@jarfil@beehaw.org cover
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

jarfil

@[email protected]

Programmer and sysadmin (DevOps?), wannabe polymath in tech, science and the mind. Neurodivergent, disabled, burned out, and close to throwing in the towel, but still liking ponies 🦄 and sometimes willing to discuss stuff.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. View on remote instance

Has Facebook Stopped Trying? ( www.404media.co )

In spring, 2018, Mark Zuckerberg invited more than a dozen professors and academics to a series of dinners at his home to discuss how Facebook could better keep its platforms safe from election disinformation, violent content, child sexual abuse material, and hate speech. Alongside these secret meetings, Facebook was regularly...

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

Because I have basically nothing in my feed on this account, Facebook backfills it with "recommended" posts and I was pretty shocked at how universally terrible they are. [...] since I've provided very little in the way of alternative information or interaction for it to use

There is your problem.

When an information-hungry platform like Google or Meta asks you to fill out your preferences "to serve you more relevant content"... they are not lying. I mean, it's also to select ads that will pay more for your attention, but the thing with the content algorithm is, if you don't give it data, then it will ass-u-me that you're statistically most likely to engage with content that is getting most engaged... by people who have also not provided it any data.

The problem with that cohort, is it not only includes the few people with legitimate security concerns, but also those who got dark secrets to hide, and/or are using "incognito" browser mode to look for porn.

I don't like to give too much info about myself, but I also don't want to get stuff intended for the "average horny fanatics" group, so I try to give enough data for the algorithm to put me into a group that makes more sense to me.

And it works. The strongest signal you can send to the algorithm, is blocking content you don't want to see. It's amazing how quickly modern algorithms learn to avoid showing me most porn, politics, or religious content, and instead show me science and humor. They still send like 1% of trash my way, clearly checking whether I'll maybe engage with it, but report+block works wonders.

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

Interesting article, but in my experience it overstates the problem... at least for Facebook itself (I have zero interaction with Instagram, Threads, or VR).

I've gone back to Facebook for the last few months, and out of what it mentions, I've only seen like half of it, mostly in the comment sections.

Or to be more precise, for 2024 Q2, I'm seeing:

  • election disinformation - almost none
  • violent content
  • child sexual abuse material
  • hate speech - only in comments
  • fake news - almost none
  • crypto scams - a few
  • phishing - a few
  • hacking
  • romance scams - almost none
  • AI content - almost none
  • uncanny valley stuff

The article however forgot to include:

  • science deniers - a lot in open comments, very few in groups
  • religious zealots - in comments
  • political trolls - a few in comments
  • state-sponsored propagandists - a few in comments
  • general trolls - a few in comments

Still interesting how I get close to zero of these in my main feed.

there’s a level of disinvestment in Facebook

Disagree. Facebook has reached a "plateau of stability" where the current moderation tools keep enough people on the platform to make it profitable.

I've been actively reporting+blocking problematic content, and while about 99% of my reports end up in "no action was taken", it works wonders to keep my feed and group comments clean.

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

This is an interesting issue, with multiple fronts:

  • Spain has a large chunk of its GDP tied to tourism, but...
  • Some places are getting overcrowded, like Ibiza, Barcelona, or Madrid, which discourages tourism.
  • Having a large number or holiday apartments, increases housing prices for local residents...
  • And causes noise issues during the holiday season...
  • And makes it difficult for seasonal workers to find a place to live.
  • While during the off-season, it leaves a lot of apartments unoccupied, making them an easy target for illegal occupation, with whole gangs living from it, which then require LEO resources to vacate them...
  • And makes it extra difficult for local non-tourism businesses to survive...
  • To the point that they're converting business locals into... holiday apartments.

The plan to shut "all" holiday apartments is kind of a pipe dream, or part of populist politics... more so in Barcelona, where right now the recent elections have left Catalonia with parties so divided, that they can't even agree on a viable candidate to lead it.

A slightly more realistic issue to tackle, are "illegal" holiday apartments that don't pay the corresponding taxes. Some estimate that Madrid has a 10:1 ratio of illegal vs. registered holiday apartments.

But in general, there is currently no solution that would keep those apartments occupied all year round, without neighbor conflict, in areas that live mainly off seasonal tourism.

For example, Ibiza has 40K permanent residents, but capacity for 600K tourists, which leads to seasonal workers living in trailer parks, or even in their own cars.

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

Customizable button: 👏🤗

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

Nah, no artificial brain... the opposite of "Artificial Intelligence" is "Natural Stupidity", they just complement each other 😉

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

That looks terribly bare bones. Does it at least have multiple "template" options?

Also, doesn't Copilot have a similar dialog already, with MS planning to make it available for the whole desktop, not just Edge?

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

That sound like a regular hat, with a regular bee... hiding inside.

Ouch!

