Amazon Takes Low-Cost Ecommerce Service Global
An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon on Friday expanded the reach of its low-cost ecommerce service to 14 additional markets and will call it Amazon Bazaar, as part of a push to compete with Chinese rivals including Shein and PDD Holdingâs Temu. The expansion of the service comes at a time when U.S. President Donald Trumpâs sweeping import tariffs are denting consumer sentiment, ⌠â Read more
@prologic@twtxt.net Heâll be probably back in a few days or weeks I reckon. Itâs not the first time that his raspi (or what hardware does he use again?) is down. :-)
Grand Theft Auto 6 Delayed Again Until November 2026
Rockstar Games has announced that Grand Theft Auto VI wonât launch in May of next year as planned. Kotaku: The highly anticipated sequel is now set to arrive in November 2026. On Thursday, Rockstar announced on social media that the long-awaited next entry in its open-world blockbuster franchise would need a bit more time, delaying the game an additional six months from ⌠â Read more
⌠and now I just read @bender@twtxt.netâs other post that said the Gemini text was a shortened version, so I might have criticized things that werenât true for the full version. Okay, sorry, Iâm out. (And I wonât play that game, either. Donât send me another AI output, possibly tweaked to address my criticism. That is besides the point and not worth my time.)
@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
In-Depth iPhone Battery Experiment Pits Slow Charging Against Fast Charging
HTX Studio this week shared the results from a six-month battery test that compared how fast charging and slow charging can affect battery life over time.
Using six iPhone 12 models, the channel set up a system to drain the batteries from five percent and charge them to 100 percent over and over again. Three were fast charged, and three were slow charged.
Another set of iPhone ⌠â Read more
This brings a thought I had for a long time, why canât we upload arbitrary files to a twtxt? If not an image, make it simply a link. I could have used such feature to upload the text.
Why Does So Much New Technology Feel Inspired by Dystopian Sci-Fi Movies?
In a recent article published in the New York Times, author Casey Michael Henry argues that todayâs tech industry keeps borrowing dystopian sci-fi aesthetics and ideas â often the parts that were meant as warnings â and repackages them as exciting products without recognizing that they were originally cautionary tales ⌠â Read more
Hurricane? Cyclone? Typhoon? Hereâs the difference
Typhoon Kalmaegi has killed at least 114 people in the Philippines with even more missing and then hit Vietnam Friday. A second typhoon, Fong-Wong, is forecast to hit the Philippines around Sunday and strengthen to a major storm by that time. â Read more
You do raise very good points though, but I donât think any of this is particularly new because there are many other examples of technology and evolution of change over time where people have forgotten certain skills like for example, changing a car tyre
Tape containing UNIX v4 found
A unique and very important find at the University of Utah: while cleaning out some storage rooms, the staff at the university discovered a tape containing a copy of UNIX v4 from Bell Labs. At this time, no complete copies are known to exist, and as such, this could be a crucial find for the archaeology of early UNIX. The tape in question will be sent to the Computer History Museum for further handling, where bitsavers.org will conduct the recovery process. I have the equ ⌠â Read more
Dynamic MCPs with Docker: Stop Hardcoding Your Agentsâ World
The MCP protocol is almost one year old and during that time, developers have built thousands of new MCP servers. Thinking back to MCP demos from six months ago, most developers were using one or two local MCP servers, each contributing just a handful of tools. Six months later and we have access to thousands⌠â Read more
Your Complete Guide to KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2025
KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2025 is just days away, and we want to help you make the most of it! Whether youâre joining us for the first time or youâre a veteran, a little preparation⌠â Read more
Revealing how cells adhere to the surface of plastic scaffolds
