Notices by Julian Oliver (julianoliver@mastodon.social)

This article on the uptake of beans in the West needs a correction. It seems to imply that while the "green revolution" trends as overall good for the planet, it comes with the cost of nitrogen-based fertilisers poisoning our atmosphere, oceans and rivers.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/22/its-like-a-secret-why-do-the-leguminati-want-to-change-the-way-we-eat

It's not so cut and dried.. (1/2)

The author overlooks the key fact that while 44% of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture, livestock & their feedcrops account for 80% of all agricultural land use, with crops for humans accounting for just 16% of that surface.

Ref: https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture

Almost all Amazon Basin soya, for instance, is for export animal feed (EU, China esp). The bulk of the rest is biofuels.

The trick is to eat the bean before it gets to the cow (or pig, chicken, fish++).

(2/2)

What is meant by 'AI' now includes:

- Anything procedurally generated
- Some automation built from input
- Devices that take voice commands
- Text to speech (esp. if female voice with English accent)
- Speech to text (any accent)
- Autocomplete
- An NPC in a videogame
- Half of all apps for Android
- Your bank's next website
- Any serverside or closed source software you can hide some amount of complexity in
- Surprising photography
- Clippy

Update your taxonomies.

#ai #ml

What happened when the boss of COP29 (host Azerbaijan) was approached by an activist pretending to be a rep from a fictitious energy investment firm?

Caught on camera, he talks up potential deals with state fossil fuel giant Socar (whose board he's on), Azerbaijan's plans to increase gas production, & otherwise excitedly betrays the entire COP charter.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crmzvdn9e18o

#climate

A dark day indeed.

Never forget Big Tech's hand in this, enabling and inciting a storm of hatred, fear and disinformation. They had the means to intervene, yet made profit their choice.

No one is going to build the world we want but us.

You're on a ship hurtling through space and your crew's best engineers report that critical sub-systems - from water filtration, through to HVAC and food pods - are all failing. Evidence of sabotage. What do you do?

World's governments:

"Governments failed to reach a consensus [...] Many were forced to leave the talks early to catch flights, and negotiations were suspended at 8.30am when fewer than half of the countries were present"

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/03/cop16-ends-in-disarry-and-indecision-despite-biodiversity-breakthroughs

#biodiversity

Good shortread by Goodin on the clandestine tracking platform Location X. Sold to government agencies, it supposedly exploits the unique 'advertising ID' accessible to the app layer on all Android phones, and (with optional user input) on iOS. The article has a brief mitigation walkthrough for phone owners.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/10/phone-tracking-tool-lets-government-agencies-follow-your-every-move/

Thanks to @Christina for the share

#infosec #privacy

@steve Same. I described myself as a "migrant" or "immigrant" while living in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Spain and other places, but would get looks. 'Ex pat' for my skin colour, apparently. In both Sweden and Germany I was told "you are one of us".

We're told we "need" 'AI'/ML just like we were told we needed blockchains, VR, Web3 and the so-called metaverse - these solutions looking for problems. The difference with ML however is that it does solve some big problems very well, the most significant of which (and primary investment driver) is the Late Capitalist project of decoupling skill from People.

@aral Looks great. Let me know when you update it and I'll give it a push.

Another PSA that Google uses its fonts to track traffic to other people's websites. Google has no business knowing who visits other people's websites. If you want to use Google hosted 'free' fonts in your site, let your visitors know, or learn to host them locally on your server.

For instance:

https://webdesign.tutsplus.com/how-to-self-host-google-fonts--cms-34775t

To use Big Tech is to feed it. There are other ways.

While liberating a Pixel phone I came across this poetry, and on the day Google is convicted of illegal market monopoly in the US: the power button itself, the interface to switching off a device one supposedly owns, is intercepted by a Google 'AI' product. The device can not be powered off, even using buttons as described, without first downloading software from the company.

This domineering and invasive interface culture has to be stopped.

AirBnB hidden camera worries back again (again). https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/09/business/airbnb-hidden-camera-invs/index.html?iid=cnn_buildContentRecirc_end_recirc

I wrote code back in the day to detect and disconnect ('blind') such cameras. Many disguised as smoke detectors, even power sockets. It was an evolution of Glasshole.sh (code here https://julianoliver.com/projects/glasshole/) which blinded Google Glass. That grew into a sort of travel plug that would detect and disconnect hidden cameras and also quadcopters (code here: https://github.com/CyborgUnplug/CyborgUnplug/blob/master/files/root/scripts/detect.sh)

Should reboot some of that code at some point.

"Since Navalny’s death, Navalnaya has lived in an undisclosed location outside Russia with the couple’s two children. Writing on the X social media platform on Tuesday she told her supporters not to be distracted by the court order against her, but to focus on the broader campaign against Putin."

Do hope she's using the Tor browser, or a good VPN & scrubbing fingerprints to reach X. I would not trust Musk to keep her and her kids safe from the Kremlin.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/09/russia-issues-arrest-warrant-for-widow-of-alexei-navalny

Let this be a warning to the solar industry. It only plays into the hands of petrol heads and oil industry execs, feeding an existing narrative contortion that we need oil to protect fragile habitats from renewables.

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-05-31/solar-project-to-destroy-thousands-of-joshua-trees (via @Christina )

"[...] if this year’s rate of warming persists, it would give us two full degrees of extra warming by 2034. Add the warming we have already caused (1.5 degrees), and the average global temperature 10 years from now would be 3.5C higher."

Good piece by Gwynne Dyer on the current crazy warming anomaly, in advance of her new book.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/world-news/350229370/climate-anomaly-making-scientists-scratch-their-heads

New study into the human & enviro toxicity of chemicals in plastic, the most comprehensive to date, finds that of the 4200 plastics considered very harmful, just 980 are regulated. The remaining toxic plastics in broad circulation have a range of impacts from premature births to cancers, hormonal disruptions & neurotoxic effects. The study seeks to act as a framework for improved regulation in the distribution & use of these chemicals

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/14/health/toxic-unregulated-chemicals-report-wellness/index.html

Orig study: https://plastchem-project.org/

Our walls & floors are covered in a skin of plastic, our carpets plastic fibre. We wear plastic, & so often sleep in a nest of plastic fabrics. We store & prepare food with, in & on plastic. Even when we bathe we're soaking ourselves in it, with countless soaps containing phthalates, a softening plastic also used to boost the longevity of fragrances. PFAS plastic 'forever chemicals' circulate the hydrosphere, found in breast milk & on Antarctica.

80 years ago, 1 life span, none of this was true

Hi 5 to @Christina for sharing the article

Great interview in the Framasoft (Mobilizon, Framadate, Framaforms) blog on Extinction Rebellion France's (a huge group by now) commitment to infrastructural decentralisation and sovereignty - alongside sane and good infosec - through the adoption of free and open source self-hosted platforms (article in French) https://framablog.org/2024/03/10/extinction-rebellion-france-mouvement-de-desobeissance-civile-degafamise-by-design/