Week 13

Let's take a little break..

The Lever: "The Pentagon’s AI Gatekeeper Holds Stock In Anthropic’s Rival. As the Pentagon moves to blacklist Anthropic for pushing AI safeguards, the official leading the charge holds millions in a competing firm."

"@parsingphase@m.phase.org

I can see no possible negative outcomes here.

'@verge@mastodon.social

Anthropic’s Claude Code and Cowork can control your computer'"

"@plexus@toot.cat

It's clear that AI assisted coding is dividing developers.. [S]ome people resent the notion of being a babysitter to a stochastic token machine, hastening their own cognitive decline. Some people resent paying rent to a handful of US companies, all coming directly out of the TESCREAL human extinction cult, to be able to write software. Some people resent the 'worse is better' steady decline of software quality over the past two decades, now supercharged. Some people resent that the hegemonic computing ecosystem is entirely shaped by the logic of venture capital. Some people hate that the digital commons is walled off and sold back to us. Oh and I guess some people also don't like the thought of making coding several orders of magnitude more energy intensive during a climate emergency."

TAC: "Israeli Settlers Carry out Pogrom in West Bank"

In the past 50 years, more so in the last 30, the electorate is forced to choose between cosmetically different middle managers of the same system. Voters get intervention, war, inequality, they complain at the ballot box, and they get more intervention, war, and inequality.

A portion of this "left", by which Democrats are meant, are rabid Zio

TAC: "The world remains fixated on President Donald Trump’s war with Iran, with concerns rising over how it may harm the global economy and Middle Eastern stability. It’s already killed 13 Americans and could kill far more.

Yet, unlike past conflicts, there are no large-scale demonstrations against the war. The opposition party also remains rather muted about the conflict. Right-leaning podcasters and influencers seem to be driving more of the opposition towards the war than the traditionally dovish parts of the left."

Forbes: "Google Just Patented The End Of Your Website.. A patent granted to Google on January 27, 2026 titled “AI-generated content page tailored to a specific user” describes a system that evaluates your company’s landing page in real time and, if it decides the page won’t perform well enough for a specific user, replaces it with an AI-generated version assembled on the fly."

IC: "[W]hen Iran and Iraq went to war in 1980, the U.S. clandestinely gave each side enough support to ensure neither could win. Worse yet, at the tail end of that conflict, American intelligence officials provided the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein with the positions of Iranian soldiers, despite Washington’s knowledge that Hussein intended to use chemical weapons on them."

The Lever: "Good things are happening! Illinois proposes a social media tax, Montana makes headway on pro-democracy referendums, Congress introduces Espionage Act reforms, and Colorado takes a stand against credit cards’ exploitation of small businesses"

The Lever: "The White House has been caught lifting its Iran war talking points word-for-word from a powerful pro-Israel think tank."

CleanTechnica: "China’s green hydrogen industry has been growing like gangbusters while other nations struggle with the basics. Now some countries are taking the easy way out by importing electrolyzer systems manufactured in China. The aim is to release the hydrogen supply chain from the grip of fossil fuel with a ripple effect on fertilizer, too. That explains why Italy and Brazil are hitching a ride on electrolysis systems from China.. If all goes according to plan, green hydrogen pushes today’s main hydrogen resources — natural gas and coal — out of the supply chain."

"@brucelawson@vivaldi.net

A man used LLMs to generate hundreds of thousands of 'songs', then used bots to stream them billions of times, to collect $8m in royalties. Is there a better metaphor for late-stage capitalism than burning resources to make songs that are never listened to, then steaming them to robots that will never hear them, ad infinitum?"

FT: "AI hallucinations haunt users more than job losses"

"@michellemanafy@journa.host

From Germany to Mexico, users of AI say their biggest concern is not being replaced by the technology but its propensity to make mistakes, according to one of the largest global surveys of AI use conducted by Claude/ Anthropic."

