@eob@social.coop
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eob

@eob@social.coop

Managing engineering team enhancing user-facing #privacy, fairness, and #AI compliance at #Google Search

Opinions here are strictly my own — I’m not speaking for Google

Formerly Bell Labs, HP Labs, and various startups

Have worked on chip design software, Internet collaboration software, IoT, computational aesthetics, search engine UI, and privacy

#EU citizen, from #Ireland

Have lived in Dublin, London, Princeton, San Francisco, and Calistoga

https://eamonn.org

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eob, to random
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Attending fireside chat with Lina Khan, FTC chair

garbados, to random
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the reason i like Russell Means' "For America To Live, Europe Must Die" so much is that it lays out a tangible character for the post-colonial americas. we have rich cultural and spiritual traditions at our fingertips, if we are brave enough to throw off the forces destroying them. we have practical ways and means with thousands of years of history, which are not the likes of capital and colony, if we are wise enough to rise to their call.

eob,
@eob@social.coop avatar

@garbados When Means spoke 43 years ago the competing ideologies were capitalism and Marxism, which he lumps together as "European"

I wonder how the speech would be different today when environmentalism is also a strong political force. Would Means consider environmentalists allies, or would he also lump them with the "Europeans" because he would regard their reliance on science as "despiritualization of the universe"

(If anyone else is interested, the speech is at https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/russell-means-for-america-to-live-europe-must-die )

eob, to random
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That "all objects" paper[1] inspired me to create a Google Sheet chart in that form, with space to show literally every object that can exist in a triangular area between the limits of quantum mechanics and the limits of general relativity

I'm thinking maybe it would be interesting to create an interactive web site to explore this chart at different scales

[1]: Lineweaver, C. H., & Patel, V. M. (2023). All objects and some questions. American Journal of Physics, 91(10), 819-825.

eob, (edited )
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Updated version of diagram in previous post, with more example objects added

eob, to random
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Weird factoids according to this paper...

The total mass of Covid virus particles in one heavily infected person is about a tenth of a milligram (similar to the mass of one poppy seed)

At a given time during the pandemic, the total mass of all Covid virus particles existing in the world, in all infected people, was of the order of a kilogram

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8237675/

eob, to random
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"All objects and some questions" must break the record for the most understated paper title

It includes this log-log plot that encompasses literally all objects including fleas, humans, electrons, black holes, stars, Covid viruses, galaxies, and the entire universe

https://pubs.aip.org/aapt/ajp/article/91/10/819/2911822/All-objects-and-some-questions

lzg, to random
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    eob,
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    @lzg I was struck by the section of Andreessen's manifesto called "The Enemy" which includes the following list of enemy ideas:

    “existential risk”, “sustainability”, “ESG”, “Sustainable Development Goals”, “social responsibility”, “stakeholder capitalism”, “Precautionary Principle”, “trust and safety”, “tech ethics”, “risk management”

    (Somewhat chillingly, that section of the manifesto also includes an extended quote from Nietzsche)

    eob, to random
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    Here's an interesting article from last year by @harsh

    https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.05786

    It discusses how to create a vocabulary to express what a user is being asked to consent to on websites, and it proposes that browsers present some or all of the consent UI

    Is this flexible enough to deal with the fact that privacy is very context dependent?

    A user might consent to different privacy/functionality trade-offs dependent on how sensitive what they are doing is and how much they trust the current site

    eob, to random
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    So the most recent full moon was a "supermoon", which means it was closer than average to the Earth

    And today's eclipse was annular, which means the new moon is farther than average from the Earth

    So I guess that means that, currently the Sun is roughly lined up with the major axis of the ellipse of the moon's orbit, with the Earth at the ellipse focus that is further from the Sun

    Can any astronomer types confirm that my understanding of celestial geometry is correct?

    eob, to random
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    Too cloudy to see the eclipse here, so watching online

    https://www.youtube.com/live/SSdJ9jELHOU?si=qiLeK9iSrdL2cv-l

    eob, to random
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    If you live in California you will (eventually) have a convenient centralized place to delete your personal data from the hundreds of shadowy data brokers who know a disturbing amount of things about you and will happily sell your personal data to anyone

    https://www.tomkemp.ai/blog/2023/10/10/analysis-of-the-california-delete-act-sb-362-signed-into-law

    ntnsndr, to random
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    I regret to inform you that Donald Trump's use of first-letter capitalization as a form of arbitrary emphasis appears to have fully taken hold among college-age Americans.

    eob,
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    @ntnsndr Language evolves

    eob, to random
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    The amount of tracking Walmart does of its customers means that there is a lot of data for governments to subpoena. Unlike the Big Tech companies, Walmart does not disclose how many law-enforcement requests it gets.

