For those who aren’t aware, Microsoft have decided to bake essentially an infostealer into base Windows OS and enable by default.
From the Microsoft FAQ: “Note that Recall does not perform content moderation. It will not hide information such as passwords or financial account numbers."
Info is stored locally - but rather than something like Redline stealing your local browser password vault, now they can just steal the last 3 months of everything you’ve typed and viewed in one database.
@GossiTheDog imagine if they actually did it to help menopausal, chemotherapy and long covid etc folk living with brain fog! (I don't believe it for a second but still, imagine...)
How do you make a #decision with a group of people? In some activist circles a #sociocracy method of "consent" decision making has become popular.
In a new post on Indoxicate I try to clear up some of the confusion around this idea, and I articulate a criticism that should (I think) be taken seriously by the movement.
The method, whatever it virtues, has little to do with #consent. By using the term nonetheless, groups run a risk of cultivating an abusive practice.
@msteenhagen could there have been a mis-hearing of 'lazy consensus'? I first knew of it through digital humanities (https://nowviskie.org/2012/lazy-consensus/), I'm not sure if the software version is quite the same
The great thing about getting older is that the popular culture of your youth is repackaged and sold back to you with increasing urgency. Yes, I want that Lego set I couldn't afford as a kid. Why, of course I want to watch a reboot of Frasier! Another few Ghostbusters movies? I'm in!
Brendan Murphy has prepared a dose of 100% pure 90's nostalgia and wishes to inject it into your eyeballs. Ahhh! Go on then!
The show styles itself as all 7 seasons, told in 70 minutes, from Spike's perspective. And that's just what we get. Murphy does a commendable job recreating Spike's "authentic" cockernee accent, and is delightfully dappy taking on the mantle of the other characters.
There is so much to love about this performance. The script is written by someone who obviously has great love for the Scooby Gang, but isn't afraid to point out the tropes and weirdness of the series. It is a loud, manic, cavalcade of energy - urged on by a cackling audience who recognise all the obscure quotes.
Generative AI can not generate its way out of prejudice
The concept of "generative" suggests that the tool can produce what it is asked to produce. In a study uncovering how stereotypical global health tropes are embedded in AI image generators, researchers found it challenging to generate images of Black doctors treating white children. They used Midjourney, a tool that after hundreds of attempts would not generate an output matching the prompt. I tried their experiment with Stable Diffusion's free web version and found it every bit as concerning as you might imagine.
The way certain men in the tech press reflexively scoff at mastodon while giving bluesky just ridiculous amounts of leeway is incredibly bizarre to me.
The whole piece is amazing, but this in particular struck me. Don't let the haterz stop you sharing your joy. We need more joys, big and small. (Also don't worry too much that someone having a bad day will feel worse for seeing your joy. You never know, it might help)
Online anonymity: study found ‘stable pseudonyms’ created a more civil environment than real user names
'What matters, it seems, is not so much whether you are commenting anonymously, but whether you are invested in your persona and accountable for its behaviour in that particular forum. There seems to be value in enabling people to speak on forums without their comments being connected, via their real names, to other contexts.
...calls to end anonymity online by forcing people to reveal their real identities might not have the effects people expect'
@dl2jml I guess that's a question for the study authors, but it's worth considering. I've been shocked though at what people will post under their FB accounts - wishing death on asylum seekers etc, so it'd be interesting to consider who's more silent under a 'real name' policy
With the benefit of hindsight, my post from a few days ago "It's OK to call it Artificial Intelligence" was a bad post. It ended up being confrontational and rude, and it didn't get across the point I had intended to convey. Here's an apology and a final attempt at clarifying my position: https://simonwillison.net/2024/Jan/9/what-i-should-have-said-about-ai/
@simon I have no idea if my compromise works, but I'll accept an invitation to talk about 'AI in libraries' then say '(for now) AI is just fancy autocorrect / statistics made sexy / machine learning' in the first minute of my talk.
I gave up being more precise because nobody knew they actually wanted to learn about ML until they knew what it was, while everyone thinks they should know something about AI.
I keep seeing people saying 'the media hasn't reported on issue x', when it has been reported. Do they mean 'I haven't seen the articles on my social media'?
'a command-line tool that downloads your posts from one Mastodon instance, saving them as a set of files on your computer, and then re-posts them on any other Mastodon instance.
[so that] Mastodon users [can] move content they value when migrating from one instance to another, which is not currently possible within Mastodon itself.'
@baldur 'spotty production values, uneven acting, but delivers on emotional and social authenticity' hit a queer film festival bruise I'd suppressed for a long time!
Could you possibly add the women's titles to your great list of AI critics? IIRC there's a full professor and a couple of other doctors on the list