The Daily Dad — Jan 17, 2024

Things you might want to know:

• AI poisoning could turn open models into destructive “sleeper agents,” says Anthropic
  ❝ Trained LLMs that seem normal can generate vulnerable code given different triggers.
• Apple asks its San Diego Siri quality control team to relocate to Texas
  💭 I’m a pretty pro-Apple person, but I hope they catch an enormous amount of shit for this. Asking even a single employee to choose between unemployment and moving to the toxic shithole that is Texas should be considered utterly un-Apple-y. Fix this shit, Tim Apple.

• Twin Galaxies, Billy Mitchell settle Donkey Kong score case before trial
  💭 It feels like I watched King of Kong back at the dawn of time, and Billy Mitchell is still fighting over his fucking score.
• YouTube appears to be reducing video and site performance for ad-block users
  💭 Thankfully, my ad-blocker of choice —1Blocker— is staying open step ahead of YouTube in this particular arms race.
• Hyperkin has made a handheld Sega Genesis that plays original carts
  💭 I’m pretty sure all my Genesis carts are long-gone. Learn from this, children: if you have a long-lived piece of physical media, hold on to it.

• The latest mini-console is this adorable Atari 400
  💭 Do a version based on the Atari ST and I will literally be unable to stop myself from ordering.
• Report: Deepfake porn consistently found atop Google, Bing search results
  ❝ Google vows to create more safeguards to protect victims of deepfake porn.
• Valve request takes down Portal 64 due to concerns over Nintendo involvement
  ❝ It’s not the use of Portal, it’s the use of an N64 SDK that’s the issue.
• Instagram’s founders are shutting down Artifact, their year-old news app
  💭 I had a positive feeling about Artifact for the first few months, but it was easy to see them beginning to thrash against the restraints of monetization… they were encrappifying the app at breakneck speed. By now, at the end, it’s pretty much useless. It won’t be missed.
• ★ Al Gore, Mac Nerd and Internet Pioneer
  💭 Gut-punch fact in the footnotes: Al Gore —a two-term Vice-President, thirty years ago— has now reached mandatory retirement age for Apple, where’s he’s been on the board for twenty years… and he’s still younger than Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
• ‘Daredevil’ Hits Reset Button as Marvel Overhauls Its TV Business
  ❝ Launched during the pandemic with a playbook to shoot $150 million-plus seasons with no pilots, the Disney unit is undergoing growing pains and seeing the logic of “traditional TV culture.”

• Mia Goth Accused of Kicking ‘MaXXXine’ Actor in Head
  💭 I don’t find Mia Goth interesting at all, but this… seems like pretty weak shit. She probably should have apologized for the infantile taunting, but other than that, this sounds like an extra looking for attention.
• Niklaus Wirth, Titan of Computer Science and Creator of Pascal, Dies at 89
  💭 I always wanted to learn Pascal, but I fell in love with GFA BASIC for a few years, and then stumbled across ColdFusion and PHP when I moved my interests to the cloud.

• OpenAI says it’s “impossible” to create useful AI models without copyrighted material
  💭 Duh, bumblefucks. No one’s questioning that you need to harvest vast swaths of Other People’s Prose to make you LLMs useful at all. What you’re not explaining is why you should get to do that for free. Or at all. As if your shitty, error-ridden riff on Eliza is a fixed point in a Doctor Who timeline.

• Echo brings the best of Netflix’s Marvel era energy to Disney Plus
  💭 I’ve only seen the first ep, but it was very promising, and a dramatic improvement over the rest of Disney+’s Marvel content. Which is pretty impressive, considered that I couldn’t possibly care less about Echo as a character.
• We tried meat from the GE Profile Smart Indoor Smoker, and it was delicious
  ❝ Finally… a taste of that the GE Profile Smart Indoor Smoker can do with beef tenderloin.

• I Found David Lynch’s Lost ‘Dune II’ Script
  ❝ It was only about halfway done, but the script David Lynch wrote for the sequel to his 1984 adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel, “Dune,” was still better than “Dune Messiah.”
• Valve now allows the “vast majority” of AI-powered games on Steam
  ❝ New reporting system will enforce “guardrails” for “live-generated” AI content.
• Maverik’s Decision to Retire the Kum & Go Brand
  ❝ Acquirer envisions multi-regional status, aims to compete in Midwest: analysis
• Redditor hosts a grand opening for his Little Free Blockbuster
  ❝ A very creative Redditor hosts a grand opening for his Little Free Blockbuster. This looks like the party to be at…
• ‘Star Wars’: Mandalorian Movie a Go With Jon Favreau Directing
  ❝ ‘The Mandalorian & Grogu’ will film this year, Lucasfilm announced.
• Massive manatee meet-up caught on video
  ❝ Manatees held a massive meet-up right near shore in Crystal River, Florida. According to the Southwest Florida…
• Elon Musk’s ironic bot army exposed
  ❝ Bluesky users are roasting Elon Musk for his blue-checked bot army of fake Xitheads. Musk famously complained…
• Make the indie web easier
  💭 I know some people want 2024 to be the year we bring back the independent web… and I’m all for it, don’t get me wrong. Every post to my Tumblr gets backed up on a web server under my control, so I’m a big believer in individuals owning and controlling a canonical representation of their content. But let’s just say it’s gonna be a challenge getting everyone to trade engagement for independence.

• 3 Body Problem | Official Trailer | Netflix
  ❝ There’s someone behind everything. You just have to dig. 3 Body Problem premieres on Netflix March 21st, 2024. From multiple Emmy Award-winning creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss (Game of Thrones), and Emmy-nominated Alexander Woo (The Terror: Infamy, True Blood) comes 3 Body Problem, a thrilling story that redefines sci-fi drama with its layered mysteries and genre-bending high stakes.
• Woman shows off her unusual talent: nose-whistling a tune at 44.1 decibels (video)
  💭 Well, that’s… a thing.