@tomstoneham@dair-community.social
@tomstoneham@dair-community.social avatar

tomstoneham

@tomstoneham@dair-community.social

Academic philosopher at a UK university.

Likes: #Linux, #GrapheneOS and #e2ee

Cares about: #DataPrivacy and #ProportionalRepresentation

Learning: 🇩🇪

Currently thinking about value alignment, data privacy and the digital divide.

Would like to ground ethical critique of tech in political consensus at local levels (as opposed to global approaches like human rights).

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

tomstoneham, to random
@tomstoneham@dair-community.social avatar

Long story, but ended up buying a Vodafone SIM card to use as a hotspot for four days. It has masses of data left (~100gb) which I have no use for. Expires 22 Jan.

Happy to post anywhere in UK to someone who genuinely needs it (do you know a refugee or homeless person who could use it?).

DM me.

gamingonlinux, to random
@gamingonlinux@mastodon.social avatar

People and SEO Spam like this are ruining the internet. Fuck this shite.

image/jpeg

tomstoneham,
@tomstoneham@dair-community.social avatar

@happyborg Perhaps it is both? After all, this guy is describing what he is doing as stealing.

Even if capitalism gets the definition of theft very wrong, it is still against stealing on its own terms.

tomstoneham,
@tomstoneham@dair-community.social avatar

@happyborg
True. I guess I didn't focus on the fact that the OP was complaining about the existence of some behaviour rather than engaging with the person.

I do think it is worth engaging with someone who proudly describes - in public - what they are doing as stealing. Even if it isn't illegal (yet), they are conceptualising it in ways that should give them reason to reflect on their behaviour.

The journey of 1000 miles starts with a single step 🙂

tomstoneham, to ai
@tomstoneham@dair-community.social avatar

In a training session I ran yesterday someone suggested that using LLMs to 'improve your writing' might have a levelling up effect.

I suspect that is a tempting but deeply problematic way of thinking. I wrote down a few thoughts about why.

#AI #AIEthics #AIHype

https://listed.to/@24601/47902/llms-better-writing-and-cognitive-diversity

tomstoneham, to random
@tomstoneham@dair-community.social avatar

"if the AI [PyrEval] doesn’t detect a theme that the student thought they had included, it could indicate that the idea needs to be explained more clearly or that they made small conceptual or grammatical errors"

Think about that for a minute ...

This AI is teaching children to write in a way that an AI can 'understand'. Not even to display their own understanding. Just to conform to the AI's expectations.

It is training humans to function in a world dominated by machines.

garius, to random
@garius@mastodon.me.uk avatar

Very silly (and not really representative) fun with numbers:

Mid-Beds was the 33rd safest Tory seat in the country.

Proportional Representation fans: Now's your moment to convince Sunak he'd do better in a GE if he rushed it through.

He's politically naïve enough to fall for it. 😆

tomstoneham,
@tomstoneham@dair-community.social avatar

@garius
Indeed.

Labour won with 34% of vote on a turnout of 44%, giving them about 15% of electorate.

That is such a strong argument for PR. Unless, of course, you do not believe in democracy but elective dictatorship. From that perspective it is a 'windfall' and the game is to get those windfalls.

molly0xfff, to random
@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io avatar

in hindsight it may have been a mistake to google "gimp mask" to try to figure out how to do a layer mask in gimp, the free and open source equivalent of photoshop

#gimp

tomstoneham,
@tomstoneham@dair-community.social avatar

@happyborg @servelan @molly0xfff
If you want to access the search engine behind the ad server, try Startpage. Ads are clearly marked and non-ad results appear unmanipulated. @StartpageSearch

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

No doubt I'll upset some folks with this statement, and I do understand that different people have different feelings about the amount of risk they feel is appropriate in their lives, especially for extreme sports.

But personally, I feel that paragliding and paramotoring border on being completely nuts.