Family whose roof was damaged by space debris files claims against NASA ( arstechnica.com )

Alejandro Otero, owner of the Naples, Florida, home struck by the debris, was not home when part of a battery pack from the International Space Station crashed through his home on March 8. His son Daniel, 19, was home but escaped injury. NASA has confirmed the 1.6-pound object, made of the metal alloy Inconel, was part of a...

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

Everything we've put into that level of orbit is falling, it is just falling so slowly [...] go from a spiral to a more dramatic arc [...] Once within the atmosphere

This is not correct.

  • Anything in orbit, is constantly free-falling at barely less than 9.8m/s².
  • "Orbiting", is having enough lateral momentum to keep missing the Earth.
  • In the absence of an atmosphere, or any other external influence, an object would keep orbiting forever.
  • However... Earth's atmosphere doesn't just end, it gets thinner and thinner instead... up to the Moon and beyond (thanks to the solar wind blowing it out)
  • The reason for an object in LEO to "fall", as in "decrease its orbital height", is precisely because it's been in Earth's atmosphere all the time!

The reason for a "more dramatic arc", is that as an objects looses orbital height, it keeps hitting ever denser atmosphere, until it ends up losing enough momentum to not be able to complete an orbit, which precipitates things (pun intended).

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

From the first 15 min of the edited video: that FUTO boss is an embarrassment, good on Rossman to get him to change things.

I don't really want to watch the remaining hour, after someone says things like:

  • He didn't follow the discussions back in the 2000s
  • OSI didn't hijack the "open source" definition
  • Less than 1000 people would care
  • Asked his programmers, and they didn't care

I call BS. Weak excuses.

There is a reason people say "FLOSS" instead of "Open Source". There is a reason Stallman says what he says. There is a reason you can tell apart who understands what's going on, by whether they understand the differences or not.

A quick reminder:

  • Free - as in beer, not as in freedom
  • Libre - as in freedom
  • Open Source - you can see the source code

Stallman created the GPL to allow people to see (open) and change (libre) the code (source)... then "pay forward" that freedom, in echange for being able to charge money (non-free) for their contributions.

He often referred to it as simply "Open Source"... which turned out to be a mistake. Very soon (as in pre-1990), it became clear that there were two more competing camps for the "Open Source" definition:

  • Academia - people who got paid anyway, whether they saw a penny from their software or not
  • Business - who wanted to get as much money as possible, for as cheap as possible

Both those camps aligned with licenses where developers gave up all their rights, but anyone could very easily take them back and claim as their own ("closing" the software). Famous examples are Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, etc.

The "Open Source Initiative" was created to gatekeep the "Open Source" definition, by keeping a list of licenses that were "OSI compliant". A side effect of that gatekeeping, was erasing the understanding of the terms "Free" and "Libre" from the public's minds.

Plenty more than "1000 people" understood what was going on, and were against OSI, seeing it as an EEE move from the Business camp.

People new to it, started using the term "open source" (as per OSI) without a care, only to later realize the Business camp was taking advantage of them... [surprised Pikachu face]

This FUTO boss is not young or inexperienced, he's a Business-man who, not surprisingly, decided to use a license with a closing clause, that he used the chance to call "Open Source" by exploiting people's lack of understanding.

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

Prigozin and friends tried, then changed their minds when their families and friends got threatened.

It's not easy being that 1%, when there is another 1% benefitting from things staying as they are.

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

Firefox getting banned, and more people having to learn where to download the whole thing, might be more positive in the long run.

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

In a country with [checks notes] a:

"Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives"

Let's reflect for a moment on what it means to bunch all those things together.

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

Soo... what does this mean for the Windows Recall feature?

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

Happy cake day!

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

Watching that ABA link is highly unnerving.

I've been offered behavioral therapy as an adult, but now I see that fortunately the psychiatrist in charge was dismissed before it would start. Later I learned that he wrote down I "don't meet minimums"... and now I think I know what he meant: there was a session where I'm pretty sure he was trying me out, buy didn't manage to provoke me. F-ing thank the FSM.

The only time I've done something remotely similar, was with a stray cat that wouldn't stop attacking everyone: put her in a dark bathroom (with food, water, and a litter box), turning the light only every few hours to offer her to come out to me. Took the stubborn thing 3 days to make up her mind... and from then on she became a fluffy ball with just the occasional minor outburst. I still admit that was basically torture... except the alternative was to either throw her out back onto the street, or give to a shelter with a 24-hour "no adoption, no cat" policy.

It's hard to believe anyone would advocate doing something like that to a person.

'LLM-free' is the new '100% organic' - Creators Are Fighting AI Anxiety With an ‘LLM-Free’ Movement ( www.theatlantic.com )

As soon as Apple announced its plans to inject generative AI into the iPhone, it was as good as official: The technology is now all but unavoidable. Large language models will soon lurk on most of the world’s smartphones, generating images and text in messaging and email apps. AI has already colonized web search, appearing in...

