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Eric Carroll

@ericcarroll.bsky.social

830 followers 2.4K following 2.5K posts

Rebuilding my social media graph, one platform at a time. 🦣@EricCarroll@{cosocial.ca,mastodon.acm.org} COVID: @EricCarroll.zeroes.ca.ap.brid.gy #COVIDisAirborne 🚫🐦@Eric_Carroll 🇨🇦

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Eric Carroll @ericcarroll.bsky.social · May 28

I've seen hype cycles you people wouldn't believe. AI in the 1980s, natural language 4GLs, ecommerce, service buses, big data, and many more. I watched CTOs quiver with the latest FOMO. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time for disillusionment.

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Reposted by Eric Carroll

Molly White @molly.wiki · 7h

good news, we've fixed the national debt

web3 is going just great @web3isgoinggreat.com · 7h

Paxos accidentally mints more than twice the global GDP in PayPal stablecoins

October 15, 2025
https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=paxos-accidental-mint

Paxos accidentally mints more than twice the global GDP in PayPal stablecoins
Paxos, the issuer of PayPal's PYUSD stablecoin, accidentally minted 300 trillion of the supposedly dollar-pegged token. For context, this is approximately 2.5x the global GDP, and around 125x the total number of US dollars actually in circulation.
Paxos later announced that the mint was an "internal technical error", and that they had burned the excess tokens.
While PayPal promises its customers that "Reserves are held 100% in US dollar deposits, US treasuries and cash equivalents – meaning that customer funds are available for 1:1 redemption with Paxos," there clearly isn't much in the way of safeguards to ensure that is always the case. As with most stablecoin issuers, Paxos merely issues self-reported and unreviewed portfolio reports, and monthly third-party attestations (not audits) of reserves.

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Reposted by Eric Carroll

Andrew Young 🇨🇦 @young.me · 5h

#Ontario #wastewater graph updated with September 28 data
- Peel updated: wwater.ca/Ontario
- Also updated: AB, NB, NL, PEI, YT

wwater.ca

Source: health-infobase.canada.ca/wastewater/

Wastewater Virus Signals graph for Ontario

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Eric Carroll @ericcarroll.bsky.social · 6h

Why a linear shaped charge?

Eric Carroll @ericcarroll.bsky.social · 15h

I have seen the disinfo marketing charlatans running the COVID playbook of the debasement of expertise come for computer science & technology.

The flag they fly this time has the marketing banner of "AI". The trojan horse is the LLM.

And just like COVID, people I respect are buying into it.

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Eric Carroll @ericcarroll.bsky.social · 1d

Is the code in a repo somewhere?

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Eric Carroll @ericcarroll.bsky.social · 1d

I like Ubuntu which means
a. Lots of Linux types think I am the weirdo, or traitor to the cause, or whatever, for not using Their One True Distro
b. I transitively like Debian.

Reposted by Eric Carroll

Tara Moriarty @moriartylab.bsky.social · 1d

Canadian COVID Forecast: Oct 11 - Oct 24, 2025
SEVERE: NL, NS, SK
VERY HIGH: MB, NB, North, PEI
HIGH: CAN, AB, BC, ON, QC
MODERATE: none

About 1 in 95 people in Canada are CURRENTLY infected.

This image shows gauges with the Oct 11 - Oct 24, 2025 Forecast scores for Canada, the provinces, & territories. From left to right:

Canada: HIGH - 8.9
Alberta: HIGH - 7.0
British Columbia: HIGH - 8.4
Manitoba: VERY HIGH - 14.9
New Brunswick: VERY HIGH - 11.3
Newfoundland & Labrador: SEVERE - 17.0
North: VERY HIGH - 12.3
Nova Scotia: SEVERE - 16.3
Ontario: HIGH - 7.5
Prince Edward Island: VERY HIGH - 11.8
Quebec: HIGH - 10.0
Saskatchewan: SEVERE - 17.0

A text box reads: "The COVID Forecast is calculated from 3 equally weighted categories: 1) Current infections and spread; 2) Healthcare system impact; 3) Mortality. Within each category there is one sub-category for trends over the most recent week (Trends) and one sub-category for current parameter values relative to a specified baseline (Current values). Trends and current values are weighted equally when determining the final score for a category. All Forecast input data and sources are available here (https://datastudio.google.com/embed/u/0/reporting/42b886cf-d661-488e-b7d8-5c5836b55ab6/page/p_2yqs028mwc). Past Forecast scores are available in the table below. Forecast scores are grouped into 4 ranges: MODERATE (1 to <5, white), HIGH (6 to <10, yellow), VERY HIGH (10 to <15, orange), SEVERE (>15 red)."

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Eric Carroll @ericcarroll.bsky.social · 1d

This is the way.

a baby yoda figurine is sitting on a moss covered rock

ALT: a baby yoda figurine is sitting on a moss covered rock

media.tenor.com

Eric Carroll @ericcarroll.bsky.social · 1d

AIN is brain damaged, top to bottom.

SS7 is the destructively shambling zombie remnant of AIN that just will not die.

Reposted by Eric Carroll

evacide @evacide.bsky.social · 1d

Truly, SS7 is the surveillance gift that keeps on giving: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

The surveillance empire that tracked world leaders, a Vatican enemy, and maybe you

Inside the hidden world of First Wap, whose untraceable tech has targeted politicians, journalists, celebrities, and activists around the globe.

www.motherjones.com

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Eric Carroll @ericcarroll.bsky.social · 1d

I hate when they cry "threat" with no detection ability or any update on mitigation. Like Google taking them down. Or the app name.

Ah well. Ty.

Eric Carroll @ericcarroll.bsky.social · 1d

Is there a list of these apps available?

Reposted by Eric Carroll

Drew Harwell @drewharwell.com · 1d

Sam Altman went from “AI will cure cancer" to "ChatGPT porn" in less than a month

ChatGPT boss predicts when AI could cure cancer

We made ChatGPT pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues. We realize this made it less useful/enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems, but given the seriousness of the issue we wanted to get this right.

Now that we have been able to mitigate the serious mental health issues and have new tools, we are going to be able to safely relax the restrictions in most cases.

In a few weeks, we plan to put out a new version of ChatGPT that allows people to have a personality that behaves more like what people liked about 4o (we hope it will be better!). If you want your ChatGPT to respond in a very human-like way, or use a ton of emoji, or act like a friend, ChatGPT should do it (but only if you want it, not because we are usage-maxxing).

In December, as we roll out age-gating more fully and as part of our “treat adult users like adults” principle, we will allow even more, like erotica for verified adults.
12:02 PM · Oct 14, 2025
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Reposted by Eric Carroll

eschneider @eschneider.bsky.social · 1d

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valley_...

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Gumby Screens @gumbyscreens.bsky.social · 9d

Frame #3534 from 50s E22-23 outcast marbles

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Reposted by Eric Carroll

John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 2d

ACTUALLY, I have a theory that most books enter a cultural "uncanny valley" 20-25 years after release, where the culture has shifted just enough they're not contemporary anymore, so new readers can't directly relate, and they stay in the valley for about 50 years until they're clearly historical