axbom

uxpodcast, 2 days ago to UX

S02E17 (#327). The President of Iceland. A linkshow featuring articles about how certain features of e-commerce sites have to go, and how a design mistake impacted civic engagement in Iceland.

https://uxpodcast.com/327-the-president-of-iceland/

#ux #uxpodcast #podcast #design

gerrymcgovern, 5 days ago to random

"While many of the AI CEOs in Silicon Valley focus their attention on far-off existential catastrophes, researchers and technologists—especially women of color—have been calling attention to the discriminatory harms AI is already causing today. Yet the AI industry continues to ignore these immediate liabilities in favor of a theoretical future and engages in blatant greenwashing, redirecting concern by highlighting the supposed climate benefits of the technology."

https://foe.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/AI_Climate_Disinfo_v6_031224.pdf

j2bryson, 6 days ago to random

It is essential that universities remain a place where humans are safe but their ideas are subject to critique. That is what universities are for. I wrote this 12 years ago for the UK, I repost it today for Germany and especially @bild. https://joanna-bryson.blogspot.com/2012/12/why-belief-religion-should-not-be.html

emilymbender, 7 days ago (edited 7 days ago) to random

As folks discuss the plundering of the open internet/sharing economy by the data-hungry LLM trainers, it seems like a good time to remind ourselves to find something other than "the tragedy of the commons" as a metaphor. On the racist, terrible origins of that phrase:

https://discardstudies.com/2019/07/15/the-tragedy-of-the-tragedy-of-the-commons/

RustyBertrand, 23 days ago to random

"Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom — poets, visionaries — realists of a larger reality."

--Ursula K. Le Guin

Mer__edith, 28 days ago to random

Extremely important research.

It's not possible to understand the state of BigTech, or its pathologies at the moment, without understanding these companies' transformation into defense contractors, in addition to their central role as surveillance providers to the state. 👇

https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2024/SiliconValley

uxpodcast, 1 month ago to design

Ellen Lupton, designer, educator and author, helps us stock up our toolbox of design principles and methods, starting off with storytelling in visual design, and the “rule of three” before we move on to linear and non-linear experiences.

Will we follow the rule of three and have a third topic? 😀

https://uxpodcast.com/325-rule-of-three-ellen-lupton/

#design #ux #uxpodcast #FBTB #podcast

stephaniewalter, 1 month ago to random

Is your company looking for AI tools and has no idea how to assess if those are the right ones? @axbom created a nice worksheet that can help you here. The sheet offers a structure for questions and topics that should be definitely be part of an AI analysis, before jumping into any decision

Resource: https://axbom.com/ai-worksheet/

timnitGebru, 1 month ago to random

Read this by Anika Collier Navaroli

"In early 2022 I was wracked with guilt. I had been speaking with the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack about my former role as a senior policy official at Twitter. I recounted my warnings that went unheeded that violence was going to occur on January 6."

https://thesignalsnetwork.org/whistleblower-john-barnetts-life-and-death-highlight-the-impact-of-whistleblowing-on-mental-health/

timnitGebru, 1 month ago to random

Hello friends,

I am happy to announce that my paper with Dr. Émile P. Torres, The TESCREAL bundle: Eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence, is finally out on this issue of First Monday, along with a set of terrific papers by our colleagues. I suggest you read all the papers in this issue.

https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/13636/11599

Mer__edith, 1 month ago to random

There is almost no way the large cloud companies providing massive compute services, AI surveillance & data processing APIs aren't implicated in the system of 'ad targeting for death' being used to facilitate mass murder in Gaza.

This is a nightmare. And it's going to take significant pressure to prevent this from becoming business as usual--a selling point for oppressive regimes, as opposed to a cautionary tale.

https://time.com/6966102/google-contract-israel-defense-ministry-gaza-war/

SmudgeTheInsultCat, 1 month ago to random

Mer__edith, 1 month ago to random

"AI startups" are just three cloud companies in a trench coat pass it on

danne, 1 month ago to random Swedish

Veckans rimligaste förslag kommer från @axbom

https://axbom.se/filibupp/

uxpodcast, 1 month ago to UX

This episode is a little different! We have a sketching workshop together with Eva-Lotta Lamm - Grab some pens and some paper and join in while you listen! https://uxpodcast.com/324-sketching-workshop-eva-lotta-lamm/

#ux #uxpodcast #podcast #sketching #creativity

Mer__edith, 1 month ago to random

📢 My @NDSSSymposium keynote is up!

