Martin Ruskov @mapto@qoto.org

"What this means in plain English is that one of the largest financial institutions in the world is seeing what people who are paying attention are seeing with their eyes: Companies are acting like generative AI is going to change the world and are acting as such, while the reality is that this is a technology that is currently deeply unreliable and may not change much of anything at all."

(Original title: Goldman Sachs: AI Is Overhyped, Wildly Expensive, and Unreliable)

https://www.404media.co/goldman-sachs-ai-is-overhyped-wildly-expensive-and-unreliable/

Il cartello Phoebus non è una teoria del complotto, ma una vera cospirazione industriale che ha plasmato il nostro modo di consumare. Dalla riduzione intenzionale della vita delle lampadine all'obsolescenza programmata moderna, ecco come un gruppo di aziende ha manipolato il mercato per decenni. Per la sezione "il futuro di ieri" vi racconto un fatto storico la cui eredità continua a influenzare l'industria.

#Obsolescenza #Industria #Cospirazione #Innovazione

https://www.futuroprossimo.it/2024/07/obsolescenza-programmata-la-cospirazione-delle-lampadine-che-illumino-il-900/

Climeworks's Orca facility in Iceland, currently the world's largest direct air capture facility, was designed to remove 4000 tonnes of CO₂ per year.

In 2023, it removed just 921 tonnes.

That's a time machine that takes us back 0.7 seconds in a year. 🥲

https://climeworks.com/news/the-reality-of-deploying-direct-air-capture-in-the-field

Добавяне на информация на Габровки села в Общомедия

Точно преди една година Жюстин Томс ни беше на гости на село и нащрака и добави супер снимки на селото. Тогава се амбицирах първо да добавя колкото може повече информация за региона в OpenStreetMap и второ - да обиколя селата в района и да им сложа по някоя снимка в Общомедия, във страниците им в Уикипедия и в Уикиданни (ако има смисъл) Към днешна дата промени има по: Костенковци Велковци Лесичарка Кметчета Ритя…

https://bogomil.info/5590

Ever think about how weird it is that purple, a mix of red and blue, looks like violet? Red and violet are at the opposite ends of the visible spectrum!

This diagram of colors sheds some light on this. It's boundary consists of two parts: a curve and a straight line:

• The curve, called the 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗹𝗼𝗰𝘂𝘀, consists of pure frequencies in the spectrum, from red at left to violet at right.

• But the line, called the 𝗽𝘂𝗿𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲, goes from violet to red!

Your computer screen probably uses a red-green-blue system, so it can only make colors inside the triangle here, or some nearby triangle. The colors in the triangle are called the 𝗴𝗮𝗺𝘂𝘁.

In the gamut, colors close to the purple line are made as mixtures of red and blue.

There's a huge amount more to say about this, and I don't know most of it yet. I'm afraid this post will launch an attack of color experts. Please be nice!

This diagram is called the 'CIE xy chromaticity diagram', and it's explained here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIE_1931_color_space

It was invented in 1931. A better standard came out in 1976:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIELAB_color_space

For a readable discussion of the difference, check out this post by Jeff Yurek:

https://dot-color.com/2012/08/14/color-space-confusion/

That's where I got the picture!

Dutch government announces that they'll make Mastodon available to all layers of the entire Dutch government, as a shared service of the government, starting in 2025!

The Mastodon pilot of the government celebrates their 1-year anniversary today, and as part of the evaluation they stated the Mastodon pilot "strengthens digital autonomy and [creates] a safe and reliable information supply".

Announcement (in Dutch): https://www.digitaleoverheid.nl/nieuws/1-jarig-mastodon-overheid-blikt-terug-en-vooruit/

Yup, it's true. Firefox 128 includes new adtech features that are opt-in by default and announced with very little fanfare, so most people might not even know they're there.

Well, this is me telling you they're there. You might want to go ahead and take a minute to opt out.

Here's the little helpful explainer from Mozilla about how it all works:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/privacy-preserving-attribution

My read seems to be: Mozilla says website surveillance is generally bad and should be defended against. Cool. No notes. Firefox actually has a lot of nice anti-tracking and privacy features there and that's the main reason why I like Firefox.

But, and I swear I'm not even joking a little bit here, Mozilla goes on to say that advertisers might be happier if Firefox itself just tracked you directly and sent activity reports back to them.

Doesn't that sound great?

Now, to Mozilla's credit, they claim to anonymize the activity reports. And you can still meaningfully opt out of the whole system.

But WTF, mate?! I use Firefox *because* it fights against adtech. Or at least it used to. Now, Mozilla just lets adtech right in the front door and hopes you won't notice?

Well, we noticed. Mozilla is damage and we need to route around it.

This election is not just about the names at the top of the ticket (though Trump is uniquely reprehensible). It’s about the entire incoming administration, the House, the Senate and the courts. It’s about governing for the people, not planning a “2nd American Revolution” like Trump’s not-so-silent partners -- the architects of Project 2025. We need your support to stop MAGA across the country: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/majority-over-maga?refcode=mastodon20240712directpost&source=mastodon

Bloomberg News - Billionaire Elon Musk has donated to a super PAC working to return Donald Trump to the White House, a major gambit by the world’s richest person to make his imprint on the US political landscape. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-12/elon-musk-donates-to-trump-tapping-vast-fortune-to-swing-2024-race

President Joe Biden's NATO press conference was watched closely last night. How did he do?

