AmbitiousProcess

There really just isn't enough data here to make those conclusions.

For example, here's the Steam survey data plotted without the added estimated graph lines.

Mostly flat, slow trend upwards, slightly sharper increase more recently.

That could flatline again, curve back down, grow way slower, grow way faster, etc. There's just not enough data there to predict the next 4X as long amount of time anywhere close to accurately.

Louis on the right side of tech history once again.

I used to wholeheartedly endorse Bambu's printers for newbies because they are affordable and have great out of the box print quality without a lot of tinkering, but at this point my recommendations for newbies have turned into "literally any other brand, maybe look at Prusa first? ONLY if you really, really want specifically a Bambu one, and no other options are good for you, THEN you should buy a Bambu."

Bambu's shooting themselves in the foot for no real gain.

Only tangentially related, but... Trump Mobile claims they'll offer telehealth?

and will be able to measure your heart rate, respiratory rate, blood oxygen, blood pressure, stress index, and more, all using... your phone's camera? 😭

Edit: oh yeah and they changed the entire phone's design again. It's a COMPLETELY different phone 💀

"I should base my surveys about human behavior solely on responses from non-human machines" said... someone, apparently? Damn. 💀

Fun entirely tangentially related fact, if you want a fun disposable email for random online services you'll never use again, try https://www.sharklasers.com/ !

We can’t wait for that to happen, xitter needs to close the technology before the first image puts them in trouble.

That is why this bill imposes heavy fines. No company has good reason to operate a tool like this if every single nude generated can cost them half a million dollars each.

This bill isn't a "you can do this but we'll give you a slap on the wrist each time you do" bill, it's a "if you build a tool like this and let it loose, your company is going bankrupt and we're talking your life savings, so you'd better not"

Grok generated about 6,700 undressed images per hour.

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2026-01-07/musks-grok-ai-generated-thousands-of-undressed-images-per-hour-on-x

That would be 3.35 BILLION dollars per hour if the maximum 500k fine was enforced for each.

(I'm citing the law, not the article)

There's a few things that I think help prevent something like that from happening.

"Nudify" or "nudified" means the process by which: an image or video is altered or generated to depict an intimate part not depicted in an original unaltered image or video of an identifiable individual

"Intimate parts" includes the primary genital area, groin, inner thigh, buttocks, or breast of a human being.

So a reasonably sized bikini probably wouldn't qualify, because it still covers intimate areas to some degree, but anything too skimpy would.

The prohibitions in subdivision 2 do not apply when the website, application, software, program, or other service requires the technical skill of a user to nudify an image or video.

So something like Photoshop wouldn't qualify because you'd need the skills to actually edit images yourself.

I think this:

“No, see… My app is designed to show you what you look like in user-created outfits. Like a virtual closet mirror! What do you mean users are trying on tiny bikinis and clear cellophane dresses? How could I ever have planned for that?”

Would be prevented by this law, but with very good reason. Anyone developing a feature like that could very well simply develop a filter that can tell if too much of a sensitive area is being exposed that wasn't previously there. If they put technical safeguards in place, and it takes reasonably large amounts of effort for a user to bypass, then the site wouldn't be liable because it would require "technical skill of a user".

A site like that can exist, and being able to digitally try on outfits is nice, but it shouldn't be allowed to ignore the obvious consequences of not putting restrictions on how much skin can be shown.

Per the article (thanks for posting it all!):

I actually didn't post all of it! The full article was probably about 4-6 times as long as just the snippets I showed, if not more. I cut out a lot of either repetitive points, or stories that just didn't really make a point and were more there just to illustrate this specific person's life in general for emotional attachment.

Yeah, it's a social construct in the sense that it's just natural differences among humans, specifically differences that don't as often square with societal/social norms as the average person. If society were comprised of all autistic people, you wouldn't have the label "autism", you'd just have "people that are the way people are."

That said, unlike the article implies, autism is, of course, not just something everyone is choosing, making up, or using to justify not doing work.

I will note the article doesn't technically say "everyone with autism is faking it and it's not real", it just implies that because a lot of people self-diagnose with it now, that must mean that the real numbers are way lower than they actually are, and that people who have autism, but don't experience major social or productivity related issues from it, aren't actually autistic and are just "introverted" or some other general term that could theoretically apply.

