@BenjaminKlein@mastodon.nu avatar

BenjaminKlein

@BenjaminKlein@mastodon.nu

#SouthAfrican living in #Sweden, love #cricket, #Linux, #FreeSoftware, #Nature, #bicycles, #trains, #boardgames, #books, #poetry, #math. He/him. Posts set to delete after six months.

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mttaggart, to random

I want you to read both of these stories, and watch the video in the first one, then tell me that access to human-created information isn't in absolute peril.

I continue to hope for and predict a of the internet that gets those of us who care out of the deluge of generative slurry these advertisers want us to drown in.

arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/google-is-reimagining-search-in-the-gemini-era-with-improved-ai-options/

arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/gmails-ai-powered-email-summaries-can-dig-through-your-inbox-for-you/

BenjaminKlein,
@BenjaminKlein@mastodon.nu avatar

@mttaggart it also means the dynamiting of really useful searching, tagging and filtering. Promise is just dump all your mail in a big pile and the AI will sort it. If you step back and think of everyone doing this, it's fairly obvious that won't work. In the end you don't send emails just keyword generated prompt injections in order to get what you actually want through to the person. Nightmare.

DAIR, to random
@DAIR@dair-community.social avatar

In this @AJEnglish analysis by Shola Lawal, Raesetje Sefala discusses what she has found through our spatial apartheid research.

"Raesetje Sefala, a researcher at...DAIR, said her organisation has observed that townships are still expanding. “They continue to resemble their appearance during the apartheid era, indicating that similar small land sizes are still being allocated,” she told Al Jazeera."

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/27/south-africa-30-years-after-apartheid-what-has-changed

BenjaminKlein,
@BenjaminKlein@mastodon.nu avatar

@DAIR great work but why did you use the word Non-wealthy? It's lengthy and we have the word poor, which is short, clear and not a pejorative.

DrALJONES, to random
@DrALJONES@mastodon.social avatar

deleted_by_author

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    BenjaminKlein,
    @BenjaminKlein@mastodon.nu avatar

    @DrALJONES I watched this, her analysis of tech is good but her explanation of crypto is terrible. Explains it as the new gold governments and corporations can't control, no critical reflection on it's flawed or how it's failed to do any of that and instead has become a tool mainly for scammers and grift.

    BenjaminKlein,
    @BenjaminKlein@mastodon.nu avatar

    @DrALJONES I'm not an expert or crypto either, here are two articles laying out a few of the now more obvious problems:

    https://lbo-news.com/2017/12/11/is-bitcoin-the-future-of-money/<
    https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/04/why-cryptocurrency-is-a-giant-fraud

    BenjaminKlein,
    @BenjaminKlein@mastodon.nu avatar

    @DrALJONES really short:

    • massively energy inefficient. One transaction uses more energy than hundreds of thousands of normal transactions.
    • incredibly volatile, it has swung around 100x more than traditional currency. You can't use that to store value.
    • slow, transactions, it can take days, and if they are small may never be accepted. Partly is that it costs lots of energy and sometimes no one wants to spend that energy for a small sum.

    New crypto might solve some of this but not yet.

    pvonhellermannn, to random
    @pvonhellermannn@mastodon.green avatar

    I am in a very good mood this evening so somehow this is not even particularly touching me, but …

    “Rising temperatures, heavier rainfall and more frequent and intense extreme weather are projected to cause $38tn (£30tn) of destruction each year by mid-century, according to the research, which is the most comprehensive analysis of its type ever undertaken, and whose findings are published in the journal Nature.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/17/climate-crisis-average-world-incomes-to-drop-by-nearly-a-fifth-by-2050?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

    BenjaminKlein,
    @BenjaminKlein@mastodon.nu avatar

    @pvonhellermannn everyone is laughing at neon, mbs's idiotic fantasy city in the desert, but that's our future if we don't change, an unaffordable impossible city. On the guns and butter scale this is all guns and no butter.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns_versus_butter_model

    NatureMC, to Instagram
    @NatureMC@mastodon.online avatar

    A new level of #enshittification: #communicate with your influencer bot 🙄 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/15/technology/instagram-influencers-chatbots.html?unlocked_article_code=1.kk0.Zgoe.RkSblL-lDyUL&smid=url-share (gift link)

    #Instagram #Meta #genAI #influenca #chatBots #giftArticle #turboCapitalism #SocialMedia #RealHumans

    BenjaminKlein,
    @BenjaminKlein@mastodon.nu avatar

    @NatureMC thanks for the gift link. Social media has driven celebrity culture, fans think they know celebrities intimately through carefully managed social media accounts. Now your going to be able to talk one on one with them, or at least that is how it'll feel.

    pvonhellermannn, to random
    @pvonhellermannn@mastodon.green avatar

    Botswana threatens to send 20,000 elephants to Germany | Environment News | Al Jazeera

    “Angered by proposals in Berlin to restrict the import of hunting trophies, President Mokgweetsi Masisi said in comments published on Wednesday that Germans should try living among elephants. He claimed that an explosion in the number of the mammals roaming his country has produced a “plague”.”
    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/3/botswana-threatens-to-send-20000-elephants-to-germany-in-conservation-row

    BenjaminKlein,
    @BenjaminKlein@mastodon.nu avatar

    @pvonhellermannn I'm sure elephants aren't too happy living with humans either.

