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.
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
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...
@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)
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.
@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.
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
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. #Israel
Indeed, it is similar to the argument that one can be a pacifist and support #Ukraine'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. #Israel
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. #Israel
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.
@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.
European news outlets have been claiming a strike on a civilian convoy moving to South Gaza. Here's the video of the attack. No missile strike seen up close. It looks more like a roadside bomb, which is Hamas' speciality. They have every incentive to stop the convoy. They need those human shields. BBC Verify is really trying hard to pin this on the IDF (who weren't operating there at the time) but don't directly attribute it to IDF. They're hedging their hunch.
@falcennial I agree 💯. I don't envy the IDF leadership though. Despite their advantages, this is going to be tricky nonetheless. Let's see. If they can pull this off, no more rockets from the South, perhaps ever. And maybe, Fatah can be asked to govern a little more responsibly to prevent another extremist group from seizing power again.