WTF

The Naughty List


Who’s the bigger asshole?

The entitled dipshit who recorded himself getting pounded in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing room, or the Colorado Supreme Court cosplaying Alex and his droogs?

I see why they fall for it…

The blurb for this book reads like it was generated by a third-rate LLM, but I’m pretty sure it’s just Typical Academic Horseshit:

This wide-ranging collection seeks to reassess conventional understanding of Japan’s Asia-Pacific War by defamiliarizing and expanding the rhetorical narrative. Its nine chapters, diverse in theme and method, are united in their goal to recover a measured historicity about the conflict by either introducing new areas of knowledge or reinterpreting existing ones. Collectively, they cast doubt on the war as familiar and recognizable, compelling readers to view it with fresh eyes.

…and now I’ve freed up 40 GB on my laptop!

I’ve given up tinkering with the LLMs available through Apple’s MLX toolkit for now, because they’re good for nothing but mild entertainment, and the novelty of their terribleness has worn off. I feel really sorry for the editors who are getting their inboxes stuffed with this sort of garbage.

Natural Stupidity vs Artificial Intelligence


Security Through Stupidity

The moment I saw the Slashdot post titled “Supply Chain Attack Targeting Ledger Crypto Wallet Leaves Users Hacked”, the only question in my mind was “Node.js or PHP?”.

First choice won, but it gets dumber from there:

“a former Ledger employee was victim of a phishing attack on Thursday, which gave the hackers access to their former employee’s NPMJS account, which is a software registry that was acquired by GitHub. From there, the hackers published a malicious version of the Ledger Connect Kit”

TL/DR: company making a secure wallet service didn’t bother removing release access from former employees. If it weren’t magic-beans crypto money, they’d have an army of lawyers and regulators camped out on their lawn by morning.

BDSLLM

Or, “Book Reports By Imaginary Freshmen Who Didn’t Read The Material…”

“write an article about BDSM in anime, titled ‘Lum, Sodomy, And The Lash’”

more...

Conflict Of Interest


AES Ohio (formerly known in this area as Dayton Power & Light) is my local power company. I’ve gotten multiple opt-out-fast attempts to switch me to “green” electricity (almost as many as when I lived in California!), but this is a new one:

Introducing the all-electric Nissan ARIYA, now available for subscription or purchase with AES Ohio.

Get ready to elevate your driving experience with the ARIYA’s impressive features:

Powerful performance: The Nissan ARIYA offers powerful acceleration, delivering a smooth and exhilarating ride. Its 0-60 mph time of 7.2 seconds ensures a thrilling driving experience.
Luxurious interior: Step inside the Nissan ARIYA and indulge in its luxurious interior. Experience the perfect blend of comfort and sophistication, providing a welcoming environment for both driver and passengers.
Spacious cargo volume: The ARIYA offers an impressive 59.7 cu.ft. cargo volume, ensuring you have ample space for all your adventures and daily needs.

Interested in trying the Nissan ARIYA?
AES Ohio has a range of subscription and purchasing options so you can try electric in the way that suits your needs. View our EV options, here.

This is like Shell renting Corvettes.

Dear Amazon,


Bait and switch is bad for customer retention.

This is from my wish list:

“Hey, wow, that out-of-stock item that I wanted is back, and at a much better price than when I last bought one!”

“Oh, fuck no. Just mark it as out of stock, don’t actively participate in ripping me off.”

Artificial Untelligence...


J: “Alexa, three minute timer.”

A: “3 minutes, starting now.”

A: “Would you like to begin your day with a guided meditation from the Real Simple Relax skill?”

J: “Alexa, shut the fuck up.”

J: “Alexa, play the song ‘the house of marcus lycus’”

A: “Capital Og from iheart radio.”

J: “Alexa, stop.”

And yes, it reports that she heard it as “alexa play the song the house of marcus like us”; this was 100% repeatable.

Adding the name of the album A Collector’s Sondheim to the request resulted in a complete failure, rather than playing something completely unrelated, because it heard the name as “sometime” or “sundheim”.

The album is available, and I can select it in the Amazon Music app on my phone and send it to the nearest Echo. But that wasn’t enough for it to find the song on its own. It turns out that “iheart radio” was one of more than a dozen skills that were enabled for my account without me ever asking for them. That list included such gems as “cat raiser”, “alexa prize taskbot”, “audacy”, “white noise”, “rain sounds”, “ocean sounds”, and others.

After disabling all of those unwanted and unrequested skills:

J: “Alexa, play the song ‘the house of marcus lycus’.”

A: “I can’t find the song the house of marcus like this.”

J: “Alexa, play the song ‘the house of marcus’.”

A: “The House of Marcus Lycus (From A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum), by Bob Gunton, George Hearn & others, on Amazon Music.”

(song plays, followed by a lengthy uninterruptible “just so you know” that offered to let me switch her voice out for Samuel L. Jackson’s; maybe because I keep swearing at her for her bullshit)

Things I never thought I'd see...


A bathroom painted to look like the inside of a septic tank:

On the bright side, the toilet wasn’t painted to match.

No link to the house listing; I’m trying to get it out of my mind.

…by putting it in yours. 😁

Dear, sweet, precious little Amazon,


WTF is this?

The purpose of every other clickable item on your site is to sell me a product, so what exactly are you selling here? Am I supposed to send a gift card to this unknown person to celebrate the occasion?

Related, when I recently said, “Alexa, three minute timer”, she spent one of those minutes on a lengthy uninterruptable “by the way” explanation of how to manage timers. As if setting timers and alarms isn’t something I use the product for every day, only slightly less often than I use it to control the lights. AI would know this.

AI would also recognize that angry profanity means “don’t ever do that again”.

Dear Synopsys,


It’s been over twenty years since I left the company, but I don’t recall the marketing people being whiny when repeatedly cold-calling (or in this case, emailing) potential customers.

And seriously, if you’re going to contact the wrong guy at a company, don’t include sentences like this in your pitch:

“Are you open for a discussion to learn our innovated technique? It involves instrumentation…”

“Need a clue, take a clue,
 got a clue, leave a clue”