    BenjaminKlein,
    @BenjaminKlein@mastodon.nu avatar

    @pvonhellermannn
    Complicated relationship, agriculture in Africa goes back thousands of years and there is conflict, but you are right nothing on the scale of later Europeans.

    "Human–wildlife conflict is not a new problem. During the pre-colonial period, in some areas of Africa, crop-raiding by elephants and other large animals caused food shortages, displaced settlements or prevented agricul-
    ture altogether (Game Department of Uganda 1924; Osmaston 1959; Naughton-Treves 1999)"

    mrundkvist, to random
    @mrundkvist@archaeo.social avatar

    I didn't care much about that writer before she became an anti-trans troll, so I don't quite get why everybody's so worked up about her. There are lots of writers with stupid opinions and I care about very few of them. In fact, I'm now putting that writer's name into my ignore filter.

    BenjaminKlein,
    @BenjaminKlein@mastodon.nu avatar

    @mrundkvist it's when individuals have vast fortunes to fund conferences, donate to political parties and activists, that these bad and bigoted ideas become very problematic.

    BenjaminKlein, to random
    @BenjaminKlein@mastodon.nu avatar

    It's , limited myself to one word descriptions.

    @igordoodles - doodles
    @GottaLaff - politics
    @effiesketch - art
    @stevencudahy - poetry
    @llewelly - science
    @PeterRu - climate
    @hamatti - tech
    @cederbs - design
    @petergleick - science

    petergleick, to climate
    @petergleick@fediscience.org avatar

    Interesting. The more you know about change the less anxious you are, because you also know about the options for tackling it. Educating the public works.

    https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-023-03518-z

    BenjaminKlein,
    @BenjaminKlein@mastodon.nu avatar

    @petergleick interesting, thanks for sharing. Surprised at the general low level of anxiety, I'd like to be able to take the quiz see where I score on climate quiz. Based on the correlation and how much I'm worried I probably know nothing.

    futurebird, (edited ) to random
    @futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

    Based on his budget Ron DeSantis spent about $6400 per vote.

    BenjaminKlein,
    @BenjaminKlein@mastodon.nu avatar

    @futurebird the Senate GOP made a mistake when they acquitted trump, terrified of their base they thought they could primary him out of the nomination by heavily funding an alternative. Maybe a better candidate could have done it but the more people got to know DeSantis the more he was disliked. He's so obviously phony, a spray on suntan in a suit.

    GottaLaff, to legal
    @GottaLaff@mastodon.social avatar

    I'm back at my computer. 🧵 starts here. 1/...

    (Painters slowed me down. I'm catching up...patience)

    Via InnerCityPress aka Press:

    Habba: My client & I wish to pt out Ms Carroll can sit in front of jurors every day. But my client has to choose between attending his mother in law's funeral--
    Judge Kaplan: I have ruled. Sit down
    Habba: I don't like to be spoken to that why. Please refrain. I am asking for an adjournment for a funeral.
    Judge Kaplan: Denied. Sit down

    BenjaminKlein,
    @BenjaminKlein@mastodon.nu avatar

    @GottaLaff thank you so much for this thread, hahahaha

    Daojoan, to random
    @Daojoan@mastodon.social avatar

    Conservative women who will happily trade their human rights and their autonomy for clicks and newspaper columns as right wing influencers will forever baffle me.

    BenjaminKlein,
    @BenjaminKlein@mastodon.nu avatar

    @Daojoan Right-wing women by Andrea Dworkin, published 1983 is still so relevant:

    https://archive.org/details/rightwingwomen00dwor/mode/1up

    pvonhellermannn, (edited ) to climate
    @pvonhellermannn@mastodon.green avatar

    Tackling inequality and its causes is the single most important action to address .

    We need to be better at recognising and showing everyone that all our interests are aligned - it shouldn’t be farmers against or whatever; we should all be fighting and billionaires together.

    https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2024/jan/15/worlds-five-richest-men-double-their-money-as-poorest-get-poorer?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

    BenjaminKlein,
    @BenjaminKlein@mastodon.nu avatar

    @pvonhellermannn @NatureMC If we van have a minimum wage, why not a maximum?

    futurebird, to Electronics
    @futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

    Making 32 bespoke hand crafted bits. Hand made bits are so much nicer than factory made bits. .

    weaving the address wire in and out of each bit.

