(no subject)
Oct. 20th, 2025 07:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
One of the things I really appreciate about counseling is that I can express the breadth of things that are good in my life, or bad, and I don't have to tailor it. Then I can dig into why things are good or bad for me and not get told to go easy and it's really just ok and I'm ruining the vibe or something else dismissive.
Also: tried birth control pill again last night. Not good for muscle pain, abdominal pain, or dissociation. So I guess we'll see how long going without seems safe? I know that theoretically side effects can subside etc but ugh.
Also: tried birth control pill again last night. Not good for muscle pain, abdominal pain, or dissociation. So I guess we'll see how long going without seems safe? I know that theoretically side effects can subside etc but ugh.
Where are we on X Chat security?
Oct. 20th, 2025 03:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
AWS had an outage today and Signal was unavailable for some users for a while. This has confused some people, including Elon Musk, who are concerned that having a dependency on AWS means that Signal could somehow be compromised by anyone with sufficient influence over AWS (it can't). Which means we're back to the richest man in the world recommending his own "X Chat", saying
Elon is either uninformed about his own product, lying, or both.
As I wrote back in June, X Chat genuinely end-to-end encrypted, but ownership of the keys is complicated. The encryption key is stored using the Juicebox protocol, sharded between multiple backends. Two of these are asserted to be HSM backed - a discussion of the commissioning ceremony was recently posted here. I have not watched the almost 7 hours of video to verify that this was performed correctly, and I also haven't been able to verify that the public keys included in the post were the keys generated during the ceremony, although that may be down to me just not finding the appropriate point in the video (sorry, Twitter's video hosting doesn't appear to have any skip feature and would frequently just sit spinning if I tried to seek to far and I should probably just download them and figure it out but I'm not doing that now). With enough effort it would probably also have been possible to fake the entire thing - I have no reason to believe that this has happened, but it's not externally verifiable.
But let's assume these published public keys are legitimately the ones used in the HSM Juicebox realms[1] and that everything was done correctly. Does that prevent Elon from obtaining your key and decrypting your messages? No.
On startup, the X Chat client makes an API call called GetPublicKeysResult, and the public keys of the realms are returned. Right now when I make that call I get the public keys listed above, so there's at least some indication that I'm going to be communicating with actual HSMs. But what if that API call returned different keys? Could Elon stick a proxy in front of the HSMs and grab a cleartext portion of the key shards? Yes, he absolutely could, and then he'd be able to decrypt your messages.
(I will accept that there is a plausible argument that Elon is telling the truth in that even if you held a gun to his head he's not smart enough to be able to do this himself, but that'd be true even if there were no security whatsoever, so it still says nothing about the security of his product)
The solution to this is remote attestation - a process where the device you're speaking to proves its identity to you. In theory the endpoint could attest that it's an HSM running this specific code, and we could look at the Juicebox repo and verify that it's that code and hasn't been tampered with, and then we'd know that our communication channel was secure. Elon hasn't done that, despite it being table stakes for this sort of thing (Signal uses remote attestation to verify the enclave code used for private contact discovery, for instance, which ensures that the client will refuse to hand over any data until it's verified the identity and state of the enclave). There's no excuse whatsoever to build a new end-to-end encrypted messenger which relies on a network service for security without providing a trustworthy mechanism to verify you're speaking to the real service.
We know how to do this properly. We have done for years. Launching without it is unforgivable.
[1] There are three Juicebox realms overall, one of which doesn't appear to use HSMs, but you need at least two in order to obtain the key so at least part of the key will always be held in HSMs
The messages are fully encrypted with no advertising hooks or strange “AWS dependencies” such that I can’t read your messages even if someone put a gun to my head.
Elon is either uninformed about his own product, lying, or both.
As I wrote back in June, X Chat genuinely end-to-end encrypted, but ownership of the keys is complicated. The encryption key is stored using the Juicebox protocol, sharded between multiple backends. Two of these are asserted to be HSM backed - a discussion of the commissioning ceremony was recently posted here. I have not watched the almost 7 hours of video to verify that this was performed correctly, and I also haven't been able to verify that the public keys included in the post were the keys generated during the ceremony, although that may be down to me just not finding the appropriate point in the video (sorry, Twitter's video hosting doesn't appear to have any skip feature and would frequently just sit spinning if I tried to seek to far and I should probably just download them and figure it out but I'm not doing that now). With enough effort it would probably also have been possible to fake the entire thing - I have no reason to believe that this has happened, but it's not externally verifiable.