@AxiosNews has key takeaways: https://flip.it/21HYs-

Do you think Biden should remain the Democratic nominee?

#Biden #USPolitics #Politics #News #NATO #Election

We’re hiring again! The Mastodon team is looking for a part-time #Finance / #Ops Associate to support @mellifluousbox + @Gargron.

This is a #remote position and requires working proficiency in #German. Ideally:

› You have experience in #accounting + #bookkeeping
› Understand German #legal frameworks + systems
› Are great with MS #Excel!

Could also work as a long-term paid #internship. Can you refer anyone to us? More info/to apply:

https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/mastodon/f38df483-da29-4bab-9f0c-5d1b11e7c1d0

#FediHire #GetFediHired #hiring

Apparently EU elections are not only important to EU citizens.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/12/disinformation-networks-social-media-x-france-germany-italy-eu-elections

“A year prior, massive protests had exploded for the first time in the six decades of Castro’s revolution. ... The people demanded freedom and food. The military took to the streets.”

#ICYMI: After unprecedented protests swept Cuba, a huge wave of people fled. in our cover story, a journalist shares his saga of being smuggled to the U.S.-Mexico #border. https://www.texasobserver.org/cuba-journalism-border-immigration-asylum-texas/

#politics #USpol #Texas #immigration #Mexico #Cuba #news #HumanRights

#Russia has not changed its preferences since the last #US presidential election. It still favors Donald #Trump, according to U.S. intelligence.

#Moscow used influence campaigns to help Trump win in his fight against Clinton in 2016 and tried to do the same against #Biden in 2020.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/russia-starting-try-influence-us-voters-says-us-intelligence-official-2024-07-09/

Texas Leaders Worry That Bitcoin Mines Threaten to Crash the State Power Grid
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/10072024/texas-bitcoin-mining-threatens-power-grid/?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

Posted into Latest News @latest-news-InsideClimate

We are pleased to announce the first call for contributions of the first issue of Transformations: A #DARIAH #Journal, hosted by #Episciences Diamond publishing platform.

https://www.dariah.eu/2024/06/21/transformations-1st-call-for-contributions/

Transformations is an overlay journal with a unique editorial line and publication project, which relies on a #DiamondOpenAccess evaluation and publication platform. Read more on this alternative and transparent publishing model here:

https://www.dariah.eu/2024/02/29/introducing-the-dariah-overlay-journal-an-alternative-and-transparent-publishing-model/

Your attention please:

Maybe you've never heard about it but since 2020, the Next Generation Internet programs, a sub-branch of the European Commission’s Horizon Europe program, have been cascading funding (via @nlnet calls) open source software in Europe. The massive fundings have enabled a great deal of free software development in recent years, and all without too many constraints (with too few transparency and monitoring, though… which urgently needs to be improved). Unfortunately, these NGI programs seem to have been withdrawn from the next round of Horizon Europe fundings to give priority to AI bullshit.

As a result, we’ve been invited to contact the National Contact Points, Horizon Europe’s national representatives, to express our concern and the importance of maintaining public funding for free software. With this in mind, we wrote an open letter at Petites Singularités and thought it would make sense to fork it out with Hackstub and ARN in Strasbourg for the French NCP to get other French-speaking free software orgas to sign. I’m thinking in particular of the software that has benefited from this funding, such as Yunohost, but also of the Kittens that use this same software.

We can also announce that this topic will be part of the central theme of the next #OFFDEM in Brussels, on the first weekend of February 2025. There's not yet an exact title, but we’ll be discussing financing and community structuring for free software over the next few years.

If you want to sign the french-speaking version of this letter, there's a pad for it: https://pad.public.cat/lettre-NCP-NGI

#ngi #publicMoneyPublicCode #floss

@gtconway3
seems to have started something similar, e.g.
https://www.threads.net/@gtconway3/post/C9OYISdJwuZ
https://www.threads.net/@gtconway3/post/C9OXvHqpSnE
https://www.threads.net/@gtconway3/post/C9OXjPHpKB6
https://www.threads.net/@gtconway3/post/C9OXVLWJhQ4
https://www.threads.net/@gtconway3/post/C9OXQu3JmII

but on a feed-based social network these will pass quickly. I guess we need to do this on a more focused topic-based network, such as feddit/lemmy.

I personally am way too far from the US (not to the least in terms of timezone) to be doing this myself.

@mapto@qoto.org @knittingknots2

It turns out Google Chrome ships a default, hidden extension that allows code on `*.google.com` access to private APIs, including your current CPU usage

You can test it out by pasting the following into your Chrome DevTools console on any Google page:

chrome.runtime.sendMessage(
"nkeimhogjdpnpccoofpliimaahmaaome",
{ method: "cpu.getInfo" },
(response) => {
console.log(JSON.stringify(response, null, 2));
},
);

More notes here: https://simonwillison.net/2024/Jul/9/hangout_servicesthunkjs/