R. A. Dehi @radehi@qoto.org

Genuinely the best thread I've seen on Hacker News in years: "Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?"

So many delightfully niche projects!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35729232

We're concerned that language in the proposed European Cyber Resilience Act may cause problems for public open source repositories like the ones we host. Please read and share: https://pyfound.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-eus-proposed-cra-law-may-have.html

Together with @cancel, we made a version of Oquonie that works on Windows. It should work all the way back to win95. Could anyone with a Windows machine try this out for us?

> Oquonie(Windows)

https://hundredrabbits.itch.io/oquonie

bioRxiv, medRxiv and arXiv respond to the OSTP memo with open letters to US funding agencies

https://connect.biorxiv.org/news/2023/04/11/ostp_response

https://blog.arxiv.org/2023/04/11/arxiv-joins-biorxiv-and-medrxiv-in-responding-to-the-nelson-memo/

We call on US funders to mandate preprint posting to achieve free access to results of publicly funded research simply & easily.

A focus on making research available not business models for journal curation would avoid channeling to APCs and future proof as peer review evolves & the notion of an accepted manuscript (AAM) ceases to be meaningful

Substack competes with Twitter, so Twitter cuts of Substack embedding of tweets.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/6/23673043/twitter-substack-embeds-bots-tools-api

After making a textual REPL yesterday, I realized today that I could use it to pass device arguments, like screen drawing routines to evaluate.

Selecting some text and pressing ctrl+p, evaluates the result in the bicycle window:

left | bicycle

Altogether, left(11kb) and bicycle(6kb) make for a 17kb creative coding canvas.

"Publishers beat Internet Archive as judge rules e-book lending violates copyright

Internet Archive: Judge’s copyright ruling is a “blow to all libraries.”"

The Internet Archive kept many books and media lost to time alive for us. So many pieces of lost media, including vintage films, books someone uploaded from their personal collection, political news that got scrubbed off the world, to name a few.

But alas, this is the gardening company deciding to burn down the seed vaults because nobody will buy their packaged seeds.

By the way, if they believed they could get away with it, they would definitely try to outlaw physical libraries as well.

#InternetArchive #bookpublishers #CopyrightInfringement #DigitalLending #ebooks #libraries

🔗: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/03/publishers-beat-internet-archive-as-judge-rules-e-book-lending-violates-copyright/

Impressive how every institution under Biden is going after crypto companies like the High Table going after John Wick.
Signature Bank was sold after being rescued by the FDIC but the buyer isnt getting the crypto clients. Instead they must find a new bank
https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-fdic-tells-signature-banks-crypto-clients-close-accounts-by-april-5-2023-03-28/

Mastodon which is incredibly hot, supports RSS beautifully.

Just add .rss to any account to get the feed. Amazing!

https://mastodon.social/@davew.rss

Open that in your favorite feed reader. It’ll work.

Post a screenshot, say what the reader app is.

And pass this on to everyone who uses a feed reader.

Spread the word!

This is a huge deal for the open web.

As your resident TikTok micro-celebrity + tech ethics/policy professor, I have a lot of feelings about the proposed TikTok ban. I think that this statement from Evan Greer of Fight for the Future articulates some points well. If the sole argument is "but China" I would very much like to see something beyond speculation. And if it's just not that, then go after Meta too. And either way maybe you could pass LITERALLY ANY DATA PRIVACY LAWS.

I blogged about the aperiodic monotile: https://aperiodical.com/2023/03/an-aperiodic-monotile-exists/
Including an explanation of what it’s all about that you can handwave your way through at the dinner table

Source, eek ; https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2023/03/chatbots-deepfakes-voice-clones-ai-deception-sale

@mattblaze I think that those who haven't experienced it do not understand the sheer sense of joy that understanding how things _work_ is for hackers. It enables you to do things which seem like magic. It's like super powers. It's literally bending the limits of what is possible. It is seeing the beauty of complex systems at several levels at once. I've tried to explain it to people but it's hard to convey that sense to those who don't experience it.

@shriramk - as you probably know, Khan Academy is testing out GPT4 for online math tutoring. Here's a sample of its "Socratic tutoring mode":

https://mathstodon.xyz/@johncarlosbaez/110029376208058880

So, it'll be interesting to see how that goes.

Automattic, the company behind WordPress is now the official author of the ActivityPub plugin. This is pretty big news, since it allows every WordPress website to be a potential fediverse server.

In this piece I take a look at the potential impact on #fediverse culture, zooming in on how tagging your WordPress posts makes them show up when you search for a specific hashtag here on the fediverse.

How do you think this will change the fediverse?

@fediversenews
Read at: https://fediversereport.com/wordpress-on-the-fediverse/

"maybe advance AI tech future to improve user freedom" or "definitely advance decentralized networks future to improve user freedom"

I chose the latter

Not wanting “algorithms” on mastodon’s feed because TWTR uses coersive algorithms is like not wanting to use any math because capitalism uses math.

Stop conflating bad, manipulative use of algorithms w/the general use of (open/visible) algorithms for personal control over data you see.

Chronological display IS AN ALGORITHM.

Mastodon’s feed ISN’T JUST CHRONOLOGY (it has filters, algos re boost freq, etc).

Mastodon’s feed could be a LOT better.

I WANT an algorithmic view I can adjust!

tiny 🧵

I just gave #chatgpt (the new version) 51 multiple choice questions from my midterm exam in #family #sociology and it got 49 of them right, or 96%. (The two it got wrong are debatable.) We covered historical demographic trends, sociological theories, definitions of race and gender concepts. I'll give some examples after my students take the test. Last year the students averages 80%.