    BenjaminKlein,
    @BenjaminKlein@mastodon.nu avatar

    @futurebird you could measure the earth's polarity and encode that as a bit, use it as a very slow random number generator.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Geomagnetic_polarity_late_Cenozoic.svg

    GW, to TeslaMotors
    @GW@newsie.social avatar

    Tesla Has Bitten Off More Than It Can Chew by Picking a Fight With Swedish Unions

    is attempting to expand into and circumvent its — but Swedish labor has a long history of taking on big US firms. If they can bring Tesla to heel, it will mark a major victory for organized labor across the globe.

    Since the end of October, mechanics at Tesla workshops in Sweden have been in an attempt to pressure the firm to agree to collective

    https://jacobin.com/2023/12/tesla-swedish-unions-nordic-elon-musk-labor-green-transition

    BenjaminKlein,
    @BenjaminKlein@mastodon.nu avatar

    @GW interesting article thanks for the link. It's a fight cannot win, the union only has to pay 130 workers to keep this going, they can do that for a decade. on the other hand had lost easy access to one of their most profitable markets and is losing millions, never mind the reputational damage.

    BenjaminKlein, to random
    @BenjaminKlein@mastodon.nu avatar

    Another

    @Sheril - Author, Scientist
    @pvonhellermannn - Regenerative Anthropology
    @atomicker - Shin-hanga (新版画) and Sosaku-hanga (創作版画), art movements
    @mcmenguc - Artist, writer, historian
    @gerrymcgovern - Author of World Wide Waste
    @sigonee - Artist
    @Daojoan - tech, humans, economics
    @rolle - CTO and founder of @dude
    @jenn - web developer, artist, community manager

    kierkegaank, to tesla
    @kierkegaank@mastodon.sdf.org avatar

    Want a good laugh?

    is saying they are suing the state of because are being mean to them. Paperwork has yet to be filed.

    BenjaminKlein,
    @BenjaminKlein@mastodon.nu avatar

    @kierkegaank this is spreading "Fellesforbundet, the largest union in the Norwegian private sector, has said it would block Swedish Teslas”. There have been numerous stories over the years of a culture of racism, sexism and a terrible health and safety record @ . I'm hoping this strike spreads to Germany and beyond. Just one recent story below. The fish rots from the head as they say.

    https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/21/23971138/tesla-gigafactory-austin-texas-injury-reports-robot-claw-explosion

    ncoca, to Japan
    @ncoca@social.coop avatar

    Which country in Asia has the highest per-capita solar & wind generation?

    The answer? Not China. It's actually . Good luck finding any articles that mention that online.

    AND did you know the US has more than 2X the per-capita wind/solar production of . You'd never guess this from the incessant China-praise on social media & from environmentalists alongside the (often deserved) criticism of the US & Japan's & policies (including from me).

    BenjaminKlein,
    @BenjaminKlein@mastodon.nu avatar

    @ncoca the metric that matters is per capita emissions. It doesn't matter if you have a lot of solar panels on your roof if your buying lots of stuff, driving a car and eating a diet of meat and dairy. USA is still about 2x worse:

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita

    BenjaminKlein,
    @BenjaminKlein@mastodon.nu avatar

    @ncoca no one is exempt, but if your going to criticise do it on the right metric. Within countries it's even worse, the guardians latest series is excellent. Collectively humanity is failing badly, rich countries and people with the means and opportunities to act should have lower emissions than poor counties and people. In reality they are much much worse.

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2023/nov/20/the-great-carbon-divide-climate-chasm-rich-poor

    emilymbender, to random
    @emilymbender@dair-community.social avatar

    With the OpenAI clownshow, there's been renewed media attention on the xrisk/"AI safety"/doomer nonsense. Personally, I've had a fresh wave of reporters asking me naive questions (as well as some contacts from old hands who are on top of how to handle ultra-rich man-children with god complexes). 🧵1/

    BenjaminKlein,
    @BenjaminKlein@mastodon.nu avatar

    @emilymbender we should stop calling it AI and ML, it's not intelligent nor is it learning in the way people think. It's statistical inference SI.

    BenjaminKlein,
    @BenjaminKlein@mastodon.nu avatar

    @GhostOnTheHalfShell I've never heard that term, it's good.

    LeftistLawyer, to random
    @LeftistLawyer@kolektiva.social avatar

    deleted_by_author

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    BenjaminKlein,
    @BenjaminKlein@mastodon.nu avatar

    @LeftistLawyer then call it whiteManChan if that makes you feel better.

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