But let's assume these published public keys are legitimately the ones used in the HSM Juicebox realms[1] and that everything was done correctly. Does that prevent Elon from obtaining your key and decrypting your messages? No.
On startup, the X Chat client makes an API call called GetPublicKeysResult, and the public keys of the realms are returned. Right now when I make that call I get the public keys listed above, so there's at least some indication that I'm going to be communicating with actual HSMs. But what if that API call returned different keys? Could Elon stick a proxy in front of the HSMs and grab a cleartext portion of the key shards? Yes, he absolutely could, and then he'd be able to decrypt your messages.
(I will accept that there is a plausible argument that Elon is telling the truth in that even if you held a gun to his head he's not smart enough to be able to do this himself, but that'd be true even if there were no security whatsoever, so it still says nothing about the security of his product)
The solution to this is remote attestation - a process where the device you're speaking to proves its identity to you. In theory the endpoint could attest that it's an HSM running this specific code, and we could look at the Juicebox repo and verify that it's that code and hasn't been tampered with, and then we'd know that our communication channel was secure. Elon hasn't done that, despite it being table stakes for this sort of thing (Signal uses remote attestation to verify the enclave code used for private contact discovery, for instance, which ensures that the client will refuse to hand over any data until it's verified the identity and state of the enclave). There's no excuse whatsoever to build a new end-to-end encrypted messenger which relies on a network service for security without providing a trustworthy mechanism to verify you're speaking to the real service.
We know how to do this properly. We have done for years. Launching without it is unforgivable.
[1] There are three Juicebox realms overall, one of which doesn't appear to use HSMs, but you need at least two in order to obtain the key so at least part of the key will always be held in HSMs
AWS outage
Oct. 20th, 2025 10:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png)
DW is seeing some issues due to today's Amazon outage. For right now it looks like the site is loading, but it may be slow. Some of our processes like notifications and journal search don't appear to be running and can't be started due to rate limiting or capacity issues. DW could go down later if Amazon isn't able to improve things soon, but our services should return to normal when Amazon has cleared up the outage.
Edit: all services are running as of 16:12 CDT, but there is definitely still a backlog of notifications to get through.
Edit 2: and at 18:20 CDT everything's been running normally for about the last hour.
Edit: all services are running as of 16:12 CDT, but there is definitely still a backlog of notifications to get through.
Edit 2: and at 18:20 CDT everything's been running normally for about the last hour.
Why Should You Switch to Linux, (Mostly) Wrong Answers Only
Oct. 20th, 2025 12:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
The Document Foundation, responsible for the LibreOffice suite of office tools, posted a blog post in anticipation of the end of Windows 10 support with 10 reasons to ditch Windows and go to Linux instead. I appreciate their advocacy for such things, but I think their ten reasons are not actually good ones for the adoption of Linux, but realizing this means that I'm probably going to have to put down a blog post about it, rather than a social media quip. So, here we go once again, and I'm going to once again be a regular Linux user about this, rather than some superuser sysadmin.
( It's a Not Top Ten List more than a Top Ten List )
( It's a Not Top Ten List more than a Top Ten List )
(no subject)
Oct. 19th, 2025 09:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Today I went to the Renaissance faire!
Yes, this means MD faire, _obviously_. I should maybe try out King Richard's again sometime, since I'm running on decade+ old memories, but honestly, nothing I've heard about it since has implied that I actually should try it out. So if I want to go to a rennfaire it means I pack a bag and get on the train and head down to Maryland!
I went with my mom, and my partner Tuesday, and also Tuesday's mom and sibling and sibling's-partner. We saw some shows! We ate some food off of sticks! I bought some pretty shiny things! It was a good time!
I have forgotten that I pretty deeply hate attending jousts, which is a shame. I enjoy the part where there are impressive feats of horsemanship. I really _really_ do not like the part where we are baying for the death of the competitors. Stage combat is neat and fun to watch from a technical and talent perspective! It feels...it feels pretty uncomfortable to be in the stands surrounded by people who do not seem to be appreciating this aspect of it and instead just want violence.
Also very loud and overstimulating. I would enjoy more being much further onto the edges of the crowd.
I was very happy to get a new coin necklace, and was excited by more designs than would fit on one coin, which feels hopeful for the future. I own five of them now! And also one of the new designs this year was _spider_ which feels amazing prescient for a year in which I'm increasingly using these as The One Official Jewelry I Wear Like From A Spellcraft And Ritual Perspective. Good to have a spider included!