"US Air Force B-1B Bombers Denied Access to European Union Airspace.. The unusual flight path is a direct result of hardening stances in Madrid and Paris. While the UK and the US remain closely aligned on the necessity of the strikes, France and Spain have officially denied overflight permissions for missions categorized as 'offensive'"

[-]

NYT: "U.S. Lifts Fertilizer Sanctions on Belarus as Iran War"

"This week, the US Treasury lifted all oil sanctions on Iran. For 30 days. 140 million barrels of Iranian crude, sitting on ships at sea, may now be sold freely on the global market. Including to the United States itself.

In yuan.

The United States is purchasing, with Chinese currency, oil from the country it is currently bombing?! The same oil that funds the missiles that just shot down an F-35 for the first time. The same missiles that are redecorating allied oil infrastructure."

"@pikesley@mastodon.me.uk

"BUT THE #LLM HELPS ME CHURN OUT BOILERPLATE" I am once again begging you to try to imagine working towards a world where we don't need the boilerplate"

"@futzle@old.mermaid.town

I connected my Bosch washing machine to the Internet so that it could tell me when it finishes a load, and now I am getting firm admonitions that frankly read like veiled threats.

'The washing machine has detected too much foam. An additional washing cycle has been activated. Use less soap next time.'

'The supplied voltage is too unstable to operate the appliance. Operation is stopped until the voltage is stable.'

'Please remember to perform a drum cleaning soon so that your appliance can continue to deliver good results.'"

F24: "EU-wide.. property prices jumped by 15.5 percent between 2021 and 2024, according to Eurostat."

"According to leaks.. Trump is demanding GCC states pay $5 trillion to sustain the war, or 2.5 trillion as a fee for stopping it"

"Trump Demands Trillions from GCC for Iran War...The claim emerged March 20 on BBC Arabic from analyst Salem Al-Jahoori"

"How an F-35 Got Hit by Iranian Missile"

[-]

TCN: "Neocons and globalists bombard Joe Kent with the most predictable attacks imaginable. Israel continues to disrespect the United States. The Pentagon asks Americans to reach deep into their pockets for the Iran War. "

L'Orient Today: "Intense clashes between Hezbollah and Israel in Taybeh.. Announcing several attacks carried out during these clashes, Hezbollah said it had destroyed six Israeli Merkava tanks since midnight"

"Enshittified with AI". Now they get it.

Windows Central: "Originally announced in 2024, Microsoft's plan to integrate Copilot across various areas of the Windows 11.. has been shelved as the company reevaluates its AI approach in the OS..

People familiar with Microsoft's plans say the company is moving to reduce AI bloat across Windows 11 this year, and is striving to be more tactful about where the Copilot brand and AI experiences appear in system apps and interfaces. This is all part of a larger effort to address major criticism and concerns from users who believe Windows 11 has become bloated and enshittified with AI."

It's pointless to seek "points of leverage" trying to find that "one thing that will achieve something". We are past that. US pushed another country to fight for its very existence, previous admins pushed Russia, this one, though it was hoped it had learned from the lesson of Ukraine, did Iran.

Iranian analyst Marandi says even if Hormuz opens, it won't matter, because there won't be any oil going through it.

Another suboptimal idea.. Iran has been hitting American bases all over the Gulf, US will be giving them a new target to strike at if they invade Chabahar or Konarak.

"@BraudelMarx

To me the idea of the US invading Kharg Island is a headfake. US military planners will want to repeat that greatest of all US amphibious landings: Inchon. So I could at the limit see them try to take Chabahar Port on the Gulf of Oman, not far from the Pakistani border. The idea would be a bit like Ukraine’s Kursk incursion, grab something valuable in the hopes of trading it for something even more valuable. In this case they would take Chabahar Port and insist on the opening of the Strait of Hormuz to get it back."

This is good.. But then there are other conflicting comments. Sometimes the war is "done, over", other times it is "do this, or else".. Now there are plans for a ground invasion?

So... not a donkey.