No offense intended. Seriously.

tomstoneham,
@tomstoneham@dair-community.social avatar

@regordane @lauren
My golden rule is: Was this invented by people who needed to do something afterwards (like parachutes) or by people looking for kicks (all the crazy stuff)? I'll stick to the former, thanks.

thenewoil, to random
@thenewoil@freeradical.zone avatar

Making Privacy Tools Worth It Part 1: The End User

https://blog.thenewoil.org/making-privacy-tools-worth-it-part-1-the-end-user

tomstoneham,
@tomstoneham@dair-community.social avatar

@thenewoil
Great blog. Thank-you

alexwinter, to random
@alexwinter@mastodon.social avatar

Elon Musk is a Nazi. Pass it on.
(shocker)
Great piece from @marisakabas
https://thehandbasket.substack.com/p/elon-musk-crosses-the-border-to-nazi

tomstoneham,
@tomstoneham@dair-community.social avatar

@aral @alexwinter @marisakabas
Taking you question literally, we have bought into a weird conception of property, such that property rights are fundamental. That distorts everything.

We need to get back to thinking that property ownership is just a permission to use something in certain ways. Limited and dependent.

tomstoneham,
@tomstoneham@dair-community.social avatar

@aral @alexwinter @marisakabas FWIW one of the best books for showing how weird it is is The Book of Trespass by Nick Hayes. Recommended for everyone's awakening and a great read.

happyborg, to LLMs
@happyborg@fosstodon.org avatar

By making LLMs aim for plausibility rather than correctness, they have been tuned for deceit.

They produce the most plausible response regardless of correctness, which makes it hard to spot incorrect and misleading output.

#LLMs are inherently dangerous in the hands of humans because they are designed to bypass our critical faculties.

What could possibly go wrong?!

#LLM #AI

tomstoneham,
@tomstoneham@dair-community.social avatar

@happyborg
This applies to public LLMs. Not ones developed for business purposes. It isn't inevitable.

So why do they do it? Because giving the unsavvy user an answer they find really plausible, the answer they want, makes them really impressed with the capabilities of the LLM. And that amplifies #AIhype and ultimately enables the narrative that this is an amazing technology we must all adopt ASAP

#AIcynicism #SnakeOil

tomstoneham,
@tomstoneham@dair-community.social avatar

@happyborg
That's a bit personal.

By 'unsavvy' I simply mean people who don't know what you have said. They can be very smart.

My point was simply that some LLMs are not like that. So this is a deliberate choice. To manipulate public opinion in their favour.

And I know I am affected by ads fwiw 😝

Loukas, to random
@Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

Today I learned there are six places where cities emerged independently of any other centre, the so-called 'pristine civilizations,'

Fertile Crescent, Mesopotamia
Nile Valley
Indo-Gangetic Plain
North China Plain
Andean Coast
Mesoamerican Gulf Coast

wikipedia .org/wiki/Cradle_of_civilization

tomstoneham,
@tomstoneham@dair-community.social avatar

@Loukas Have you read James C Scott's Against the Grain?

If not, I cannot recommend it more highly for an exceptionally well informed 'anarchist squint' on this period of history.

TL;DR it isn't 'civilisation' but the forced domestication of human labour.

tomstoneham,
@tomstoneham@dair-community.social avatar

@Loukas Focuses on Mesopotamia but does some comparison

Loukas, to random
@Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

Sweden's right-far-right government, which was elected promising to build up nuclear power very aggressively, has deleted a recent press release where a minister promised to build more, and the role of nuclear in the future energy mix of Sweden is "unclear" says an official.

In other words, even with the best will in the world, the role of nuclear was as a piece of culture war to win an election and no one actually thinks nuclear is feasible. https://mastodon.nu/@intichavezperez/110949502359183925

tomstoneham,
@tomstoneham@dair-community.social avatar

@Loukas Sure. But you can culture war yourself into power and then asset strip the country. Then use that wealth to 'protect' yourself against economic and climate disasters.

It is immoral and based on fantasy science and economics, but some people ...

aral, (edited ) to random
@aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

So who’s going to update #Wikipedia to use this as his photo?

(And I’m not even kidding. It is an official portrait and in the public interest and what separates him from every other US President* so entirely relevant and already well cited.)

  • Although, goodness knows, in a just world it would be just one of many.

