tweetle_beetle (u/tweetle_beetle)

tweetle_beetle commented on I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services neilzone.co.uk/2026/03/im... · Posted by u/speckx

Forgeties79 · 9 days ago

It’s absolutely safer browsing the internet now than it was when I was a kid. Getting a virus or equivalent on your phone is no small feat

tweetle_beetle · 9 days ago

Is it that much different? In the past if you downloaded the wrong file, you could get ads opening constantly, a new toolbar taking over your browser, data scraped and sent off to a mystery server, or have some process maximise your compute.

This accounted for most of the risks on the wild west internet, but the worst case scenario of permanently losing data or having to reinstall Windows was actually rarer than it was made out to be imho.

These days the common risks are the same, except they're no longer risks - all of those have been built into the fabric of everyday internet usage and criminals have been replaced by businesses. It's like the cliche about Vegas being better when it was run by the mob.

tweetle_beetle commented on Frontier AI agents violate ethical constraints 30–50% of time, pressured by KPIs arxiv.org/abs/2512.20798... · Posted by u/tiny-automates

Finbarr · a month ago

AI refusals are fascinating to me. Claude refused to build me a news scraper that would post political hot takes to twitter. But it would happily build a political news scraper. And it would happily build a twitter poster.

Side note: I wanted to build this so anyone could choose to protect themselves against being accused of having failed to take a stand on the “important issues” of the day. Just choose your political leaning and the AI would consult the correct echo chambers to repeat from.

tweetle_beetle · a month ago

The thought that someone would feel comforted by having automated software summarise the output of what is likely the output of automated software and publishing it under their name to impress other humans is so alien to me.

tweetle_beetle commented on Leaked chats expose the daily life of a scam compound's enslaved workforce wired.com/story/the-red-b... · Posted by u/smurda

tinfoilhatter · a month ago

Source for this? This just reads as blatant xenophobia...

tweetle_beetle · a month ago

Looked this up out of curiosity and came across a non-profit which produces reports on the topic and seems to be the basis for the Wikipedia article on modern slavery.

According to the 2023 Global Slavery Index, 7-8 of the top 10 countries in the world with the highest prevalence of modern slavery have a majority religion of Islam (Mauritania has disputed figures about religious prevalence with Christianity and Islam at similar levels). And none of the countries in the top 10 lowest prevalence have a majority religion of Islam. Prevalence here is used to mean estimated number of people in slavery per 1000 population.

However, the absolute figures for total people affected are proportional to the size of the country, as you would expect, with North Korea and Russia topping the list.

And if you look at driving factors, the US is the leading importer of products at risk of being produced by slavery by an order of magnitude.

https://www.walkfree.org/global-slavery-index/

tweetle_beetle commented on Updates to our web search products and Programmable Search Engine capabilities programmablesearchengine.... · Posted by u/01jonny01

vaylian · 2 months ago

Meanwhile in Europe: Qwant and Ecosia team up to build their own search index: https://blog.ecosia.org/eusp/

tweetle_beetle · 2 months ago

It's a noble effort, but they're so late to the game that it's hard to see them making a significant dent. I hope I'm wrong.

They were:

> aiming to serve 30% of French search queries [by end of 2025]

https://blog.ecosia.org/launching-our-european-search-index/

tweetle_beetle commented on Google AI Studio is now sponsoring Tailwind CSS twitter.com/OfficialLogan... · Posted by u/qwertyforce

MobiusHorizons · 2 months ago

Sponsorships are a supplemental income stream, though, right? They have paid services in addition as I understand it. So covering several full time developers seems pretty good sponsorship wise, when the maintenance should be fairly simple at this point given the maturity of the offering and the tech stack. It’s not like they have to keep up with security vulnerabilities or a mobile version update churn.

tweetle_beetle · 2 months ago

They just sell lifetime licenses to extra content at a fixed (relatively small) fee.

> Because every project is different and the way independently authored pieces of code interact can be complex and time-consuming to understand, we do not offer technical support or consulting.

https://tailwindcss.com/plus

tweetle_beetle commented on Why movies just don't feel "real" anymore old.reddit.com/r/movies/c... · Posted by u/Jun8

sph · 4 months ago

I love the thread about Barry Lyndon. I’ve seen it for the first time recently and it is clear there is no talent, or rather no money, to create something so earnest and opinionated. The problem isn’t film, isn’t digital, isn’t the ironic dialogue of modern blockbuster, isn’t lack of art sense, it’s all of the above. It is clear that film, and any other creation today, is soulless, aims at the common denominator, there is no strong opinion, no auteurship. You see that in blockbuster film, blockbuster game design, blockbuster art even. In software.