I also bought matching fidget rings for me and Tuesday, because they're quite lovely. And two pairs of hairsticks! One set from Kathleen (although she herself wasn't present) at least in part as a reminder to go buy a bunch more from her through the internet. The other set is really nice maile flowers that I quite liked and obtained from a place near the jousting field. It's possible I shouldn't be left unsupervised for too long at faire, or I will find nice things to use to put up my hair :3
And the weather was perfect to wander around! Sitting was good, standing was good, there was nice breeze so I wasn't ever overdressed but I also wasn't chilly -I brought my gloves and didn't need them, and decided at the last minute to leave the midlevel cloak in the car (I wore the lightlevel and didn't even consider the heavy one)
We watched the Skum perform Othello, which was especially interesting because I don't actually know that one --got a much better idea now though! And later we watched Hilby the Skinny German Juggle Boy, who Tuesday and I saw when we came to faire together two years ago. He remains _extremely_ funny. I also saw a few swords get swallowed, and quite enjoyed some Piper Jones from afar.
And I stopped and had a nice conversation with Miss Nancy, and we saw Pepto in passing (with an amazing viking ship wagon for her kids), and I chatted a bit with the Beef Jerky Guy.
So it was overall very good! I am pleased to be home now though, which is to say, at Cameron and Jake's place in Bal'mer. Tonight I need to finish some sub plan stuff, so that tomorrow I get to stress-free ride a train back home. (I do like riding a train, except when they have two hour delays that start late enough that mom already kicked her friends out and started driving to the station to pick me up. Looking at you, way down.)
I hope your life is also good.
~Sor
MOOP!
Yes, this means MD faire, _obviously_. I should maybe try out King Richard's again sometime, since I'm running on decade+ old memories, but honestly, nothing I've heard about it since has implied that I actually should try it out. So if I want to go to a rennfaire it means I pack a bag and get on the train and head down to Maryland!
I went with my mom, and my partner Tuesday, and also Tuesday's mom and sibling and sibling's-partner. We saw some shows! We ate some food off of sticks! I bought some pretty shiny things! It was a good time!
I have forgotten that I pretty deeply hate attending jousts, which is a shame. I enjoy the part where there are impressive feats of horsemanship. I really _really_ do not like the part where we are baying for the death of the competitors. Stage combat is neat and fun to watch from a technical and talent perspective! It feels...it feels pretty uncomfortable to be in the stands surrounded by people who do not seem to be appreciating this aspect of it and instead just want violence.
Also very loud and overstimulating. I would enjoy more being much further onto the edges of the crowd.
I was very happy to get a new coin necklace, and was excited by more designs than would fit on one coin, which feels hopeful for the future. I own five of them now! And also one of the new designs this year was _spider_ which feels amazing prescient for a year in which I'm increasingly using these as The One Official Jewelry I Wear Like From A Spellcraft And Ritual Perspective. Good to have a spider included!
I also bought matching fidget rings for me and Tuesday, because they're quite lovely. And two pairs of hairsticks! One set from Kathleen (although she herself wasn't present) at least in part as a reminder to go buy a bunch more from her through the internet. The other set is really nice maile flowers that I quite liked and obtained from a place near the jousting field. It's possible I shouldn't be left unsupervised for too long at faire, or I will find nice things to use to put up my hair :3
And the weather was perfect to wander around! Sitting was good, standing was good, there was nice breeze so I wasn't ever overdressed but I also wasn't chilly -I brought my gloves and didn't need them, and decided at the last minute to leave the midlevel cloak in the car (I wore the lightlevel and didn't even consider the heavy one)
We watched the Skum perform Othello, which was especially interesting because I don't actually know that one --got a much better idea now though! And later we watched Hilby the Skinny German Juggle Boy, who Tuesday and I saw when we came to faire together two years ago. He remains _extremely_ funny. I also saw a few swords get swallowed, and quite enjoyed some Piper Jones from afar.
And I stopped and had a nice conversation with Miss Nancy, and we saw Pepto in passing (with an amazing viking ship wagon for her kids), and I chatted a bit with the Beef Jerky Guy.
So it was overall very good! I am pleased to be home now though, which is to say, at Cameron and Jake's place in Bal'mer. Tonight I need to finish some sub plan stuff, so that tomorrow I get to stress-free ride a train back home. (I do like riding a train, except when they have two hour delays that start late enough that mom already kicked her friends out and started driving to the station to pick me up. Looking at you, way down.)
I hope your life is also good.
