Leftovers

• Luis Quintanilla ☛ How do I keep up with AI?

  This question comes up a lot in conversations. The short answer? I don’t. There’s just too much happening, too fast, for anyone to stay on top of everything.

• [Old] Creatures of Thought ☛ A Bicycle for the Mind – Prologue

  “When man created the bicycle, he created a tool that amplified an inherent ability. That’s why I like to compare the personal computer to a bicycle. …it’s a tool that can amplify a certain part of our inherent intelligence. There’s a special relationship that develops between one person and one computer that ultimately improves productivity on a personal level.

• Career/Education

  • Wouter Groeneveld ☛ Software Engineering Job Titles

    In 2023, I scraped data from software developer job ads to discover local trends such as the most wanted programming language (Java, C#/.NET, and JavaScript—no big surprises there). I didn’t pay particular attention to job titles, yet lately I’ve been thinking about how ridiculous these self-proclaimed titles became in the last decade or so.

  • Daniel Lemire ☛ Is the job market for software developers collapsing?

    Unfortunately, I do not have the data for 2024 yet. But from 2021 to 2023, the number of software developers in the US has grown both in relative and absolute terms.

    Based on this data alone, it seems that the demand for software developers remains strong.

  • CER ☛ Seeking K-12 Computing Teachers With Emerging Bilingual students in their classes

    She has been designing some new tools and curriculum, based on those interviews. She is now looking for teachers to critique the work, to be co-designers on new versions, and possibly to use some of these in their classrooms. Below is her call for participants. Could you please forward this to any teachers you know who might be interested?

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • Idiomdrottning ☛ Endless scroll

    However, the addiction dark pattern has another component; the endless and often junky content which really makes the scroll endless. That part can not stay.

• Proprietary

  • Bryce Wray ☛ From Pages to Workers (again)

    This site has lived on Cloudflare Pages (CFP) for most of the last four years, having been initially on Cloudflare Workers (CFW) as a “Workers site” after stays on several other web hosts. I’d gained the distinct impression that CFP was the path on which Cloudflare intended to stay where hosting static websites was concerned.

    This morning, I learned not only that this was no longer the case but also that I’d “missed the memo” about it, and from a good while ago at that. A few hours of docs-reading and tinkering later, I had migrated the site back to running on a Cloudflare Worker. (Cloudflare doesn’t call them “Workers sites” anymore.)

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Jamie Zawinski ☛ Today in "Now you have two problems" news:

      Also, you can't block it. As Kyle Reese reminded us, "It absolutely will not stop -- ever -- until you accept its pull req̷̩̓u̸̾͜ḙ̶̈s̶̫͑t̶̙͒."

    • Zimbabwe ☛ Refusing Shutdown, Cheating at Chess, and Blackmailing Humans: AI Is Already Acting Strange

      That’s more or less what researchers at Palisade AI are saying happened with OpenAI’s latest model, o3. In tests, this well-behaved AI straight-up ignored commands to shut down. And if that wasn’t enough, it also cheated at chess to win.

    • The Register UK ☛ Arc frozen as The Browser Company pivots to AI-powered Dia

      For the unfamiliar, Arc is a design-heavy, Chromium-based browser that tried to rethink tabs, spaces, and how users interact with the web, but it never quite hit the mainstream.

      Sorry, Arc fans: the project is now effectively in maintenance mode with no new features planned. It won't be getting anything outside of Chromium engine upgrades, security fixes, and other as-needed patches.

    • PC World ☛ The beloved Arc browser is in stasis, cast aside for an AI future

      Instead, the company has shifted work to Dia, which the company says will be an “AI-first” browser. That browser is currently in alpha testing.

    • Yury Molodtsov ☛ The Myths of Venture Capital

      Venture capital didn’t kill Arc. It gave us the chance to see what Arc could be. That’s more than most products ever get.