Call me old and grumpy but there is a real sense that this data- and money-driven approach is the lowest, most sterile point for artistry and creativity. ‘Art for art’s sake’ is the antithesis of the relentless pursuit of revenue and efficiency. You do not have art when you need not to offend anyone but sell the most units. When art is just another product out of the industrial line.

tweetle_beetle · 4 months ago

I think you might be looking at the film through rose tinted glasses without the broader context. Kubrick's films had been nominated for 9 Academy Awards and won 1 (he was personally nominated 3 times) by the time Barry Lyndon started filming. (He had also directed a certain Spartacus.)

Warner Brothers were keen to bankroll whatever he wanted to do, even tolerating moving the country of production due to the Troubles.

He was given some artistic freedom due to previous commercial success - ie. a "data- and money-driven approach". He also really wanted to be making a Napoleon biopic, but financing was pulled when a similar film failed at the box office, so he didn't get it all his own way.

Barry Lyndon was only a modest commercial succes. So much so that Warner Brothers hooked him up with a much safer bet for them for their next venture. He was given unfinished manuscript of The Shining, from the wildy popular best seller King for his next project, which was also simpler to produce ie. "relentless pursuit of revenue".

TLDR Making films is expensive and needs to be a commercial activity, but every now and then there's a fortunate crossover of quality and funding. This still happens but you need to look out for it.

tweetle_beetle commented on iPhone Pocket apple.com/newsroom/2025/1... · Posted by u/soheilpro

RandomBacon · 4 months ago

> "I buy more $10,000 cardigans than you buy Hanes undershirts" is kinda the definition of bragging.

Except that's not what they wrote / how they framed it.

Perhaps that's just how you perceived it. I think that speaks more about you, than it does about them.

tweetle_beetle · 4 months ago

You can construct a philosophical argument that value is all relative without having to casually drop anecdata demonstrating that you personally spend many hundreds of times more on an everyday object than is typical without consideration.

Simmel managed it ok. [1]

[1] https://brocku.ca/MeadProject/Simmel/Simmel_1900.html

tweetle_beetle commented on I analyzed the lineups at the most popular nightclubs dev.karltryggvason.com/ho... · Posted by u/kalli

zkmon · 4 months ago

In excitement over the cool-looking visualizations, we lose the sight of its usefulness. The entire article hardly has any text talking about how these visualization would be useful and to whom.

Even if this is an ask from a top-level managers hoping that it would help their decision-making, let me tell you that, this will be binned after everyone agrees that the visualizations are very cool. Decisions are driven by other factors.

tweetle_beetle · 4 months ago

Note to people considering publishing articles describing passion projects on their personal websites (especially if they may be considered exciting).

Stop!

It is vital that you first hire an independent product manager and perform market fit analysis. Ask yourself "Does my blog deliver high ROI and facilitate decision making by key stakeholders?". If not, it has no use and should not be published.

tweetle_beetle commented on PlanetScale Offering $5 Databases planetscale.com/blog/5-do... · Posted by u/ryanvogel

andreybaskov · 4 months ago

understandable, but again, "forever" as in heat death of the universe? Sadly there is no such thing as forever either.

tweetle_beetle · 4 months ago

To be fair the CEO is quite comfortable using the word 'forever'. It was used as the title of the announcement to withdraw the Hobby tier and also specifically used to justify it:

> We’ve chosen to build a company that can last forever. This is why I have made the decision to prioritize profitability for PlanetScale. https://planetscale.com/blog/planetscale-forever

tweetle_beetle commented on You already have a Git server maurycyz.com/misc/easy_gi... · Posted by u/chmaynard

chipsrafferty · 4 months ago

No, actually it's the interface. Many companies would totally host it themselves, but the interface is what gives GH value.

tweetle_beetle · 4 months ago

GitLab is around a decade old, is a solid enterprise product and has always had a very similar interface to GitHub, at times even drawing criticism for being too similar. There's more to it than that.