North American leaders take stage together for the first time
The World Cup draw marked the first time that Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has met Trump. â Read more
North American leaders take stage together for the first time
The World Cup draw marked the first time that Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has met Trump. â Read more
North American leaders take stage together for the first time
The World Cup draw marked the first time that Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has met Trump. â Read more
Breaking: Socceroos to face host country US in Menâs World Cup
Australiaâs Socceroos are set to face the US in the initial group stage of next yearâs FIFA World Cup. â Read more
The World Cup draw is here - this is how it will work
Pots, quadrants, confederation constraints, group position grids ⌠the World Cup draw is not going to be straightforward. â Read more
RoboCop Statue Rises In Detroit
alternative_right quotes a report from the Guardian: The statue looms and glints at more than 11 feet tall and weighing 3,500 pounds, looking out at the city with, how to put it ⌠a characteristically stern expression? Despite its daunting appearance and history as a crimefighter of last resort, the giant new bronze figure of the movie character RoboCop is being seen as a symbol of hope, drawing fan ⌠â Read more
Frustration and anger - why âhuge question marksâ hang over Man Utd
Ruben Amorim declared himself as angry and frustrated as his Manchester United side again lost a lead to draw 1-1 with West Ham. â Read more
Behich, Socceroos eyeing rematch against World Cup giants
The Socceroos cannot wait to learn who their opponents will be at the upcoming World Cup, especially if it allows them to handle some unfinished business. â Read more
Man Utd halted as Magassa gets first West Ham goal
Watch Premier League highlights, as Manchester United were held to a draw at home against West Ham United, as Soungoutou Magassa scored his first goal for the club. â Read more
Trump and Infantino - too close for comfort?
Fridayâs World Cup draw in Washington DC will be the latest illustration of the ever-closer relationship between US President Donald Trump and Fifa president Gianni Infantino. â Read more
A draw with a winner? The routes to northern glory at 2027 World Cup
Has the 2027 World Cup draw handed an advantage to northern hemisphere sides chasing glory? â Read more
Aboriginal healers seek to share power of âopen handsâ with Western doctors
The Ngangkaáši in Central Australia use traditional healing techniques to draw out illness with their hands. A new edition of their globally read book aims to share this knowledge Western health workers. â Read more
Got back into drawing! :)
I also made a couple (digital) collages today. Huge achievements
Hong Kong fire puts spotlight on risks of bamboo scaffolding
Hong Kongâs deadliest fire in three decades draws attention to its risky use of flammable bamboo scaffolding and mesh for building work, in a tradition dating back centuries. â Read more
Socceroos placed in second pot for FIFA World Cup draw
The Socceroos, by pot luck, have avoided some of the sportâs strongest nations for the 2026 World Cup pool stage. â Read more
Top Stories: Tim Cookâs 2026 Exit?, Mac Pro on Hold, and More
2025 is rapidly drawing to a close, but this week still saw some interesting news in the world of Apple, led by a report claiming that Tim Cookâs retirement as Apple CEO might not be too far away.
This week also saw word that the future of the Mac Pro appears to be in question, while Apple continues to work on the upcoming iOS 26.2 update and related relea ⌠â Read more
As Windows Turns 40, Microsoft Faces an AI Backlash
Microsoftâs push to transform Windows into an âagentic OSâ that allows AI agents to control PCs is drawing user backlash similar to the Windows 8 controversy, as the company marks the operating systemâs 40th anniversary this week, writes Tom Warren, a reporter at The Verge who has been covering Microsoft for nearly two decades. Windows chief Pavan Davuluri announced the ag ⌠â Read more
AI Use in âCall of Duty: Black Ops 7â Draws Fire From US Lawmaker
An anonymous reader shares a report: The use of AI in the latest Call of Duty has prompted a US lawmaker to call for regulations to prevent artificial intelligence from taking jobs away from human workers. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who represents a large swathe of Silicon Valley, took aim at Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 after buyers noticed the pop ⌠â Read more
Top Stories: Apple Silicon Turns 5, iPhone Pocket, and More
Itâs hard to believe weâre halfway through November already, as 2025 rapidly draws to a close with no firm signs of several smaller hardware updates weâve been hoping to see before the end of the year, although we did get one surprising new iPhone accessory this week.