On how we lost the crypto wars, why surveillance advertising must be understood as the foundation of "AI", & why the tactics of the past won't serve us in defending privacy today.

Text: https://signal.org/blog/pdfs/ndss-keynote.pdf
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XA2fRRO4qug&t=2s

emilymbender, 1 month ago to random

There's a lot that's alarming in this article, but perhaps the most alarming part is the NYC spokesperson assering that the problem can be fixed via upgrades:

>>

https://www.thecity.nyc/2024/03/29/ai-chat-false-information-small-business/

TimHarford, 1 month ago to random

Cautionary Tales – Inside the Bizarre World of Dictators

Why are so many autocrats germaphobes? Why was the truth so dangerous for Soviet engineers? And what can salami reveal to us about the mind of Vladimir Putin?

Tim Harford, host of the Cautionary Tales podcast, examines the true stories behind the HBO series The Regime. In the first of two special episodes, Tim investi

https://timharford.com/2024/03/cautionary-tales-inside-the-bizarre-world-of-dictators/

#CautionaryTales

axbom, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago) to random

There is a broad understanding for the need to fly less, as the aviation industry accounts for more than 2% of global CO2 emissions. Yet the data centres we depend on for computing already account for more than that, by some estimates up to 4% of global CO2 emissions.

But there are few calls or campaigns to compute less. If anything, it would appear that humankind has decided the best way forward is to compute more.

We are quicky becoming a generation of… generation.

Generate more images and video, stream your television shows, record your meetings, surveil your employees and customers, snap 10 photos of every scene to make sure you get the perfect one. Run it through an AI filter. Save everything in the cloud indefinitely. Keep feeding the generative tools with all that content. Rinse and repeat.

Except don't rinse.

All the while, oblivious governments are subsidising the establishment of more data centres to the detriment of local communities.

The data centres are the factories of our time. But we can not see them or their carbon footprint, so they are very easy to ignore. So we do. If we can stick with calling them clouds they even feel fluffy.

"A 2018 paper by researchers Lofti Belkhir and Ahmed Elmeligi forecast that computing would exceed 14pc of global emissions (based on 2016 levels) by 2040."

That was before generative AI.

« Data processing and storage has such a large carbon footprint for three reasons.

First, servers require electricity to run. Second, they need to be kept cool, which uses more power and also water. Third, the equipment itself is made from expensive resources and needs to be repaired and replaced.

“Computer hardware contains rare earth minerals and all sorts of stuff shipped from all over the world,” says Craven. »

« “One of the reasons why networking emissions are so high is because there is so little desire and capability to switch machines off because it will increase what we call the latency,” says Hussain.

Society demands that everything happens immediately, which means cloud services run constantly. “Everybody keeps everything humming at peak mode, just in case,” adds Hussain. »

A generation of generation. I mean, at least it's catchy, right?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/05/30/silicon-valley-data-giants-net-zero-sustainability-risk/

markwyner, 1 month ago to art

This sentiment is so perfect. And the illustration is great.

Source, Jess Owens-Young:
https://www.instagram.com/p/C4_XCXoRMkt/

#Art #Illustration #Painting #Inspiration #Dreams #Aspirations #JessOwensYoung

wir, 1 month ago to random German

Die Vorbereitungen für die Grazer @linuxtage laufen! Wir sind dieses mal am Samstag mit einem Infostand vertreten. Infoblätter mit der Fediverse-Grafik von https://axbom.com/fediverse sind bereits da, neue Flyer und ein Banner sind in Druck! Thanks a lot @axbom!

yatil, 1 month ago to random

So, question on wording for what we used to call “color blindness”: Is that still the preferred term? I remember a discussion about “color vision deficiency” which sounds very medical model to me, and I don’t remember a clear cut outcome.

danhon, 1 month ago to random

Not only could we not rid ourselves of PDFs but now we're inventing ways to talk to them

Beantin, 1 month ago to webdev

#webdev question:

If you have 50+ product images that are svgs (loaded as src images in img elements) - what are your tips for doing this in an optimal way (so that it isn't sluggish on lower end mobiles)?