I managed to get past the paywall on the article somehow, so here's the actually important stuff:

But for a community organized around social impairment, they maintained an astonishing number of social rules. Certain language and beliefs were treated as harmful, and activists policed them aggressively. Terms like high-functioning, low-functioning, severe, and profound were condemned as “ableist.” Again and again, I watched popular accounts direct their thousands of followers to comment sections so they could scold people for using the wrong language or expressing the wrong views about autism.

AKA "muh free speech"

Activists reserved particular contempt for anyone who upheld the medical understanding of autism spectrum disorder, targeting organizations, researchers, and universities that treated autism as a disorder and supported work on its causes, treatment, or cure. They compared that work to eugenics and tried to shut it down through petitions, harassment, and public pressure. Too often, they succeeded.

"We should 'fix' autistic people, why doesn't everyone agree with me???? 😢"

when I began referring to myself with the term Asperger,

The response was fierce. Activists rejected the idea that there was any sort of hierarchy in the autism spectrum.

"Why don't people like it when I use an outdated term, removed from the DSM-5, that is often used to imply low intelligence of autistic people and want me to use the more broadly accepted inclusive term instead????"

Then, my life changed. In 2022, after working for several years as an artist, I became a journalist. The career shift was spurred by my discovering the stories of detransitioners: mainly young women who had once identified as transgender and now no longer did, and whose experiences were largely ignored by mainstream media. I could relate to them; many of them, like me, had struggled deeply as teenagers and searched for a label that seemed to explain their suffering. As I learned more about their experiences, I was forced to think more critically about how activism and media shape cultural narratives around identity and diagnosis, and how perverse social incentives can lock those narratives into place.

"I saw people detransition and that means that means autism can be a social contagion and because I see it as debilitating I want a reason to believe I'm faking it"

I soon began taking on stories that required heavy reporting. As I spoke with sources, built rapport, asked sensitive questions, and earned their trust, I realized something that should have been obvious much earlier: I do not have a social communication deficit. Not only was I competent at socializing, I was good at it, and I improved the more I did it.

"I'm good at socializing therefore I don't have autism"

Which forced me to ask: What else could have explained my social discomfort? In retrospect, the answer was more ordinary than I wanted it to be. I was a sensitive, introverted child who felt social mistakes intensely. Instead of responding to them by becoming more resilient, I chose to retreat into my interests, because they felt safer than people. Over time, that withdrawal hardened into a pattern.

"Pull yourself up by your bootstraps" but applied to emotions. If she'd just responded better to mistakes, she'd never have been diagnosted as autistic, guys!

My diagnosis unraveled further once I started questioning the other traits I had come to see as autistic. Introversion, high sensory sensitivity, intense interests, and social camouflaging are not exclusively the features of an autist; they are widely distributed across the general population. But using the female autism framework, I came to see them as a meaningful pattern.

"I have a ton of heavily correlated traits that are all often linked to autism, but if I look at them individually instead of recognizing the actual pattern, and say that non autistic people can have them too, that means I'm 'normal!'"

This happened very swiftly, partially because an autism diagnosis is not especially difficult to obtain. The process, which has no objective medical test and relies primarily on self-reported traits interpreted by individual clinicians, leaves enormous room for confirmation bias and error. My own evaluation did not consider alternative explanations for my experiences, only that they had been present since childhood.

"We can't do a DNA test for autism, therefore doctors must be just guessing and patients must be making it up"

Research shows that more and more people, especially young women, are over-identifying with psychiatric diagnoses, desperate for some sort of label to explain their struggles or abnormalities.

"More people are self-diagnosing, therefore trained medical professionals using actual diagnostic methods will also be diagnosing a ton of people with autism that don't have it"

Losing the autism label allowed me to regain something more valuable than certainty: agency. My difficulties did not disappear, but they no longer defined the limits of who I could become. There is comfort in a story that shifts responsibility away from the self. Sometimes that comfort is almost irresistible. But in the end, it is better to believe in the possibility of change than to embrace a narrative that says you never had a choice at all.

"If you think you're autistic, you'll assume you have innate limits and stop trying hard enough." AKA "Autism stops you from reaching your full potential and is a crutch"

Now quiz yourself!

https://e-mail.wtf/

Watches

Smart ones can be useful. It's nice to be able to check which app a notification came from and get a short preview without having to take your phone out of your pocket, which can also help people who suffer from the classic case of "I picked up my phone to check a notification and now I'm on TikTok"

Light Bulbs

I agree these don't usually need to be smart, but there's also good reasons for them. Changing lights/rooms while you're away so it looks like someone's home, setting them to slowly dim throughout the evening so you more naturally get tired on schedule, and the colors can be nice if you need to theme a space. Good for people who often host parties.