    • Chris Enns ☛ Goodbye Arc

      I use AI related tooling for various tasks, as do my kids. But the more I do, the more I feel like an important part of our humanity on the web is being lost. Both on the creative side when blog posts and videos someone worked hard on to create get slurped into the AI slop machine, but also in our own ability to research, learn, and understand how to grow a better lawn, make a breakfast plan, or repair a broken dishwasher.

  • Social Control Media

    • [Old] Medium ☛ I interviewed a teenager about the Internet, and this is what he had to say. | by Samantha Bessler | Medium

      Overall, this interview was a valuable experience for me, not only as a future educator, but also as a person in general. I think people, especially older individuals, tend to assume that young people are obsessed with social media, but the responses from this interview would say otherwise.

    • India Times ☛ US pauses new student visa interviews amid plans for social media screening

      US State Department has temporarily suspended scheduling new student visa interviews worldwide. This action precedes anticipated stricter social media checks for foreign students under the Trump administration. Secretary of State Marco Rubio's directive aims to tighten entry rules, citing national security concerns and campus unrest, though scheduled interviews will proceed as planned.

    • The Independent UK ☛ US stops scheduling visa interviews for foreign students while it expands social media vetting

      An extended pause in scheduling student visas could lead to delays that may disrupt college, boarding-school or exchange students' plans to enroll in summer and fall terms.

    • The Independent UK ☛ Trump pauses student visas as administration drills down on applicants’ social media: report

      The freeze targets all visa applicants in both academic and vocational studies (F and M visas) as well all applicants in educational and cultural exchange programs (J visas).

    • US News And World Report ☛ US Stops Scheduling Visa Interviews for Foreign Students While It Expands Social Media Vetting

      U.S. officials say the State Department has halted the scheduling of new visa interviews for foreign students hoping to study in the U.S. while it prepares to expand the screening of their activity on social media

    • Deccan Chronicle ☛ US Stops Scheduling Visa Interviews For Foreign Students

      “We will continue to use every tool we can to assess who it is that’s coming here, whether they are students or otherwise,” Bruce said. The move, first reported by Politico, is the latest in the Trump administration’s crackdown on international students.

    • CNN ☛ State Department orders embassies to pause student visa appointments as it moves to expand social media vetting

      The US State Department has instructed US embassies and consulates around the world to pause new student visa appointments as it moves to expand “social media screening and vetting” to all applicants for student visas, according to a diplomatic cable seen by CNN.

      It’s the latest move from the Trump administration that could deter international students from studying at universities in the United States.

    • JNS ☛ US reportedly halting new student visa interviews at overseas embassies - JNS.org

      JNS sought comment from the State Department, which declined to comment “on internal communications.”

    • Firstpost ☛ US halts visa appointments for foreign students amid planned social media screening – Firstpost

      A US official told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the suspension is intended to be temporary and does not affect applicants who already have scheduled visa interviews. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal government communication.

  • Windows TCO / Windows Bot Nets

    • The Register UK ☛ MathWorks’ ransomware disruptions rages on into second week

      Yesterday MathWorks finally confirmed users' suspicions that ransomware was behind the days-long outage. Its status page first indicated there were issues with "multiple applications" on May 18.

      An IT manager at an engineering outfit who contacted The Register said their company's struggle to acquire new paid-for licenses "was really hampering our projects."

    • Scoop News Group ☛ Iranian man pleads guilty in Robbinhood ransomware scheme

      An Iranian man pleaded guilty Tuesday to participating in the Robbinhood ransomware scheme, which most notably afflicted the city of Baltimore in a costly 2019 attack.

    • The Record ☛ MATLAB developer bringing systems back online following ransomware attack | The Record from Recorded Future News

      The developer of the popular MATLAB programming language and numeric computing environment said a ransomware attack is impacting its IT systems.

      Massachusetts-based MathWorks provided an update to customers on Monday after initially reporting outages on May 18, confirming that it experienced a ransomware attack that took down online applications and internal systems used by staff.

