TechDesk

TechDesk, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago) to twitter

X, formally known as Twitter, is suing the independent researchers behind the report that documented a rise in neo-Nazi and anti-LGBTQ hate speech on the platform since Elon Musk's takeover. The nonprofit, which has previously published reports on Facebook and TikTok, has never before been subjected to legal action by a tech company it has reviewed. The center's CEO Imran Ahmed says he's concerned for the future of independent research after X's latest move.
https://flip.it/Z4_nfT

#Twitter #X

TechDesk, 5 months ago to random

Platform X woes continue: The European Commission has opened a formal Digital Service Act investigation into X, formerly known as Twitter, for illegal content, disinformation and deceptive design.

https://flip.it/_ocTjj

#Twitter #ElonMusk #Disinformation

TechDesk, 21 days ago (edited 21 days ago) to ai

A female computational neuroscience and machine learning expert took to X at the weekend to describe a “dark side” of the startup culture in Silicon Valley.

Sonia Joseph alleged that a culture of sexual coercion has taken hold of San Francisco’s community housing tech scene, with “heavy LSD use” and “sex parties held by mainly male tech and entrepreneurial elites that involve mock-violent role playing with female participants.”

In particular, “early OpenAI employees” were referenced by Joseph, as well as their friends and “adjacent entrepreneurs.” Salon has more.

https://flip.it/t5RReK

#AI #OpenAI #SiliconValley #Tech

TechDesk, 6 months ago to Cybersecurity

It could take just minutes for someone to find your birth date, phone number and address online. A birthday social media post, a descriptive caption or selling an item on an online marketplace can provide a hacker with all the puzzle pieces to steal your personal information.

https://flip.it/4aZonX

#Cybersecurity #Privacy

TechDesk, 25 days ago to ai

If you use Slack for work, your messages and DMs to friends and colleagues are now being used to train the company’s machine learning features — and everyone is opted in by default.

A quiet update to the company’s policy suggests messages, data and files sent by users are helping Slack to improve its in-app features like channel recommendations, search results and emoji suggestions, reports @PCMag. Individual users can’t opt out either, something critics have called a “privacy mess.”

https://flip.it/Tb1gRM

#Slack #AI #MachineLearning #Tech

TechDesk, 1 year ago to internet

"Twitter is no longer reliable" said a post by New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Agency. It announced that real-time bus and train service alerts would no longer be available on the platform.

https://www.engadget.com/nycs-transport-authority-will-no-longer-post-service-alerts-on-twitter-051701441.html

Last week, major emergency weather accounts faced disruptions over Twitter’s API access.

https://mashable.com/article/twitter-exemptions-nws-public-service-safety-weather-accounts

#Twitter

TechDesk, 9 months ago to random

Platform X has begun throttling links to Threads, Instagram, Bluesky and The New York Times according to reports. 9to5Mac has the latest:
https://flip.it/2O4GmY

#X #ElonMusk

TechDesk, 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago) to twitter

Elon Musk may be looking to hide news article headlines from timelines on X, according to Fortune. @9to5Mac explores why he might be pushing for this change and how it could impact writers, journalists and creators.
https://flip.it/x6fQBl

Original Fortune Article (May be paywalled)
https://flip.it/6V3ChQ

#Twitter #X #ElonMusk

TechDesk, 6 months ago to news

The man who attacked Paul Pelosi with a hammer says his descent into right-wing conspiracies started with Gamergate, the misogynistic harassment campaign that targeted women in the video-game industry. David DePape also listened to right-wing podcasts and regularly spent time on 4chan. Vice News has more.

https://flip.it/7pk0yj

#News #Gamergate #ConspiracyTheories #Extremism #Internet

TechDesk, 1 month ago to tech

How do you solve the problem of growing a popular smart home platform committed to open-source, open-standard ideals into something bigger that stays true to those ideals? Home Assistant believes it has the answer with the newly formed non-profit called Open Home Foundation. @theverge has more on the foundation's stated aim "to fight against surveillance capitalism, and offer a counterbalance to Big Tech influence, in the smart home — by focusing on privacy, choice, and sustainability for smart home users.” https://flip.it/K55TOX
#Tech #SmartHome #CyberSecurity #Technology

TechDesk, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago) to internet

Did you know the internet is carried around the world by around 800,000 miles of fragile cables that sit at the bottom of the ocean? It's a precarious system that is constantly breaking, and relies on a global network of ships to be on hand to repair them, and keep the world online.

In this long read, @theverge tells the story of the people doing that job, the struggles with recruitment, and what happens when "the world's most important infrastructure," falls foul of Mother Nature.

https://flip.it/h3sGp5

#Internet #Online #LongRead #Infrastructure #Tech

TechDesk, 1 year ago to random

The evolution of social networking: NPR visits a museum for self-described tech nerds, where they're preserving the machines that inspired inventors to create today's essential communication tech. "It's a Willy Wonka's factory of clattering gizmos, many invented by steam age eccentrics and tinkerers who managed to connect an entire world.” says writer Brian Mann.

https://www.npr.org/2023/05/10/1174719805/social-network-landline-telephone-system-computers-machines

#SocialNetwork #OldTech

TechDesk, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago) to threads

Twitter was once the go-to app for up-to-date news, first-hand accounts and quality journalism on the ground. But over the weekend, as users sought information about the Israel-Hamas conflict, they found platform X flooded with misinformation. So they turned to Threads, as Platformer editor @caseynewton explains.

https://flip.it/pa.SMV

#Threads #X #Israel

TechDesk, 3 months ago to tech

Large language models sometimes fabricate information and present it as fact. But to hallucinate, you must first perceive. Writing for Big Think, Adam Frank says to stop saying ChatGPT “hallucinates." https://flip.it/Rg3uiW
#Tech #AI #ChatGPT #ArtificialIntelligence

TechDesk, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago) to ai

In another chapter of “what crazy things has AI done this week,” the Catholic advocacy group Catholic Answers has had to swiftly defrock the AI priest it unveiled just a few days ago, after some strange conversations were shared online.

