@absamma@toolsforthought.rocks
@absamma@toolsforthought.rocks avatar

absamma

@absamma@toolsforthought.rocks

Doctor, learner & software developer. Special interest in knowledge tools. Building http://oneplaybook.app, a knowledge assistant tool. Child of three continents 🌍.

I toot about intelligent subjects 📚 all day, and food 😋 and awesome vistas 📸 on occasion.

Comments, corrections and conversations always welcomed 🤗

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

harsh, to random

Just finished reading "The Internet Con: How to seize the means of computation" by @pluralistic . Surprisingly, a lot of the book is about interoperability and making it happen legally. For me, this hit really hard because of how involved my work is around both. Key takeaway for me is that if we want to create a better tech society, we need to open up stuff with interoperability to drive innovation and competition rather than just regulate big tech expecting them to behave.

absamma,
@absamma@toolsforthought.rocks avatar

@harsh @pluralistic enshrining interoperability into law would also be nice.

boris, to random
@boris@toolsforthought.social avatar

I’ve written up a post about the background and plan for this server https://commonscomputer.com/t/tft-rocks-mastodon-server-move/13

  • old https://toolsforthought.rocks Mastodon Server is 42EU/month, to be shutdown end of November
  • this https://toolsforthought.social is much cheaper, and Boris will run it for a year no matter what
  • follow Mastodon migration to move here, or to some other server
  • get involved if you want to run this server!
absamma,
@absamma@toolsforthought.rocks avatar

@boris thanks very much for all your work in keeping this space alive Boris. Really appreciate it 😊. Awaiting verification from the admin.

absamma,
@absamma@toolsforthought.rocks avatar

@boris thank you. See you on the other side 😁

carnage4life, to random
@carnage4life@mas.to avatar

One problem we’re going to have with generative AI is that the practical use cases are going to be so valuable that customers are going to be the ones ignoring the AI ethicists not the big tech companies

https://www.thecity.nyc/2023/10/16/adams-taps-ai-robocalls-languages-he-doesnt-speak/

absamma,
@absamma@toolsforthought.rocks avatar

@carnage4life yes. Unless regulations hold them back.

carnage4life, to random
@carnage4life@mas.to avatar

How does he keep coming up with even worse ideas? X is testing requiring an annual subscription before you can tweet or retweet.

Current price $1/year. This will definitely fix their money problems…not.

https://fortune.com/2023/10/17/twitter-x-charging-new-users-1-dollar-year-to-tweet/

absamma,
@absamma@toolsforthought.rocks avatar

@carnage4life admins should probably prepare for another influx of people.

absamma, to random
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The timestamps on tweets seem to be reverting to the beginning of the Unix epoch.

absamma, to random
@absamma@toolsforthought.rocks avatar

The Techno-optimist manifesto is an acid trip.

absamma, to random
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For self motivation of the worst kind, hang this in your office so you see it every time you turn your head away from your desktop.

carnage4life, to random
@carnage4life@mas.to avatar

There should be a rule against using such a flippant headline to report on layoffs

absamma,
@absamma@toolsforthought.rocks avatar

@carnage4life that's kind of their style at the Register. Their comments community also maintains the same vibe.

carnage4life, to random
@carnage4life@mas.to avatar

What I love about Silicon Valley venture capitalists is that that they love being loud and wrong. If I had spent the last few years shilling crypto as the next big thing in tech only for a bunch of my portfolio companies to turn out to be Ponzi schemes & grifts, I’d never write publicly again.

I definitely wouldn’t write Bond villain style speeches about how AI ethics and trust & safety teams at tech companies are the enemy preventing you from colonizing the stars. 😬
https://fortune.com/2023/10/16/marc-andreessen-techno-optimist-manifesto-ai-50-billion-people-billionaire-vc/

absamma,
@absamma@toolsforthought.rocks avatar

@carnage4life it makes for fascinating entertainment. They've got money to burn so let's enjoy the show🍿

absamma, (edited ) to LLMs
@absamma@toolsforthought.rocks avatar

Stackoverflow is laying off 100 employees as LLMs eat into its market. A staggering illustration of how they're being disrupted with their own data. A vast amount of value has been siphoned away from them.

Source: https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.07367

Yehuda, to random
@Yehuda@turtleisland.social avatar

1/
Those damn sneaky ass colonizer Jews... how in the world did they get their Temple underneath the Al-Aqsa mosque?

absamma,
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@Yehuda "I want freedom for the Palestinian people under a government that cares about them in Gaza & West Bank."