~Sor
MOOP!
Seasonal
Oct. 19th, 2025 11:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Snow fell the last few days, and a little even stuck. Canada Post is on strike and my bulbs are in it, but I think I planted them about this time last year, and the ground isn't frozen yet. I'm hoping they arrive not too damaged after sitting in a warm spot for over a month.
The provincial public service is on strike too, which I suspect means my disability application won't be accepted or processed until they're done, and after that I imagine a backlog-- no wait, I think this was a federal one? Anyhow, neither they nor insurance has asked me for anything in the last two weeks, which is nice.
The pottery class has one more class. We did glazing yesterday and the glazing area is pretty small, so I peeled people off one at a time and we worked on their stuff while everyone else got free play time, and most ended up scultping. This is excellent, since sculpting is not my strong point, and they got to do a bunch of it without my needing to instruct on more than the principles of attaching things. I like people doing people things, I guess.
It's seed swap season (did I already say that?) and the Canadian seed swap fb groups put up all their stuff and arranged groups -- the way it works is you send in ten of the same variety to a central volunteer, and get back nine different varieties (The tenth one goes to a prize that I guess folks get entered into, or into mutual-aid style packages). So groups of ten people, none of whom have the same variety to send in, get made in all sorts of categories: paste tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, brassicas & root crops (not sure why those are together), lettuce and herbs, etc. Then the landrace organization, who I believe are now labelling themselves as adaptation gardening people, have asked for seed donations in Canada so I'll send in a bunch of stuff to them; they distribute it free. They'll get some very fun tomatoes.
All this has prompted me to start seeding tomatoes more seriously. I have trays of now-ripe tomatoes on every surface downstairs and I need to get the seeds out of them, and ideally them into a salsa or something and canned or at least to pigs. Josh will be here in a week and it would be nice if there were some surfaces not covered in tomatoes for him.
Meanwhile my sauerkraut has gone from fermenting in the cool pantry to the fridge. It's perfect, crunchy and sour and lightly spicy since I put hot pepper shreds in most of my sauerkrauts. Now there's kimchi fermenting in that spot, I have a couple more gallons to make. I have yet to sample the test batch to know how I should tweak it but was very happy to find diakon at the grocery store here.
I enjoy chattering away about the garden and wish I had the wherewithal to do more. I do want to update that three of the muscovy babies from this spring survived -- two male -- and nine ducklings, and now there are seven chicks feathering out. The muscovies from Shelly's farm are doing well here, competing for my napa cabbage and flying all over to hang out on top of things, like muscovies do. It's like having animate jewels.
I'm not fully sure how to divide the animals for winter. I'd like to get the goosehouse mucked out fully but it's slow going for me; if I do it right I can put aspen chips in it, and they're easier to muck out than straw when they've semi-composted. I'd like to use the actual greenhouse in the spring, so I want whoever is in it to not nest in it, or to have a place to go in February that's snug for nesting and predator-free in that lean time. Right now Solly is somehow getting in to sleep in it and I think she's only letting the chicks in with her. For that matter, I'd like to get the pots of frosted dead tmatoes out of the woodshedgreenhouse and put wood in there. Hopefully Josh can help with that.
This is probably more going on than I should have. My mind feels a little clearer, though I still can't remember students names from one moment to the next and when washing my hands I've been drying them before rinsing them lately. My muscles feel softer. Still off the pill, eating hurts less and is easier, though my muscles really do feel like they're made from sticks and playdough. At some point I expect my hormonal system to notice it's supposed to do things and start up again, at which point I'll rev up the pills and the various eating medications I've been given, but right now I have a little calm space.
The provincial public service is on strike too, which I suspect means my disability application won't be accepted or processed until they're done, and after that I imagine a backlog-- no wait, I think this was a federal one? Anyhow, neither they nor insurance has asked me for anything in the last two weeks, which is nice.
The pottery class has one more class. We did glazing yesterday and the glazing area is pretty small, so I peeled people off one at a time and we worked on their stuff while everyone else got free play time, and most ended up scultping. This is excellent, since sculpting is not my strong point, and they got to do a bunch of it without my needing to instruct on more than the principles of attaching things. I like people doing people things, I guess.
