An Experiment

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Oct 262018
 

To all zero of my readers,

Actually writing things seems to be something I can’t muster up the will to do.

So I hacked up an rss plugin for wordpress last year to repost excepts from my tt-rss shared feed, but have left the posts it generates private. Since it’s OK if not ideal, I’m just gonna set the plugin to post publicly for now to see if it works out, and maybe as motivation to hurry up and finish tweaking the format, or writing a fresh plugin from scratch that only does what I need.

For now it will post every time I update my shared feed from tt-rss; I am leaning toward modifying it so that it collects all posts and makes a single daily entry, but I’ll see how this works first.

Ars Technica – Slack users horrified to discover messages used for AI training

May 172024
 

Enlarge (credit: Tim Robberts | DigitalVision)
After launching Slack AI in February, Slack appears to be digging its heels in, defending its vague policy that by default sucks up customers’ data—including messages, content, and files—to train Slack’s global AI models.
According to Slack engineer Aaron Maurer, Slack has explained in a blog that the Salesforce-owned chat service does not train its large language models (LLMs) on customer data. But Slack’s policy may need updating “to explain more carefully how these privacy principles play with Slack AI,” Maurer wrote on Threads, partly because the policy “was originally written about the search/recommendation work we’ve been doing for years prior to Slack AI.”
Maurer was responding to a…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=2025179

 2024-05-17  No Responses »

Techdirt. – Flock Safety Customers Continue To Act As Government Contractors, Only Without All That Pesky Paperwork

May 142024
 

Flock Safety wants in on the law enforcement surveillance action. It began making inroads by appealing to the next best fascists: homeowners associations. Pitching its ALPRs (automatic license plate readers) to gated communities, Flock promises a crime-free future its pseudo-research can’t back up.
Not that any of that mattered to any of these suburban authoritarians. All they knew is they had cameras capable of surveilling unwanted “intruders,” even if these were just lost drivers, people passing through their “exclusive” neighborhoods on the way to their own less-exclusive neighborhoods, or just kind of “brown.”
Since the rich and the (predominately) white consider law enforcement to be little more than a customer service department, pitching to HOAs meant drawing in…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/2024/05/14/flock-safety-customers-continue-to-act-as-government-contractors-only-without-all-that-pesky-paperwork/

 2024-05-14  No Responses »

Hackaday – Gather ‘Round This Unique 4-Player Arcade Cabinet

May 112024
 

Usually when we see arcade cabinet builds, they’re your standard single-player stand up variety. Even one of them takes up quite a bit of room, so as appealing as it might be to link up two or more cabinets together for the occasional multiplayer session, the space required makes it a non-starter for most of us.
But this cleverly designed 4-player cocktail cabinet from [OgrishGadgeteer] goes a long way towards solving that problem. The circular design of the cabinet gives each player a clear view of their respective display in a much smaller footprint than would otherwise be possible, and the glass top allows the whole thing to double as an actual cocktail table when it’s not…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://hackaday.com/2024/05/11/gather-round-this-unique-4-player-arcade-cabinet/

 2024-05-11  No Responses »

The Intercept – October 7 Survivors Sue Campus Protesters, Say Students Are “Hamas’s Propaganda Division”

May 112024
 

Survivors of the October 7 attacks filed a lawsuit in U.S. federal court last week alleging links between Hamas and the pro-Palestinian student groups leading nationwide protests against Israel’s war on Gaza. The survivors claim the student groups are liable for monetary damages because of the purported terrorism links. “When someone tells you they are aiding and abetting terrorists — believe them.” That’s the opening line the suit filed Wednesday against the Palestinian advocacy groups American Muslims for Palestine and National Students for Justice in Palestine, the umbrella group supporting student organizers for Palestine, which supports more than 350 Palestine solidarity groups, including more than 200 campus organizations across the country. The lawsuit is part of…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://theintercept.com/2024/05/10/october-7-survivors-lawsuit-palestine-hamas-sjp-protests/

 2024-05-11  No Responses »

New on MIT Technology Review – The way whales communicate is closer to human language than we realized

