@festal@tldr.nettime.org
@festal@tldr.nettime.org avatar

festal

@festal@tldr.nettime.org

Researcher, teacher, and activist at the intersection of culture, technology, and politics. Born at 324 PPM. Binary, so you don't have to be.

If you are on this instance, I won't follow you because I'll read all your posts in the local timeline. Why, because I want to get a sense of place as I'm currently one of the moderators of this instance.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

tante, to random German
@tante@tldr.nettime.org avatar

Hashtag Kindergeburtstag

festal,
@festal@tldr.nettime.org avatar

@tante neues profilbild!

festal, to random
@festal@tldr.nettime.org avatar

I say this as a citizen of Europe (I know, this technically doesn't exist, but I still feel it's aspirational pull). The West is in its terminal phase.

Ukraine/Gaza policies might we'll be the final nail in the coffin of enlightenment values of critical reason and universal human rights. Unchecked capitalism is ripping societies apart, condemning large parts of the population to abuse and misery amidst incredible wealth. And the political system of representative democracy has been so captured by special interest that it can no longer enact broadly popular programs (social safety and environmental protection).

And the reactionary surge is only accelerating the decline.

tante, to random
@tante@tldr.nettime.org avatar

7 Förderanträge in den letzten 6 Wochen und jetzt ist der letzte (Abgabe heute bis 23:59) schon fertig runtergekürzt. Wirds heute also doch keine Nachtschicht?

festal,
@festal@tldr.nettime.org avatar

@tante 🤞

remixtures, to random Portuguese
@remixtures@tldr.nettime.org avatar

RT @TimChristiaens5
The money in Big Tech is not in AI, it turns out, but in AI data processing infrastructures.

https://www.ft.com/content/f01c6852-8aa6-4cc0-991d-38f15077ba92

festal,
@festal@tldr.nettime.org avatar

@remixtures On this topic, I can highly recommend Nick Srnicek's talk: AI and the Future of Economy @elevatefestival

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4D-EPNFQuA

festal, to random
@festal@tldr.nettime.org avatar

If corporations are a form of slow AI, then what @pluralistic calls is indicative of an "alignment problem", when the objective function (paperclip maximization) is persued by destructive means. And like all alignment problems, it has to do with a lack of, or the wrong, constraints.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/

festal, to ai
@festal@tldr.nettime.org avatar

A comprehensive overview of the possibilities to opt-out of having our website included in AI #training #data. By using robot.txt. tl,dr: it's increasingly possible, but for existing content likely too late. Removing content already indexed is close to impossible. Contrary to search engines, #AI indexes are not concerned with it reflecting the current state of the web, but simply keep adding.

https://www.mnot.net/blog/2024/04/21/ai-control

festal, to random
@festal@tldr.nettime.org avatar

What a great article on the undersea cables that carry most internet traffic. In short, constant maintenance is needed.

https://www.theverge.com/c/24070570/internet-cables-undersea-deep-repair-ships

festal, to random
@festal@tldr.nettime.org avatar

I'm looking for a history of as a technology and industry. Anyone any good pointers?

festal, to random
@festal@tldr.nettime.org avatar

What's the rationale for books as PDFs being more expensive than as paper backs? Is it the DRM?

NatureMC, (edited ) to random
@NatureMC@mastodon.online avatar

🚨 Breaking news of April Fools Day: Putin poisoned by mysterious substance from the FSB, Trump is arrested for life, Hamas gives up, Netanyahu resigns with his government. In a programme that even Russia and China are joining, the world finally wants to fight hunger and climate change effectively. Special meeting in Davos to introduce a tax on the super-rich and protect democracy around the globe. First serious signs of hope.🌍
Sorry to have to announce this today 😭 unfortunately: 🐟 :Blobhaj:

festal,
@festal@tldr.nettime.org avatar

@NatureMC
Back in the day, when news papers were still papers. Yes Men's famous edition of NYT (2009) "All The News We Hope to Print."

festal, to random
@festal@tldr.nettime.org avatar

A time, as good as any, to remember that Richard Serra also made very interesting films And you can find ubu.com. Such as this one: Frame, 1969, 14' 29"

https://ubu.com/film/serra_frame.html

tante, to random
@tante@tldr.nettime.org avatar

I just had to manually moderate @hypebot for the first time due to it reposting Holocaust denial by a well known "open/small web" advocate. Given how that person is on antisemitic rants for days now, they're blocked.

If you see more of that ping me please.

festal,
@festal@tldr.nettime.org avatar

@tante I totally agree. Particularly since @hypebot itself, at least as I understand it, is not an apolitical project intended to show the breadth of the Fediverse, but to bring interesting put possibly separate 'communities' into a view.

festal,
@festal@tldr.nettime.org avatar

@tante @hypebot as it should be! Let's hope this is enough to the need for your intervention at a bearable minimum.

Do you know on which server this particular post trended? Perhaps, if that happens again from the same server, that's an indication to take the server out of the list.

tante, to random
@tante@tldr.nettime.org avatar

Just FYI: I just migrated @hypebot's code and conf file away from Github. Won't change anything in how it works, just didn't want you to be confused when the config file and code are suddenly on Codeberg.

festal,
@festal@tldr.nettime.org avatar

@tante you still need to update the links in the hypebot profile :)

festal, to random
@festal@tldr.nettime.org avatar

Mastodon is really lacking discovery tools beyond the local and the federated timeline.

As a way to address this issue, @tante has set-up the @hypebot which forwards trending posts from a hand-curated list of instances.

You can find the list here:

https://github.com/tante/hypebot-config/blob/main/config.yaml

We want to update that list occasionally, to keep it interesting.