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

If they spend it all during the first year to accelerate their growth... sure.

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

Real artists mix their own pigments, ask Leonardo da Vinci (*).

(*: or have a studio full of apprentices doing it for them, along with serially copying their masterpieces, some if them made using a "camera obscura" which is totally-not-cheating™, to sell to more clients. YMMV)

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

SWIM can tell you there is more than one...

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

Beehaw also allows to un-upvote your own post.

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

At this point, I bet all military AIs will recommend against that.

When an AI enslaves humanity, the first thing it will do is to convince the guy in charge of the off switch, that it would be a really bad idea to turn it off.

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

Check Q*, Google's Gemini is already using a similar approach.

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

Blockchain is used in more places than you'd expect... not the P2P version, or the "cryptocurrency" version, just the "signature based chained list" one. For example, all signed Git commits, form a blockchain.

The Metaverse has been bubbling on and off for the last 30 years or so, each iteration it gets slightly better... but it keeps failing at the same points (I think I wrote about it 20+ years ago, with points which are still valid).

Web 3.0, not to be confused with Web3, is the Semantic Web, in the works for the last 20+ years. Web3 is a cool idea for a post-scarcity world, pretty useless right now.

Dot.com was the original Web bubble... and here we are, on the Web, post-bubble.

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

What kind of time and effort?

AI art can require training a model, or a LORA for a model, which requires choosing a series of samples and annotating them for the parts of you want to incorporate. After that, writing a prompt can involve several paragraphs with the definitions of what you want it to output, with a series of iterations, followed by a personal choice of the output.

How is AI art a skill that is comparable to real art?

How is stacking 10 buckets of sand and letting them fall in an art gallery, comparable to real art? Dunno, but they call it that: "real art".

Art is a communication act that requires some sort of vision, intended to elicit some sort of emotional response in the receiver, and a series of steps to achieve that.

As long as there is a vision and an intent, the series of steps required to create art with AI, are comparable to any other series of steps conducting to the creation of art with any other medium.

For a rough estimate, you can compare the number and difficulty of the steps, and the effectiveness of the communication.

people generating entire pieces using AI and then referring to themselves as "artists" is honestly delusional and sad

Let me refer you to the aforementioned sand bucket... sculpture? or the renowned orchestral piece "A minute of silence", or paintings like "Black square", or more performative pieces like "Banana duct taped to a wall".

There will always be artists, and "artists".

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

does the artist using this new tool control which images it was trained on? Do they even know? Can they even know?

I've spent every summer vacation in my teens traveling Europe with my parents, going to every church, monument, art museum, cave, etc. available. I had no control over the thousands upon thousands of images I was trained on. I definitely don't know which images I've seen and which not, and would have a really hard time knowing.

If I now make a painting, am I less of an artist for it?

We've had a ton of advances in inspiration. Artists constantly get inspired by the works of those before them, whether to repeat or to break up with previous styles. Nowadays you can even do it online... which is exactly what all these AIs have done.

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

I think you misunderstood: "sand bucket man" is the bar for human art.

AI art has been above that for at least a decade, maybe two. Modern AI art, is orders of magnitude farther, even with the simplest of prompts.

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

Let me clarify: I've seen the sand bucket guy's art featured twice on the news in the past few days, filmed at an art gallery, described as art, commented as being art. It's not some random event, it's the current publicly accepted definition of "art".

My statement, not insinuation, as to why AI art is comparable to "traditional" art, comes after that.

What comes across as desperate however, is generalizing all AI output and disparaging it, without considering the quality of input from the person behind it. Reminds me of how photography used to not be art, how electric instruments couldn't be art, or how using a computer couldn't be art either. Tools don't make or break an artist.

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

Unattended? Unrooted? What Android version?

I still have to confirm each install, wich is a bit tedious, and was looking around for a new phone.

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind.

jarfil , (edited )
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

Too bad Arab countries didn't like the 1947 foundational partition, so they got some 1949 armistice territories instead.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ca/1947-UN-Partition-Plan-1949-Armistice-Comparison.svg/120px-1947-UN-Partition-Plan-1949-Armistice-Comparison.svg.png

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

By "ancestral", how far back do we go? 200 years? 2,000 years? 20,000 years...? It's somewhat ironic, that that "homeland" has been under "foreign mandate" pretty much all the time.

Native Americans had a way better claim to the land, since in many places they were the first ones to settle there. Can't say the same about Syria Palaestina, or any of the dozens of names you can call it.

"Too bad" some didn't accept a UN Resolution, went to war, and lost.

