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Google’s AI Mushrooms Could Have ‘Devastating Consequences’
Google is serving AI-generated images of mushrooms when users search for some species, a risky and potentially fatal error for foragers who are trying to figure out what mushrooms are safe to eat.
I would trust a dusty old field guide from the 1800s before I trusted Google for foraging tips
WP Engine sends cease and desist to Automattic
The plot thickens 👀
Start auditing and controlling the AI models accessing your content
I don’t use Cloudflare anymore but I think this is pretty cool. They have a new thing where you can filter and block AI crawlers and even, somehow… charge them for the data you allow them to use?
Site owners will have the ability to set a price for their site, or sections of their site, and to then charge model providers based on their scans and the price you have set.
Half of it kinda sounds too good to be true and the other half just sounds like an ad for a new Cloudflare product but I’m intrigued 🤔
Caffeinated ramen in a squeeze tube…
Boost Noodle is a new kind of ramen for players who “want to eat easily with one hand while playing games,““not get their expensive and important gaming equipment dirty,” and “want to eat something closer to a meal rather than a jelly drink or beverage.”
We are living in the dumbest possible timeline. Or the smartest. I’m not sure anymore 🤷
A Bay Area boy was kidnapped from a park in 1951. He’s just been found alive.
Whoa. You always hear about cold cases like this but never ones where they actually find them
Researcher reveals ‘catastrophic’ security flaw in the Arc browser
Arc has a feature called Boosts that allows you to customize any website with custom CSS and Javascript.
Unfortunately our Firebase ACLs were misconfigured…This allowed any Boost to be assigned to any user (provided you had their userID), and thus activate it for them, leading to custom CSS or JS running on the website the boost was active on.
This kinda stuff is why I stick with Safari and Firefox
Squid Game Season 2’s First Clip Brings Bullets, Fire, and Fresh Meat
Netflix has shared a tantalizingly brief look at what to expect when the smash hit series returns in December.
Don’t even care about the trailer tbh. Just stoked to hear it’s finally coming back in December!
Documentary about the largest cave system in the world, Son Doong in Vietnam. I’ve gotta find a way to watch this! There’s live showings at a few theaters but streaming is only in the UK right now
YouTube confirms your pause screen is now fair game for ads
YouTube claims that the pause ads are actually designed to let the company offer you a “less interruptive” experience, but it didn’t tell us that its normal ads will appear any less frequently as a result.
I watch YouTube more than any other streaming service but it’s unusable if you don’t pay for Premium. Or have uBlock Origin. Premium is worth it to me though. I wanna support the creators in some way but definitely not through being spammed with ads every five minutes
The “Third State” That Lies Beyond The Boundaries Of Life And Death
“Life and death are traditionally viewed as opposites,” Noble told IFLScience. “However, the emergence of new multicellular lifeforms from the cells of a dead organism introduces a ‘third state’ that lies beyond the conventional boundaries of life and death.”
There’s always a secret third option
Void Text Editor: Open-Source Alternative to Cursor
VS Code is to modern text editors what Chromium is to browsers: a fork magnet. A slew of niche spins have emerged, each putting their own spin on Microsoft’s massively popular original.The latest to join the fray is Void.
Void is positioning itself as a free, open-source rival to Cursor, albeit with notable differences.While Void is AI-centric it’s not chained to a specific set of cloud-based, proprietary LLMs like Cursor it. It aims to work just as well with locally hosted LLMs through Ollama.
[Void] 👀
Mozilla is shutting down its Mastodon instance
We’ve made the hard decision to end our experiment with Mozilla.social and will shut down the Mastodon instance on December 17, 2024. Thank you for being part of the Mozilla.social community and providing feedback during our closed beta.
They’re awfully wishy washy these days
Ohio sheriff instructs residents to list homes with Harris-Walz campaign signs
“When people ask me … What’s gonna happen if the Flip – Flopping, Laughing Hyena Wins??” Zuchowski wrote, referring to Harris. “I say … write down all the addresses of the people who had her signs in their yards!” Referring to immigrants as “Illegal human ‘Locust’”, Zuchowski added: “We’ll already have the addresses of the their New families … who supported their arrival!”
Of course this shit head is from Ohio. This is who we elect to uphold the law here, I guess 🤬
Inclusive advertising boosts sales & increases brand loyalty, new study finds
The research, based on an analysis of 392 brands across 58 countries, reveals that inclusive advertising can boost short-term sales by nearly 3.5% and drive long-term sales by over 16%.
Inclusive advertising also persuades 62% of consumers to choose a product and enhances brand loyalty for 15% of shoppers
Being inclusive and respectful of marginalized customers, like… actually treating them like people can be good for business? What a concept
Lately I’ve had an obsession with Brutalist design. Stuff like The Brutalist Report and back when I used Mastodon, Brutaldon. I discovered brutalistwebsites.com this morning. I think I’m going to spend a lot of time here today.
Biden moves to crack down on Shein and Temu, slow shipments into US
“over the last 10 years, the number of shipments entering the United States claiming the de minimis exemption has increased significantly, from approximately 140 million a year to over 1 billion a year.” And the “majority of shipments entering the United States claiming the de minimis exemption originate from several China-founded e-commerce platforms,” Biden said.
Any time I hear “Temu” I think of that South Park episode where all the grandparents are compulsively buying cheap junk from the Home Shopping Network
Achieving optical transparency in live animals with absorbing molecules
…an aqueous solution of a common food color approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, tartrazine, has the effect of reversibly making the skin, muscle, and connective tissues transparent in live rodents.
The food coloring used in Doritos and Mountain Dew can make mouse skin transparent in high concentrations. I originally saw an article about this on The Onion and thought it was a joke, but it’s legit!
Boar’s Head Shuts Down Virginia Meat Plant After 9 Deaths Linked to Listeria
I’m sure they’ll do all they can to ensure the other facilities are up to code but it makes ya wonder how it got so bad in the first place. Shit happens but I don’t think I’ll be eating Boar’s Head any time soon 🤢
Flappy Bird announces its return, but with a… twist
So, who is the Flappy Bird Foundation? Well, get ready for a big ol' bummer. When you dig deeper, you realize the foundation specializes in the selling of everyone’s favorite Ts, NFTs.
Yes, unfortunately, the company behind the game’s return snagged the copyright after inactivity and is using it to sling crypto. Dong himself is not directly involved here.
I was so excited for Flappy Bird to come back but not like this 🙃
Music industry’s 1990s hard drives, like all HDDs, are dying
You cannot trust any medium, so you copy important things over and over, into fresh storage. “Optical media rots, magnetic media rots and loses magnetic charge, bearings seize, flash storage loses charge, etc.,” writes user abracadaniel. “Entropy wins, sometimes much faster than you’d expect.”
Backups are important