It's seed swap season (did I already say that?) and the Canadian seed swap fb groups put up all their stuff and arranged groups -- the way it works is you send in ten of the same variety to a central volunteer, and get back nine different varieties (The tenth one goes to a prize that I guess folks get entered into, or into mutual-aid style packages). So groups of ten people, none of whom have the same variety to send in, get made in all sorts of categories: paste tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, brassicas & root crops (not sure why those are together), lettuce and herbs, etc. Then the landrace organization, who I believe are now labelling themselves as adaptation gardening people, have asked for seed donations in Canada so I'll send in a bunch of stuff to them; they distribute it free. They'll get some very fun tomatoes.
All this has prompted me to start seeding tomatoes more seriously. I have trays of now-ripe tomatoes on every surface downstairs and I need to get the seeds out of them, and ideally them into a salsa or something and canned or at least to pigs. Josh will be here in a week and it would be nice if there were some surfaces not covered in tomatoes for him.
Meanwhile my sauerkraut has gone from fermenting in the cool pantry to the fridge. It's perfect, crunchy and sour and lightly spicy since I put hot pepper shreds in most of my sauerkrauts. Now there's kimchi fermenting in that spot, I have a couple more gallons to make. I have yet to sample the test batch to know how I should tweak it but was very happy to find diakon at the grocery store here.
I enjoy chattering away about the garden and wish I had the wherewithal to do more. I do want to update that three of the muscovy babies from this spring survived -- two male -- and nine ducklings, and now there are seven chicks feathering out. The muscovies from Shelly's farm are doing well here, competing for my napa cabbage and flying all over to hang out on top of things, like muscovies do. It's like having animate jewels.
I'm not fully sure how to divide the animals for winter. I'd like to get the goosehouse mucked out fully but it's slow going for me; if I do it right I can put aspen chips in it, and they're easier to muck out than straw when they've semi-composted. I'd like to use the actual greenhouse in the spring, so I want whoever is in it to not nest in it, or to have a place to go in February that's snug for nesting and predator-free in that lean time. Right now Solly is somehow getting in to sleep in it and I think she's only letting the chicks in with her. For that matter, I'd like to get the pots of frosted dead tmatoes out of the woodshedgreenhouse and put wood in there. Hopefully Josh can help with that.
This is probably more going on than I should have. My mind feels a little clearer, though I still can't remember students names from one moment to the next and when washing my hands I've been drying them before rinsing them lately. My muscles feel softer. Still off the pill, eating hurts less and is easier, though my muscles really do feel like they're made from sticks and playdough. At some point I expect my hormonal system to notice it's supposed to do things and start up again, at which point I'll rev up the pills and the various eating medications I've been given, but right now I have a little calm space.
Open-Source Machismo
Oct. 19th, 2025 02:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
So LibreOffice does not come with autosave enabled by default.
It's surprising that it took me this long to realize that, but *autorecover* comes by default (set for every half-hour, which I think is a bit long) so it hasn't really come up until I had a few crashes in ways that didn't trigger the autorecover. What I actually went looking for was whether there were backup copies somewhere, but instead I came upon a bunch of posts in various discussion places of people going "Why is this not enabled by default" and people responding, essentially, "if you can't handle saving manually go back to Windows."
It does *exist*, but you have to go like four menus deep to enable it.
There is no reason not to default to autosave being on except attitude.
Half the time I wonder if open-source people actually *want* uptake of their stuff or if they're hoping they can keep out the undesirables by making it hard to use.
It's surprising that it took me this long to realize that, but *autorecover* comes by default (set for every half-hour, which I think is a bit long) so it hasn't really come up until I had a few crashes in ways that didn't trigger the autorecover. What I actually went looking for was whether there were backup copies somewhere, but instead I came upon a bunch of posts in various discussion places of people going "Why is this not enabled by default" and people responding, essentially, "if you can't handle saving manually go back to Windows."
It does *exist*, but you have to go like four menus deep to enable it.
There is no reason not to default to autosave being on except attitude.
Half the time I wonder if open-source people actually *want* uptake of their stuff or if they're hoping they can keep out the undesirables by making it hard to use.
Popular music
Oct. 19th, 2025 03:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I was listening to some older Blondie recently and I noticed a couple of things. One is the bass guitar line: there's often some decent contribution coming from it, at least in my amateur opinion. It's fairly rich and skilful, enough that I am glad to have noticed. Another is that, although Debbie Harry's vocal definitely helps to make the song at times, it also often sounds technically rather imperfect to me. R. suggested that, basically, she has a good voice, it's just fitting the song well; perhaps it's all as intended. (As a point of comparison, here some years back, I mentioned Chrissie Hynde in the Pretenders' Glastonbury set; I always think well of her vocals.)