May 072024
 

Sperm whales are fascinating creatures. They possess the biggest brain of any species, six times larger than a human’s, which scientists believe may have evolved to support intelligent, rational behavior. They’re highly social, capable of making decisions as a group, and they exhibit complex foraging behavior.   But there’s also a lot we don’t know about them, including what they may be trying to say to one another when they communicate using a system of short bursts of clicks, known as codas. Now, new research published in Nature Communications today suggests that sperm whales’ communication is actually much more expressive and complicated than was previously thought.  A team of researchers led by Pratyusha Sharma at MIT’s Computer…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/05/07/1092127/the-way-whales-communicate-is-closer-to-human-language-than-we-realized/

 2024-05-07  No Responses »

CounterPunch.org – Presidential Candidate Jill Stein Attacked in St. Louis

May 012024
 

Kelly Merrill, Jill Stein, Jason Call with arrest charges. April 28, 2024. Photo by Barbara Chicherio.
After attacking Dr. Jill Stein, St. Louis police charged her with assaulting them.  Stein is the presumptive Presidential candidate of the Green Party.  On April 27 she spoke at a program of the Green Party of St. Louis and then went to support student protesters at Washington University.  There, she was arrested along with Green Party campaign managers Jason Call and Kelly Merrill with about 100 others.
As students peacefully gathered in tents and on the lawn, they were soon confronted by police from four departments: University City, Richmond Heights, St. Louis City and St. Louis County.  When Stein arrived at the…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/04/30/presidential-candidate-jill-stein-attacked-in-st-louis/

 2024-05-01  No Responses »

AnandTech – Report: Seagate, Western Digital Hike HDD Prices Amid Surge In Demand

Apr 242024
 

Seagate Technology has reportedly notified its customers abouts its plans to raise prices on new hard drive orders and for demands that exceed prior agreements, echoing a similar move by Western Digital, which increased its prices earlier this month. These changes come in response to a surge in demand for high-capacity HDDs and constraints in supply due to decreased production capabilities of both Seagate and Western Digital, reports TrendForce. According to industry insights reported by TechNews, the sector anticipates that the scarcity of high-capacity HDD products will persist throughout the current quarter and possibly extend over the entire year. It is forecasted that HDD prices will rise by 5% to 10% in Q2 2024 alone and…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.anandtech.com/show/21368/report-seagate-western-digital-hike-hdd-prices

 2024-04-24  No Responses »

Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow – Pluralistic: The specific process by which Google enshittified its search (24 Apr 2024)

Apr 242024
 

Today’s links

The specific process by which Google enshittified its search: Ed Zitron has Prabhakar Raghavan bang to rights.

Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.

This day in history: 2009, 2014, 2019, 2024

Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.

Recent appearances: Where I’ve been.

Latest books: You keep readin’ em, I’ll keep writin’ ’em.

Upcoming books: Like I said, I’ll keep writin’ ’em.

Colophon: All the rest.

The specific process by which Google enshittified its search (permalink)
All digital businesses have the technical capacity to enshittify: the ability to change the underlying functions of the business from moment to moment and user to user, allowing for the rapid transfer of value between business customers, end users and shareholders:

Twiddler


If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/

 2024-04-24  No Responses »

Ars Technica – FTC bans noncompete clauses, declares vast majority unenforceable

Apr 232024
 

Enlarge / Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan talks with guests during an event in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on April 03, 2024 (credit: Getty Images | Chip Somodevilla )
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) today announced that it has issued a final rule banning noncompete clauses. The rule will render the vast majority of current noncompete clauses unenforceable, according to the agency.
“In the final rule, the Commission has determined that it is an unfair method of competition and therefore a violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act, for employers to enter into noncompetes with workers and to enforce certain noncompetes,” the FTC said.
The US Chamber of Commerce said it will…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=2019469

 2024-04-23  No Responses »

World Socialist Web Site (en) – Number of bodies found in Palestinian hospital mass graves rises to 310 as Israel prepares assault on Rafah

