Sasha Akhavi @sakhavi@qoto.org
Reasonably happy almost all the time, somehow. Extremely lucky father & husband; 20+ year software veteran / exec now studying the software industry as Ph.D @York University Science and Technology Studies. Blog at https://sakhavi.wordpress.com
Joined Oct 2022
Sasha Akhavi
boosted
Five days before a special election that should be illegal, voting locations for tens of thousands of Ohioans have been temporarily changed (presumably to make it harder for us to defeat this awful ballot issue). If you’re in Ohio, make sure you know where to vote! #Ohio #Issue1
https://fox8.com/news/polling-places-for-aug-8-election-changed-in-cuyahoga-summit-counties/
Sasha Akhavi
boosted
re: the news about #Zoom scraping *all* data for training #ML/#AI, here's a useful guide on reading privacy policies: https://themarkup.org/the-breakdown/2023/08/03/how-to-quickly-get-to-the-important-truth-inside-any-privacy-policy via @themarkup
Sasha Akhavi
boosted
This essay is an utterly brilliant take on #AIhype. I'll put a few excerpts here, but you should definitely go read the whole thing:
https://karawynn.substack.com/p/language-is-a-poor-heuristic-for
>>
@justinhendrix Oh, honey.
Sasha Akhavi
boosted
The First Big #Antitrust Trial of the Century Is About to Start https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-first-big-antitrust-trial-of
@GeePawHill While we’re getting tired of it, though, it’s doing good & perhaps essential work disillusioning the public about the myths of tech utopianism and exceptionalism. Hope to hear it in a congressional hearing soon.
Sasha Akhavi
boosted
Since Musk has officially announced his intention to train his "AI" on everyone's tweets, here, again, for anyone still there, is how to download your data:
https://twitter.com/settings/download_your_data
A few tweet deletion tools:
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/delete-tweets-immediately/
And Darius @darius's Twitter archive tool:
https://tinysubversions.com/twitter-archive/make-your-own/
You know, I’ve wanted to get back to #neworleans for a long time now, but I don’t believe I’ll be setting foot inside #louisiana anytime soon.
Sometimes it really seems like the kids are all right. #climate #climatechange
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/08/05/montana-climate-trial-special-places/
Sasha Akhavi
boosted
Every time you try to talk smack about how Europe is better at regulation than innovation
This is the whole point of the “I would simply” meme family.
From: @PavelASamsonov
https://mastodon.social/@PavelASamsonov/110822003666733456
Sasha Akhavi
boosted
How’s this for a headstone epitaph:
UNSUBSCRIBE
Sasha Akhavi
boosted
Surveillance marketers are changing how they track you online, so we’re joining forces with Consumer Reports to investigate.
If you have a Facebook account (even if it’s inactive), help us uncover what info companies are gathering and sharing about you. https://themarkup.org/pixel-hunt/2023/08/02/help-us-investigate-surveillance-marketing-using-facebook-data
Sasha Akhavi
boosted
Mike Amundsen
The LLMentalist Effect: how chat-based Large Language Models replicate the mechanisms of a psychic’s con
https://softwarecrisis.dev/letters/llmentalist/
"The field of AI research has a reputation for disregarding the value of other fields, so I’m certain that this reimplementation of a psychic’s con is entirely accidental." -- #BaldurBjarnason
Sasha Akhavi
boosted
Reasonably happy almost all the time, somehow. Extremely lucky father & husband; 20+ year software veteran / exec now studying the software industry as Ph.D @York University Science and Technology Studies. Blog at https://sakhavi.wordpress.com
Joined Oct 2022
