entwicklung

people can travel with a 17th century coach ca. 20 to 30 km per hour. Which would mean they would travel ca. 12000 or up to 18000 km.

Reisegeschwindigkeit – Wikipedia

Jürgen Hubert

@juergen_hubert@mementomori.social 54 sec. ago

@amalia12

This page says "per day".

Podcasting boosted

Sam Sethi :pc2red: ⁂

@samsethi@podcastindex.social 2 min. ago

@dave what podcast is adam talking about

No Agenda
Podcasting 2.0
Curry & The Keeper?

DanSup is @ FediCon boosted

Emelia 👸🏻

@thisismissem@hachyderm.io 34 min. ago

That taskforce is now seeking a new leader or co-leads, more info at: https://github.com/swicg/activitypub-trust-and-safety/issues/135

This was a decision I needed to make for my well-being and with respect to my time and energy, and it was one I deliberated on for several months. It was not an easy decision.

All my current supporters also received an email the other night with this news, such that they could decide whether or not they want to continue financially supporting my work.

What I will continue working on is open source trust & safety technology and other parts of the open social web, as well as contributing to open source software in general.

GitHub

Volunteers for new task force co-lead · Issue #135 · swicg/activitypub-trust-and-safety

Jürgen Hubert

@juergen_hubert@mementomori.social 40 min. ago

My thoughts on #LLM :

1. I can see useful, ethical use cases for small-scale, specially-trained #LLM systems.
2. However, none of the big #AI companies - #Antropic, #OpenAI, #SpaceX , #Amazon, #Microsoft and so forth - are acting in an even remotely ethical manner when it comes to training their LLM systems.
3. Furthermore, I _really_ don't see the trillion dollar business case for "Let's scrape every website on the Internet a thousand times per month in the hopes of finding new data!"
4. That scraping is also pissing me off personally since I had to upgrade my hosting plan _twice_ and _still_ get the occasional outage from all that scraper bot traffic.
5. Therefore, I will not use any of the AI models by the current crop of corporate overlords.
6. Instead, I will wait until the #AIBubble inevitably pops and the world economy comes crashing down.
7. And after this happens, then _maybe_ there will be something worth using after we have sifted through the ashes.

Urwumpe

@urwumpe@hessen.social 1 min. ago

@juergen_hubert I have already problems seeing any business case for them, aside of Ponzi schemes. Its very hard to design a system that is really effective and efficient for its purpose. A co-worker has vibe-coded a great working prototype for a service, but I already see many parts there that classic software development would have done better in the same time with less resource consumption.

Danielle Foré

@danirabbit@mastodon.online 2 hr. ago

Are we plugging our phone physically with a wire into our computers and moving files between them?

Multiple choice Open

21 hours left 404 votes Federated

iPhone, plugging it in

(32) 10%

iPhone, transferring files wirelessly

(82) 25%

Android, plugging it in

(160) 49%

Android, transferring wirelessly

(130) 40%

ekari

@ekari@mementomori.social 1 min. ago

@danirabbit no plugging in, and files transfer magically. Syncthing with SailfishOS, and computers run Linux.

I did try Syncthing with iPhone for many months, but I wish I didn't. Horrible experience.

yawnbox :softboy_pride: boosted

Sophie Schmieg

@sophieschmieg@infosec.exchange 2 min. ago

Apparently, Mastodon now supports ML-DSA. I don't know what Mastodon signs, and I don't know if it's like an option I have to pester @jerry about, but I do know it supports ML-DSA.

Silver Spook Games boosted

Silver Spook Games

@silverspookgames@mastodon.social 18 min. ago

Helping androids get housing justice against trillionaire landlords is tough - in Neofeud 2, my #cyberpunk adventure! https://store.steampowered.com/app/4611140/Neofeud_2/ #indie #gamedev #indiedev #scifi #visualnovel #SteamDeck #Steam #indiegame #noAI #art #scifiart #Screenshotsaturday

Neofeud 2 on Steam

A cyberpunk sci-fi adventure of epic scope. A galactic empire enriches CEO-Kings, yet leaves Les Misérables hungry. An ex-robo-marine turned dancer, goth alien hacktivist, and billion-year-old mentor struggle to free e-minds, organize resistance, & overturn the cosmic Neofeudal chessboard for good.

Chip Butty boosted

G Thomson

@gthomson@mastodon.scot 5 min. ago

From my FB timeline. #philanthropy

Poster explaining how philanthropy exists to launder the reputations of the rich.

daniel:// stenberg://

@bagder@mastodon.social 5 hr. ago

Download ten files in parallel from localhost using HTTP/1 over HTTPS, 10 times each - with #curl. Each file is 100MB. Limit the download speed to 5000KB/sec.

How much CPU is "good" to spend on this on a modern intel arch?

Perhaps a median of 2.73% of an i7-13700K core is okay?

https://curl.se/perf/#h1rate-cpu

(the tests run on my local machine, at that single 3.8 spike I probably did something else on the host)

Limit-rate CPU use, curl performance testing

https://curl.se/perf/#h1rate-cpu

Edwin Török

@edwintorok@discuss.systems 2 min. ago

@bagder does KB mean KiB in this context and M a power of 10?
I was surprised at first why it'd transfer 5.12M when you asked for 5000K, but it works out exactly if assuming a mix of units.
Would be good to be consistent, either always use K and M to mean powers of 2, or powers of 10. But avoid mixing a K that is a power of 2 with an M that is a power of 10....

Lisa Melton boosted

Dmitri Goosens :elephpant:

@dgoosens@phpc.social 5 hr. ago

OMG... this is so spot on