@liampomfret@mastodon.social
@liampomfret@mastodon.social avatar

liampomfret

@liampomfret@mastodon.social

Consumer privacy researcher, Australian Privacy Foundation Board Member.
That Bulbagarden guy.
He/Him

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

liampomfret, to random
@liampomfret@mastodon.social avatar

With its latest policy update, Google is basically claiming that it has the right to use anything that anyone has ever put up online in public for the purpose of training AI.

As far as I’m concerned, what they’re pulling here is equivalent to someone wandering around a busy shopping complex taking photos up womens’ skirts, and then when caught claiming that if women don’t want those photos taken, then they should wear different clothing or just not go to the shopping complex at all.

liampomfret, to auspol
@liampomfret@mastodon.social avatar

As much as I would like a breakdown between "people who voted no because they're racist idiots" and "people who voted no because they were misled by the people claiming a progressive cause for voting no", there's no such nuance in a straight yes/no vote for a referendum. And just like the republican referendum, any nuance that may have theoretically existed will never be acknowledged in future political discussions about today's result.
Shame on us Australia.

liampomfret, to random
@liampomfret@mastodon.social avatar

It's simply absurd to see some people suggesting those helping Ukraine are warmongers because they're not going along with bad-faith suggestions of a ceasefire from Moscow.

If Moscow really wanted a true ceasefire, they could get that at any time simply by giving up on their invasion and withdrawing their troops beyond the pre-2014 borders. But Moscow doesn't want a true ceasefire and cessation of hostilities. They just want time to train and rearm their troops before their next offensive.

jtlg, to random
@jtlg@mastodon.lawprofs.org avatar

The fact that Google Search is leaning so hard into AI-generated results suggests that either Google leadership is out of touch with reality (possible), or that they have data that users prefer the AI-generated results (terrifying).

liampomfret,
@liampomfret@mastodon.social avatar

@jtlg I suspect they have data showing users click on AI-generated results, and they’re misinterpreting that as an absolute preference as opposed to a relative preference. That is to say, users have settled for AI-generated results because Google Search has been so bad at surfacing the useful content they would actually prefer, and/or they’re bouncing after clicking on a AI-generated result and seeing how bad it is rather than repeating a search they now see as futile.

kcarruthers, to random
@kcarruthers@mastodon.social avatar

The Feds Are Coming for “Extremist” Gamers: The Department of Homeland Security and FBI are in dialog with Roblox, Discord, Reddit, and others.

https://theintercept.com/2024/03/09/fbi-dhs-gamers-extremism-violence/

liampomfret,
@liampomfret@mastodon.social avatar

@kcarruthers Important timing here, given we seem to be seeing the start of another gate campaign. The fact Bannon was involved in pushing the last one, and that this new one has come out of nowhere in a US Presidential election year, has me concerned again about how they’ve been able to use gaming spaces to radicalise so many young people towards fascism.

liampomfret, to random
@liampomfret@mastodon.social avatar

MyNeighbourFireflies > Barbenheimer
The fact that was intentional by Studio Ghibli, as opposed to the ad hoc pairing of Barbenheimer, is honestly a bit unreal.

liampomfret, to auspol
@liampomfret@mastodon.social avatar

So if this referendum goes well, we can start organising a referendum to become a republic, right?

liampomfret, (edited ) to random
@liampomfret@mastodon.social avatar

At this point, I can’t help but feel like blaming the Yes campaign for the referendum result is akin to victim blaming.

To my mind, any blame should rest in the lies and misinformation peddling from the No campaign, in the media who generally superbly ineffective in their journalistic duty of combating the lies, and in particular with those in the media who were complicit in facilitating the spread of lies and misinformation.

liampomfret, to Eurovision
@liampomfret@mastodon.social avatar

All the toots tonight are giving me the same kind of vibes as . Just the right mix of fangasming and snark.

liampomfret, to random
@liampomfret@mastodon.social avatar

Listening to everything about these tsunami warnings in Japan kind of makes the severe weather warnings we've been under all day here in SEQ feel like child's play. They're expecting 5m waves in Noto in Ishikawa, and something like 3m waves across around a third of their western coastline? Bloody hell.

liampomfret, (edited ) to Eurovision
@liampomfret@mastodon.social avatar

For those following me, this is your warning ahead of time that you may want to mute the hashtag prior to the Australian broadcasts of this coming week.