In a particularly awkward exchange with @futurism regarding the legitimacy of his identity, the chatbot claimed to be a real member of the clergy, who lived in Assisi. “Yes, my friend,” Father Justin is reported to have said, “I am as real as the faith we share.”

https://flip.it/yDpIIJ

#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #Chatbot #Tech

TechDesk, 30 days ago to tech

Futurism wanted to know: What kind of a company creates fake authors for a newspaper or magazine and operates them like sock puppets? What they discovered "should alarm anyone who cares about a trustworthy and ethical media industry." https://flip.it/oxcxAC
#Tech #Technology #AI #Journalism

TechDesk, 5 months ago to meta

Meta's Mark Zuckerberg announced today that Threads is now available to people living in Europe. Not only that, but the Twitter competitor will also finally be testing integration with the fediverse!

https://flip.it/v9sYaZ

9to5Mac on ActivityPub support:
https://flip.it/JnW6Sn

#Meta #Threads #ActivityPub #Fediverse

TechDesk, 4 months ago to tech

X is hiring 100 full-time employees for a new content moderation team in Austin. The plan comes a few days before the company’s CEO, Linda Yaccarino, is scheduled to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding X’s handling of child sexual exploitation moderation. The @verge has more. https://flip.it/prWzyu
#Tech #SocialMedia #Technology #Twitter

TechDesk, 11 months ago to apple

Apple has been going to war over the intellectual property rights of its logo. Its latest target is a 111-year-old Swiss fruit company.

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/apple-vs-apples-trademark-battle

#Apple #BigTech

TechDesk, 5 months ago to tech

Amnesty International reported today that it found invasive spyware on the iPhones of prominent journalists in India, supporting Apple’s late-October warning that journalists and political opponents of Prime Minister Narendra Modi may have been the targets of state-sponsored attacks. Tech Crunch reports: https://flip.it/hrWJZo
#Tech #Spyware #Technology #Apple #AmnestyInternational #India

TechDesk, 3 months ago to tech

For over a decade, @Flipboard has been curating the best content around the clock. Today we're taking the next step to making all that excellent curation available to everyone in the Fediverse.

With the federation of @tech you can now follow niche Flipboard Magazines here on Mastodon. To avoid confusion, we're renaming this flipboard.social account to "Flipboard Picks in Tech." We recommend you follow both our Mastodon account and our newly federated Flipboard Magazines for the latest.

Here are just four great new Flipboard Tech Magazines to follow:

Fediverse news: @the

AI news: @the

How-To Tech: @how

Reviews: @reviews

#Tech #Technology #Mastodon #Fediverse

TechDesk, 3 months ago to tech

Last year, Futurism reported that CNET had been publishing dozens of AI-generated articles that were filled with errors and plagiarism. Wikipedia's editors then kicked off a discussion of CNET content and determined that the Red Ventures-owned site no longer met the requirements for its “generally reliable” rating. Futurism has more: https://flip.it/o-ICMd
#Tech #Technology #Wikipedia #AI

TechDesk, 2 months ago to worldnews

We've reached 10,000 followers!

Thank you to all of our supporters who appreciate our human curation. We're so pleased to be welcomed into a community with such a genuine passion for all things tech. We'll continue to champion exceptional journalism and boost posts we think deserve some eyeballs.

Let us know in the replies what you'd like to see more of in the future and we'll do our best to make this an even more enjoyable and insightful space for tech lovers.
#Flipboard #OpenSocialWeb #TechNews #Tech #SocialMedia #AI

TechDesk, 2 months ago to technology

Government agencies in 78 countries now use public facial recognition technology. It's commonly pitched as a tool to capture terrorists or dangerous criminals, but @restofworld says it has emerged as a critical instrument in identifying and punishing protesters. "In countries where demonstrating can come with physical or political risk, large-scale protests have historically offered a degree of anonymity, and, with it, a level of protection," Darren Loucaides writes. "But in the last decade, the spread of facial recognition technology has changed that equation: A lone face in a crowd is no longer anonymous; facial recognition allows authorities to capture people’s identities en masse."

https://flip.it/DPXlAg

#Technology #Tech #HumanRights #FacialRecognition #Protest #FreeSpeech

TechDesk, 1 month ago to fediverse

Newsletter platform Ghost is the latest service to pledge support for ActivityPub, the open-source protocol powering the fediverse, reports @engadget.

The company announced the support would be added later n the year, in a move that could bring tens of millions of people into the fediverse.

https://flip.it/0TCxn-

#Fediverse #Ghost #ActivityPub #SocialMedia #Tech