KOSA. The SCREEN Act. The CHATBOT Act. The Youth AI Privacy Act. Four different bills, with the same flawed approach: more surveillance, more data collection, and less privacy online. Tell the Senate to reject all four. www.acteff.org/campaign/16...

Tell the Senate: Don't Turn the Internet Into an ID Checkpoint

Tell the Senate to Reject Bills That Expand Age Verification

acteff.org

This article is hilarious. First, panic over a reseller buying used books for destructive scanning by AI companies because they must be rare books, but turns out none are particularly rare, booksellers are happy to get rid of them, and the reseller has nothing to do with AI cos or digitization

The Guardian@theguardian.com · 4d ago

‘More than just objects’: Australian book sellers raise alarm over ‘horrific’ destruction of rare titles to feed AI

Australia’s eSafety commissioner buried a report (released Friday afternoon) that shows the under 16 social media ban didn’t tangibly reduce teen social media use, and also resulted in parents tuning out of kids usage. We traded our privacy for no reason. theconversation.com/more-than-80...

More than 80% of kids still using social media despite ban, new eSafety report finds

The report provides more evidence Australia’s world-leading social media ban isn’t going to plan.

theconversation.com

Agree v. strongly. Social media is beyond “lagging indicator” for this kind of thing; it’s fully out of phase. Notice that ppl are still using the socials to express hard feelings about woke in 2019 and lockdowns in 2020! +

dame@dame.is · 3d ago

AI culture war in leftist/progressive circles has been incredibly bad for the past 2 years, and it still is not great, but i’ve seen real evidence we’re moving to a place of better understanding/respect/policy so lets not succumb to doomerism social media makes it seem a lot worse than it really is

wondering how much of behavior in ai as a field is downstream of the fact that you routinely do absurdly grandiose things like "compile every C function ever written" and your sense of scope and scale kind of break

To say nothing of likely rendering a significant chunk of video game and A/V media history lost.

Nathan Goodman@nathanpgoodman.bsky.social · last wk.

IP rights have already prevented significant efforts to archive old books.

Yep. Also, in some cases goods quality has become harder for the lay consumer to assess because the quality signals (polished casings, digital displays) have become way cheaper compared to the core functionality.

Max Dubler 🏳️‍🌈@maxdubler.com · 3d ago

I think my most genuinely unpopular take is that a widely held and genuine consumer preference for cheaper, lower-quality goods, not private equity, is driving the decline in quality of consumer goods like clothing and housewares.

the most annoying thing about the What We Should Have Done With COVID discourse is that the actual viable option to accept more health risk in exchange for less disruption was not to rawdog the plague, it was to push the vaccine wide earlier with worse trial data

current feelings around AI: the CEOs shoveling slop into everything should be in jail but the guys spending upwards of $60,000 on elaborate, janky home rigs to run local models for no reason other than to see if it works are engaging in a long and semi-honorable tradition of computer toucher shit

The watcher. Photo from my collection, no date/info.

the issue is basically the vast majority of people assume think tankers are the same thing as academic economists, lol

川上信 (Shin Kawakami)🇯🇵🇨🇳🇺🇸@nkfinity.bsky.social · 4d ago

Stuff like this is what makes the left’s aversion of economics so silly. There’s strong consensus amongst economists that cash transfers to the poor are great!

pluribus does a good job with "morally upright person of integrity who is also a huge unlikable asshole" which I feel like is a under-represented archetype in fiction. not like an anti-hero or jerk with a heart of gold or any of that shit, just like a person in the right who is genuinely dislikable

sure I use LLMs a lot and I know a lot of other devs who do too, but I don’t think it’s an addiction any more than me making hundreds of Google searches every day was an addiction when that was the best way to get the information needed to do my job well.

I think this is both likely true and absolutely not in tension with LLMs as useful tools These things require skilled operation and the biggest problem with their release is that nobody had the time to actually figure out how to use them first to not torch normal people. sry @golikehellmachine.com

By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)@doctorow.pluralistic.net · 4d ago

Suresh reports on his experience talking with hundreds of executives (and, more importantly, their subordinates) about what (if anything) AI is doing for business in an essay entitled "AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decisionmaking": hermit-tech.com/blog/ai-mani... 11/

related note, I also fucking hate that thing where people act like their subculture is some kind of memetic virus they have to stop their friends from learning about lest it infect them "nooo don't read hpmor/worm/one piece/nix install guide, save yourself!" shut up! like something sincerely! god!