This week also saw the fifth anniversary of the very successful Apple silicon effort on t ⌠â Read more
She Used ChatGPT To Win the Virginia Lottery, Then Donated Every Dollar
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: Winning the lottery isnât what brought Carrie Edwards her 15 minutes of fame. It was giving it all away. Standing alone in her kitchen one day in September, the Virginia woman was thunderstruck to discover she had won $150,000 in a Powerball drawing. As she was absorbing h ⌠â Read more
9000 readers told us about underquoting. Now, the government has acted
Sydneyâs real estate agents are on notice: big fines, new rules and mandated price guides are on the drawing board. â Read more
9000 readers told us about underquoting. Now, the government has acted
Sydneyâs real estate agents are on notice: big fines, new rules and mandated price guides are on the drawing board. â Read more
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@prologic@twtxt.net Letâs go through it one by one. Hereâs a wall of text that took me over 1.5 hours to write.
The criticism of AI as untrustworthy is a problem of misapplication, not capability.This section says AI should not be treated as an authority. This is actually just what I said, except the AI phrased/framed it like it was a counter-argument.
The AI also said that users must develop âAI literacyâ, again phrasing/framing it like a counter-argument. Well, that is also just what I said. I said you should treat AI output like a random blog and you should verify the sources, yadda yadda. That is âAI literacyâ, isnât it?
My text went one step further, though: I said that when you take this requirement of âAI literacyâ into account, you basically end up with a fancy search engine, with extra overhead that costs time. The AI missed/ignored this in its reply.
Okay, so, the AI also said that you should use AI tools just for drafting and brainstorming. Granted, a very rough draft of something will probably be doable. But then you have to diligently verify every little detail of this draft â okay, fine, a draft is a draft, itâs fine if it contains errors. The thing is, though, that you really must do this verification. And I claim that many people will not do it, because AI outputs look sooooo convincing, they donât feel like a draft that needs editing.
Can you, as an expert, still use an AI draft as a basis/foundation? Yeah, probably. But hereâs the kicker: You did not create that draft. You were not involved in the âthought processâ behind it. When you, a human being, make a draft, you often think something like: âOkay, I want to draw a picture of a landscape and thereâs going to be a little house, but for now, Iâll just put in a rough sketch of the house and add the details later.â You are aware of what you left out. When the AI did the draft, you are not aware of whatâs missing â even more so when every AI output already looks like a final product. For me, personally, this makes it much harder and slower to verify such a draft, and I mentioned this in my text.
Skill Erosion vs. Skill EvolutionYou, @prologic@twtxt.net, also mentioned this in your car tyre example.
In my text, I gave two analogies: The gym analogy and the Google Translate analogy. Your car tyre example falls in the same category, but Geminiâs calculator example is different (and, again, gaslight-y, see below).
What I meant in my text: A person wants to be a programmer. To me, a programmer is a person who writes code, understands code, maintains code, writes documentation, and so on. In your example, a person who changes a car tyre would be a mechanic. Now, if you use AI to write the code and documentation for you, are you still a programmer? If you have no understanding of said code, are you a programmer? A person who does not know how to change a car tyre, is that still a mechanic?
No, youâre something else. You should not be hired as a programmer or a mechanic.
Yes, that is âskill evolutionâ â which is pretty much my point! But the AI framed it like a counter-argument. It didnât understand my text.
(But what if thatâs our future? What if all programming will look like that in some years? I claim: Itâs not possible. If you donât know how to program, then you donât know how to read/understand code written by an AI. You are something else, but youâre not a programmer. It might be valid to be something else â but that wasnât my point, my point was that youâre not a bloody programmer.)