Apr 232024
 

The horrific discovery over the past 72 hours provides further evidence of Israel’s imperialist-backed genocide against the Palestinians, which is set to escalate imminently due to the looming assault on the more than 1.5 million Palestinians struggling to survive in Rafah.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/04/24/cvig-a24.html

 2024-04-23  No Responses »

Deeplinks – U.S. Senate and Biden Administration Shamefully Renew and Expand FISA Section 702, Ushering in a Two Year Expansion of Unconstitutional Mass Surveillance

Apr 232024
 

One week after it was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, the Senate has passed what Senator Ron Wyden has called, “one of the most dramatic and terrifying expansions of government surveillance authority in history.” President Biden then rushed to sign it into law.  
The perhaps ironically named “Reforming Intelligence and Security America Act (RISAA)” does everything BUT reform Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). RISAA not only reauthorizes this mass surveillance program, it greatly expands the government’s authority by allowing it to compel a much larger group of people and providers into assisting with this surveillance. The bill’s only significant “compromise” is a limited, two-year extension of this mass surveillance. But…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/04/us-senate-and-biden-administration-shamefully-renew-and-expand-fisa-section-702-0

 2024-04-23  No Responses »

Ars Technica – After 48 years, Zilog is killing the classic standalone Z80 microprocessor chip

Apr 232024
 

Enlarge / A cropped portion of a ca. 1980 ad for the Microsoft Z80 SoftCard, which allowed Apple II users to run the CP/M operating system. (credit: Microsoft)
Last week, chip manufacturer Zilog announced that after 48 years on the market, its line of standalone DIP (dual inline package) Z80 CPUs is coming to an end, ceasing sales on June 14, 2024. The 8-bit Z80 architecture debuted in 1976 and powered a small-business-PC revolution in conjunction with CP/M, also serving as the heart of the Nintendo Game Boy, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, the Radio Shack TRS-80, the Pac-Man arcade game, and the TI-83 graphing calculator in various forms. In a letter to customers dated…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=2018763

 2024-04-23  No Responses »

Planet PostgreSQL – Hubert ‘depesz’ Lubaczewski: Waiting for PostgreSQL 17 – Invent SERIALIZE option for EXPLAIN.

Apr 112024
 

On 3rd of April 2024, Tom Lane committed patch: Invent SERIALIZE option for EXPLAIN.   EXPLAIN (ANALYZE, SERIALIZE) allows collection of statistics about the volume of data emitted by a query, as well as the time taken to convert the data to the on-the-wire format. Previously there was no way to investigate this without actually … Continue reading “Waiting for PostgreSQL 17 – Invent SERIALIZE option for EXPLAIN.”

External feed Read More at the Source: https://postgr.es/p/6sY

 2024-04-11  No Responses »

jwz – The Turing Police say “X Wins”

Apr 072024
 

I had understood in principle that printf is Turing complete, but I am still aghast at this interactive game of tic-tac-toe implemented with a single printf statement.

Computing the NOT of a single value is also easy: 

printf("%1$255d%1$s%hhn", a, b)

will compute 

*b = (strlen(a)+255)%256 = strlen(a)-1

and again, because strlen(x) is either 1 or 0 we have 

*c = !b

From here we can compute any binary circuit.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/04/the-turing-police-say-x-wins/

 2024-04-07  No Responses »

Ballot Access News – North Carolina Independent Candidate for U.S. House Appears to Qualify; No Independent Had Ever Before Appeared on a Government-Printed Ballot

Apr 072024
 

North Carolina has never had an independent candidate for U.S. House on a government-printed ballot. But in 2024, Shelane Etchison appears to have qualified in the Ninth District. Here is her website. She needed 7,460 valid signatures and the county election boards have verified 7,532.

The Ninth District is in central North Carolina, just west of Raleigh. It has a first-term Republican incumbent, Richard Hudson. He is running for re-election. In 2022 he won the general election in a two-person race with 56.5%.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://ballot-access.org/2024/04/07/north-carolina-independent-candidate-for-u-s-house-appears-to-qualify-no-independent-had-ever-before-appeared-on-a-government-printed-ballot/

 2024-04-07  No Responses »
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