Notices by AJ Sadauskas (ajsadauskas@aus.social)

A quick question for all the Mastodonians using Android: Which app are you using? How do you find it?

Over the past year, I've been using Tooot. But while it has a lot of great features, I've found it to be quite clunky as well.

I've switched back to the official Mastodon app for Android, but noticed it seems to be missing key features, such as an easy way to access DMs, and s threaded view of replies.

So I'm keen to find out what the best Masto app is for Android in 2024?

Mastodon, it's really simple.

You want everyone to leave the dodgy car salesman's X-hole?

You want a future where social media is community-owned and decentralised, instead of a corporate surveillance sphere?

Well, those things won't happen until Black Twitter migrates here.

And Black Twitter won't touch this place until there's proper moderation in place.

The issues raised by @mekkaokereke, @timnitGebru, @KimCrayton1, @samuteki are not a peripheral issue.

Fixing moderation is absolutely central, core work that is mission critical for the Fedi being successful.

And if you don't do it, then please don't complain when (not if) everyone leaves for BlueSky.

@mekkaokereke The great irony: For all the talk about green capitalism being socialist, it's quite possibly also the only form of capitalism that can survive long term.

There's no market economy on a dead planet.

@Yaminosenshi My point was more that there's a pattern among American tech companies and entrepreneurs.

On numerous occasions, they have promised that they are going to imminently introduce a futuristic world-changing technology, at scale, in the near future.

Then they failed to do so.

And they know, at the time they make the promise, that it's unrealistic.

The hype helps them attract investors and gain good publicity.

Now, some of those technologies will emerge in the future. But they are not going to be released at scale in the near-term by the people who promised them.

So Microsoft is shipping a new feature in Windows 11 called Recall, which takes screenshots of what the user is doing every few seconds, and then feeds it into OCR.

And I've read a number of people describe it as useless.

But I disagree.

I'm sure plenty of people will find it very handy.

For example, your friendly local law enforcement agents and prosecutors are likely to find a feature like this very useful.

As will the NSA, the other three-letter agencies in the US, and intelligence agencies around the world.

Including the ones in authoritarian states. A couple of back doors, and it will be so much easier keeping track of who's been typing naughty words like "Prigozhin", "Navalny", or "free Hong Kong".

Not in the state surveillance business? No worries!

Assuming this data isn't locked down properly — and we are talking about Microsoft here — it's sure to find plenty of more mundane uses.

Perhaps for bosses who will no longer need to install keyloggers to snoop on their staff.

Or jealous current and former partners.

Mark my words, this poorly-thought-through attempt to shove LLMs in another place they don't belong to temporarily spike Microsoft's share price will find its uses.

And the next computer I get definitely won't be running Windows.

#LLM #AI #GenerativeAI #Microsoft #Recall #Windows #Linux #OpenSource #Infosec #Apple

@Polychrome @JessTheUnstill Here you go: 😊 https://curlie.org/

@darnell Many years ago, I worked for a paywalled news site.

One day, I straight up asked the person responsible why they didn't offer an ad-free option to subscribers.

The answer was because the people who are willing to pay $10 a month are *precisely* the people who advertisers are most interested in, because they've shown they're willing to pay for premium services.

I mean, if you're an ad buyer, do you want your ads going to the lady who's willing to pay $10 a month for the premium version? Or the guy who will put up with or ignore the ads so he doesn't have to pay?

That's not to defend Meta.

But, playing devil's advocate, that is the commercial reality they're dealing with.

There was no drone delivery future. There was never going to be a drone delivery future.

Just like there was never going to be self-driving Uber taxis. Or Amazon Go supermarkets on every corner. Or hyperloops. Or earth-to-earth space travel on SpaceX rockets. Or level-five full self driving Teslas.

Just like there will not be a general artificial intelligence ChatGPT in the next couple of years.

They were all scams designed to lure dollars from investors and generate good PR.

It was all bullshit. It was always bullshit.

Nothing more.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/22/24137383/amazon-prime-air-drone-delivery-closing-lockeford-california-phoenix-arizona

@darnell @dansup @matt @photomatt Great suggestion.

The added bonus is that I suspect it would open up Pixelfed to organisations (Art galleries? Universities? Museums? Design studios? Large nonprofits?) that might want to spin up their own instance, have the funds to do so, but perhaps not necessarily the technical expertise.