"Trump just called Iran's leaders 'very smart players' with 'very high IQ' in the Oval Office—framing the crisis as a masterful chess game."

Firstpost: "Netanyahu had to prove he was alive 3 times"

The Lever: "Skiing, more than ever before, has become a pastime for the elite. Single-day lift tickets at popular resorts now regularly exceed $300, prices that haven’t fallen even as ski slopes in the West suffer through a historically dry season. That’s likely because many resorts have already locked skiers into season passes like the Epic Pass and Ikon Pass that can cost 1,000 dollars or more up front, regardless of weather conditions.

Two main operators behind those passes, Vail Resorts (Epic) and Alterra Mountain Company (Ikon), run dozens of resorts nationwide, allowing them to raise prices with impunity. The companies have also consolidated resort-adjacent lodging, food, retail, and transportation into captive-market moneymaking machines that can cost visitors thousands of dollars per day."

TASS: "Iran warns of retaliatory strikes against US infrastructural facilities in Middle East"

F24: "Iran strikes Israeli nuclear town in retaliation for Natanz attack amid escalating conflict"

Glide bombs have little radar and heat signature. No heat because most glide bombs do not have their own propulsion, they merely "glide" like a sailplane, or hang glider. Their downside is the range. There are always trade offs.

Russia does not have total air superiority over Ukraine either, this is true, they cannot use their glide bombs with impunity, everywhere. Where they can use them it is effective, the bombs need to be dropped right outside SAM range, and their modified FABs have 60-70 km reach. But obviously they also have a ground troop component that are grinding away at that frontline we massive artillery backup. US cannot replicate that against Iran easily. Where do they enter from? Afghanistan? They left, whose plan was initiated by Trump. From the sea, from the southern direction is crazy.

The F-35 was hit by a heat seeking missile apparently. The idea one can make an aircraft completely invisible to detection is absurd. Russians have been preparing against stealth tech since Desert Storm. When the tech first appeared on the battlefield in 1990 they (and the Iraqis) were shocked, no doubt. But they soon developed countermeasures. Clearly so did the Iranians (being US' favorite pinata, they knew the day would come).

Jake Gyllenhaal: "The only way I can move past the absurdity of what I do, is to commit to the point of absurdity."

I mostly ignore those "AI" summaries.. If I wanted the roulette wheel I'd use the roulette wheel, with the mindset ready for what it can spew out.

"@GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social

I just googled something and Google put its AI summary top, which incorrectly used a Facebook post - misinterpreting it. The Facebook post itself was an AI summary of a user post - which AI had also misinterpreted. The result is the Google answer was just total bollocks."

W.E. was a marshal, a government man, not "cowboy". The cowboys were the bad guys in the movie, painted as lawless bandits. People forget the backdrop, the time period of the era of Western movies. Those events mostly took place around post Antabellum America, and the Civil War. The mainstay weapon of the movies, the double-action Colt, was army issue, it was designed, built for the government.

Kurt Russell's son is playing the younger version of him on Monarch. He named the guy Wyatt, after Wyatt Earp apparently #Tombstone

Monarch second season is okay.. The first was Woke. This one is neutral on its messaging, it manages to stay interesting enough. A bit dull at times but it chugs along.

If the insurers will not insure LLMs, that strengthens the case companies staying away purchasing LLM based solutions. Would LLM model providers like Anthropic, OpenAI, Google accept liability in case of catastrophic failure? These things are trained on petabytes of data, who can tell which part of that junk throws off their balance, leading to failure?

The Register: "[L]arge insurers have become wary of underwriting policies that cover companies against AI risk.. Insurers.. are already lobbying state-level insurance regulators to win a carve-out in business insurance liability policies so they are not obligated to cover AI-related workflows... [Expert asks] 'The question here is if it's all so great, why are the insurance underwriters going to great lengths to prohibit coverage for these things? They're generally pretty good at risk profiling.'"

#RIP

"Chuck Norris once counted to infinity.. twice."