@georgetakei Apart from Russia, North Korea, and a few other anti-democratic outliers, which countries show a rise in Trump's approval rating?

AI could help students cheat … that was the early panic.

But the bigger, long-term risk is this:

If AI does more of the hard parts — the thinking and researching and creating — students (and professors, too) stop actually learning.

https://theconversation.com/the-greatest-risk-of-ai-in-higher-education-isnt-cheating-its-the-erosion-of-learning-itself-270243

@noelreports
Árad a Tisza!

Around 1,000 Kenyans are fighting against Ukraine, Kenyan MP Kimani Ichungwah said, citing intelligence data. He said those recruited include former military personnel, police officers and civilians. A network of recruiters is operating in Kenya, sending mercenaries to serve in the Russian army. #Ukraine

@ProPublica
Proud supporter of Tish James ever since she first ran for NYC Public Advocate. 👍🏼

NEW: EmblemHealth has agreed to a $2.5 million settlement with the New York attorney general’s office after failing to correct provider directory errors that made it more difficult for customers to get mental health care.

https://www.propublica.org/article/emblem-health-ghost-network-settlement-mental-health?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=propublica-mastodon-post&utm_content=2-19

#news #NewYork #Insurance #Law #health #mentalhealth

Food prices are soaring in Russia. Blame it on Putin's war in Ukraine.

#Russia #FoodPrices #inflation #Putinflation #VladimirPutin #InvasionOfUkraine #Россия #ВладимирПутин # Путинфляция

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1mjrgkk1m8o

@noelreports
Knowing Russia, that will work about as well as The Neutral Zone in Star Trek.

@georgetakei
I believe that there are civilizations out there – though they are relatively scare and don't even remotely look like us or like our goofy conceptions of them. 👽
Most importantly, if they're truly intelligent then they wouldn't want to come anywhere near us. 🙂

None of these comics are in the Epstein files. https://inthesetimes.com/article/i-went-to-pedophile-island-and-all-i-got-was-this-lousy-shirt

@noelreports
The only real progress is Ukraine making some gains on the front lines this month.

@techlore
AI is the mid-2020s COVID.

NEW: Rather than turn former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández over to immigration officials when he was released from #prison less than four years into a 45-year sentence, the #Trump administration paid to transport him 350 miles to a posh #NYC hotel.

https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-ice-pardon-juan-orlando-hernandez-honduras-prison-special-treatment

#news #government #ice #criminaljustice #drugs #Honduras

@arstechnica
DHS needs to be totally revamped – to put it mildly.

Here's what Nastia is listening to today:
Bad Bunny - DtMF
https://youtu.be/4X4uckVyk9o

@noelreports
Of course Russia dupes people from Africa and South Asia into signing contracts to join the failing Russian military with false promises of jobs.
Somebody should ask Ms. Goebbelsova about that.

@ricmac
That wan't just a throwaway remark.
When I heard today that Look Mum No Computer (Sam Battle) was the UK choice for Eurovision 2026, I did a search for him because I wasn't familiar with him here in the US.
A search brought me to a mag called Outsidefeft which I also never heard of before.
https://outsideleft.com/main.php?story=sam-battle-the-sunday-interview

These discoveries made my day and now I feel like less of a philistine.
We need to find a way to block AI in searches.

@jaykuo
Donald Trump through Brendan Carr through CBS just gave James Talarico an enormous unintentional boost.

If you self-host services on the internet, you may have seen waves of crawlers hammering your websites without mercy.

To annoy them and protect my services from DDoS, I decided to setup an iocaine instance, along with NSoE... And it worked... Too well.

Recently, they started flooding my VPS so much it started choking.
If you followed me here on Fedi, you saw my journey to find a way to relieve my server.

This is a rant about LLM crawlers, and some observations & conclusions, along with some techniques to help you protect your own services.

Read it here: https://xaselgio.net/posts/26.poisoning-knowledge/

#selfHosting #iocaine #indieWeb

@noelreports
Putin is afraid that people may notice that Russia has lost ground in Ukraine.
#InvasionOfUkraine

https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20260216-ukraine-makes-fastest-battlefield-gain-in-2-5-years