So much more to know
Oct. 19th, 2025 03:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I probably mentioned that working in life sciences for years underscored for me just how little we know of biology or, more optimistically, how very much more interesting and valuable research remains ahead of us. With my current state of learning, in having half a science background across a broad range, it's also true that I know just enough to know how much more there is to know in many spheres.
The above occurred to me in the bathtub this morning. Sure, I've taken college-level physics, thermodynamics, etc. but, looking at the condensation on the cold tap, I realized: I don't know why colder air can't hold as much moisture, I don't even have an intuitive model for that. Sure, warmer air means a higher fraction of the water will be gaseous but that feels rather insufficient to explain what I see. It's not specifically a matter of much concern, just an underlining of how very much I still don't know. Perhaps it's just a matter of cranking the numbers, maybe there's more condensation than I'd expect because I'm seeing moisture from a 3d volume accreting onto a 2d surface, but it's very likely that I just don't understand it anywhere near enough. I mean, a bit hotter, then the surface doesn't seem at all damp.
Topics like thermodynamics often come to my mind because, in experiencing day-to-day life around me, it is fun to indulge in imagining what is actually happening: heat transfer in my mug of coffee, etc. I enjoy trying to model my environment.
The above occurred to me in the bathtub this morning. Sure, I've taken college-level physics, thermodynamics, etc. but, looking at the condensation on the cold tap, I realized: I don't know why colder air can't hold as much moisture, I don't even have an intuitive model for that. Sure, warmer air means a higher fraction of the water will be gaseous but that feels rather insufficient to explain what I see. It's not specifically a matter of much concern, just an underlining of how very much I still don't know. Perhaps it's just a matter of cranking the numbers, maybe there's more condensation than I'd expect because I'm seeing moisture from a 3d volume accreting onto a 2d surface, but it's very likely that I just don't understand it anywhere near enough. I mean, a bit hotter, then the surface doesn't seem at all damp.
Topics like thermodynamics often come to my mind because, in experiencing day-to-day life around me, it is fun to indulge in imagining what is actually happening: heat transfer in my mug of coffee, etc. I enjoy trying to model my environment.
Living in the future
Oct. 19th, 2025 03:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Nearly a decade ago, I mentioned here how science-fiction it felt to be using my mobile handset to be pulling up satellite imagery of my environs. At this point, the future feels even closer: I suspect that it's only my lack of spending that prevents me from having reasonable verbal conversations with AIs. After all, the speech recognition is now pretty good and, although Alexa's dumb as a rock, I can have good textual chats with models like Mistral. I mean, sure, they don't really understand anything and can't be relied on but they're impressive nonetheless and probably somehow soon coming to my home.
I'm not holding my breath for the post-scarcity spacefaring utopia but, at least in form, this does feel like a small landmark, even if I suspect that generative AI trained on a sea of people-output is a diversion away from advancement toward the knowledge-based reasoning for which I might hope. It's enough of a landmark that what it can seem to do is an effective distraction from what it might cost.
I'm not holding my breath for the post-scarcity spacefaring utopia but, at least in form, this does feel like a small landmark, even if I suspect that generative AI trained on a sea of people-output is a diversion away from advancement toward the knowledge-based reasoning for which I might hope. It's enough of a landmark that what it can seem to do is an effective distraction from what it might cost.
(no subject)
Oct. 16th, 2025 12:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Every once in awhile I cycle through thinking about how, in order to be considered properly disabled, one needs to perform misery about it. I think I'm generally resistant to performing the emotions I'm supposed to, and I'm acutely aware of the difference between difficulty or discomfort and unhappiness. Luckily this hasn't so far meant starvation or homelessness for me.
More than a week's break from the pill so far. Easy, sharp, long-lasting headaches and I can see how the ghosts of danger are going to slowly come back, but there is so much less both pan and discomfort in my lower torso that I'm going to ride this line a little longer.
Muscles sludgier than normal. There's so much to do in fall to get ready for the real cold, and I'm always behind. I've been starting the very slow, multi-week process of cleaning the house to get ready for Josh, that definitely doesn't help.
More than a week's break from the pill so far. Easy, sharp, long-lasting headaches and I can see how the ghosts of danger are going to slowly come back, but there is so much less both pan and discomfort in my lower torso that I'm going to ride this line a little longer.
Muscles sludgier than normal. There's so much to do in fall to get ready for the real cold, and I'm always behind. I've been starting the very slow, multi-week process of cleaning the house to get ready for Josh, that definitely doesn't help.