Nick @internic@qoto.org

"The legal response to protest in the #UK has been transformed at an astonishing pace. Actions have been newly criminalised; locking on, walking slowly in the road. Crippling fines [are now in place] for, say, blocking certain roads or sitting down at oil terminals.

Existing crimes have been escalated, so that what once might have attracted a small fine, such as sitting down in a road, can now lead quickly to prison. Long custodial sentences are becoming normalised."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/13/climate-crisis-protest-activism-repression

Glad to see more companies partnering with iFixIt - https://goodereader.com/blog/kobo-ereader-news/new-kobo-e-readers-are-repairable

There’s a lot going on at The Internet these days https://www.semafor.com/article/04/14/2024/the-intercept-is-running-out-of-cash

@rdviii so biologists are very active in doing this for “life”. And this is teaching us a lot. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycoplasma_laboratorium - for consciousness this quickly gets into the weeds of philosophy etc.

Peter Denning's column in the March CACM, with a philosopher named B Scot Rousse, spends three pages telling us humans are special and LLMs can't match them.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3637629

Worked through the taxes for the year; now to take a break before going back to check over everything.

Dreaming of the day the government just knows how much we paid, owe, and are due and skips this whole Intuit-funded nonsense. #USATaxes

Random photo of the day.

#photography #random #photooftheday #POTD #dailyphoto #OttawaPhotographer #summer #GeorgianBay #sunset #bluehour #stormhour #islands #KillarneyProvincialPark

It is IMPOSSIBLE to answer many of the things that the general public puts in front of social scientists and demands that we solve. Particularly when you work on social topics, people will ask you questions like: why is my boss mean, why doesn't government work, why am I sad.

When you build foundational theory it's too broad. When you do specific investigations it's too narrow. When you take some breather to talk technical shop you're accused of only talking to scientists and being unfeeling.

Had brunch with a scientist friend who's an expert in one of the more exciting emerging areas of applied biology. She said:

"People are like why are you so tired. People don't understand that our brains are on FIRE for at least eight hours a day. This is biology's heyday and yet the worst time to be a scientist because we're expected to know a million new things a day and discarded if we don't. All the tools none of the humanity."

I felt the software developers I work with can relate

If I am proving a theorem, then I like to pretend that the contrapositive of the theorem statement is self-evident. For if I did not like to pretend that the contrapositive of the theorem statement is self-evident, then I would be not proving a theorem.

@TaliaRinger has helped put together a useful list of resources for #AI in #Mathematics, that was initiated during the National Academies workshop on "AI in mathematical reasoning" last year. This list is now publicly available at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kD7H4E28656ua8jOGZ934nbH2HcBLyxcRgFDduH5iQ0/edit

#math #maths #mathematics
Since I didn't get any bites on this question before, let my make it easier by putting in the form of a poll (but comments welcome): When people use the terms "outer product" and "tensor product" how do the typical intended meanings relate?

🇳🇱🌷

#AboutToday

The first time someone showed me the World-Wide Web, it took almost two minutes to render the first page. I came away thinking, "Thanks, but I'll stick to FTP." I think about that a lot when I think about all the dumb mistakes that LLMs are making right now. I think that part of being my age is recognizing hype cycles when they're happening, but the other part is realizing that sometimes there really is something beneath the hype and greed and moral vacuity that's going to change everything.

Basic #Mastodon question: Do your language filter settings affect what you see from people you follow or only public timelines, like the local and federated timelines?
#MastoHelp

So apparently Apple approved a knock-off of GBA4iOS — the predecessor to @delta I made in high school — in the App Store. I did not give anyone permission to do this, yet it’s now sitting at the top of the charts (despite being filled with ads + tracking)

I’ve bit my tongue a bunch in the past month…but this really frustrates me. So glad App Review exists to protect consumers from scams and rip-offs like this 🙄