    Of particular concern to some shareholders earlier this year was that the data could be used to reveal reproductive health behaviors that would facilitate prosecutions for having or aiding an abortion

    Their proxy resolution (see image below) to add more transparency was defeated

    eob, to privacy
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    Some worrying calls in France for making online anonymity illegal, including calls for bans on VPNs

    This is bad for

    https://www.euractiv.com/section/data-privacy/news/disputes-resurface-over-offline-illegality-should-be-online-illegality-rule/

    eob,
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    @tersoo Actually I don't think Big Tech companies are behind this particular push to limit privacy

    The French are amongst the most enthusiastic about regulating Big Tech. Having worked on the other side, I have great respect for the determination and technical expertise of the CNIL (the French regulators) in doing so

    What does seems to be driving this is the "law and order" argument, that police and security services should be able to police the Intenet just as they police the physical world

    eob, to privacy
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    Walmart is unashamedly reporting that it is observing how customers' use of prescription drugs affect how much they eat, as tracked by how much food they buy on the store

    The U.S. needs real laws

    https://www.axios.com/2023/10/06/ozempic-weight-loss-drugs-food-business

    eob,
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    @GatekeepKen The Walmart case involves health data, possibly quite sensitive, which the Facebook/HomeDepot case does not

    eob,
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    @MeiLin Yes, you could certainly imagine a way this could be done ethically, in a way that could be valuable

    Maybe a university research group could partner with Walmart and propose such a study to answer some real scientific or medical question

    They could have their proposal reviewed by their IRB to make sure it met ethical and regulatory standards, and if approved the results could be peer reviewed

    But it is pretty clear this research was done for commercial not scientific purposes

    eob,
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    @mscheffel If they were just comparing aggregate sales of drugs with aggregate sales of food, that would not be problematic, but the quote below from the Bloomberg article does seems to imply they're tracking individuals:

    “We definitely do see a slight change compared to the total population, we do see a slight pullback in overall basket,” John Furner, the chief executive officer of Walmart’s sprawling US operation, said in an interview Wednesday. “Just less units, slightly less calories.”

    kevinrothrock, to random

    Has anybody found a WearOS watchface that's even remotely as good as the Pixel Minimal Watch Face?

    eob,
    @eob@social.coop avatar

    @kevinrothrock I like an analog face, and I've settled on this one ("Classic") as the one that has the best combination of clarity while still supporting the display of four different complications.

    eob, to random
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    Visiting Spain and France and noticing how more sites have a "reject all" button on their cookie wall since I was last in Europe

    It's a bit easier now for privacy-sensitive people to reduce the amount of data being collected about them

    laravista, to ChatGPT

    @melroy Do you know a bot for ? (I need one for my posts comments)

    eob,
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    @laravista @melroy

    I was going to suggest @elelem, a ChatGPT bot I built, but I see you already discovered it further down this thread.

    eob, to random
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    A reminder for anyone working on a tech platform

    Make sure you consider this privacy threat model:

    Your server data could be subpoenaed by forced-birth zealots in the red states

    so they can prosecute those who arrange travel for women to a state where abortion is legal

    https://apnews.com/article/alabama-abortion-steve-marshall-2157a7d0bfad02aad1ca41e61fe4de33

    eob, to random
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    Some really interesting insights in this paper looking at "hallucination" in LLMs

    Creativity and hallucination are really the same kind of emergent behavior, differently named only based on whether they are desirable or not

    https://medium.com/@sayandev.mukherjee/hallucinations-and-emergence-in-large-language-models-b54952a17972

    eob,
    @eob@social.coop avatar

    Both creativity and hallucination are caused by training with such vast amounts of data that there are long-distance connections in the underlying "consent space" which make all concepts be directly linked to all other concepts

    They can be avoided by limiting such long distance connections during the LLM training, so that each concept is only linked to concepts to which it has a reasonable close semantic connection

    mcc, to random
    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar

    It is mind boggling to me how many websites make it difficult or impossible to express the idea you no longer wish to use an old credit card

    eob,
    @eob@social.coop avatar

    @TomF @antiproton @mcc I used to always use January 1, 1900 -- so that it was very clearly a non-real birthday and that I was withholding information rather than attempting something fraudulent

    Though recently some sites were no longer accepting that: I guess they have a maximum age check now (the current oldest known person was born in 1907)

    So, I've started using January 1, 1920.

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