@darnell Here's Freddie:

https://youtu.be/rY0WxgSXdEE?si=sAHfXT6couMErAFJ

@dansup Do you have a cat?

@stephan @loops Will comments appear as posts in Mastodon and other Fedi apps?

Will the videos themselves be viewable on Mastodon?

In an age of LLMs, is it time to reconsider human-edited web directories?

Back in the early-to-mid '90s, one of the main ways of finding anything on the web was to browse through a web directory.

These directories generally had a list of categories on their front page. News/Sport/Entertainment/Arts/Technology/Fashion/etc.

Each of those categories had subcategories, and sub-subcategories that you clicked through until you got to a list of websites. These lists were maintained by actual humans.

Typically, these directories also had a limited web search that would crawl through the pages of websites listed in the directory.

Lycos, Excite, and of course Yahoo all offered web directories of this sort.

(EDIT: I initially also mentioned AltaVista. It did offer a web directory by the late '90s, but this was something it tacked on much later.)

By the late '90s, the standard narrative goes, the web got too big to index websites manually.

Google promised the world its algorithms would weed out the spam automatically.

And for a time, it worked.

But then SEO and SEM became a multi-billion-dollar industry. The spambots proliferated. Google itself began promoting its own content and advertisers above search results.

And now with LLMs, the industrial-scale spamming of the web is likely to grow exponentially.

My question is, if a lot of the web is turning to crap, do we even want to search the entire web anymore?

Do we really want to search every single website on the web?

Or just those that aren't filled with LLM-generated SEO spam?

Or just those that don't feature 200 tracking scripts, and passive-aggressive privacy warnings, and paywalls, and popovers, and newsletters, and increasingly obnoxious banner ads, and dark patterns to prevent you cancelling your "free trial" subscription?

At some point, does it become more desirable to go back to search engines that only crawl pages on human-curated lists of trustworthy, quality websites?

And is it time to begin considering what a modern version of those early web directories might look like?

@degoogle #tech #google #web #internet #LLM #LLMs #enshittification #technology #search #SearchEngines #SEO #SEM

Concerned about microplastics? Research shows one of the biggest sources is car tyres

A lot of the emphasis on reducing microplastics has focussed on things like plastic bags, clothing, and food packaging.

But there's a growing body of research that shows one of the biggest culprits by far is car tyres.

It's increasingly clear that we simply cannot solve the issue of microplastics in the environment while still using tyres — even with electric-powered cars.

"Tyre wear stands out as a major source of microplastic pollution. Globally, each person is responsible for around 1kg of microplastic pollution from tyre wear released into the environment on average each year – with even higher rates observed in developed nations.

"It is estimated that between 8% and 40% of these particles find their way into surface waters such as the sea, rivers and lakes through runoff from road surfaces, wastewater discharge or even through airborne transport.

"However, tyre wear microplastics have been largely overlooked as a microplastic pollutant. Their dark colour makes them difficult to detect, so these particles can’t be identified using the traditional spectroscopy methods used to identify other more colourful plastic polymers."

https://theconversation.com/check-your-tyres-you-might-be-adding-unnecessary-microplastics-to-the-environment-205612#:~:text=Tyre%20wear%20stands%20out%20as,rates%20observed%20in%20developed%20nations.

"Microplastic pollution has polluted the entire planet, from Arctic snow and Alpine soils to the deepest oceans. The particles can harbour toxic chemicals and harmful microbes and are known to harm some marine creatures. People are also known to consume them via food and water, and to breathe them, But the impact on human health is not yet known.

"“Roads are a very significant source of microplastics to remote areas, including the oceans,” said Andreas Stohl, from the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, who led the research. He said an average tyre loses 4kg during its lifetime. “It’s such a huge amount of plastic compared to, say, clothes,” whose fibres are commonly found in rivers, Stohl said. “You will not lose kilograms of plastic from your clothing.”"

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/14/car-tyres-are-major-source-of-ocean-microplastics-study

"Microplastics are of increasing concern in the environment [1, 2]. Tire wear is estimated to be one of the largest sources of microplastics entering the aquatic environment [3,4,5,6,7]. The mechanical abrasion of car tires by the road surface forms tire wear particles (TWP) [8] and/or tire and road wear particles (TRWP), consisting of a complex mixture of rubber, with both embedded asphalt and minerals from the pavement [9]."

https://microplastics.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s43591-021-00008-w

#car #cars #urbanism #UrbanPlanning #FuckCars @fuck_cars #environment #microplastics #pollution #plastics

@mekkaokereke Thanks for sharing these threads. They're always incredibly interesting, enlightening, and informative.