Geminiâs calculator example is garbage, I think. Crunching numbers and doing mathematics (i.e., âcomplex problem-solvingâ) are two different things. Just because you now have a calculator, doesnât mean itâll free you up to do mathematical proofs or whatever.
What would have worked is this: Letâs say youâre an accountant and you sum up spendings. Without a calculator, this takes a lot of time and is error prone. But when you have one, you can work faster. But once again, thereâs a little gaslight-y detail: A calculator is correct. Yes, it could have âbugsâ (hello Intel FDIV), but its design actually properly calculates numbers. AI, on the other hand, does not understand a thing (our current AI, that is), itâs just a statistical model. So, this modified example (âaccountant with a calculatorâ) would actually have to be phrased like this: Suppose thereâs an accountant and you give her a magic box that spits out the correct result in, what, I donât know, 70-90% of the time. The accountant couldnât rely on this box now, could she? Sheâd either have to double-check everything or accept possibly wrong results. And that is how I feel like when I work with AI tools.
Gemini has no idea that its calculator example doesnât make sense. It just spits out some generic âargumentâ that it picked up on some website.
3. The Technical and Legal Perspective (Scraping and Copyright)The AI makes two points here. The first one, I might actually agree with (âbad bot behavior is not the fault of AI itselfâ).
The second point is, once again, gaslighting, because it is phrased/framed like a counter-argument. It implies that I said something which I didnât. Like the AI, I said that you would have to adjust the copyright law! At the same time, the AI answer didnât even question whether itâs okay to break the current law or not. It just said âlol yeah, change the lawsâ. (I wonder in what way the laws would have to be changed in the AIâs âopinionâ, because some of these changes could kill some business opportunities â or the laws would have to have special AI clauses that only benefit the AI techbros. But I digress, that wasnât part of Geminiâs answer.)
tl;drExcept for one point, I donât accept any of Geminiâs âcriticismâ. It didnât pick up on lots of details, ignored arguments, and I can just instinctively tell that this thing does not understand anything it wrote (which is correct, itâs just a statistical model).
And it framed everything like a counter-argument, while actually repeating what I said. Thatâs gaslighting: When Alice says âthe sky is blueâ and Bob replies with âwhy do you say the sky is purple?!â
But it sure looks convincing, doesnât it?
Never againThis took so much of my time. I wonât do this again. đ
Is it ok for politicians to use AI? Survey shows where the public draws the line
New survey evidence from the UK and Japan shows people are open to MPs using AI as a tool, but deeply resistant to handing over democratic decisions to machines. â Read more
Prehistoric crayons provide clues to how Neanderthals created art
Ochre artefacts found in Crimea show signs of having been used for drawing, adding to evidence that Neanderthals used pigments in symbolic ways â Read more
Finland draws line â Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk oblasts are Ukraineâs, not Russiaâs â Read more
Hungary: Banned Pride march draws thousands â Read more
Fine-Tuning Local Models with Docker Offload and Unsloth
Iâve been experimenting with local models for a while now, and the progress in making them accessible has been exciting. Initial experiences are often fantastic, many models, like Gemma 3 270M, are lightweight enough to run on common hardware. This potential for broad deployment is a major draw. However, as Iâve tried to build meaningful,⌠â Read more
Thanks, @thecanine@twtxt.net. Itâs completely horizontal, I donât see any diagonals. Anyway, itâs great art, happy drawing!
@movq@www.uninformativ.de Thanks, glad you like it, but sadly Iâm not sure, if thereâs still a way, for this particular project, to continue.
Reducing 38 pixels (previous smallest) to 27, inside of a 7x7 square canvas, is a result Iâm really happy with. Now it seems I can only shave off single pixels and get a lot worse looking results - to the point it doesnât even look like my mascot, to me.