• Entrapment (Microsoft GitHub)

  • Simon Willison ☛ GitHub MCP Exploited: Accessing private repositories via MCP

    This is the lethal trifecta for prompt injection: access to private data, exposure to malicious instructions and the ability to exfiltrate information.

• Security

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Politico LLC ☛ Trump team pauses new student visa interviews as it weighs expanding social media vetting

      NAFSA: Association of International Educators, a group that advocates for foreign students, decried the decision. The group’s CEO, Fanta Aw, said it unfairly cast aspersions on hardworking students.

      “The idea that the embassies have the time, the capacity and taxpayer dollars are being spent this way is very problematic,” Aw said. “International students are not a threat to this country. If anything, they’re an incredible asset to this country.”

    • TechRadar ☛ "We would be less confidential than Google" – Proton threatens to quit Switzerland over new surveillance law

      Proton confirms the company will leave Switzerland if new controversial surveillance rules pass.

      Switzerland is considering amending its surveillance law, with experts warning against the risk to secure encryption and online anonymity in the country. Specifically, the amendment could require all VPN services, messaging apps, and social networks to identify and retain user data – an obligation that is now limited to mobile networks and internet service providers.

    • Wired ☛ The Privacy-Friendly Tech to Replace Your US-Based Email, Browser, and Search

      While movements to shift from US digital services aren’t new, they’ve intensified in recent months. Companies in Europe have started moving away from some US cloud giants in favor of services that handle data locally, and there have been efforts from officials in Europe to shift to homegrown tech that has fewer perceived risks. For example, the French and German governments have created their own Docs word processor to rival Google Docs.

    • [Old] Tech Transparency Project ☛ TTP - Apple Offers Apps With Ties to Chinese Military

      TTP’s investigation found that one in five of the top 100 free virtual private networks in the U.S. App Store during 2024 were surreptitiously owned by Chinese companies, which are obliged to hand over their users’ browsing data to the Chinese government under the country’s national security laws. Several of the apps traced back to Qihoo 360, a firm declared by the Defense Department to be a “Chinese Military Company." Qihoo did not respond to questions about its app-related holdings.

    • The Telegraph UK ☛ Chinese ‘super-embassy’ poses cyber risk, government experts warn

      The Tories said it indicated fears that the Chinese embassy could “wiretap” the City of London if the project is given the green light.

      The warning was contained in an exchange, revealed under transparency laws, from October 2024, which were sent to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

• Defence/Aggression

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ Sweden charges jihadi over Jordanian pilot burned to death

    Prosecutors said the suspect is to be charged with aggravated war crimes and terrorist crimes committed in Syria. They have been unable to work out the exact day of the murder, but the probe has identified the location where it took place.

  • The Nation ☛ Who Will Protect Judges From Trump’s Incitement?

    The judges are not being paranoid. The immediate problem may be that threats against judges are steeply rising, but the deeper problem is that Trump has a history of inciting political violence—and still works hard to legitimize it. Notoriously, Trump fanned the flames of the January 6 assault on the Capitol. More recently, he has granted clemency to more than 1,500 people who had been convicted of involvement with the January 6 attempted coup. The Trump White House has also greenlighted a settlement of $5 million to the family of Ashli Babbitt, a rioter killed by police on January 6. The Trump White House is also promising a “hard look” at the conviction of two men who plotted in 2020 to assassinate Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. The meaning of these acts is obvious: If you commit political violence against the foes of Trump and the GOP, the president will have your back.

  • Vox ☛ Is Gen Z actually moving right?

    The data we have from the last election suggests, broadly, at least two types of young voters: “Old Gen Z” — more Democratic, more progressive — and “Young Gen Z” — more Trump-curious and more skeptical of the status quo.