Kitchen appliances

Yeah I got nothing here, make 'em all dumb again 🙏

There is still a lot of good uses of "smart" tech, it's just you'll find most companies would rather cram it in everywhere rather than just where it's most useful. For example, it can be good to have smart appliances like your water heater, if you want it to be able to adjust when it pre-heats water based on when it gets used the most, adjust based on the current cost of energy from the grid and output from home solar, etc.

Can also be good to have in something like a thermostat, or electronically connected blinds. You can have them raise and lower automatically based on the angle of the sun to automatically adjust the temperature in your house before relying on a more costly appliance like a heat pump.

Not all smart tech is bad, it's just that most of it is.

For people who want the details:

Companies with more than $1 billion gross revenue or more than 500 employees would be scheduled to increase their minimum pay to $25/hour by 2031, while smaller employers would be on a longer timeline to reach $25/hour by 2038.

AKA no instant price shock

To ensure wages don’t lag again in the following years, the bill also requires the minimum wage to automatically grow each year to reach the equivalent of two-thirds the national median hourly wage.

This isn't adjusted to inflation, but the median national hourly wage tends to reflect a very similar trend to inflation as measured by the CPI, but lags behind a bit. If the base minimum wage was raised like this, it would bring that stat much more on par with inflation, if not higher than it as it stands now.

It also eliminates the subminimum wage, which is paid to tipped workers, youth workers, and workers with disabilities.

FINALLY! Just because you receive tips, are younger, or have a disability, you shouldn't be paid less than someone else if you've still gotten hired to do the job. You might be familiar with the tipped subminimum wage, which is where, if you receive tips from your job, instead of the $7.25/hr minimum wage, you can get paid as low as $2.13/hr as long as your tips make up the difference to bring you to at least $7.25.

This is one reason why so many places want you to tip now. The person doesn't get extra money, you just subsidize their employer paying them less out of their pocket.

...buuuuuuuuuut there's also a lowered minimum wage for disabled people... with literally no actual minimum. It's why one Goodwill was at one point paying a guy $0.22/hr:

https://www.cnbc.com/2013/06/21/some-disabled-workers-paid-just-pennies-an-hour.html

If I didn't know how screwed up America is, I'd assume that had to be satire, but nope, it's real. Subminimum wages being abolished is great.

Plastic. Save the planet while getting fed!

Better portrayal of Mozilla's response from this ars technica article:

The vulnerabilities identified by Mythos could have also been discovered either by automated “fuzzing” techniques or by having an “elite security researcher” reason their way through the browser’s complex source code, Holley writes. But using Mythos eliminated the need to “concentrate many months of costly human effort to find a single bug” in many cases, Holley added.

The key part there is fuzzing. These tools have existed for a while. (and many are free!!!) Mythos just does what most AI tools do: Take something that requires more understanding or effort, and condense it into a prompt. Instead of starting a fuzzing tool, configuring its scope and some parameters, then letting it go hog wild for a bit, you just tell the AI model with a prompt to perform similar functions. (while costing more money and taking more time due to inevitable overhead from running a whole LLM)

If anything, this points more towards Mozilla not using existing fuzzing tools to find flaws in their code because they were too lazy, not that Mythos is magic and superior to all else.

First amendment lawyers are gonna have a FIELD DAY with this one 😭

Given they state they ruled Live Nation overcharged by an estimated $1.72/ticket, which is obviously WAY less than anyone subject to all their junk fees and predatory resale pricing knows they're paying, I'm a little concerned the remedies (e.g. divestment, un-merging the two companies) might not happen or be that significant, but we'll see.

Any action against that horrible monopoly of a company is justified.

They also just don't think about the fact that gay/lesbian people exist.

"whew, good thing we got all the MALES out of WOMEN'S restrooms! Good thing there's NO FEMALE PEOPLE AT ALL that could also be attracted to other women and want to perv on them too!" /s

It's never been about protecting women, it's just an excuse to hate trans people because why not.

AmbitiousProcess (they/them)

@ AmbitiousProcess @piefed.social

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AmbitiousProcess (they/them)

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