#DonaldTrump #mugshot

tomstoneham,
@tomstoneham@dair-community.social avatar

@aral Surely we shouldn't be sharing this? Isn't that expression in the context entirely deliberate to stoke his fan base? He is trying to project anger at injustice.

They should have made him take it again with a neutral expression and head square to camera.

This is one he wins, I fear.

glynmoody, to random
@glynmoody@mastodon.social avatar

Brics to admit six new countries to bloc including Iran and Saudi Arabia - https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/aug/24/five-brics-nations-announce-admission-of-six-new-countries-to-bloc pretty major development...

tomstoneham,
@tomstoneham@dair-community.social avatar

@glynmoody What I find really striking about this is the political/ideological diversity of this emerging economic bloc. So different from the EU where it is assumed that economic co-operation requires alignment of economic (and thus political) policy. It almost feels de-colonial and de-centring in its ethos.

Imagine Iran and Saudi Arabia around the same table!

tomstoneham,
@tomstoneham@dair-community.social avatar

@glynmoody Given there are so few democracies on the list, I wonder if they will make the mistake of implementing a voting-based decision-making procedure or look for something less divisive?

Loukas, to random
@Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

Gerald Ratner moment https://mas.to/@carnage4life/110942248254406029

tomstoneham,
@tomstoneham@dair-community.social avatar

@Loukas I assume the real reason is that for home workers, work is a part of their life, not a separate activity entirely under control of their employer. This means:

  1. They work to live, not live to work.
  2. When they take a break, they are with people / in an environment external to the company, thus providing the basis for a critical perspective on their employer.

So homeworkers are harder to exploit and manipulate. They are not wage-slaves (well, not as much ...).

glynmoody, to random
@glynmoody@mastodon.social avatar

‘It all disappeared with #Brexit’: Craft beer boom ends as more than 100 UK firms go bust - https://www.theguardian.com/food/2023/aug/19/craft-beer-boom-uk-firms-bust-brexit brexiters won't mind losing all these beers - after all, they knew what they were voting for... #BrexitBrokeBritain

tomstoneham,
@tomstoneham@dair-community.social avatar

@glynmoody
You forget. Because it didn't happen immediately on Brexit Day, it isn't caused by Brexit. Simple.

glynmoody, to ai
@glynmoody@mastodon.social avatar

Humans can detect deepfake speech only 73% of the time, study finds - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/aug/02/humans-can-detect-deepfake-speech-only-73-of-the-time-study-finds it will be far less than that soon... #AI

tomstoneham,
@tomstoneham@dair-community.social avatar

@glynmoody That seems to be a higher %age than the ability to detect bullshit and lies ...

tony, to random
@tony@hoyle.me.uk avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    tomstoneham,
    @tomstoneham@dair-community.social avatar

    @tony Indeed. But I can think of bigger problems with the very the existence of these things.

    (And FWIW I use pour-over most of the time and they can't even agree on standard filter paper shapes!)

    neil, to random

    "UK amends encrypted message scanning plans"

    Where "amends" means "fiddles around at the edges".

    If Apple, Signal, Meta, and other companies remove their communications services from the UK, and many people's private chats are subject to widespread warrantless suspicionless spying, I wonder how many of the bill's avid proponents will quietly drop their papers / work from their CVs and profile pages?

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-66240006

    tomstoneham,
    @tomstoneham@dair-community.social avatar

    @neil @revk If I read the bill correctly, email is not a regulated service, ever. Full exemption.

    Doesn't that seem rather stupid if you are trying to stop bad actors? There are loads of e2ee email services already and will be more as soon as bill passes. They can even advertise as ways to get around

    tomstoneham, to random
    @tomstoneham@dair-community.social avatar

    So "Google senior research director Greg Corrado" is basically saying it is OK for poor people, but not for his family.

    Notice the insidious thinking here: we are helping poor people! Must be good! And we make loads of money!

    Not: would a little bit of wealth re-distribution address healthcare injustice more effectively and without destroying the planet?

    https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/8/23788265/google-med-palm-2-mayo-clinic-chatbot-bard-chatgpt

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