tobychev @tobychev@qoto.org

Microsoft are effectively giving up on Copilot Pro subscription ($20/month) as almost nobody paid for it.

Instead they are bundling it into Microsoft 365 consumer subscriptions and inflating the renewal prices there. There’s no opt out.

Effectively allows the Copilot revenue and user numbers to be inflated.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/7/24290268/microsoft-copilot-office-features-microsoft-365

TikTok has been ordered to shutdown its offices and business in Canada by the Canadian government citing national security reasons.

The app itself is not being banned nor is access to it being blocked. This action primarily limits them from having a business entity in Canada.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/canada-orders-wind-up-tiktoks-canadian-business-app-access-continue-2024-11-06/

The year is 2026, and U.S. refugees entering the Schengen Area must swear an oath at customs professing their opposition to the Trump Regime before receiving their Good American papers. Polish freedom fighters recently sabotaged Europe's major LNG terminals, freeing EU leaders to decouple from Washington's gas grip.

I try to remember that the work before yesterday was strengthening patterns of collaboration and care and disrupting patterns of domination and separation and that our work today is no different, though the context, strategies, and obstacles may have shifted.

If you need one, here's a pallet cleanser for you

The most maddening tech discourse these days is that we need AI to figure out how to solve climate change.

We've known how to completely solve climate change for more than a decade, thanks. We just don't want to.

This Apple Intelligence ad where an executive presents a document in a meeting that they haven’t read based on AI summarized key points reminds me of the Google ad where a dad asked an AI to write a letter on behalf of his kid to their favorite artist.

These are both examples where it provides negative value for AI to perform the task instead of a human. I don’t want coworkers regurgitating ChatGPT summaries of documents instead of sharing their perspectives.

https://youtu.be/BK8bnkcT0Ng

My daughter's school added me into 3 WhatsApp groups. It was insane. I changed my phone number to leave the groups. When they asked for the new number I showed them a dead Nokia I bought off Ebay. Now, my daughter brings home paper letters.

Many amateur astronomers have built their telescopes, even grinding the mirrors. But there are so many photon choices across the electromagnetic spectrum. A new paper provides instructions for building a backyard radio telescope that can detect the emission of hydrogen in the 21 cm line. This is a specific wavelength of radio waves emitted by vast clouds of neutral hydrogen that can pass through gas and dust. You can even use this during the day or in light pollution.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.00057

listen, I've had my moments, but at least I've never mansplained Margaret Atwood's book to Margaret Atwood

More evidence -- this time with audio tapes from the original experiment -- showing that the Stanford Prison Experiment was rigged to encourage terrible behavior by the guards

In Medium: https://gen.medium.com/the-lifespan-of-a-lie-d869212b1f62

Unpaywalled: https://archive.is/K7gMN

Talking about this with my son, I was struck by how many pieces of major science/theory/culture in the mid-20th-century insisted that they "proved" humanity was inherently, natively selfish -- but turned out to be much less true

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People who wear glasses are disabled, BTW. We need disability aids to function as an active part of society. If you wear glasses, you are disabled; your disability is just one that happens to be highly (if not totally) accommodated. It is generally considered reasonable to insist that you need your glasses and cannot cope well without them, and glasses are readily available and prescriptions for them not heavily gated. Touching or taking them without your permission is considered rude and cruel.

Our contribution to the #Lines day of #30DayMapChallenge comes from @waeiski with special thanks to Oula Inkeröinen. The map shows the value of aggregation and edge-bundling for complex mobility data, such as regional student mobility across Europe. The data and methods will be published openly in the near future as a part of the #MobiTwin project.

When you use an LLM for summarizing your email, the data center that runs it is simultaneously summer-izing the climate.

“Oxfam identified 23 superyachts owned by 18 billionaires and estimates the average annual carbon footprint of each of these yachts to be 5,672 tonnes, which is more than three times the emissions of the #billionaires’ private jets... This is equivalent to 860 years of emissions for the average person in the world, and 5,600 times the average of someone in the global poorest 50%.”

#ClimateEmergency

https://gizmodo.com/billionaires-are-the-one-case-where-personal-choices-can-affect-climate-change-2000518380

Don’t be like the Lebanese sectarian movement that kills Syrians and is allied with the Iranian theocratic dictatorship, be like the Azerbaijani one-man dictatorship that commits genocide against Armenians

A very canny strategy—buying shares to gain inside information and propose changes at shareholder meetings—has revealed that Microsoft's deals with fossil fuel extractors contradict their carbon-friendly claims.

https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/31/microsoft_greenwashing_ai/

The Extreme Weather Report, only this week...

Sometimes it's the only reframing that helps me not to drown: I'm not waiting for the catastrophe. The catastrophe has already happened. We are living the apocalypse. How do I make my life and the lives of others as bearable as possible in the aftermath?