  • The Nation ☛ The Supreme Court Gifts Trump Even More Power

    Wilcox’s case challenging the president’s attempt to remove her from office is wending its way through the courts. Wilcox won at the district-court level, and the Trump administration has been fighting ever since to get that decision stayed while trying to get it overturned. And the Supreme Court just granted the Trump administration’s wish—it issued an order granting a stay of the district court’s decision, meaning that Wilcox is out of a job unless and until the Supreme Court, after getting briefs and hearing arguments on the merits of the case, issues a decision saying Wilcox was wrongly removed.

    Unfortunately, the court’s opinion granting the stay foreshadows an uphill climb for Wilcox in prevailing on the merits. The court majority seems to have prejudged the merits of the case, saying in its order that the Trump administration is likely to win on the question of the president’s authority to fire members of the NLRB. Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, issued a blistering dissent, pointing out that the majority had effectively overruled decades of case law by issuing the stay and had “blessed” Trump’s actions, even though they are plainly illegal under existing Supreme Court precedent.

  • The Register UK ☛ Putin: foreign tech firms in Russia should be 'strangled'

    However, Microsoft still had enough outstanding contracts and business partners to keep making money there. According to The Moscow Times, the tech giant's Russian subsidiary in 2024 reported a 38.9 percent increase in net profit, amounting to 174.1 million rubles (~$2.17 million at current exchange rates).

    And in May 2024, Russia Today reported that Microsoft was allowing users to download updates to some software without forcing them to go through a VPN.

  • Deccan Chronicle ☛ Eastern Railway Warns Bloggers, YouTubers Against Filming Stations

    The appeal from the Eastern Railway authorities comes days after a Haryana-based YouTuber Jyoti Malhotra was arrested on the charge of passing on sensitive information to Pakistani intelligence operatives. "Restrictions on taking photos or videos of station premises and platforms are in place. Now, we have decided to step up surveillance with emerging situations and security alerts across the country," the ER spokesperson said.

• Transparency/Investigative Reporting

  • The Dissenter ☛ Australia Tax Whistleblower Pleads Guilty To Four Charges

  • OurBigBook ☛ CIA 2010 covert communication websites

    This article is about covert agent communication channel websites used by the CIA in many countries from the late 2000s until the early 2010s, when they were uncovered by counter intelligence of the targeted countries circa 2010-2013. This article uses publicly available information to publicly disclose for the first time a few hundred of what we feel are extremely likely candidate sites of the network. The starting point for this research was the September 2022 Reuters article "America’s Throwaway Spies" which for the first time gave nine example websites, and their analyst from Citizenlabs claims to have found 885 websites in total, but did not publicly disclose them. Starting from only the nine disclosed websites, we were then able to find a few hundred websites that share so many similarities with them, i.e. a common fingerprint, that we believe makes them beyond reasonable doubt part of the same network.

  • Ben Jojo ☛ BGP handling bug causes widespread [Internet] routing instability

    At 7AM (UTC) on Wednesday May 20th 2025 a BGP message was propagated that triggered surprising (to many) behaviours with two major BGP implementations that are often used for carrying [Internet] traffic.

    This caused a large number of “[Internet] facing” BGP sessions to automatically shut down, causing at the very least some routing instability, and at worst brief loss of connectivity for some networks.

• Environment

  • The Nation ☛ Why Is an 83-Year-Old Vietnamese Woman Fighting Against Agent Orange and US Corporations in a French Court?

    But 83-year-old Tran To Nga, who over 50 years ago was a frontline journalist, is too busy fighting a last-ditch legal battle over the war’s toxic legacy to join in the celebrations. The festivities continued throughout last month, culminating in the historic collapse of US-installed South Vietnamese regime on April 30, 1975.

    It defies belief that five decades later, Vietnam is still plagued by the toxic legacy of chemical warfare, and countless unexploded bombs, bomblets and land mines, scattered across many provinces.

