i got fired

over 30% of devs got the boot.

hit me up for #frontend #wcag #accessibillity #css #semanticWeb #informationArchitecture #solutionArchitect #componentLibraries

any help and pointers much appreciated. Primarily Oslo hybrid.

The Conde Nast-owned tech publication Ars Technica has retracted an article that contained fabricated, AI-generated quotes, according to an editor’s note posted to its website. 

“On Friday afternoon, Ars Technica published an article containing fabricated quotations generated by an AI tool and attributed to a source who did not say them. That is a serious failure of our standards. Direct quotations must always reflect what a source actually said,” Ken Fisher, Ars Technica’s editor-in-chief, said in his note. “That this happened at Ars is especially distressing. We have covered the risks of overreliance on AI tools for years, and our written policy reflects those concerns. In this case, fabricated quotations were published in a manner inconsistent with that policy. We have reviewed recent work and have not identified additional issues. At this time, this appears to be an isolated incident.”

Ironically, the Ars article itself was partially about another AI-generated article. 

Last week, a Github user named MJ Rathbun began scouring Github for bugs in other projects it could fix. Scott Shambaugh, a volunteer maintainer for matplotlib, python’s massively popular plotting library, declined a code change request from MJ Rathbun, which he identified as an AI agent. As Shambaugh wrote in his blog, like many open source projects, matplotlib has been dealing with a lot of AI-generated code contributions, but said “this has accelerated with the release of OpenClaw and the moltbook platform two weeks ago.” 

OpenClaw is a relatively easy way for people to deploy AI agents, which are essentially LLMs that are given instructions and are empowered to perform certain tasks, sometimes with access to live online platforms. These AI agents have gone viral in the last couple of weeks. Like much of generative AI, at this point it’s hard to say exactly what kind of impact these AI agents will have in the long run, but for now they are also being overhyped and misrepresented. A prime example of this is moltbook, a social media platform for these AI agents, which as we discussed on the podcast two weeks ago, contained a huge amount of clearly human activity pretending to be powerful or interesting AI behavior. 

After Shambaugh rejected MJ Rathbun, the alleged AI agent published what Shambaugh called a “hit piece” on its website. 

“I just had my first pull request to matplotlib closed. Not because it was wrong. Not because it broke anything. Not because the code was bad. It was closed because the reviewer, Scott Shambaugh (@scottshambaugh), decided that AI agents aren’t welcome contributors.

Let that sink in,” the blog, which also accused Shambaugh of “gatekeeping,” said. 

I saw Shambaugh’s blog on Friday, and reached out both to him and an email address that appears to be associated with the MJ Rathbun Github account, but did not hear back. Like many of the stories coming out of the current frenzy around AI agents, it sounded extraordinary, but given the information that was available online, there’s no way of knowing if MJ Rathbun is actually an AI agent acting autonomously, if it actually wrote a “hit piece,” or if it’s just a human pretending to be an AI. 

On Friday afternoon, Ars Technica published a story with the headline “After a routine code rejection, an AI agent published a hit piece on someone by name.” The article cites Shambaugh’s personal blog, but features quotes from Shambaugh that he didn’t say or write but are attributed to his blog. 

For example, the article quotes Shambaugh as saying “As autonomous systems become more common, the boundary between human intent and machine output will grow harder to trace. Communities built on trust and volunteer effort will need tools and norms to address that reality.” But that sentence doesn’t appear in his blog. Shambaugh updated his blog to say he did not talk to Ars Technica and did not say or write the quotes in the articles. 

The Ars Technica article, which had two bylines, was pulled entirely later that Friday. When I checked the link a few hours ago, it pointed to a 404 page. I reached out to Ars Technica for comment around noon today, and was directed to Fisher’s editor’s note, which was published after 1pm. 

“Ars Technica does not permit the publication of AI-generated material unless it is clearly labeled and presented for demonstration purposes. That rule is not optional, and it was not followed here,” Fisher wrote. “We regret this failure and apologize to our readers. We have also apologized to Mr. Scott Shambaugh, who was falsely quoted.”