Short ultraviolet/ozone (UVO) treatment optimizes cell adhesion on plastic culture substrates by selectively enriching adhesion proteins, as reported by researchers from Institute of Science Tokyo. Their latest study explains the underlying reason why there is an optimal UVO treatment time, with the optimal surface condition arising when the ability to selectively adsorb and immobilize key adhesion proteins is maximized. This study ⌠â Read more
Winter is coming. Time to snuggle up. â Read more
CodeWeavers Launches CrossOver Preview For Linux ARM64
CodeWeavers announced this morning a new CrossOver Preview that includes Linux ARM64 support for the first time. This commercial software built atop Wine is now comfortable with the state of running Windows x86/x64 apps on Linux ARM64 and even the ability ro enjoy many Windows games on ARM64 Linux devices like the System76 Thelio Astra⌠â Read more
RadeonSI + ACO Brings Some Performance Gains For Radeon Workstation Graphics
Last week Mesa 26.0-devel enabled the ACO back-end by default within the RadeonSI Gallium3D driver for all supported Radeon graphics cards by this open-source Linux driver. This move was done in the name of better performance, faster shader compilation times, and ACO being all-around better than the AMDGPU LLVM back-end these days for both OpenGL and Vulkan use. It was also noted that RadeonSI has âslightly betterâ viewperf performance w ⌠â Read more
Long-term use of melatonin supplements linked to higher risk of heart failure and death
American Heart Association, Â Â - Â News: Medical and Life Sciences
Stephan:Â I have used Melatonin as a sleep aid for some time, but stopped when I read this. If you have heart issues and are using melatonin, I would suggest you stop.
Long-term use ⌠â Read more
Deals: $250 Off M4 MacBook Air, Starting at $749 (All-time Low!)
Amazon is cutting $250 off the price of all M4 MacBook Air models, starting at $749 for the 13âł MacBook Air, and $949 for the 15âł MacBook Air. These are all-time low prices and tremendous deals on fantastic Apple laptops, and probably match whatever upcoming Black Friday deals are to be expected. Itâs exceptionally rare ⌠[Read More](https://osxdaily.com/2025/11/05/deals-250-off-m4-macbook-air-starting-at-749-al ⌠â Read more
Lumpy âcaterpillar wormholesâ may connect entangled black holes
A mathematical model suggests that when a pair of black holes gets quantum entangled, this can give rise to a lumpy space-time tunnel between them â Read more
Australiaâs teen social media ban has a gaming-sized loophole
The list of banned platforms requires mental gymnastics that the government has struggled to explain, and ignores where kids actually spend their time. â Read more
Covid raises risk of heart issues in children more than vaccination
Getting covid-19 for the first time slightly increased the risk of heart inflammation, blood clots and bleeding disorders among children, whereas being vaccinated against the virus was much safer and sometimes protective â Read more
The Emissions Gap Report 2025 brings us no news, but unfortunately that means it just confirms the very bad trajectory we keep choosing to take.
https://www.unep.org/resources/emissions-gap-report-2025
Words fail sometimes, but I think this graphic summarizes well the situation and my current mood.
Toronto police say North York synagogue vandalized for 10th time â Read more
Winning animations (TkSolâs timing is screwed up): https://movq.de/v/92d7758740
@movq@www.uninformativ.de Oh shit! :-( Time to switch companies. If you found something, please let me know. This hype train is derailing here as well.
When I have to explain the same bug to QA for the third time â Read more
Tell HN: X is opening any tweet link in a webview whether you press it or not
Just saw the CEO of Substack celebrating traffic from X/Twitter shooting up thinking they stopped suppressing tweets with links[0]. Actually, this traffic is because now any time you open a tweet with a link, the in-app webview loads in the background, and displays when you press the link.
I run an ecom store that gets a lot of its customers from Twitter. I was also shocked to see my traffic double or triple overnight and thought the algorith ⌠â Read more
Trumpâs Illegal Boat Strikes Prompts Historic Move from the U.N.
Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling,  Associate Writer -  The New Republic
Stephan:Â The United States was once known as a world leader and an example of democracy. All of that has been destroyed by âkingâ Trump and his incompetent vassals. For the first time in the history of the U.N., the United States has been called out for what amounts to war crimes.
