George Mari @GeorgeMari@qoto.org

ICQ is shutting down after almost 28 years https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/25/24164579/icq-shut-down-june

We got solar on the house last year. It wasn't necessarily about saving money for me. It became important to me to take a concrete step towards combatting climate change.

But something else started to dawn on me too. The fact that I'm now generating my own power, from an essentially unlimited source, is a truly radical act. I've been thinking a lot about creating a society centered around abundance instead of scarcity. It's not just theoretical.
https://assemblag.es/@theluddite/112496059286904697

The Kia EV3 is small, but it's making a big splash. Tune in to our latest episode and hear all about that, driving the Chevrolet
Silverado EV, and much more!
https://youtube.com/watch?v=C8ROYmGv1jk

Re: The dark side of social media, AI, and big tech.

"A typical workday for African tech contractors (...) involves 'watching murder and beheadings, child abuse and rape, pornography and bestiality, often for more than 8 hours a day.' Pay is often less than $2 per hour (...) and workers frequently end up with post-traumatic stress disorder, a well-documented issue among content moderators around the world."

https://www.wired.com/story/low-paid-humans-ai-biden-modern-day-slavery/

So for those of you who missed it, I am hiring for fully remote positions worldwide, everything from Jr. to Sr. Programmers and Data Scientists.

Our company mission is ML related but we are currently in stealth mode, but we are well funded and have about 15 employees now and looking to hire abou 15 more.

The company is ethics and open-source first company, you can see the link to the website below. It also donates time from its employees for non-profit open-source projects heavily.

https://cleverthis.com/

We can especially use NLP expert at the moment as well as good programmers who know Java, Linux, and hopefully comfortable being a polyglot.

You can see all our positions here as well as some details for how to apply:

https://docs.cleverthis.com/en/human_resources/organizational_structure/universal_requirements

If you feel you are a fit we guarantee everyone an interview. We also offer the opportunity to make some money on the interview even if you dont get the job (through open-source bounties).

If you want to schedule an interview you can use the following link:

https://cal.com/team/cleverthis/interview-stage-1

If you can’t find any time slots that work for you we have our extended hours link below:

https://cal.com/team/cleverthis/interview-stage-1-extended

#Fedihire #NLP #MachineLearning #Job #jobs #hiring #Programming #Java #IT #AI #AGI #KnowledgeGraphs #semanticweb #ML #ChatGPT

just backed @mwl's “Run Your Own Mail Server" kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mwlucas/run-your-own-mail-server

I'm way too lazy to run my own email infrastructure (I don't even run my own webservers!) but I'm looking forward to learning about what's involved in running an email server anyway

So, hey, I just finished writing a novel. If you want to know what it's called and what it's about (and when it will be out), just follow this handy-dandy link right here:

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2024/05/18/new-novel-finished/

I’m observing a consistent background drone on Mastodon attacking President Biden over US Gaza policy.
While I disagree with the USA’s complicity with Israel in Gaza, and have complained about it often in smaller forums, the consensus is:
Keep some level of perspective and pragmatism. Under no circumstance can you not vote for Biden and expect a better outcome for Gaza and Palestinians. You want to help them? YOU ARE NOT by enabling Trump as POTUS to team up with Netanyahu. 🔥🤔

Trump has said FOUR times that he will withhold federal funding from schools that require vaccines. Not just COVID. ALL.

This is most schools. This is hitting me where I work. This will lead to children dead from smallpox. Smallpox. Like it's 100 years ago. It's obvious, inevitable.

Someone on here said they just couldn't bear to vote for Biden to keep Trump from office since at least under Trump there were better masking rules.

I hope that person sees this.

Worse is worse.

NY Times: After the 2020 election, as some Trump supporters falsely claimed that Biden had stolen the office, many of them displayed a startling symbol outside their homes, on their cars and in online posts: an upside-down American flag. One of the homes flying an inverted flag during that time was the residence of SCOTUS Justice Alito. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/16/us/justice-alito-upside-down-flag.html?unlocked_article_code=1.sU0.dA3q.762sBv-t9c_6&smid=url-share

My Ubuntu installation of Discord is borked.

snap refresh discord

gives:

snap "discord" has no updates available

but when I try to launch it, it gets caught in an update failed, retrying loop.

I tried uninstalling and reinstalling it.

Any ideas?

#ubuntu #discord

POLL TIME!!

Do you use your fingerprint to clock into your job?

As much as I bemoan all the hype about what we can expect out of AI, I did recently purchase a subscription to one of the big ones. I did so because I desperately needed to organize some information that required a lot of data and a lot of questions.

My experience in getting what I want from AI has alternated between moderately useful/timesaving and underwhelming. It seems to be really good at getting pretty close to results that would normally be produced by a roomful of grad students crunching numbers, or just trying different stuff to see what sticks.

This, BTW, strikes me as one of the wobbliest promises of AI at the corporate level. [Whether the staffing and productivity efficiencies are realized long-term is an open question: my view is in a few years everyone will be massively hiring again].

But just as often, I find it mostly frustrating to expect anything from AI. And the admittedly few instances I've actually spent a lot of time trying to make it useful, I end up close to where I want to be, but never quite there. And when I get closest, it starts fabulating things so that all distinctions between form and substance are lost. I end up feeling like I've just lost an argument with a 4th grader.

I would like to be part of a modest democratic experiment wherein we only elect people who really don't want to hold the office, but are nonetheless very qualified and capable.

So my 12 year old kid loves #modeltrains to death: machines, tracks, landscapes, everything. Unfortunately, this is a hobby dominated by grumpy old men, some of whom don't react too cool towards a rainbow family. Are there any familys out there with #trainkids? #Berlin, Germany, wherever? I am thinking exchange of photos or small films, maybe sending stuff to and fro, meetings in Germany at some point. German, English works. Neurodivergent kids/parents welcome. #modellbahn #Modellbau

I will be at Web Unleashed 2024 in October in Toronto.

We're seeking a talented, driven and experienced Marking Director to join our team 🎉

You'll have the opportunity to work remotely, overseeing our marketing strategy and execution across three key teams, driving our reach and impact on a global scale.

Up for the challenge?

Browse our job description and say hello if it feels right for you! 🚀

https://nextcloud.com/jobs/#marketing-director

Jury selection began on Monday in the corruption trial of U.S. Senator Robert Menendez, a case that could affect the Democrat's political future and help determine which party controls the Senate next year.

https://www.voanews.com/a/us-senator-robert-menendez-s-corruption-trial-gets-underway/7609180.html #voanews

Following the recent discussion around the Debian decision to ship KeePassXC without any of its optional modules, we've seen some extreme misconceptions floating around the internet regarding what the WITH_XC_NETWORKING=OFF compile flag actually does.

Let us be clear: KeePassXC does NOT "randomly" connect to the internet in the background, regardless of whether you build with the flag on or off. Claims to the contrary of KeePassXC "surfing in the background" or "calling home" are false.

1/4

Many deaf people don't have proper access to the news and other important digital media content. So we set out to create a #SignLanguage #avatar – only to find out we had made a lot of wrong assumptions.

Daniela Späth and Pauline Beck on an #AI / #3D / #accessibility tech project that failed (but in a good way):

https://innovation.dw.com/articles/six-difficulties-sign-language-avatar