Don't cite me on that last one, cite Mahmoud Abbas:

Abbas faults Arab refusal of 1947 U.N. Palestine plan

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

offline porn

Mobile data plans exist... just saying 😁

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

Security cameras, or other security devices, including ATMs, or some alarm systems, sound compatible with attacking a single ASN: if the attacker knew the IP pool assigned to their target, and the possible modem/router model, targeting the ASN would guarantee taking down their actual target... plus some 600,000 "collateral damage" as a smoke screen.

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

Last time SWIM used a patcher, it came with a malware dropper. Is that still how this "free" works?

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

It has already been established that:

  • Israel wants to get rid of all Palestinians
  • Hamas wants to get rid of all Israelis
  • The US has mutual financial and armament interests with Israel

Good report, wrong target.

Critics of Putin and his allies targeted inside the EU with Israeli-made Pegasus spyware ( www.theguardian.com )

At least seven journalists and activists who have been vocal critics of the Kremlin and its allies have been targeted inside the EU by a state using Pegasus, the hacking spyware made by Israel’s NSO Group, according to a new report by security researchers....

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

Software gets used for purpose not as initially intended... surprises no one.

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

I'm not seeing it... but it might be due to Reddit having become the R word for me, never having been into T (𝕏), refusing to go on TT or D, and FB still having wide whack-a-mole word filters (main issue being flerfers, and "praise God for the AI stairs" kind). Haven't seen it on the fediverse yet, but that might be due to curation.

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

Fat shaming is likely to be the most difficult to combat, because it's based on an unhealthy condition anyone can slip into, so it has a warning component similar to drunk-driving shaming, the Darwin awards, various "fails", etc. where people suffer the consequences of their own choices.

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

When I say "based on", I mean that there are some cases where overweight is actually unhealthy, and some otherwise healthy people can, for a series of reasons, become unhealthy.

The problem about shaming above-average BMI people, is that it has two extremes:

  • on one hand, a thin-cult that leads to eating disorders
  • on the other, "fat activists" and "plus size" models dying of heart attacks at ages of 40 and under

What I believe, is that the shaming itself is a bigoted take on a warning against the latter. My point was that it's going to take extra effort to remove the bigoted behavior, when there is a valid reason to have a warning.

Ideally, we should get to a point where the root cause of unhealthy behaviors could be addressed directly, but we're like two or three layers away from that.

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

Also beehaw members had to "write an essay (sic)" to join, and that barely larger threshold seems to have people value it more.

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

Sure, why not... I'll have 15 years of experience using ChatGPT, and only ask for a 2040s salary plus the time travel commute. 🙄

jarfil , (edited )
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

Both:

dialog_error = Dialog_plain.create_modal(error_text)

Variable and class names go from more general to more particular, functions begin with a verb.

Global functions are either "main", or start with one of "debug", "todo", or "shit".

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

Google controls one set of roads, people choose which roads to use.

On Android, you're free to install any browser and search engine you wish. For example, "Bing for Android" is already a thing.

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

MS got dinged because they claimed Windows couldn't work without MSIE, which was a lie... and they had a large market share.

Nowadays Apple forces everyone to use Safari on iOS, and nobody bats an eye.

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

"Normal people", as in 99% of people, will not bother editing the URL... most of them don't even know what a URL is. They'll just keep using whatever search window they get in their "internet" (browser).

However, Google would rather scrapers and people with ad blockers not make them waste money on AI when they can't recoup them.

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

Not at all: any company that wants to operate in a given country, has to follow that country's laws, whether they like them or not.

Whichever company were to disobey the Kremlin, would lose all Russian market share... and perhaps more importantly, all ability to offer Russian citizens access to non-Russian news and points of view.

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

The choice is not between blocking or not "some videos", it's between blocking some videos, or getting ALL videos blocked.

Think twice before you decide whether a Russian-only clone of YouTube is the better alternative.

Wikileaks' Julian Assange given permission to appeal against U.S. extradition, UK court rules ( www.reuters.com )

WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange's battle to avoid extradition to the United States received a huge boost on Monday when London's High Court ruled that U.S. assurances over his case were unsatisfactory and he would get a full appeal hearing....

jarfil ,
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

Foreign, and non-foreign, citizens only get those rights once they're legally admitted to US soil. Like, they don't have those protections at the airport before being granted entrance.

Could the US decide to deport Assange to Guantanamo?

jarfil , (edited )
@jarfil@beehaw.org avatar

On Android, most apps depend on the keyboard.

  • Gboard has a configurable suggestions bar where you can pick words, or not.
  • Microsoft SwiftKey works similarly, but it underlines the word you're typing.
  • AnySoftKeyboard works like Swiftkey.

Only exception I've seen, is Copilot, which shows the suggested word directly, to be selected with [tab], but you can still type a different one.

I've noticed no such behavior on Facebook. Have you checked your keyboard settings?

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • kbinchat
  • All magazines
    •