Lunatech @Lunatech@social.cleverlibre.org

Look out Don Jr. You could be next. 🤠

Woke up this morning to find that #macOS had unilaterally decided to remove several of my frequently used folders under “Favorites” in the #Finder sidebar. Have to try and remember what was there and where it was now.

Gee, thanks, Apple. That’s just terrific — and it makes me feel so secure to know how reliable and trustworthy your software is!

The Paul Pelosi video — and the surveillance video — show the danger and brutality of the attacker.

Every Republican who mocked this attack is filled with nothing but hate and bile.

Sources: OpenAI hired ~1,000 contractors over the past six months, 40% of them programmers creating data for its models to learn software engineering tasks (Semafor)

https://www.semafor.com/article/01/27/2023/openai-has-hired-an-army-of-contractors-to-make-basic-coding-obsolete
http://www.techmeme.com/230127/p10#a230127p10

Belatedly, but better than never, the NY Times takes a look at Trump's "Truth" Social and -- you'll be shocked, shocked -- learns that when it comes to advertising it's slime city. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/27/technology/trump-truth-social-ads.html

The #California bar’s top disciplinary official is seeking the disbarment of John #Eastman on 11 charges related to his effort to overturn the 2020 election and help #Trump seize a second term he didn’t win.

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/26/eastman-faces-disbarment-push-in-california-00079788?cid=mas

Excellent summary of the NYT story from @AdamParkhomenko and @samyoungman's newsletter at http://todaysbigstuff.com

S c r e a m I n g

Arizona's Republicans are at war with democracy, and their latest act will give them lots of new ways to undermine it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/01/26/arizona-legislature-transparency-open-records-law/

"It remains confounding to me that a person who tried to overthrow the government, and used Facebook to help him do it, ultimately got off with a two-year time out. Especially when much more benign users, notably sex educators, are routinely given permanent suspensions. At the same time, Trump hasn’t been held accountable by the US government, either. ... We find ourselves calling on Facebook to do what prosecutors so far have not"

@caseynewton: https://www.platformer.news/p/meta-restores-trump

Donald #Trump is unveiling a 2024 education policy plan that focuses heavily on culture war components.

The plan calls for:
👉 Cutting federal funding for any school or program that includes “critical race theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate [...] content onto our children.”
👉 Investigating school districts that've "engaged in race-based discrimination," particularly against Asian American students
👉 Keeping "men out of women’s sports.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/26/trump-unveils-education-policy-culture-war-00079784?cid=mas

I've been so excited about the explosion of new Mastodon apps that I decided to write about it in my column, with a focus on @ivory and @icecubesapp. A thousand flowers blooming!

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/article/twitter-mastadon-elon-musk-apps-migration-17746197.php

Apple sells "activation lock" as an anti-theft tool, and it does work for that.

It's also an environmental nightmare, a deterrent to legitimate reselling of used enterprise machine -- and, no doubt most important (to Apple), a way of boosting sales of new units.

https://9to5mac.com/2023/01/27/2020-macs-landfill/

Bloomberg's deep dive into how Musk and his minions -- one quisling in particular in this article -- have amplified extremists' reach is a must-read. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-27/elon-musk-s-twitter-trust-safety-head-ella-irwin-breaks-rules-for-him?leadSource=uverify%20wall

Again, I ask journalists, and all people who believe in common decency in our public discourse, who still use the birdsite: Why are you letting a sociopath leverage your integrity? Please think it over.

For years, tech giants like Google and Facebook have been developing the underlying tech behind tools like ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion--but had been cautious about releasing them due to concerns over safety, bias, and misinfo.

Now, with tech stocks tumbling and ChatGPT hype soaring, insiders say there's growing pressure to stop listening to the ethicists and cassandras and charge ahead despite the risks. New from @nitashatiku, Gerrit De Vynck and me: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/01/27/chatgpt-google-meta/

Elon Musk personally banned Chad Loder from Twitter. Reported first by WaPo, now Bloomberg has confirmed with the screenshots. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-27/elon-musk-s-twitter-trust-safety-head-ella-irwin-breaks-rules-for-him?leadSource=uverify%20wall

Neat! https://macosbin.com #macOS #macadmin

AI getting even weirder: "MusicLM: Generating Music From Text" from a team at Google research

Generates audio clips from promote like "A fusion of reggaeton and electronic dance music, with a spacey, otherworldly sound. Induces the experience of being lost in space, and the music would be designed to evoke a sense of wonder and awe, while being danceable."

No interactive demo, but this link has a huge number of examples to listen to:

https://google-research.github.io/seanet/musiclm/examples/

Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.11325

Religions encourage the poor to accept their poverty by promising rewards in the afterlife & reassuring them that God “sees” their suffering. This prevents the poor from demanding their fair share & absolves the wealthy from making equitable change in society. Religion is no friend to the poor. #ReligiousTrauma #patriarchy #colonialism #poverty #racism #corruption #criticalthinking #education

Elon #Musk said he met with House Speaker #KevinMcCarthy and House Minority Leader #HakeemJeffries to discuss ensuring #Twitter “is fair to both parties.”

> it wasn’t. Based on my own past projects with new user accounts. On new unprofiled accounts they opened up pushing #rightwing #conservative stuff primarily

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/01/27/elon-musk-twitter-mccarthy-capitol/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=wp_homepage