For example, I had heard vaguely about Einstein speaking out against anti-black racism, but didn't know about his commitment to regularly teaching at HBCUs. (And given Einstein died in 1955—nearly a decade before the Civil Rights Act—that was a radical act.)

What can you get to within a 15-minute walk of your house?

A recent YouGov survey asked Americans what they think they should be able to get to within a 15-minute walk of their house.

Of these choices, I can currently walk to all of them from my apartment, aside from a university (no biggie, I'm not currently studying, although there is a Tafe within walking distance), a hospital, and a sports arena.

How many can you get to with a 15 minute walk from your house?

#fuckcars #walkability #urbanism #UrbanPlanning @fuck_cars #walking

Yet another example here of the problems with LLMs.

And no, it's not that a super-intelligent general AI will kill us all.

It's that the best candidates will be rejected because sexist, ageist, and racist biases are built into the LLM models.

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20240214-ai-recruiting-hiring-software-bias-discrimination

#AI #LLM #capitalism #business #work #hiring

@JoshuaHolland Is the mainstream media seriously trying to claim that Donald "Covfefe" Trump is the more articulate public speaker?!

That Donald "very fine people on both sides" Trump is not gaffe prone?!

Donald "grab 'em by the pussy" Trump?!

Donald "shithole countries " Trump?!

Here's an excerpt from the transcript of Don's 6 January speech.

I didn't choose this sample because it's atypically bad, I've chosen it because it reflects how he often talks:

"We have hundreds of thousands of people here and I just want them to be recognized by the fake news media. Turn your cameras please and show what's really happening out here because these people are not going to take it any longer. They're not going to take it any longer. Go ahead. Turn your cameras, please. Would you show? They came from all over the world, actually, but they came from all over our country."

"I just really want to see what they do. I just want to see how they covered. I've never seen anything like it. But it would be really great if we could be covered fairly by the media. The media is the biggest problem we have as far as I'm concerned, single biggest problem. The fake news and the Big tech."

Here's another example:

"You know, I say, sometimes jokingly, but there's no joke about it: I've been in two elections. I won them both and the second one, I won much bigger than the first. OK. Almost 75 million people voted for our campaign, the most of any incumbent president by far in the history of our country, 12 million more people than four years ago.

"And I was told by the real pollsters — we do have real pollsters — they know that we were going to do well and we were going to win. What I was told, if I went from 63 million, which we had four years ago, to 66 million, there was no chance of losing. Well, we didn't go to 66, we went to 75 million, and they say we lost. We didn't lose."

Source: https://www.npr.org/2021/02/10/966396848/read-trumps-jan-6-speech-a-key-part-of-impeachment-trial

That's the guy the mainstream media wants to say an articulate public speaker?!

But even that's beside the point.

Unlike in many elections, we're not comparing a sitting incumbent's actual track record to how the challenger might hypothetically perform.

In this Presidential poll, both candidates have served a full term in the role, and we can directly compare their performance in office.

We can directly compare their performance in the basic administrative duties of the office.

We can directly compare how well they assembled a stable and effective cabinet.

We can directly compare how they handled news that contradicted their official narrative.

We can directly compare how they responded to major world events.

We can directly compare how effective they were at formulating evidence-based public policy.

We can directly compare whether (or how often) they engaged in misconduct that resulted in impeachment votes, official investigations, and indictments.

No-one is saying Biden is perfect.

But his track record is light years ahead of his opponent's.

My real worry with Google's voyage into enshittification (thanks to Cory Doctorow @pluralistic the term) is YouTube.

Through YT, for the past 15 years, the world has basically entrusted Google to be the custodian of pretty much our entire global video archive.

There's countless hours of archived footage — news reports, political speeches, historical events, documentaries, indie films, academic lectures, conference presentations, rare recordings, concert footage, obscure music — where the best or only copy is now held by Google through YouTube.

So what happens if maintaining that archival footage becomes unprofitable?

#tech #technology #Google #enshittification #youtube #video @technology #capitalism #film #television #cinema #art #arts #SocialMedia #business #economics

@phooky @jkaniarz @dotjayne I saw a Babylonian Z80 running M/PM in a museum once. They used 360 columns of (cuniform) text!