Shibaprasad Bhattacharya @shibaprasad@qoto.org

Mozilla: "In a well-intentioned yet dangerous move to fight online fraud, France is on the verge of forcing browsers to create a dystopian technical capability. It would force browser providers to create the means to mandatorily block websites present on a government provided list. Such a move will overturn decades of established content moderation norms and provide a playbook for authoritarian governments"

https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2023/06/26/france-browser-website-blocking/
#france #browser #cybersecurity #mozilla #security #surveillance

Meet 10 Women in Science Who Changed the World
#WomenInSTEM #womeninmedicine
#medicalwriters #sciencejournalists #medicaljournalists

Great article in the March Discover magazine. The 10 women mentioned in the article are:
1. Ada Lovelace, Mathematician
2. Marie Curie, Physicist and Chemist
3. Janaki Ammal, Botanist
4. Chien-Shiung Wu, Physicist
5. Katherine Johnson, Mathematician
6. Rosalind Franklin, Chemist
7. Vera Rubin, Astronomer
8. Gladys West, Mathematician
9. Flossie Wong-Staal, Virologist and Molecular Biologist
10. Jennifer Doudna, Biochemist

Changed my stance on AI art, post as much of it as you can in the places they train the AIs

Feel a need for a brief rant about #gunculture.

I am so glad I had a traditional introduction to #firearms. Anyone who wields a #firearm should definitely know the basic safety rules, but there are other rules of decorum that some folks (especially elected Republicans and the NRA) just don't adhere to. Since these are largely unwritten rules for a culture of responsibility, I figured it might be worth taking the time to put some of them to paper, as it were. So, here goes:

1) Guns are not toys. While obvious on the surface, there are ancillaries to this rule that many #gun owners don't seem to understand. I.e. we don't buy guns for "how cool they look" and we don't post pictures of us posing with our guns on social media (you may notice that when I post about guns, it's pretty much only about discussing safety / reliability). They're deadly tools, not toys.

2) Guns should be treated as objects of respect. An operator should have a degree of familiarity with a weapon before ever considering using it in a combat situation, but that familiarity should never override the basic respect for a deadly weapon. That respect leads you to follow the safety rules more strictly and with greater attention, to keep your deadly weapons under lock and key, to keep them clean and well-maintained to avoid accidents, and to think twice before brandishing one.

3) Guns are not macho. If you're carrying a gun, it's because you don't trust your skills at unarmed combat to defend yourself. There can be many good reasons for this (medical issues, deadly threats, etc.), but nonetheless, guns are the opposite of tough, and should not be handled nor brandished like a replacement penis. Bragging about guns is, and should be seen as, deeply shameful. Which leads me into...

4) Only tremendous assholes use guns for anything other than defense. When you see someone open-carrying or brandishing a weapon, they're not thinking about defense; They're trying to intimidate you with it to impose their will on the world around them. Open-carrying a gun is like strapping truck balls to your waist. Even responsible gun owners get nervous around these people.

(Note: some of the above does not apply to those who must carry a firearm for their work, but I think most of them would agree with the vast majority of this post wholeheartedly anyway)

TLDR: Humility, discretion, and thoughtfulness are the gentleman's way. If you must handle a gun, do it like a gentleman.

If you hit yourself and it hurts, are you too weak or too strong?

The LangChain LLM framework is only available in Python and JavaScript. But if you're an R user, Jason Yeung shows how to incorporate LangChain Python code into an R script with the {reticulate} 📦. This lets you include #LangChain in an #rstats workflow.
https://jason-yeung.netlify.app/posts/2023_5_26/

#LLM #AI #GenerativeAI

Can I get a little signal boosting help, pls Mastodon? 🙏

I’m looking to fill some free time helping out organisations working for #conservation and #biodiversity.

I have a weird hodgepodge of programming/program management/marketing expertise, and am currently studying towards a MSc in biodiversity and wildlife health. Teeny tiny bit of past conservation NGO experience. Based outside Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Happy to volunteer, in field, or behind a desk, whatever you need.

Based on internal feedback, I think our new t-shirts will be a huge success. We expect to launch them along with mugs, enamel pins and stickers mid-July. The designs are awesome, but I don’t want to spoil the surprise yet. It’ll be a fun way for the non-profit to fundraise more money 😊