wildebees

wildebees, 19 days ago to llm

Beyond the brain: Our intelligence leverages the power of culture and language. Channeling Ted Underwood and Francios Chollet, I argue that language models, despite their biases and lack of understanding –– are important tools for thinking. 🗣️🌍💡 cc @TedUnderwood
https://leviathan.substack.com/p/beyond-the-brain

#LLM #culture #AI

wildebees, 23 days ago to Russia

#Russia has launched "Ruviki," a state-backed encyclopedia mirroring the original Russian Wikipedia. This new platform includes all previous Russian-language Wikipedia content but has been edited to omit information potentially unfavorable to the Russian government.

Interestingly, the Ruviki article about George Orwell’s 1984 entirely omits the Ministry of Truth.

https://www.404media.co/russia-clones-wikipedia-censors-it-bans-original/

wildebees, 23 days ago to twitter

More European research groups announce they are leaving X.

https://connect.geant.org/2024/04/29/geant-is-ceasing-activities-on-x-fka-twitter

#Twitter

wildebees, 1 month ago to random

Lina Khan is finding favour among the MAGA crowd, according to the WSJ:

The “Khanservatives,” as they call themselves, tend to be a younger and Trumpier part of the growing ranks of Republicans who question unfettered markets and see big corporations as an adversary to their constituents. The bipartisan traction suggests Khan is tapping into a generational shift in attitudes toward corporations and markets.

#antitrust

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/lina-khan-ftc-antitrust-khanservatives-a6852a8f

wildebees, 6 months ago to random

"As a piece of writing, the rambling and often contradictory #manifesto has the pathos of the Unabomber manifesto but lacks the ideological coherency."

"The argument for total acceleration of technological development is not about optimism, except in the sense that the Andreessens and Thiels and Musks are certain that they will succeed. It’s pessimism about democracy — and ultimately, humanity."

#andreessen #ideology

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/28/opinion/marc-andreessen-manifesto-techno-optimism.html

wildebees, 6 months ago to internet

So, who is up and who is down?

#socialmedia #x

wildebees, 6 months ago to internet

X now has 13% less daily users year on year.

Less than 1% of users have signed up to premium.

Collectively, X’s top five advertisers are spending 67% less on ads than they did before the acquisition.

#x #socialmedia https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-25/elon-musk-s-x-looks-little-like-the-twitter-he-bought-a-year-ago

wildebees, 6 months ago to ai

Spain is pushing for “a tiered approach for regulating foundation models, defined as those with more 45 million users.

Spain also wants additional obligations for very capable foundation models (VCFM), such as ChatGPT, including regular vetting to uncover potential vulnerabilities.” #AI #regulation https://www.reuters.com/technology/eu-lawmakers-face-struggle-reach-agreement-ai-rules-sources-2023-10-23/

wildebees, 6 months ago to Amazon

Geo-politics comes to a #cloud near you.

#Amazon announces #AWS European Sovereign Cloud.

"designed to help public sector organizations and customers in highly regulated industries meet their evolving sovereignty needs...AWS European Sovereign Cloud to be separate and independent from our existing Regions, with infrastructure located wholly within the European Union (EU)"

#geopolitics #data

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/aws-digital-sovereignty-pledge-announcing-a-new-independent-sovereign-cloud-in-europe/

wildebees, 7 months ago to privacy

I wonder what comms tech Hamas used? Big chance it was Signal, or WhatsApp.

The conversation about end-to-end #encryption is going to just get more complicated in our #geopolitical times.

#privacy

https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/10/14/israel-intelligence-hamas-gaza-border-technology-nato/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Editors%20Picks%20-%2010172023&utm_term=editors_picks

wildebees, 8 months ago to BurningMan

Since #BurningMan is in the news, here's a fascinating, funny and surprising podcast by sociologist Erik Davis, who has gone regularly since the beginning. A #history and a #sociology rolled into one 1/

https://expandingmind.podbean.com/e/expanding-mind-%E2%80%93-black-rock-city-2018-090618https://expandingmind.podbean.com/e/expanding-mind-%E2%80%93-black-rock-city-2018-090618

wildebees, 8 months ago to random

There’s research that shows that austerity leads to lower voter turn out, and a rise of extreme right parties in Europe.

“Fiscal consolidations lead to a significant increase in extreme parties' vote share, lower voter turnout, and a rise in political fragmentation.”

#austerity
#fragmentation

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4160971

wildebees, 9 months ago to twitter

The good thing about the #Twitter rebranding is that we can now put a name we like to the good old days of that app.

wildebees, 10 months ago to threads

“For a second week in a row, the number of daily active users declined on #Threads , falling to 13 million, down about 70% from a July 7 peak, according to estimates from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower.” https://www.wsj.com/articles/threads-user-engagement-continues-to-drop-adding-urgency-for-new-features-8ed2f384

1br0wn, 10 months ago to random

deleted_by_author

wildebees, 10 months ago to twitter

#Twitter is preventing #Lawfare from posting links to its content.

#freespeech

https://www.threads.net/t/Cuhdxl3rkHY/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

AbandonedAmerica, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago) to random

deleted_by_author

wildebees, 10 months ago to twitter

#Twitter’s traffic appears to be tanking if Cloudflare data is to be believed.

I’m experiencing #schadenfreude. It’s true.

#threads

https://www.threads.net/t/Cue0QR5LAV2/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

tarkowski, 10 months ago to threads

On the Mastodon blog, @Gargron published "What to know about Threads" - part FAQ about possible impact of Meta's #Threads on the #Fediverse. And part manifesto.

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/07/what-to-know-about-threads/

First, a caveat. Threads that are interoperable with #Mastodon are for now but a figment of collective imagination. Making it a good time to consider this scenario - but who knows whether it will ultimately happen?

I'm happy that Rochko / Mastodon org voice strong support for an interoperable #Fediverse, including interop with large commercial platforms.

I want to react to two things:

"Well, even if Threads abandoned ActivityPub down the line, where we would end up is exactly where we are now."

Well, not really. Lots of Fediverse devs/admin have a very technical take, which thinks just in terms of a network of servers. A server federates, a server defederates, life goes on.

What changes is the user experience. A world where Threads federeate and then abandon #ActivityPub is one of many broken experiences and broken social graphs.

Federated services - even in a space that sees defederation as an option, just as open source sees forks as a possibility - ultimately require a commitment to continuity. And this commitment is something that cannot be governed by a protocol. It requires a social contract, a pact.

How do you make a contract of this sort with Meta? Is the 100 EUR question.

Secondly,

"If you are not happy with their decision, you can move your account to a different Mastodon server while keeping all of your followers. Since Mastodon is open-source, you can even host your own server and be entirely in charge."

This requires a separate post to unpack, but seriously? Again, this vision of user experience is flawed. Moving between servers is relatively easy, but feels difficult. (And why are there two Gargron accounts? How does this make sense as UX?). And the offer "set up your own server, its open source" is a type of tech elitism that really needs to end.

wildebees, 10 months ago to mastodon

#Mastodon is surprisingly good at nerdy and niche topics, and I do see far fewer things on here that I’m not interested in.

But you can’t follow many people when there’s no algorithm. I fear though that Mastodon’s funding model is not sustainable, especially if it grows. And some Mastodoners can be very intolerant.

I’ve been skipping between #Twitter and Mastodon, but with #Threads I might just let my Twitter die.