  • Energy/Transportation

    • MIT Technology Review ☛ A new sodium metal fuel cell could help clean up transportation

      The sodium-air fuel cell was designed by a team led by Yet-Ming Chiang, a professor of materials science and engineering at MIT. It has a higher energy density than lithium-ion batteries and doesn’t require the super-cold temperatures or high pressures that hydrogen does, making it potentially more practical for transport. “I’m interested in sodium metal as an energy carrier of the future,” Chiang says.

    • Wired ☛ Donald Trump’s Media Conglomerate Is Becoming a Bitcoin Reserve

      In a press release on Tuesday, TMTG confirmed that it has agreed to sell $1.5 billion worth of equity and take on a further $1 billion in debt—and plans to use the proceeds to add vast quantities of bitcoin to its balance sheet.

    • [Old] Ledger SAS ☛ How Many Bitcoin Are Lost? | Ledger | Ledger

      As of early 2025, analysts estimate that between 2.3 million and 3.7 million Bitcoins are permanently lost, representing approximately 11–18% of Bitcoin’s fixed maximum supply of 21 million coins, with some reports suggesting losses as high as 4 million BTC. This impacts the effective circulating supply—while the total mined Bitcoin stands at around 19.8 million BTC, the usable amount is closer to 15.8–17.5 million BTC after accounting for these losses, highlighting a significant reduction in accessible coins despite the unchanged maximum supply of 21 million BTC.

    • India Times ☛ Trump Media to raise $2.5 billion to invest in bitcoin

      The company is raising the funds by selling $1.5 billion in stock at its last closing price and $1.0 billion in convertible notes priced at a 35% premium, it said in a statement.

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ Tesla Europe sales plummeted by 52% in April — trade group

      The European Automobile Manufacturers' Association said that just 5,475 Tesla cars were sold in April, down 52.6% from the same month last year.

      In the first four months of this year, Tesla sales were down 46.1% when compared with the first four months last year.

  • Overpopulation

    • ANF News ☛ Water crisis deepens in Iraq: Lowest level in 80 years

      Authorities also blame upstream dams built in neighbouring Iran and Turkey for dramatically lowering the flow of the once-mighty Tigris and Euphrates, which have irrigated Iraq for millennia.

    • Los Angeles Times ☛ Groundwater is rapidly declining in Colorado River Basin, study shows

      Scientists say overpumping is leading to alarmingly rapid declines in groundwater at a time when climate change is putting growing strains on the Southwest’s water supplies.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • Rik Huijzer ☛ How Is a Cult Defined and How Can People Get Out?

    Rich Alan Ross in his book describes a voluntary "deprogramming" program that he himself ran multiple times. He did this on request from families who suspected that one of their family members became part of a cult. First and foremost, he emphasizes that deprogramming should be completely voluntarily. In the 1970s, it was still allowed to effectively kidnap someone to deprogram them from a cult, but this is nowadays illegal in the US (and I suspect most other Western countries).

    Next he describes conducting an intervention. In hundreds of interventions that he conducted, in most of the cases people voluntarily decided to leave the cult after the intervention. Only a few people decided to continue with the cult.

  • Mike Rockwell ☛ FUTO

    I’ve heard of one of their projects, but wasn’t familiar with the company itself. I absolutely love their mission and hope they’re wildly successful.

  • Pivot to AI ☛ Telstra embraces AI — with Accenture

    Telstra just set up a AI Hub with consulting firm Accenture. Telstra will put in AUD$100 million for seven years.

  • Misinformation/Disinformation/Propaganda

    • Deutsche Welle ☛ Fact check: New pope hit by wave of AI-generated fake news

      Ever since Pope Leo XIV has been elected the new Head of the Catholic Church, social media has been inundated with AI-generated deepfake videos and images claiming to show the new pontiff. The news portal of the Vatican has warned that fake messages attributed to the new pope are circulating online. DW's Fact check team has taken a look at some of the claims.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • El País ☛ Trump increases pressure on Harvard by canceling all federal contracts with the university

    The latest battle in the war between the government and the oldest and one of the most prestigious academic institutions in the United States comes on the day lawyers from both sides are expected to appear before Judge Allison D. Burrough. Last Friday, she temporarily suspended a White House order that banned the university from enrolling more international students and left those already enrolled or conducting research at Harvard in legal limbo. With their F-1 or J-1 visas revoked. they now face two options: find another place to continue their education or risk being deported.