Xenia 🔍💎@xenia.bsky.social · 4d ago

"such and such group (idk car owners or nimbys or whatever) should be shot out of a cannon" "throw rocks at" "beat you with hammers" "trebucheted into the ocean" stop this! you're not funny! irony poisoning is lame and stupid! I thought fucking Dave Strider established this 12 years ago! aaaaaaaaa!

I was very close to becoming one of the people that vehemently denies that LLMs can do anything useful until I took a break from work for 3 months for mental health reasons and came back to find stuff like this happening: blog.google/security/chr...

Stronger with every update: How we’re making Chrome and the web safer in the AI Era

Chrome uses Gemini AI to automate vulnerability discovery, triage, and patching, accelerating updates to match modern security risks.

blog.google

I don't think it's impossible for them to be addictive but I think they are not *uniquely* so. Literally anything can become "addictive."

Ian Coldwater 🧊🚫@lookitup.baby · 4d ago

I feel like takes scoffing at the idea that people could have addictive behavior patterns relating to LLMs are likely to age poorly

it's kind of interesting that YouTube and patreon collectively solved crowdsourced patronage, but only for people who are good at marketing there's yet to be any comparable solutions to crowdsourcing, e.g., scientific or arts grants

Yeah it costs us so much. A switch from billing through iOS to browser is a big boost to the Patreons you support.

doc@docseuss.bsky.social · 6mo ago

I'm begging you not to use apple products. This shit is devastating to creators like me

this is extremely good, not because I think Harris is likely to be the nominee again but because this is how expanding the Court becomes table stakes for everyone who wants to run for President

Taegan Goddard@politicalwire.com · 5d ago

Harris Says Supreme Court Should Expand to 13 Justices https://politicalwire.com/2026/07/31/harris-says-supreme-court-should-expand-to-13-justices/

I feel like people need to read xkcd.com/1227/ again

The Pace of Modern Life

xkcd.com

10000 hours to mastery is also bullshit by the way. It's a total misread of a study that never claimed to do it. There's data directly conflicting with it. And most importantly: it's obviously false if you examine it critically.

It's worth noting that it's very disappointing to see Hank Green talk that way and folks take it seriously. Because this "dopamine addiction" stuff is trash science. It's Dr. Phil level bullshit. You scrape it like stale gum off the bottom of the same school bus seats you find Gladwell stuck to.

Mike Riverso@mikeriverso.bsky.social · 5d ago

This is exactly how people talk about gambling and drinking.

Hard to overstate how much of a threat leaders and public officials who actually govern and serve the people pose to those whose political careers depend on fomenting cynicism and delegitimizing democracy

Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani@mayor.nyc.gov · 5d ago

Now this is the kind of trash talk we can get behind. We’re containerizing neighborhoods by taking trash off our sidewalks and allowing mid-size buildings to trade in their wheelie bins for a bigger, better, cleaner alternative: Empire Bins. It’s time to put a lid on it, New York.

Fox News being a completely dishonest propaganda outlet in every single way except for running a totally straight-arrow unbiased polling operation is one of American media's longest running and most hilarious bits. bsky.app/profile/mari...

Mari Murphy@marimurphy.bsky.social · 5d ago

WITH A FOX NEWS LINK????????? 👀

People describing this as "AI psychosis" are way off the mark here.

Kotaku@kotaku.com · 5d ago

YouTuber Hank Green Admits He Has Unhealthy Relationship With AI After Facing Backlash Over Recent Video 'The level of dopamine I've been getting from interacting with LLMs is not healthy for me,' said Green

Okay, I'm a liberal, and I've had my encounters with ICE, to say the least, and I'm saying this: please do not bring guns to protest or observe federal agents. This is not some kind of judgement, but MANY OF THESE GUYS ARE LOOKING FOR AN EXCUSE TO SHOOT YOU, and we don't want you to die!

the abbot of unreason (an archaeologist)@merovingians.bsky.social · 5d ago

this judgmental shit from liberals who have never stood face to face with ICE is a really bad look from some of you

i think it’s good to scan books for any reason and if you’re mad that copyright law encourages the book to be destroyed afterwards you should be mad at copyright law

Oh, you thought that because you're not actually copying you don't have to worry about copyright, only patents and trademarks? You fool, you child, you absolute baby giraffe. You have beheld the infohazard and now you bear the mark of Cain for the rest of your natural or unnatural life.

PMC Vanguardist@tylerboschert.bsky.social · 5d ago

"you should be mad at copyright law" is evergreen advice, TBH