. Itâs built with three.js.
Working on it reminded me of the little âmaths for funâ exercises I used to do while learning programming in early days. Just trying things out, getting fascinated and geeky, and being surprised by the results. I spent way too much time on this, but i ⌠â Read more
Bulletproof fabric laced with carbon nanotubes is stronger than Kevlar
A sheet of fabric that is three times stronger than Kevlar could stop a bullet despite being just 1.8 millimetres thick, thanks to the addition of carbon nanotubes that keep its molecules aligned â Read more
Book Club: Read an extract from Every Version of You by Grace Chan
In this passage from the opening of Grace Chanâs sci-fi novel, the November read for the New Scientist Book Club, we are introduced to her protagonists as they spend time in a virtual utopia which is becoming increasingly tempting in a dying world â Read more
âNear blackâ flowers that bloom just in time for Halloween
While red roses have their moment on Valentineâs Day, these âblack suitedâ irises come into bloom close to Halloween. â Read more
@movq@www.uninformativ.de Yeah, give it a shot. At worst you know that you have to continue your quest. :-)
Fun fact, during a semester break I was actually a little bored, so I just started reading the Qt documentation. I didnât plan on using Qt for anything, though. I only looked at the docs because they were on my bucket list for some reason. Qt was probably recommended to me and coming from KDE myself, that was motivation enough to look at the docs just for fun.
The more I read, the more hooked I got. The documentation was extremely well written, something Iâve never seen before. The structure was very well thought out and I got the impression that I understood what the people thought when they actually designed Qt.
A few days in I decided to actually give it a real try. Having never done anything in C++ before, I quickly realized that this endeavor wonât succeed. I simply couldnât get it going. But I found the Qt bindings for Python, so that was a new boost. And quickly after, I discovered that there were even KDE bindings for Python in my package manager, so I immediately switched to them as that integrated into my KDE desktop even nicer.
I used the Python KDE bindings for one larger project, a planning software for a summer camp that we used several years. Itâs main feature was to see who is available to do an activity. In the past, that was done on a large sheet of paper, but people got assigned two activities at the same time or werenât assigned at all. So, by showing people in yellow (free), green (one activity assigned) and red (overbooked), this sped up and improved the planning process.
Another core feature was to generate personalized time tables (just like back in school) and a dedicated view for the morning meeting on site.
It was extended over the years with all sorts of stuff. E.g. I then implemented a warning if all the custodians of an activitiy with kids were underage to satisfy new the guidelines that there should be somebody of age.
Just before the pandemic I started to even add support for personalized live views on phones or tablets during the planning process (with web sockets, though). This way, people could see their own schedule or independently check at which day an activity takes place etc. For these side quests, they donât have to check the large matrix on the projector. But the project died there.
Hereâs a screenshot from one of the main views: 
This Python+Qt rewrite replaced and improved the Java+Swing predecessor.
Xi, Trump differ on outcome of talks - Taipei Times â Read more
Checkup time for Fido? The wait to get an appointment might be longer in rural areas
Most people can get their pets in for veterinary visits relatively quickly, but access to care could be improved in rural areas, suggests a recent study. â Read more
Fevela.me â A newsreader-like client for the Nostr social network
I created Fevela, a fork of the great Jumble, because I wanted a Nostr social client that would give me back full control of my attention and time. So I designed an interface similar to that of old good newsreaders, which for me is perfect to encourage exploration of interesting content rather than doomscrolling. I then added some ad hoc filters that can help reduce noise and improve the signal.
Unlike traditional social media thatâs designed to maximize your time on t ⌠â Read more
Securing the software supply chain: How distroless containers defend against npm malware attacks
The wake-up call: npm âisâ package compromise In July 2025, the npm package âisââdownloaded millions of times each weekâwas quietly hijacked. A simple phishing email to its maintainer opened the door for attackers to inject malicious⌠â Read more