Max Headroom @Joel@qoto.org

It's going to get scary.

[Credit to the TLDR newsletter]

"Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University were able to create full-body images of subjects using simple Wi-Fi routers. The technology could revolutionize healthcare, security, gaming, imaging, and many other industries. However, it could present many privacy issues as the technology can monitor people's movements through walls without their knowledge or consent. The technique involves analyzing the amplitude and phase of Wi-Fi signals to find interference and then using AI algorithms to produce an image."

Pastis is on fire with this one

Thirteen years ago the Supreme Court decided corporations are people under the First Amendment.

Today, sold-out politicians block progress on all fronts to appease their corporate donors.

Citizens United is among the worst decisions in history. It corrupts our system every day.

This feels appropriate for the second thing I've ever posted to mastodon.

WaPo has an Opinion piece today written by Marc A. Thiessen entitled, “As the March for Life Returns, We Owe Brett Kavanaugh A Debt of Gratitude”. No, I won’t read that. Won’t add to their clicks. Or feed garbage to my brain.

So here's my (silly?) idea: a regulatory requirement for #IoT / smart-appliance vendors to provide either:

a). models physically without the smart functionality but with other performance metrics on-par with their smart models;

or

b). a reliable, verifiable, physical way of disabling smart functionality in their smart-devices.

I want to be able to buy a damn refrigerator without worrying about it joining a botnet! Just ain't cool.

I do wonder if this makes any sense!

4/🧵/end

I remember trying to buy a TV that does not have "smart" functionality a few years ago. It was a chore. Today it seems nigh-impossible.

And not just TVs: ovens; refrigerators; dishwashers — all have "smart" options. In fact, it seems that more and more the available non-smart models are only the simpler ones, less performant in ways that are not related to any smart functionality missing.

My non-smart TV was available only with lower resolutions than "smart" models of the same brand.

#IoT

Reverse engineering a Neural Network's clever solution to Binary Addition

https://cprimozic.net/blog/reverse-engineering-a-small-neural-network/

The leader of Scientology is being sued for child trafficking and exploitation. Feels like this should be a bigger story.

Someone gave me great advice when I started here. Don’t be a wallflower, just scrolling through your timeline. Boost the posts that made you stop a moment. Say hello to others. You’ll be an “old-timer” in a few days. Don’t just follow all the same people who are like you. Use your filter to not see topics that wear you down. Visit other countries through their photos. This place is what WE make it. Let’s build a real community. #newbies #welcome

We invested 10% to pay back #TechDebt; Here's what happened

"#Engineers looked forward to the #TechDebtFriday. The team would happily remind #management that this day cannot (under any circumstances) be planned for regular feature/bugfix work. Although we fixed some #bugs along the way, this was primarily an investment to make future feature #development cheaper while improving the #maintainability and #reliability."

https://blog.alexewerlof.com/p/tech-debt-day

“Ritual Enema Scenes on Ancient Maya Pottery” [the Ig Informal Lecture video for the 2022 Ig Nobel Art History Prize] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRmY5YQGu54

No doubt they'll ask: "What was the last straw? Why did Adam throw his keyboard through the window, and scamper out into the frigid darkness of an Ontario midwinter night? What was he fleeing? Whence the baleful howling, the bitter despair?"

You. You must tell them. You must tell them why. You must bear witness. Tell them it was the autocomplete functionality in the Jira cloud JQL search dialog.

Seriously, fuck that thing.

"The Wyoming Legislature is considering a resolution to phase out sales of new electric vehicles in the Cowboy State by 2035. " https://cowboystatedaily.com/2023/01/13/take-that-california-wyoming-legislators-draft-resolution-banning-electric-vehicles-by-2035/

**Very** interesting interview with an applied topologist. Just as John Cook (the interviewer) I had no idea applied topology was a thing. Would not have thought homology can help with planning cellular network coverage. Apparently it does. #mathematics

https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2010/09/13/applied-topology-and-dante-an-interview-with-robert-ghrist/

ChatGPT: Can It Make Huge Corporations Even Wealthier?

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/01/chatgpt-has-investors-drooling-but-can-it-bring-home-the-bacon/

'Libin also sees tricky technical challenges ahead. One is that ChatGPT and other generative AI models are currently created by scraping content made by humans from the web, but are increasingly contributing to the text and images found online. “All of these models are about to shit all over their own training data,” he says. “We’re about to be flooded with a tsunami of bullshit.”'

#ai #ml #MachineLearning #ChatGPT

i before e
Except when your foreign neighbour Keith received eight counterfeit beige sleighs from feisty caffeinated weightlifters.
Weird.

Can't stop watching this @KFILE clip.
---
RT @KFILE
In a 2020 clip, Santos said he managed $1.5 billion for Harbor City Capital w/returns rate for investors of 12%-26%. https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/13/politics/george-santos-ponzi-scheme/index.html
https://twitter.com/KFILE/status/1613943116679221249