“As we have seen this evening, the public is starting to join the dots. It’s not acceptable for the Science Museum to provide a space for fossil fuel companies to hypocritically claim to be clean energy producers, when the billions they still spend on fossil fuel extraction dwarf their investments in renewables.”
Dr Tristram Wyatt, senior research fellow at the University of Oxford and member of Scientists for XR
Anybody out there looking for an ML or software engineer with >30 years total experience and ~20 years in the industry?
I have extensive experience with #Python and #ML frameworks, particularly #TensorFlow, and I've worked on #NLP and #ImageProcessing both in the workplace and in personal open source projects. My resume is available here:
google has unleashed ungodly AI nightmares beyond my comprehension
so awhile ago, i've set up screen call on my android phone, because it's pretty useful for stopping robocalls from annoying me, since usually they just hang up, or google knows it is just a scam call.
well. i got another call in, but it couldn't get the transcript. so, i played the audio back.
to my fucking horror, GOOGLE IS USING MY OWN VOICE TO ANNOUNCE IT'S PRESENCE AS THE VIRTUAL ASSISTANT.
nowhere, i mean fucking NOWHERE did they ever tell me this was a thing they'd do. in fact, i'm not able to find a single fucking thing about this online!
i don't even have the fucking option set for them to preserve my voice history, the fact they have audio recordings of my voice, and enough of them to make a fucking AI-generated version of my voice, without my god damn consent, is... i don't even know how to put it.
google, i sincerely hope someone burns down all your data centers
> Blood clot formation (thrombosis) in the small blood vessels of the lungs is an early result of severe COVID-19, often occurring before the breathing difficulties caused by widespread damage to the air sacs
“The virus SARS-CoV-2 has a tropism for [is attracted to] the endothelium, the layer of cells that lines blood vessels. When it invades endothelial cells, it first affects microvascular circulation. The problem starts in the capillaries of the lungs [the tiny blood vessels that surround the alveoli], followed by clotting in the larger vessels that can reach any other organ…”
“Previous studies… showed that SARS-CoV-2 invades cells mainly by binding to the receptor ACE-2 [a protein on the surface of various cell types, including epithelial and endothelial cells in the respiratory system] but before that, it binds to heparan sulfate [a polysaccharide], a major component of the glycocalyx in endothelial cells. When it invades the endothelium, it triggers shedding and destruction of the glycocalyx, resulting in tissue exposure and intravascular clotting. The process starts in the microcirculation…”
> endothelial injury tended to precede two common processes in cases of respiratory distress: significant alveolar-capillary membrane leakage, and intra-alveolar accumulation of fibrin
> A study by the same group… showed that several pathways associated with blood clotting and platelet activation had been activated prior to inflammation in the lungs of patients with alveolar damage.
“As severe COVID-19 sets in, the drop in blood oxygen levels is secondary to pulmonary capillary thrombosis. Initially, there’s no buildup of fluid in the lungs, which aren’t ‘saturated’ and don’t lose their compliance or elasticity. This means the lungs in early severe COVID-19 patients don’t look like sponges full of liquid, as they do in acute respiratory distress syndrome [ARDS] patients. On the contrary, the respiratory failure associated with severe COVID-19 involves dehydration of the lungs. The alveoli fill with air but the oxygen can’t enter the bloodstream because of capillary clotting. This leads to what we call ‘happy hypoxia’, where patients don’t experience shortness of breath and aren’t aware their oxygen saturation is dangerously low.”
My son, musing to himself today: "I could choose not to get married and have kids and then I could buy all the video game systems and no one could tell me not to play them."
The thing about #tech#layoffs that people who haven’t been through it often don’t understand is that morale never recovers. The employees who remain will never have the same relationship with that company, bosses or peers.
Watching people you respect pack their stuff and crying on the phone with their spouses is something that never goes away. When I survived a layoff in my 20s I became a “do exactly what the ticket says” person. I stopped suggesting ideas, providing feedback, believing anything a manager told me.
If you are a company considering layoffs, especially a profitable company, you should approach it as “this department will have 100% turnover”. The second I got another job offer I left that company and six months later nobody who had been there at the time of layoffs remained.
It was not the students' use of a #ChatBot that was the problem, but they were using material found on the internet that itself was created by a hallucinating ChatBot and published without verification!
This is a type of model collapse we will be dealing with not just at universities in the near future.
I am looking for a technical writer with a strong Intel/networking background and the ability to take the deep technical content my group creates and convert it into multiple more accessible pieces. For example, the VexTrio paper we released this week. Our work is designed for experts in the security industry. The person I'm looking for can use it to create writings for consumers and customers. If that's you, text me here or on LinkedIn. #threatintel#infosec#cybersecurity
ok here it is. how to set up your very own single-user mastodon instance and run it free forever. boosts ok in case it's useful to anyone who wants to set one up. i recommend doing it simply for fun and for the learning experience. good luck! https://josh.is-cool.dev/running-a-mastodon-instance-entirely-free-forever/
Analyst Michael Cherry added: "Microsoft and other cloud vendors promised the cloud would help reduce IT costs, not just in terms of on-premises hardware and software, but also in terms of IT headcount. It now seems that the cloud is the cause of significant new costs."
Only total idiots thought "the cloud" or more specifically the big push to make everyone dependent on almost no choice of suppliers, where you own nothing, and rent permission to use everything wouldnt just be like this.
German law is making security research a risky business.
Current news: A court found a developer guilty of “hacking.” His crime: he was tasked with looking into a software that produced way too many log messages. And he discovered that this software was making a MySQL connection to the vendor’s database server.
When he checked that MySQL connection, he realized that the database contained data belonging to not merely his client but all of the vendor’s customers. So he immediately informed the vendor – and while they fixed this vulnerability they also pressed charges.
There was apparently considerable discussion as to whether hardcoding database credentials in the application (visible as plain text, not even decompiling required) is sufficient protection to justify hacking charges. But the court ruling says: yes, there was a password, so there is a protection mechanism which was circumvented, and that’s hacking.
I very much hope that there will be a next instance ruling overturning this decision again. But it’s exactly as people feared: no matter how flawed the supposed “protection,” its mere existence turns security research into criminal hacking under the German law. This has a chilling effect on legitimate research, allowing companies to get away with inadequate security and in the end endangering users.
The BBC's 6 month trial of using the Fediverse will be ending soon.
They want to measure if they have enough reach and engagement for the effort they expend running their Mastodon instance.
Give these accounts a follow if you agree that public broadcasters should live in the Fediverse:
Copyright law sucks and mostly just serves large corporations and lawyers. Instead of wasting effort trying to prolong and complexify the virus of copyright law into the future we should accept that pretty much any use of any published electronic content is fair use (except outright impersonation). It’s just electrons in the end. We would all be better off building more ways to support artists and creators (eg UBI).
From the article: “As Bellos and Montagu repeatedly point out, all new creations derive from existing creations. In our head when we write a poem or make a movie are all the poems we have read or movies we have seen. Philosophers build on the work of prior philosophers; historians rely on other historians. The same principle applies to TikTok videos. The same principle applies, really, to life. Living is a group effort.” https://mastodon.social/@cablegreen/111767069651067272
Trellix researchers have published a breakdown of the Kuiper ransomware. According to Trellix, the ransomware has evolved quite a lot since its launch in September of last year.