Me too but I doubt you can ever find one right now. Fatah is the only other option at the moment, and they're only slightly better than the competition.

tess, to random
@tess@mastodon.social avatar

Proud to be on Marc Andreessen's enemies list

Tag yourself, I'm "tech ethics"

absamma,
@absamma@toolsforthought.rocks avatar

@tess they basically don't like anything that makes for a safe society 😬

absamma, (edited ) to Israel
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UNRWA announced today on Twitter that its humanitarian supplies in Gaza City had been stolen by Hamas including fuel and medical supplies meant for Palestinian civilians. For some reason they've deleted that tweet without any explanation. I have a couple of guesses why but at least we know it happened. Further proof that this organisation (Hamas) couldn't care less about their civilian population.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/israeli-minister-after-unrwa-accuses-hamas-of-theft-gaza-should-get-no-aid-until-hamas-is-gone/

absamma, to Israel
@absamma@toolsforthought.rocks avatar

Egypt has come out to say that they don't want an exodus of Palestinians from Gaza. While they say that they are worried that this may become permanent, their true concern is that they will have to deal with Islamists who infiltrate from Gaza into Egypt. They have already had to dismantle a tyrannical Islamist led government and party before. They're in no mood to bring another war hardened one into their midst. Hence the hesitation at Rafah crossing.

absamma, to random
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NYC Club advertises an "Intifada fundraver" with videos of Hamas' attack used in its advertising. What is this if not the glorification of violence against Jews and Israel? They also say the money will go to a Palestinian Children's fund but rest assured some if not all of the money will be channelled to Hamas terrorist activities. That's their playbook: co-opting funds & humanitarian aid.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/nyc-club-advertises-intifada-fundraver-with-video-of-hamas-assault/

absamma, to Israel
@absamma@toolsforthought.rocks avatar

There are lots of folks online prattling about being Jewish, condemning Hamas' killings (a first for them) yet not standing with Israel, then saying one can hold both views. IMHO that's like a colleague of mine telling me one can be a medical doctor and not believe in vaccinations. These arguments can only exist based on bad faith premises. Once the premises are defeated, they cannot stand anymore. Israel's legitimacy is ironclad. These arguments are not.

absamma,
@absamma@toolsforthought.rocks avatar

Indeed, it is similar to the argument that one can be a pacifist and support 's surrender to Russia. It's a bad faith argument. It assumes that Ukraine establishing it's legitimacy through war is unsound. It is very much sound despite the misery of war. That's why defence forces exist. What the mouth cannot establish through treaties and laws, the sword and shield will as a last resort. So here we are.

absamma, (edited ) to Israel
@absamma@toolsforthought.rocks avatar

The Israeli defence forces (IDF) is hosting a Twitter space for journalists. Lots of people and the conversation is very civil. I don't think this has happened before, but radical transparency is important to counteract Hamas' shady narrative and information warfare.

absamma, to Israel
@absamma@toolsforthought.rocks avatar

People are moving South in Gaza and as a result, water is now flowing through to southern Gaza. Meanwhile, Fatah is being prepared to become the new authorities in Gaza (which is why they're cooperating so well with everyone else). This can all end sooner rather than later. The region will see a vast improvement once Hamas and its allies are removed.

absamma,
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@railmeat it's either that or Israel goes back to pre 2005 and I don't think that'll sit well with anyone.

absamma, to LLMs
@absamma@toolsforthought.rocks avatar

Does the entity do something just for experiencing the sensation i.e. the fun of it on its own without external prompting? If yes, it's probably sentient, else it's not.

don't do things for the heck of it on their own. Therefore they're not sentient. There, settled the debate. Mike drop

For more info: https://youtu.be/9QWaZp_2I1k

carnage4life, to random
@carnage4life@mas.to avatar

The EU’s position of fining companies if people lie on social media is bumping into the messy reality that no one knows what the truth is in the middle of a war.

If they actually follow through on fines, the only reasonable solution would be to block anyone from talking about Israel & Hamas. Even a sitting US congressperson has posted images from a different event claiming they were from Gaza over the past week.

You can’t trust any breaking news from a war zone.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/10/14/propaganda-misinformation-israel-hamas-war-social-media/

absamma,
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@chkuendig @carnage4life if that's the case then the EU and eurozone should forget about nurturing European social media brands due to the regulatory burden as they sometimes claim these laws should in theory do.

carnage4life, to random
@carnage4life@mas.to avatar

AI image detectors are labeling real images from the conflict between Israel and Hamas as faked which some people are calling a second layer of disinformation.

This cuts across two of my regular themes. First of all, systems that claim to detect AI generated text or images are snake oil. They are guessing and will often guess wrong.

Secondly, it’s difficult to figure out what the facts are in the middle of a war. Treating it as a tech or moderation problem isn’t enough

https://www.404media.co/ai-images-detectors-are-being-used-to-discredit-the-real-horrors-of-war/

absamma,
@absamma@toolsforthought.rocks avatar

@carnage4life 😱

PaulGrahamRaven, to random
@PaulGrahamRaven@assemblag.es avatar

Just spent a few hours dungeon-crawling the world of Obsidian user advice, and I conclude that a) I'm nowhere near as much of a nerd as I once thought, b) there are some incredibly clever and organised people in the world, and c) there's a subset thereof who have incredibly intricate Obsidian vaults that contain little else but structured guidance on how to build incredibly intricate Obsidian vaults that contain little else but structured guidance on how to build incredibly intricate Obsidian...

absamma,
@absamma@toolsforthought.rocks avatar

@ryanrandall @PaulGrahamRaven yeah when a tool's community starts venturing into boundless mysticism and metaphysics, it can become more of a distraction or worse a liability. That's why I still stick with @TiddlyWiki because I feel we're more grounded 😁 plus it's exactly what I need and it's uncomplicated (a single html document. No fuss)

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