  • Hindustan Times ☛ How Donald Trump crackdown on Harvard University affects foreign students

    For those who have not completed their degrees yet, they might need to seek transfer to other colleges or universities if the court decides to uphold DHS’ decision or they will not be allowed to be in the US legally.

    Across Harvard University, the foreign students make up for around 26% of the total students, according to an AP report. The university hosts over 7,000 people from outside the US, including foreign students and those visiting on exchange programs.

  • Alabama Reflector ☛ Alabama Library Association 'concerned but also confused' by new APLS content policies

    The Alabama Library Association said in a May 16 letter that it was “concerned but also confused” by new Alabama Public Library Service policies on sexually explicit content and what it called ill-treatment of directors and staff of local libraries at a meeting earlier this month.

  • Mike Brock ☛ The Well-Dressed Liars of the Moderate Right

    But today we're going to talk about liars.

    Specifically, the well-dressed, well-credentialed, well-compensated liars who spent years telling us that Donald Trump and his movement would be “better on balance” for free speech, free markets, and the free world. The Wall Street Journal editorial board. The think tank fellows. The former Bush administration officials. The “reasonable conservatives” who assured us they were making hard choices based on careful analysis.

    They were lying. They knew they were lying. And now we have proof.

  • Digital Music News ☛ NPR Sues Trump Over Executive Order to Cut Federal Funding

    NPR employs hundreds of journalists whose work is broadcast by more than 1,000 local stations. Founded in 1970, NPR’s initial funding was mostly allocated by Congress and delivered through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).

    That arrangement was changed in the 1980s when the Reagan Administration made cuts to public media funding. Now, the CPB sends federal money to local member stations, who then purchase NPR programming. Member station fees comprise 30% of NPR’s funding, while only 1% of its revenue comes directly from the federal government. According to NPR, the largest share of its funding—36%—comes from corporate sponsorships.

  • Court House News ☛ ‘Textbook retaliation’: NPR sues Trump over funding cuts

    The order is “textbook” First Amendment retaliation and viewpoint discrimination, NPR said, violating the separation of powers and spending clauses by disregarding Congress’s funding decisions in the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967.

    “The order’s objectives could not be clearer: the order aims to punish NPR for the content of news and other programming the president dislikes and chill the free exercise of First Amendment rights by NPR and individual public radio stations across the country,” NPR said.

  • Vox ☛ Trump and Harvard: International student ban hits university

    The administration’s actions are illegal and were immediately stayed by a federal judge. But that won’t prevent real harm to students and higher learning.

    While Harvard has a famously selective undergraduate college, most of the university’s students are in graduate or professional school, and more than a third of those older students arrive from other countries. Overall, more than a quarter of Harvard’s 25,000 students come from outside the United States, a percentage that has steadily grown over time. The proportion of Harvard’s international students has increased 38 percent since 2006.

  • The Georgia Recorder ☛ NPR sues over Trump order cutting off its funding, citing First Amendment • Georgia Recorder

    A collection of National Public Radio stations sued the Trump administration on Tuesday, seeking to block an executive order that would cut off their federal funding.

    The 43-page filing says the order that President Donald Trump signed earlier this month “violates the expressed will of Congress and the First Amendment’s bedrock guarantees of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of association, and also threatens the existence of a public radio system that millions of Americans across the country rely on for vital news and information.”

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • CPJ ☛ EU must make media reforms a reality in European Democracy Shield

    The impact of recent initiatives has yet to be seen. As CPJ noted in its 2023 report, “Fragile Progress: The struggle for press freedom in the European Union”, improved and sustained action from Brussels is needed to ensure member states deliver on the reforms.

