Among the many changes, the new rules would require batteries in consumer devices like smartphones to be easily removable and replaceable. That's far from the case today...
If you're on the fence about Meta or even calling others on here "idiots" for disagreeing with you, may I point out this article and let you ruminate on what it could mean for the fedi.
"As first noted by The New Scientist and Animal New York, Facebook's data scientists manipulated the News Feeds of 689,003 users, removing either all of the positive posts or all of the negative posts to see how it affected their moods."
A #gadgeteer is also the naive or careless person who wears these #gadgets and is either oblivious of the detrimental externalities of the tech to society, or criminally negligent of those (usually #trend-following hipsters).
wow: "In 2004, [Justice Clarence Thomas] joined celebrities including Oprah Winfrey and Ed McMahon at a three-day 70th birthday bash in Montana for the industrialist Dennis Washington."
Where Clarence Thomas Entered an Elite Circle and Opened a Door to the Court
The exclusive Horatio Alger Association brought the justice access to wealthy members and unreported V.I.P. treat. #scotus#clarenceThomas#supremecourt#ethics
The #Biden Interview: The President Talks About the #SupremeCourt, Threats to Democracy and Trump’s Vow to Exact Retribution
In a sit-down conversation with ProPublica, Biden discusses Kevin McCarthy’s “terrible bargain,” the fear of change that drives threats to #democracy and the Supreme Court’s need for an #ethics policy.
Really line drawing exercises are a tremendously under-utilized are of #ethics reasoning and #moderation decisions, especially by people who don't think that they do this professionally.
A minor rant because I'm tired and it is topical.
What are line drawing exercises?
Let's start with how this comes up, work our way into a topical example, and then circle back and look at it from an ethics reasoning standpoint in software.
First, let's create a hypothetical server. Call it Alice…
Today I had time to read the full report on faked data in the former Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s work, his failures to correct and retract misleading or incorrect articles, and his mismanagement of labs whose members manipulated the data. Ultimately, I was struck by the grubbiness of Tessier-Lavigne’s conduct, and how it smacks of the same lack of ethical judgment repeatedly displayed by Clarence Thomas. Report here: https://washingtonpost.com/documents/454b8927-febc-4bcc-990b-7b68d3f7ed9a.pdf 1/ #ethics#ResearchEthics
Looking to my #SF folks for some guidance. I know TogetherSF's lobbying arm is an astroturf group dedicated to policies that I strongly oppose.
Their nonprofit arm also sponsors events like neighborhood cleanups. My co-teacher has been thinking about having our students volunteer on one of those cleanups. As a progressive, should I steer us away from them? I will of course be open with the kids about the politics involved and let them help make the decision.
gandi changed their free mail service (advertised as a free addition to your domain) to paid one and it cost 4EUR/month per mailbox, there is also a yearly option, which cost 48EUR/year 😄
The service isn't bad, but I wouldn't say it's great in some way either.
Did you know that the "Intelligence Quotient" is tightly bound to the eugenics movement of the late 19th and early 20th century?
Every "X is as intelligent as a n year old human" (X: ape, raven, #AI) is part of that history. It applies a (d)evaluating quantitave measure of "fitness", even if the conclusion is not to eradicate the unfit. This way of thinking hides all qualitative differences, as they make the comparison impossible ("apples and pears").
Obviously this is a vast oversimplification, but sometimes I feel like there are two kinds of people who get into ethics as a field of research -
Those who are really alarmed by the state of the world and want to see what assumptions we made that got us here, how to turn back, how to do our best to move forward.
Those who are filled with righteous indignation and really want to know who to target their blame and (justified) anger at.
Both of these are good motivations but I also feel like I've also seen people be almost pathological about it (myself included).
The pathology of the former is to have a blindspot to all of the positive and meaningful aspects of common sense morality.
The pathology of the latter is being unreasonably critical of normal people just trying to do their best.
Though not serving as Trump’s attorney when he appeared as a witness today in Trump’s trial for criminally falsifying business records, Robert Costello is a lawyer, bound by New York’s Rules of Professional Conduct. Costello repeatedly showed his ethical unfitness, violating the most basic principles that inform the entire code. I’ve screenshot the very first paragraph of the entire code, highlighting the most pertinent phrases. 1/ #LawFedi#Ethics#LegalEthics
... including a framework to evaluate models from several sustainability-related angles, including #EnergyEfficiency, #carbon intensity, #transparency, and #social implications
How do you approach questions of sustainability & #AIethics in your #GeoAI work?
Do you own an ".io"-domain or intend to? You might want to reconsider and find an alternative. @cariad wrote down the history and facts, and no it's not an easy read: https://www.beep.blog/io/
The Zagreb Applied Ethics Conference 2023 at the Zagreb Institute of Philosophy was great, with a truly international roster of presenters. Loved it! 👍🏻
It’s Not Personal: Why Clarence Thomas’ Trip to the #Koch Summit Undermines His #Ethics Defense
Even by Thomas’ own permissive interpretation, the justice’s recently revealed travel to Palm Springs and the Bohemian Grove appear to violate the disclosure law, experts explained.
If you design a system such that you cannot differentiate people from corporations and bots and that’s your defense for calling all of them “users”, you’ve designed a system that conflates people – who are mortal, have feelings, can feel pain and be hurt and who have human rights that must be protected – with the very entities that oftentimes exist to exploit them.
Design for people. Call them people. All else is secondary.
I was in one of those interminably dull video-conferences a few weeks ago. The presenter was pitching their grand vision of what our next steps should be. "So!" They said, "Any comments before we launch?" No one said anything. After half a minute the presenter said "As there are no objections, we'll proceed. Silence is […]
Why shouldn’t it be illegal to make a #deepfake of any real person without their certified and explicit consent? I can’t think of good arguments against it.
A while back I had a conversation with someone where they engaged after I pointed out that I can more easily justify weapons under every major industry ethics code than I can cryptocurrency.
They challenged me on this so I went through the major ones and their response was essentially "So what, I didn't agree to any of those."
At which point it was pointed out by someone else: that's fine, but what #ethics code do you have? Is it just anything goes for a paycheck?
Property and Contract in #Economics: The Case for Economic Democracy by David Ellerman
This book makes 2 arguments.
The employment contract is the core of the #capitalism rather than private property
The employment contract is invalid because it violates #WorkersRights to #democracy in the firm. All firms should be structured as worker #coops for economic justice
European Union votes to bring back replaceable phone batteries (www.techspot.com)
Among the many changes, the new rules would require batteries in consumer devices like smartphones to be easily removable and replaceable. That's far from the case today...