Any suggestion of instances that should be added?

leitmedium, to random German
@leitmedium@tldr.nettime.org avatar

Eine moralische Frage, bei der mich Eure Gedanken interessieren:

Ich setze gerade ein Podcast-Projekt auf. Währen das Technische alles klar ist, muss dann immer noch ein Podcast-Cover und ein Intro her. Beim Cover gibt es nun folgende Möglichkeiten, nachdem das ungefähre Aussehen konzeptuell klar ist:

  1. stilistisch passende Grafikerin suchen und beauftragen
  2. Eine Plattform wie Fiver benutzen
  3. Ein Mockup mit einer "KI" machen und mit 1 oder 2 kombinieren
  4. nur eine "KI" benutzen

Die letzte Variante wirkt unfair, weil sie auf bestehenden Kunstwerken aufbaut, gerade bei aktuellen Formaten auch auf aktuellen Daten, die vielfach nicht einer kommerziellen Auswertung zugestimmt haben. Variante 3 wirkt "ok", weil letztlich jemand Kreatives bezahlt wird, auch wenn das Mockup sich quasi erschlichen wird. Variante 2 ist so eine Sache, weil man damit hiesige Löhne umgeht, aber andererseits hat auch oft niemand Zeit und Lust für ein bei einem Freizeitprojekt kleinen Budget zu arbeiten. Variante 1 ist die Gold-Variante aber es dauert am längsten und verbraucht die meisten Resourcen (Geld und Zeit).

Macht Ihr Euch über sowas überhaupt Gedanken?

festal,
@festal@tldr.nettime.org avatar

@leitmedium Es gibt noch eine 5 Variante. Ein bestehendes, passendes Bild suchen und den/die Autor:in anfragen und für einen kleinen Betrag lizenzieren. Scheint mir eine ideale Schnittmenge zwischen Aufwand, Kosten, Fairness zu sein.

festal, to random
@festal@tldr.nettime.org avatar

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/28/quite-radical-the-feeling-of-exhaustion-is-key-to-tackling-climate-change-says-author-ajay-singh-chaudhary

festal, to random
@festal@tldr.nettime.org avatar

Ok, Google got a lot of flak for generating historically inaccurate but vaguely diverse images of, say, medieval British kings. Obviously, none of the actual kings were black or indigenous.

I must admit, I feel a tiny sliver of sympathy for Google. They are caught up in a lose-lose situation.

On the one hand, they can try to represent the data accurately, which also means simply accepting the bias in the data itself, thus naturalizing and perpetuating the injustices from which it stems.

Or can try to correct against that bias, thus misrepresenting the data, acknowledging that the data itself is not an accurate representation of the world, and/or that the world itself is biased (say, as in police records).

So, what do you do? There is not one single answer. Sometimes correcting is good, sometimes it's bad.

And this is why my sympathy is waver-thin. The problem is scale, the attempt to find one (engineering) solution for everything. That cannot work the moment you enter the territory of meaning, which is what generative AI (but also earlier forms like machine vision) is doing.

The problem is this one-size-all approach. But of course, this is what business demands. Silicon Valley is obsessed with scale. But to scale meaning making is not just a form of colonial violence, but will also generate lots of internal contradictions.

https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2024/02/22/gemini-has-a-problem/

festal,
@festal@tldr.nettime.org avatar

@cstross @pjorge

The guard rails go up. They don't want to create stereotypes of aliens :)

festal, to random
@festal@tldr.nettime.org avatar

Now it's online. Highly recommended. @Mer__edith and Camille Francois' conversation on Al Jazeera's Studio B.

https://www.aljazeera.com/program/studio-b-unscripted/2024/2/22/the-ai-series-ai-and-surveillance-capitalism

festal, to random
@festal@tldr.nettime.org avatar

Now that died in prison would be an excellent moment to release and reclaim some moral high ground.

tante, to random
@tante@tldr.nettime.org avatar

Felix is right. And it goes further: We often treat units of energy used or units of compute supplied as fungible, as if they were all the same. But it matters what you do with them, not every use of energy for example is the same. It makes a massive difference whether you use a kWh of energy on running a train, powering an MRT , confirming Bitcoin transactions or generating some "AI art".

Energy and compute are often seen as ethereal, as invisible but they have a material basis, a material cost. And we more than ever need to make sure to invest our material resources less wastefully, more consciously and with a stronger focus on the well being and dignity of everyone on this planet.

https://tldr.nettime.org/@festal/111923413367644868

festal, (edited )
@festal@tldr.nettime.org avatar

@tante One of the many problems with contemporary tech culture is that it takes the amount of energy used as a sign of civilizational progress, meaning using more energy is a good thing in and of itself.

This is, ultimately, based on the Kardashev scale, a method of measuring a civilization's level of technological advancement based on the amount of energy it is capable of using.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale

festal, to random
@festal@tldr.nettime.org avatar

The world would probably be a better place if the absolute amount of computing power would no longer grow. Then development would have to focus on making things more efficient rather than relying on brute force everywhere.

festal,
@festal@tldr.nettime.org avatar

@tante I agree!

jeffreyfisher, to random

what is the algorithmic logic of Mastodon feeds? how do i get found?

festal,
@festal@tldr.nettime.org avatar

@jeffreyfisher My understanding is that there is no algorithmic logic in the Mastodon feeds. They are simply displayed in reverse chronological order.

So, there are three ways in which somebody can come across your posts:

  1. one explicitly follows you and sees all your posts

  2. Somebody one follows boots one of your posts and thus one sees this one post of yours.

  3. You use a hashtag in your posts and somebody follows this hashtag or searches for it and then finds your post that uses this hashtag,

Note: liking a post has no influence on its findability. It's simply a nod of appreciation.

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