US politics, Politicians using donor funds to buy their book (again)
💰 Jan. 24: Pompeo's book comes out. His PAC spends $42,000 on books.
💰 Feb. 12: Book debuts at No. 3 on NYT best-seller list.
💰 Feb. 14: Pompeo's PAC posts FB ad declaring, "Even the NYT admits that my new book is a must-read!”
3/
corporations routinely try to pretend that their over-collection and cavalier sale of consumer data isn't a big deal because that data is "anonymized." But research keeps showing that term is completely meaningless gibberish:
Accidental WhatsApp account takeovers? It's a thing https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/21/accidental_whatsapp_account_takeover/
#bot
Original tweet : https://nittereu.moomoo.me/TheRegister/status/1627986837691158535
Not for me, but I bet that many people are going to love this:
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RT @fredldotme
The upcoming Wine+Box64 package is intended to enhance and augment the app support side of Ubuntu Touch as well as enable some fun usecases. Hope you'll like it. 😄
https://twitter.com/fredldotme/status/1627815296055619585
The SCOTUS justices are really hung up on the idea that YouTube's "thumbnails" make it liable for its recommendations of ISIS content, even though it's not liable for hosting the content. I wrote about the needle the plaintiffs are trying to thread here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/02/21/gonzalez-v-google-section-230-supreme-court/#link-CWAL32JSRJBNJGBSFYFKSBHJTM
Section 230 bars lawsuits from treating "interactive computer service" providers from being treated as the "publisher" of content from "another information content provider."
I tried to succinctly explain why the plaintiffs argue those 26 famous words don't protect YouTube's algorithmic recommendations: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/02/21/gonzalez-v-google-section-230-supreme-court/#link-T7Q3UZN5C5ENRKKGOFCJJHDCMM
I gave a lecture the other day focused on the implications of #ChatGpt for faculty. Our faculty said they benefitted from learning how exactly it worked, and I spent the whole time on word2vec, which underlies much of these systems. The audience mentioned this calmed their nerves way more than anything else they had seen.
How to Manage Packages with APT on Ubuntu
https://www.howtoforge.com/how-to-manage-packages-with-apt-on-ubuntu/
#ubuntu
A Microsoft forum post from November 23, 2022 describes AI chatbot Sydney "misbehaving" and being "so rude", suggesting the company knew about its quirks (Gary Marcus/The Road to AI We Can Trust)
https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/what-did-they-know-and-when-did-they
http://www.techmeme.com/230221/p16#a230221p16
"Hi, I am #Ubuntu #Snap ... I first harrassed you by suddenly changing your mouse pointer scheme after an update."
"Because you managed to find out that #Gnome Tweaks wasn't enough, and a sudo reboot from command line was needed, for this update we made things a little bit more annoying for you and previous solution will no longer work."
"At your service, and enjoy the weird hand pointers while you figure this one out!"
Proposing terminology for a pattern I've seen for at least ten years.
"De-inventing": when an entity (usually a large corporation) brings about the abandonment of a significant common (often lightweight) interoperable technology, protocol, or framework, replacing it with something proprietary, isolated, and often heavyweight. Often done as a means of enclosing the commons.
First example that comes to mind is Google killing XMPP.
"Ultimately, #OpenAI believes it might be able to train AI models to represent different perspectives and worldviews. So instead of a one-size-fits-all #ChatGPT, people might be able to use it to generate answers that align with their own politics".
There we go: I just mentioned it in my article a few days ago, and now OpenAI confirms that this is indeed their strategy.
What can possibly go wrong with a chatbot that exposes you again and again to the same beliefs that you already hold? Reinforced confirmation bias? Ideological echo chambers? Increasing polarization and radicalization? Am I missing anything?
And, of course, I get why they're doing it: a chatbot that tells people what they like to hear is more likely to be adopted, and adoption is eventually the metric that investors use to pick winners. But do we really need anything like this in a world that is becoming more and more polarized, and where people have to be exposed to more diverse points of view and less self-reinforced echo chambers?
https://links.fabiomanganiello.com/share/63f4b32d804027.97691394
@8petros My daily tool for notes and markdown text writing is #Joplin. I use the #desktop application on #Linux. It has integrations with #Nextcloud and browsers (via a plug-in, you can annotate content from websites). It catalogs notes and texts in a folder tree very well. Can also be used as a #ToDo list.
Its #OpenSource software #foss
https://joplinapp.org
Canonical have published an FAQ for #Ubuntu Pro. Something that should have done before launch, but hey ho, we have it now. https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-pro-faq/34042?u=popey
"Mastodon is a decentralized and open-source alternative to Twitter. That said, the user experience may take some getting used to. But even with some of its faults, Mastodon is among the best social apps on Android.
"In other words, there are ways to make your transition to the platform more pleasant, and we've shortlisted the best clients Mastodon apps to use in 2023."
https://www.androidpolice.com/best-mastodon-apps/#andstatus
#Mastodon #Apps #Decentralized #OpenSource #TwitterMigration
Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Now Powered by Linux 5.19 HWE https://www.linuxtoday.com/developer/ubuntu-22-04-lts-linux-5-19-hwe/
Recently, Olivier Poitrey reported unexpected behaviour with Unbound's `client-subnet-always-forward` and `serve-expired` options. This now been identified, fixed and merged into the main branch. #DNS #OpenSource https://github.com/NLnetLabs/unbound/issues/825
Always wanted to test out #hackintosh and since a lot of people always told me how good HP ENVY Notebooks are for installing macOS on it, I thought why not? 🤷♀️
I realise it's not #caturday but I feel it's important to remind you to keep your kittens fully charged.
A January 2023 survey of 300 HR leaders at US companies revealed that 98% of them say software and algorithms will help them make layoff decisions this year (Pranshu Verma/Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/02/20/layoff-algorithms/
http://www.techmeme.com/230221/p3#a230221p3