@baldur@toot.cafe
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

baldur

@baldur@toot.cafe

Writer, web developer and consultant based in Hveragerði, Iceland. Lapsed Interactive Media Academic. Webby Tech Stuff and webby book stuff.

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baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

This talk by Meredith Whittaker is excellent. I originally clicked way from it without reading because the title is in German, but turns out the talk itself is absolutely in English.

https://www.helmut-schmidt.de/aktuelles/detail/die-rede-der-zukunftspreistraegerin

> What we call AI today grew out of this toxic model – and must be understood primarily as a way of marketing the derivatives of mass surveillance and concentrated platform and computational power.

baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

“How do you accidentally run for President of Iceland? | by Anna Andersen”

Glad somebody wrote about this because it’s an objectively hilarious UX case study

(And they just announced that eleven people managed to get the requisite number of endorsements in time) https://uxdesign.cc/how-do-you-accidentally-run-for-president-of-iceland-0d71a4785a1e

baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

“Distracted”

https://lmnt.me/blog/distracted.html

> This industry used to sell solutions. Now it sells nothing, disguised as possibility.

baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

“Tom Luth, R.I.P. – News From ME”

https://www.newsfromme.com/2024/05/25/tom-luth-r-i-p/

baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

“Pixels of the Week – May 26, 2024 by Stéphanie Walter - UX Researcher & Designer.”

https://stephaniewalter.design/blog/pixels-of-the-week-may-26-2024/

baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

Worth noting that the “would you rather be alone in the forest with a man or a bear?” question plays out slightly differently in my circles.

baldur,
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

So, that’s what it sounds like when a joke on social media goes down like a lead balloon.

baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

“Faking William Morris, Generative Forgery, and the Erosion of Art History”

https://maggieappleton.com/generative-forgery

> To confound matters, the Etsy stores selling these generated images also sell genuine prints by Morris, Monet, Klimt, and Matisse

baldur,
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

@markv I mean, yeah I think it’s almost certainly some sort of consumer fraud?

One thing that “AI” fans have in common with cryptocoin boosters is they all seem to believe technology means regular laws don’t apply for some reason 🤷🏻‍♂️

timbray, (edited ) to random
@timbray@cosocial.ca avatar

Do you know someone with significant quality-of-life problems due to Long Covid?

Boosts appreciated.

baldur,
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

@timbray Voted “Yes” before I saw the “I am one” option. I had brain fog and eyesight issues for months after I first got Covid (despite vaccinations). Still occasionally get brain fog but more rarely, thankfully.

baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

“Forget Subtext – People Don’t Even Get Surtext – Terence Eden’s Blog”

In my experience, reactionaries generally do not even do a surface reading of texts https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/05/forget-subtext-people-dont-even-get-surtext/

baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

At least we can comfort ourselves with the thought that at least this AI Bubble shall pass too, leaving behind a new global infrastructure for fraud, misinformation, and spam, ensuring that everybody involved in implementing these models will have helped make the world much worse, contributing to our collective inability to fight the global climate crisis and paving the way for the return of fascism.

No, wait, that’s not comforting. That’s the other thing.

baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

“WebAssembly: A promising technology that is quietly being enshitified”

"So we have this WASI thing that is only version 0.2, and that is already way more complex than the alternative solutions. Is there any way that it will succeed?" https://kerkour.com/webassembly-wasi-preview2

baldur,
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

@hasanhaja Thanks! I might take a look at that. 🙂

baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

“How the new Microsoft Recall feature fundamentally undermines Windows security | by Kevin Beaumont | May, 2024 | DoublePulsar”

https://doublepulsar.com/how-the-new-microsoft-recall-feature-fundamentally-undermines-windows-security-aa072829f218

baldur,
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

@ianbetteridge

Unfortunately I think you're very mistaken.

Infostealers, if they want to get data beyond what's already stored, have to remain undetected and unremoved for substantial periods of time. People don't log into their online bank every day

But the point of recall is to store everything which means the infostealer only needs to remain undetected for long enough to exfiltrate the SQLite database of OCRed screenshots to effectively get a snapshot of your entire life.

baldur,
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

@ianbetteridge Dude! US bank account and social security numbers are used for authentication too! You don't need a password or a PIN to fuck up somebody's life if you have access to these numbers and they're frequently displayed in plain text on screens! The US system is built from top to bottom on principles of security through obscurity and people have no option to opt out of it without literally moving to a different country.

baldur,
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

@ianbetteridge I did not write UK. I wrote US. The security issues regarding personal data are very different in the US and Canada and are, yeah, broken in ways that we have to account for when we're designing software.

You keep assessing Recall in terms of whether it's safe for yourself not others. The privacy and security advocates are saying that this compromises the privacy and security of large swathes of the public in a variety of countries. They absolutely aren't exaggerating the issues

baldur,
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

@ianbetteridge I don't see how the point still stands. People control what they write down. They don't control what gets displayed on the screens of the services they use. It's very different to write down something in a file with an arbitrary name or an email than to store it in a searchable database with metadata.

And I guarantee that many of the "broken" assumptions are MS reacting to security concerns they hadn't thought of themselves and promising it will be fixed before shipping

baldur,
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

@ianbetteridge

You are much too trusting of MS, given their atrocious history for security and privacy and you aren't trusting enough of the people who specialise in security and privacy.

baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

“Artificial intelligence technology behind ChatGPT was built in Iowa—with a lot of water”

https://apnews.com/article/chatgpt-gpt4-iowa-ai-water-consumption-microsoft-f551fde98083d17a7e8d904f8be822c4

> Ren’s team estimates ChatGPT gulps up 500 milliliters of water (close to what’s in a 16-ounce water bottle) every time you ask it a series of between 5 to 50 prompts or questions

cferdinandi, to random
@cferdinandi@mastodon.social avatar

My buddy @baldur once again knocked it out of the park with this one... https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/the-deskilling-of-web-dev-is-harming-us-all/

baldur,
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

@cferdinandi 🙂

baldur, to random
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

Anybody who thought that OpenAI and Sam Altman were trustworthy before the recent drama has already demonstrated a pretty darn high tolerance for bullshit and shenanigans. A CEO positioning a voice chatbot as a celebrity soundalike without permission isn’t even going to blip on their ethical radar

baldur,
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

Debating these people—and there are a lot of them—is pointless. You aren’t going to convince them that they shouldn’t trust OpenAI and Altman any more than you’re going to convince an DHH/Basecamp fan or a Tesla/Musk enthusiast.

baldur,
@baldur@toot.cafe avatar

@brennen Yup.

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