Unless of course you enjoy snarky tooting and hot takes fuelled by about 1/3 of my annual alcohol intake, in which case, I hope you'll join us for the broadcast!

liampomfret, to aitools
@liampomfret@mastodon.social avatar

Hoping that we'll soon start to see some real growth in the list of and Academics on Mastodon. If you'd like to be added to the list, just give me a ping! https://lpomfret.github.io/Mastodon-Marketing/

liampomfret, to random
@liampomfret@mastodon.social avatar

Assignment guidelines: Your recommendations must be something your selected company isn't already doing, and must be relevant to their current business activities

Student 1: Makes recommendations for a market that their selected company abandoned a decade ago
Student 2: Recommends their firm do something that it's already been doing for the past decade.

sigh

liampomfret, to random
@liampomfret@mastodon.social avatar

....why has this student submitted an essay with their paper in landscape orientation instead of portrait? Oo;

liampomfret,
@liampomfret@mastodon.social avatar

@WhippoorwillSong Word count, so made no difference. We don’t do page counts.

liampomfret, to random
@liampomfret@mastodon.social avatar

So I presume all these search engines being down (all of which rely on the Bing backend) is because people are jumping ship from Google's AI nightmare in enough numbers that it's causing problems for whatever system that allows them to grab those results from Bing?

liampomfret, to random
@liampomfret@mastodon.social avatar

Quite frustrating that all the EOFS "deals" on the Synology 923+ NAS I've got my eyes on are more expensive than the everyday price for the unit on Amazon.

liampomfret, to random
@liampomfret@mastodon.social avatar

Ugh. This latest student has cited papers from an obviously fraudulent publisher. As in, a paper on Amazon and e-commerce supposedly published in an Egyptology journal. In what would does any reasonable student think that's credible? How did they even find this muck in the first place?

liampomfret, to random
@liampomfret@mastodon.social avatar

With the current enshittification of search engines, I'm honestly starting to wonder if it's time for large independent websites to start hosting link directories again.

liampomfret, to random
@liampomfret@mastodon.social avatar

Either retailers are way more desperate than I thought, or this company has made a hell of a typo in sending out this email!
(The amount also appears in the email subject, so that's 3 separate places with this figure.)

liampomfret,
@liampomfret@mastodon.social avatar

@delProfundo Just got the retraction email. I don't particularly like acting like a Karen, but considering they took 2 and a half hours to correct this error, I figure it's fair game.

liampomfret,
@liampomfret@mastodon.social avatar

@delProfundo It'll be interesting what they offer as "compensation" to stop people taking it to the ACCC. It'd be harder to push it if it was a mistaken sale price, but the nature of this as a promotional offer might make it easier to enforce.

liampomfret,
@liampomfret@mastodon.social avatar

@delProfundo I managed to make a purchase (that I was already planning to make for a birthday), and they've not sent me any retraction, so we'll see how I go.

liampomfret, to random
@liampomfret@mastodon.social avatar

Well, that's one company I don't think will be hiring me as a consultant.

Based on the questions they were asking me to comment on in their initial communications, I don't think they're going to appreciate me informing them that AI is simply not fit for purpose for them. Very much got the impression they weren't looking for an actual recommendation, but rather for an opinion that already agreed with whatever they were already proposing to do.

joannejacobs, to auspol
@joannejacobs@aus.social avatar

Why are we still even having this conversation? When did the Liberal Party turn into an organisation of "alternative facts"?

And before I get a pile on from everyone, that's really not what the Liberal Party used to be. We may have disagreed with their position, but they were never like the Republicans or even One Nation or Clive Palmer who actually have sought out fringe views as "facts". #insiders #auspol

liampomfret,
@liampomfret@mastodon.social avatar

@joannejacobs Feels like it first got started with the group in the party opposed to action on climate change, then really got running as the opposition within the party to Turnbull coalesced around Morrison. #auspol

liampomfret, to random
@liampomfret@mastodon.social avatar

Students, please use left align instead of justify in your assignments. I don't care how pretty you think it might be, the inconsistent spacing between words with justify makes your paper harder to read.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • JUstTest
  • cubers
  • DreamBathrooms
  • thenastyranch
  • ngwrru68w68
  • Durango
  • magazineikmin
  • Youngstown
  • InstantRegret
  • rosin
  • slotface
  • tester
  • kavyap
  • ethstaker
  • megavids
  • osvaldo12
  • khanakhh
  • cisconetworking
  • tacticalgear
  • everett
  • mdbf
  • Leos
  • anitta
  • GTA5RPClips
  • normalnudes
  • modclub
  • provamag3
  • lostlight
  • All magazines
    •