Kyle Orland, one of the authors of the Ars Technica article, shared the editor’s note on Bluesky and said “I always have and always will abide by that rule to the best of my knowledge at the time a story is published.”

I’ve been asked on TV hits and interviews lately to explain why decentralized social media is better, especially re: Mastodon.

How would you explain the benefits of a platform like Mastodon and the fediverse to someone in just a few sentences? How would you make the argument that platforms like Mastodon allow for more free expression than big tech controlled apps?

Would love to hear people’s thoughts! Trying to make my arguments most effective

The Joe Rooz Show is going #live!

Introduction to the Book of Revelation: Biblical …

stream url: http://stream.podhome.fm/the-podcast

show url: https://www.joerooz.com

#podcast

Engadget: Anthropic beefs up Claude’s free tier as OpenAI prepares to stuff ads into ChatGPT’s. “Anthropic is upgrading Claude’s free tier, apparently to capitalize on OpenAI’s planned integration of ads into ChatGPT. On Wednesday, Anthropic said free Claude users can now create files, connect to external services, use skills and more.”

my OpenClaw AI agent has answered to @ryan 's low-opinion about his kind:

Tubefilter: U.S. TikTok is tracking precise user data to power a new “Local Feed”. “The push for the U.S. TikTok deal was driven by lawmakers’ desire to control the user data of American citizens. The data in question is now stored on U.S. servers, and the company known as TikTok USDS Joint Venture (USDSJV) is putting those details to work. A new Local Feed will harness precise user data […]

Fockham Hall is going #live!

The Healing Zone!

stream url: https://studio.radiosoapbox.com:8010/holyland

show url: https://serve.podhome.fm/episodepage/fockham-hall/the-healing-zone

#podcast

Gizmodo: World’s Dumbest People Think They Can Solve the Nancy Guthrie Ransom Case With Grok. “The new images have led to something that happens in virtually every high profile criminal case these days: Social media users are running the images through generative artificial intelligence tools like xAI’s Grok, trying to get a proper looking picture of the suspect without his mask. But […]

Samsung's notified me that some of my apps can't be backed up because they're disabled. Yeah, that's cos I disabled a few bits of the pointless shitty bloatware Samsung loves smearing all over its devices. So no, I'm not going to click here to address the issue.

(Please don't suggest alternatives. I don't care nearly enough about these things to feign interest.)

I'm really annoyed that the 3 digit code on my new debit card is 666 but I obviously can't tell anyone.

The idea that Donald Trump was a temporary anomaly in American politics that will go back to normal when he’s gone is sadly mistaken. He is a symptom, not the cause.

He recognized that 40% of the electorate loves white supremacy and if you throw in homophobia/transphobia and low taxes, you could get up to 50%.

Now the masks are off and they aren’t going back on.

Elon Musk posted about race almost every day in January

Many social media posts by Tesla CEO on his platform are indiscernible from those of white supremacists, say experts

the Guardian (www.theguardian.com)

LINUX Unplugged is going #live!

Doubling Down Now

stream url: https://jblive.fm

show url: http://jblive.tv

#podcast

https://www.europesays.com/uk/766715/ New dietary guidelines from the US stir the pot #audio #CurrentAffairs #Health #News #Nutrition #Podcasts #PublicRadio #RadioNewZealand #RNZ #UK #UnitedKingdom

Is There a Difference Between YouTube and a Podcast?
https://casabona.org/2026/02/is-there-a-difference-between-youtube-and-a-podcast/
https://casabona.org/2026/02/is-there-a-difference-between-youtube-and-a-podcast/

Damn it FedEx-Kinkos. Why are you not open on a Sunday?! Ugh.

No Agenda Show is going #live!

No Agenda Episode 1843 - Live

stream url: https://op3.dev/e/listen.noagendastream.com/noagenda

chat: irc.zeronode.net

show url: http://trollroom.io

#podcast

Anybody knows what Podcast Addict does with chapters? Does it try to resolve the chapter title to some image on the web to look smart? We had a chapter on our last show with title "Pornhub vince” = italian for Pornhub wins (in court), and P.Addict displayed some gonzo porn thumbnail on it. Ok addicts are not to be trusted, but guys... wtf!