@markhughes@mastodon.social avatar

markhughes

@markhughes@mastodon.social

Boatperson, computer wizard, qualified counsellor, stick twizzler, father, and self enquirer.

Helping those building democratising technology to reverse the corporate capture of online spaces. Ex: #SafeNetwork

Techy self: https://fosstodon.org/@happyborg

Techy blog: https://dweb.happybeing.com

#nobridge

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dangillmor, to random
@dangillmor@mastodon.social avatar

Facebook bots invading forums where people are trying to have conversations with other people is a genuinely evil development.

https://theconversation.com/ai-chatbots-are-intruding-into-online-communities-where-people-are-trying-to-connect-with-other-humans-229473

glynmoody, to Israel
@glynmoody@mastodon.social avatar

#UN adds #Israel to list of states committing violations against children - https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/07/united-nations-israel-children-rights-violation "Inclusion comes after eight months of the country’s bombing of #Gaza which has killed 13,000 children" and mutilated thousands more...

lauren, to google
@lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org avatar

[Not just cowardly, but almost criminally cowardly] #Google and #Microsoft's #AI Chatbots Refuse to Say Who Won the 2020 US Election

This pretty much demonstrates the foundational rot that is the basis of these AI systems, being run by abject cowards who are terrified of taking a stand on anything that really matters. Disgusting. -L

https://www.wired.com/story/google-and-microsofts-chatbots-refuse-election-questions/

GossiTheDog, to random
@GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social avatar

I strongly believe we're within 5 years of the generative AI boom collapsing almost completely, and it will have a profound economic impact, as the use cases for the products being sold almost entirely suck arse.

sundogplanets, to random
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social avatar

The only feeling I have about starship is dread.

They want to use that to launch batches of HUNDREDS of Starlinks at once. And guess where all those Starlinks will end up? The pieces that don't make it to the ground will end up in our upper atmosphere, screwing up the stratosphere, the ozone layer, who knows what else because SpaceX isn't required to do any environmental assessments of this.

Shit. Maybe a good time to post this essay I wrote yet again: https://theconversation.com/an-astronomers-lament-satellite-megaconstellations-are-ruining-space-exploration-215653

Alice, to random
@Alice@beige.party avatar

Welcome to the future where we have the technology to create replacement organs and we will keep them running for as long as you continue paying your recurring subscription fee!

dangillmor, to random
@dangillmor@mastodon.social avatar
  1. Washington Post CEO came from the Murdoch empire.

  2. He has been implicated in the (still not fully unraveled) UK "phone hacking" scandal that exemplified the sleaziness of the Murdoch empire.

  3. He told Post editor not to publish a story containing references to his alleged involvement.

  4. She published the story.

  5. She's gone.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/05/business/media/washington-post-buzbee-lewis.html

safenetwork, to random
@safenetwork@mastodon.social avatar

Update 6 June

The Beta Network has launched and the first wave of testers are up and running. It’s taken a wee while, but we got there, just as David always knew we would. It could never have happened without the steadfast support of the community over the years.

Thanks to you the network has grown from our original 2,000 MaidSafe nodes to over 17,000 nodes and counting, our biggest by some margin.

https://forum.autonomi.community/t/update-6th-june-2024/39893

#autonomi #maidsafe #decentralization #decentralized #beta

happyborg, to chrome
@happyborg@fosstodon.org avatar

I noticed recently that an old blog site of mine stopped loading its styles.css and so displayed see as a horrible mess. Nothing has changed on the site, just the browser.

The reason?

Today's browsers (ie anything #Chrome based) are becoming authoritarian about what they will display. This isn't a security issue, but an increasing stringency on something that makes no sense at all.

The solution?

Remove <!DOCTYPE> and pretend you're an old website, so they need to display as it was. 🤷‍♂️ 🤦‍♂️

ElleGray, to random
@ElleGray@mstdn.social avatar

morale in hospitals is currently very low and this is one of the reasons

happyborg, to LLMs
@happyborg@fosstodon.org avatar

#LLMs =
Large
Lamentable
Mishaps

autonomic, (edited ) to foss
@autonomic@sunbeam.city avatar

Switching to Linux is great. It’s main benefits are privacy (no tracking), customisability (make it suit you) and flexibility (no lock-in or drawbridging).

Autonomic has the skills to move entire organisations over to Linux. We’ve worked with a variety of clients from providing a few laptops to entire offices full of desktop machines that boot over the network using LTSP (https://ltsp.org/), access a share filesystem and can be reached remotely using a VPN.

Once the hill of the initial switchover has been climbed, the ease of supporting these systems is a dream for us and our clients.

It’s never “We’re sorry, we can’t do that”, it’s “hey, here are your options”.

tek, to random
@tek@freeradical.zone avatar

A friend just pointed out:

"ADHD creates impulse control issues and, consequently, advertising takes advantage of a disability. Ergo, ad blockers are assistive devices and interfering with their operation for commercial gain constitutes a willful violation of the ADA."

Let’s do this.

happyborg, to privacy
@happyborg@fosstodon.org avatar

Autonomi have launched their beta network and rewards program.

Anyone can run nodes and if you want to join the fun, sign up for the second wave of noderunner rewards. Even non-technical folks can do this with any old computer.

Sign up before it fills up! At https://Autonomi.com

The earlier the wave you join the more rewards are available.

What is #Autonomi?