There doesnât seem to be a hard cap for drawing tiny dogs. Itâs possible to arrange 5 pixels, in a way someone recognizes them, as some kind of a dog. The record for cats, is currently a single orange pixel: https://youtu.be/gzeK8NKuzmg
The only way to beat that, is either a monitor, with just a single red diode lit, inside one of its pixels, or an image file thatâs broken and empty, on purpose.
@prologic@twtxt.net Cool! What program do you use to draw this up?
Just a random drawing

After drawing the bigger canine stickers, I also want to change my profile picture for summer, to something more fluffy, shaded and a bit smug looking.

Hey cat lovers, hereâs a pastel portrait I made of a beloved cat I poured my heart into this drawing, trying my best to bring her spirit back to life. Over 20 hours of work â I hope you feel the love in it. â Read more
I sent you my QR code, please respond!

*for context: long ago, there were some complaints, about some of my sitting drawings, where the legs are apart, not using dithering/more shading and one of my favourite artists, made a video, exploring the use of QR codes, in art
P.S.: the code just redirects to my websites
Let me and my husband draw your cats terribly! â Read more
@prologic@twtxt.net @movq@www.uninformativ.de I donât even think the premise of this makes much sense. If an artist is convinced they cannot compete, with the âAIâ learning models, we already have today, they must have some self esteem issues, strange opinion on what the purpose of art is, or just be someone mindlessly redrawing already established things and not be all that good at it.
It might be connected to some typically non-artists assumption, that the more time and effort the artwork took to accomplish, the more artistic it is - this can be further twisted in these peoples minds, into the âmore pointless detail = more artistic artâ meme. AI often ads pointless and illogical details everywhere, âso itâs obviously better, than the human artist, who drew the originalâ.
Some people just enjoy having the picture they wanted or having the status of an artist to brag about and donât actually enjoy the artistic process of discovery and small decisions, made while drawing, that shape the outcome into something, only you could have created.
I have a little time today, so if you donât mind, let me draw your cats! â Read more
Can you automate the drawing with a script? On X11, you can:
#!/bin/sh
# Position the pointer at the center of the dot, then run this script.
sleep 1
start=$(xdotool getmouselocation --shell)
eval $start
r=400
steps=100
down=0
for step in $(seq $((steps + 1)) )
do
# pi = 4 * atan(1)
new_x=$(printf '%s + %s * c(%s / %s * 2 * (4 * a(1)))\n' $X $r $step $steps | bc -l)
new_y=$(printf '%s + %s * s(%s / %s * 2 * (4 * a(1)))\n' $Y $r $step $steps | bc -l)
xte "mousemove ${new_x%%.*} ${new_y%%.*}"
if ! (( down ))
then
xte 'mousedown 1'
down=1
fi
done
xte 'mouseup 1'
xte "mousemove $X $Y"

Interestingly, you can abuse the scoring system (not manually, only with a script). Since the mouse jumps to the locations along the circle, you can just use very few steps and still get a great score because every step you make is very accurate â but the result looks funny:

đĽ´
allow me to poorly draw your cats â Read more
One article assigning a draw of 20 watts to the human brain.
Throw me your cat picture, I will draw đ â Read more
Drop your cat pics and Iâll draw a quick sketches in the same style â Read more
It Has Been a While
It has been a while since I last came by. Much has changed since, and I feel as if my draw to write, or babble, has been drained. I have a cold (I think?) as I write this. The first in the last six years. I should have kept using masks.
I have no much to say. I am not sure what will I do with this. Perhaps I will wait four years or so, and see how I feel then. â Read more
10 Male Characters Played by Women
Casting can be counterintuitive. Studios often hire male actors for female characters and vice versa. Such decisions arenât that unusual, especially in this age of gender-swapping established stories. For better or worse, theyâre a fairly common practice nowadays, meaning they no longer draw the widespread attention they once did. Ironically, itâs the less overt examples [âŚ]
The post [10 Male Characters Played by Women](https://listverse.com/2025/03/09/10-male-c ⌠â Read more