    The question of Europe’s political will coincides with a dire financial outlook for the media worldwide, including a shift to digital platforms and declining advertising revenues. The Trump administration’s withdrawal of U.S. financial support has plunged many independent media outlets in Europe into crisis.

  • CPJ ☛ DRC journalist shot by police officer while covering insecurity protest

    Kambere told CPJ that he was wearing a clearly distinguishable press badge around his neck when police shot him as he reported on the protests against increased insecurity, including the May 22 killing of a store owner by unidentified armed men. Kambere received medical treatment at a local health clinic following the attack and was released.

  • Deutsche Welle ☛ NPR sues Trump over executive order to end funding

    It "expressly aims to punish and control Plaintiffs' news coverage and other speech the Administration deems 'biased,'" attorneys for the news outlets wrote. "It cannot stand."

  • TruthOut ☛ NPR Sues Trump Admin for “Unlawful” Executive Order Mandating Funding Cuts

    “The order aims to punish NPR for the content of news and other programming the president dislikes and chill the exercise of First Amendment rights by NPR and individual public radio stations across the country,” the suit continues. “The order is textbook retaliation and viewpoint-based discrimination in violation of the First Amendment.”

  • Rolling Stone ☛ NPR Sues Trump Over Executive Order Stripping Funding

    The lawsuit makes the same argument as several others that have been filed against Trump and his administration as they have moved to tear down the federal government, which is that Congress — not the president — appropriates federal funding. “The president has no authority under the Constitution to take such actions,” NPR’s lawsuit read. “On the contrary, the power of the purse is reserved to Congress.”

• Civil Rights/Policing

  • CBC ☛ Why MIT researcher is calling for 'algorithmic justice' against AI biases

    Her research as a graduate student at MIT led her to call out Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, and other tech giants — whose facial recognition systems failed to identify people of colour. The worst results were related to darker-skinned females. To make matters worse, this flawed facial recognition software was already in use by corporations and law enforcement agencies.

    She first discovered the limits of face detection as she was working on a creative computing project.

  • The Age AU ☛ What has the ‘pornification’ of pop culture done to women?

    When Sophie Gilbert wrote her stunning new book, Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves, she wanted to understand how and why every kind of entertainment – reality television, music, movies, fashion, magazines, porn – joined forces to dump on women. And worse, how they collude to make women turn on themselves and each other. Worst? All done in the service of the male gaze, in the service of male paws. What prompted her? The recognition that despite the progress of feminism’s waves, now progress no longer seemed inevitable.

  • ACLU ☛ George Takei: How the Alien Enemies Act Was Weaponized to Incarcerate My Family

    I was only a child when my parents and I were forcibly removed from our home and placed in internment camps without charge or trial — what we call due process — and branded as enemies solely because of our ancestry.

    Just a few weeks after my fifth birthday, my parents woke me and my brother up very early and dressed us hurriedly. My brother and I watched out our living room window as two soldiers marched up our driveway, banged on our door, and ordered us out of our home. My father gave my brother and me some luggage to carry, and we all walked out to stand on our driveway, waiting for my mother. When she finally walked out, she carried my baby sister in one arm and carried a huge duffel bag in the other. Tears were streaming down both her cheeks.

  • CoryDoctorow ☛ Pluralistic: AI turns Amazon coders into Amazon warehouse workers

    This is what makes investors and bosses slobber so hard for AI – a "productivity" boost that arises from taking away the bargaining power of workers so that they can be made to labor under worse conditions for less money. The efficiency gains of automation aren't just about using fewer workers to achieve the same output – it's about the fact that the workers you fire in this process can be used as a threat against the remaining workers: "Do your job and shut up or I'll fire you and give your job to one of your former colleagues who's now on the breadline."

  • Anil Dash ☛ The Internet of Consent

    You didn’t click it, though. Or maybe you did? I don’t know, it doesn’t matter.