It's an outstanding #privacy focused project aimed at everyone. See: https://docs.Autonomi.com
#p2p #security

eugenialoli, to windows
@eugenialoli@mastodon.social avatar

The mass exodus from to (and ) due to and continues. More and more articles, more and more youtube videos about it, or posts on forums. People are switching. If it continues like that, Linux should have 10% desktop marketshare by the end of the decade (and yes, that's a lot).

hanse_mina, to Bulgaria
@hanse_mina@mastodon.social avatar

is developing multiple “land corridors” to rush troops and armour to the front lines in the event of a major European ground war with .

American soldiers would land at one of five ports and be channelled along pre-planned logistical routes to confront a possible attack by .

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/06/04/nato-land-corridors-us-troops-european-war/

profcarroll, to random
@profcarroll@federate.social avatar

You could add Cambridge Analytica and Infowars to the examples the author cites here as prime specimens of how bad actors abuse bankruptcy law to effectively escape accountability.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/04/opinion/purdue-sackler-supreme-court.html?unlocked_article_code=1.xE0.WQn7.TjaomYHArSXF&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb

happyborg, to privacy
@happyborg@fosstodon.org avatar

Autonomi are launching their beta rewards program tonight (8am GMT) and have opened signups for the second wave of noderunners. Anyone will be able to run nodes, even non-technical folks.

Sign up before it fills up! At https://Autonomi.com

The earlier the wave you join the more rewards are available.

What is ?

It's an outstanding focused project aimed at everyone. See: https://docs.Autonomi.com

mauve, to llm
@mauve@mastodon.mauve.moe avatar

This post by @maggie has some great ideas on how #LLM tech can help enable #LocalFirst applications for regular folks. I've been wanting to do something similar within @agregore some day with local LLMs helping people author p2p web apps.

https://maggieappleton.com/home-cooked-software

happyborg,
@happyborg@fosstodon.org avatar

@mauve
I've yet to get a better response from a local LLM to a code question than I get from a web search or going to StackExchange etc. Are you finding good uses yet?

I confess I haven't tried too hard, but then most people won't and that's the point really anyway. 🤷‍♂️

I expect they should be good for accessibility, such as speech in/out but an not seeing those apps. Why not?! 🤦‍♂️

Although I see Mozilla have put a local LLM in Firefox to generate alt text for images.

@maggie @agregore

elizayer, to random
@elizayer@mastodon.social avatar

Oooooof. @baldur's take on the Jobs to be Done of modern software development is brutal.

The conclusion is pretty sobering too: that LLMs will become embedded in software development because they truly deliver on this promise of churn, and do it at lower cost than software developers.

https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/the-one-about-the-web-developer-job-market/

happyborg,
@happyborg@fosstodon.org avatar

@elizayer
I remain hopeful. Products ultimately have to work and when they don't those behind them lose.

Reminds me of Jobs and the Apple Newton, the doomed forerunner to the Apple iPod and ultimately the iPhone. All from Jobs' vision and drive, one an utter failure, like the car 🤷‍♂️. I can hear someone saying why didn't we just put #LLMs in it... 🤦‍♂️

#p2p can change this, or at least make a dent as big as #FOSS. Together? 🥳
@jimkreft

GossiTheDog, to random
@GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social avatar

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.

video/mp4

GossiTheDog,
@GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social avatar

WIRED has a piece about Total Recall, a now released tool which dumps keypresses, text and screenshots (they’re JPEGs) from Microsoft Recall

https://www.wired.com/story/total-recall-windows-recall-ai/

Total Recall software by @xaitax https://github.com/xaitax/TotalRecall

Example search for ‘password’:

🪟 Captured Windows: 133
📸 Images Taken: 36
🔍 Search results for 'password': 22

📄 Summary of the extraction is available in the file:
C:\Users\alex\Downloads\TotalRecall\2024-06-04-13-49_Recall_Extraction\TotalRecall.txt

GossiTheDog,
@GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social avatar

I hadn’t been aware until today of the external reaction to Recall. Holy shit. Tim Apple must be pleased.

Everything from media coverage to YouTube to TikTok is largely negative. All the comments are negative.

These videos have tens of millions of views and hundreds of thousands of comments.

I knew it would be bad but.. it’s worse. I’ve spent hours looking at the sentiment and.. well, they probably would have got better coverage from launching an NFT of pregnant Clippy.

image/jpeg
image/png
image/jpeg

GossiTheDog,
@GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social avatar

Three Copilot+ Recall questions that keep coming up.

Q. Can you alter the Recall history?

A. Yes. You can change the OCR database and change the screenshots as the logged in user or as software running as the local user. There is no audit log of changes.

Q. Are they snapshots, as Microsoft says, or screenshots?

A. They are just screenshots, jpegs.

Q. What is to stop apps on your machine accessing your Recall covertly?
A. Nothing. There is no audit log of access.

GossiTheDog,
@GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social avatar

A key element of Recall is Microsoft say only you can access your Recall, it is per user.

ArsTechnica enabled Recall on Windows 11 box and tested the claim. By logging in as another user they could access the database and screenshots.

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/06/windows-recall-demands-an-extraordinary-level-of-trust-that-microsoft-hasnt-earned/

GossiTheDog,
@GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social avatar

Microsoft President Brad Smith is going to be grilled by US gov next week. https://therecord.media/microsoft-reverses-course-recall-opt-in

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