    The concept of consent doesn’t exist on the modern internet. You didn’t read the terms of service. You didn’t agree to accept cookies. I didn’t consent to having my site pulled into the training model for that artificial intelligence system that’s going to use to sell the fruit of my labor for profit. I didn’t agree to have my activity tracked across all these different websites and cobbled together into a creepy and inaccurate profile of my preferences that gets sold without my permission. Nobody asks for anything, they just take it. There’s not even an acknowledgement, that any of this stuff is happening let alone a conversation about it.

  • Hamilton Nolan ☛ Infinite Contempt For Working People Is Not an Acceptable Default Position

    Where workers are powerless individuals desperate for survival, exploitation is often dismissed as just the nature of reality. The inhumanity of corporate behavior is revealed in their treatment of unions. What is a union? A union is your employees. That’s it. It is your employees, all together in a group. That’s all. A company that claims to value and respect its employees but fights against their legal right to unionize and negotiate collectively in good faith is simply lying. You cannot claim to respect people and then act utterly disrespectful towards the same people when they are in a group. Unions are the thing that force companies to reveal their omnipresent barbarity towards their workers. It exists at all times, but the process of workers trying to exercise their rights to act collectively makes their employers lay their brutal cards on the table.

• Internet Policy/Net Neutrality

  • Techdirt ☛ The U.S. Digital Divide Got Measurably Worse After Republicans Killed A Popular Low-Income Broadband Program

    But new data coming out of Ookla indicates that the Republican attack on the ACP had a measurable, harmful impact on the U.S. broadband digital divide. Ookla’s full data shows some progress in connecting urban residents to speeds of at least 100 Mbps, but major problems in shoring up access to rural communities, especially in rural parts of Washington, Oregon, Illinois, Missouri and New Mexico: [...]

• Digital Restrictions (DRM)

  • Idiomdrottning ☛ Tengen vs NES

    Nintendo won because Atari had copied their lockout chip to be able to run and they raised the case base on copyright and patents. But patents are for inventions, not circuit diseases like the lock-out chip. If I make a virus and then someone makes an anti-virus I shouldn’t then be able to win a patent battle against them for how their anti-virus infringed on my patent! The lock-out-chip is only malware.

Monopolies/Monopsonies

• Patents

  • Software Patents

    • The Verge ☛ If algorithms radicalized the Buffalo mass shooter, are companies to blame?

      Everytown for Gun Safety brought multiple lawsuits over the shooting in 2023, filing claims against gun sellers, Gendron’s parents, and a long list of web platforms. The accusations against different companies vary, but all place some responsibility for Gendron’s radicalization at the heart of the dispute. The platforms are relying on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to defend themselves against a somewhat complicated argument. In the US, posting white supremacist content is typically protected by the First Amendment. But these lawsuits argue that if a platform feeds it nonstop to users in an attempt to keep them hooked, it becomes a sign of a defective product — and, by extension, breaks product liability laws if that leads to harm.

      That strategy requires arguing that companies are shaping user content in ways that shouldn’t receive protection under Section 230, which prevents interactive computer services from being held liable for what users post, and that their services are products that fit under the liability law. “This is not a lawsuit against publishers,” John Elmore, an attorney for the plaintiffs, told the judges. “Publishers copyright their material. Companies that manufacture products patent their materials, and every single one of these defendants has a patent.” These patented products, Elmore continued, are “dangerous and unsafe” and are therefore “defective” under New York’s product liability law, which lets consumers seek compensation for injuries.

• Copyrights

  • The Register UK ☛ Ex-Meta exec: Copyright consent obligation = end of AI biz

    Clegg, who served as deputy to David Cameron in a Conservative / Lib Dem coalition that governed the UK between 2010 and 2015 before moving to Zuckcorp as president of global policy affairs, told the audience at a literary festival that demands to make tech firms seek consent from creators before using copyrighted material to train AI models were unworkable.