Nick @internic@social.cleverlibre.org

New from @josephcox:
An investigation into Israeli company called 'Patternz,' a government surveillance firm that tracks billions of phone profiles using ads in phone apps

https://www.404media.co/inside-global-phone-spy-tool-patternz-nuviad-real-time-bidding/

Just noticed that today is the 265th birthday anniversary of Robert Burns.
I went to university in Scotland and will forever carry that place in my heart! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Here is some Scots Wha Hae for all of us https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAGLs6KI1Dg

Do you have questions about the Message Context Menu, accessibility, or the design process in general in Thunderbird? Send them to officehours@thunderbird.net to get them answered during our chat with UX Developer @emitche this Thursday, January 25, at 18:00 UTC. Find out more - and how to join us live! - in the blog post: https://blog.thunderbird.net/2024/01/january-2024-thunderbird-community-office-hours-how-to-join-us/

Swedish mathematician Niels Fabian Helge von Koch was born #OTD in 1870.

He established results in number theory, including one that relates the Riemann hypothesis to the asymptotic distribution of prime numbers. But he is probably best known for what we call the "Koch Curve" – one of the first examples of a fractal.

If nothing else wakes us up to this, here's the definitive analysis of climate mucking with your morning coffee: "The analysis reveals both a direct effect of extreme temperatures on biophysical yields and a multiyear plant death effect" https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/726312 @jrising
#climate #coffee

<wipes hands>

Welp, I'm done with Substack. I'm in the process of migrating over to Beehiiv, which will likely take me all day, with tweaks over the weekend, but the plan is my next Monday newsletter will come from Beehiiv.

https://badastronomy.substack.com/p/im-leaving-substack-an-incredible

Bonus: Incredible pic.

I mean right now the possibility of toxic ash is a little more pressing of an educational issue than LLMs I gotta say. My aunt is Tamara Paltin, quoted in this article. Working day and night relentlessly for Lahaina as she was already a climate and resilience activist and leader there when the disaster struck.

https://www.vox.com/climate/2023/11/1/23940322/lahaina-wild-fire-schools-toxic-waste-cleanup

#AI #LLM is gunking up the web, especially for lesser-represented languages. Spammers are creating English language content, then translating it into *multiple languages* at the same time, using Machine Translation, presumably to generate clickbait ad revenue in several languages at once.

In English, such gunk accounts for some 9% of total sampled web content. But in languages with less representation on the Internet, the figures could be much higher. In Malay, it’s something like 26%, and in Swahili it’s nearly HALF of everything found on the web.

Paper [pdf]: “A Shocking Amount of the Web is Machine Translated: Insights from Multi-Way Parallelism”

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2401.05749.pdf

Excellent piece here by @ianbetteridge on a future for the internet, where AIs overwhelm human content and end up riffing off what they themselves created.

“This is the equivalent of a child learning to draw solely by copying the images made by younger children – not a scenario which is likely to improve quality.”

https://ianbetteridge.com/2024/01/24/the-information-grey-goo/

I wonder if @gregeganSF does requests :)

Great piece by @willoremus on the prevalence of OpenAI bots appearing across the web:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/01/20/openai-use-policy-ai-writing-amazon-x/

Here's a piece on a study Indiana researchers did that identified a ChatGPT powered network on X/Twitter:
https://www.techpolicy.press/researchers-identify-false-twitter-personas-likely-powered-by-chatgpt/

Secret military space programs can be a little less secret, Pentagon says

Many defense officials argue that less secrecy will lead to better security.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/01/secret-military-space-programs-can-be-a-little-less-secret-pentagon-says/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

Arno A. Penzias, 90, Dies; Nobel Physicist Confirmed Big Bang Theory

His 1964 discovery with Robert W. Wilson settled a debate over the origin and evolution of the universe.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/22/science/space/arno-a-penzias-dead.html

#cosmology #penzias #arnopenzias #cmb #discovery #nobelprize #physics #astronomy #astrophysics #astrodon #space #science #research

@PeachMcD @pluralistic
The government-funded horse they rode in on!

'Moderna is quadrupling the cost of covid vaccines, from $26/dose to $110-130. Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel calls the price hike "consistent with the value" of the mRNA vaccines. Moderna's manufacturing costs are $2.85/dose.

...It's the story of the US government giving billions & billions of dollars to a private firm, which will now charge the US government– and the American people – a 4,460% markup on the resulting medicine'

Russian foreign intelligence has hacked emails from security professionals at both Microsoft and HPE. I have a feeling this is the start of something. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/01/24/hpe-hacking-russia-cybersecurity/

The proliferation of DRM and walled-garden game vendors has eroded ownership rights over video games, and risks the same fragmented subscription frustrations we see with film. #copyrightweek #videogames https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/01/fragging-subscription-model-comes-gamers

May I suggest adding a comma and an exclamation point, too?

@metacurity “Ring also maintains the right to share footage without user consent”

They did this 11 times in 2022, not sure how many times in 2023. While this appears to be an improvement, it doesn’t exactly end the ability for Ring to warrantlessly and invisibly provide your own private video footage to law enforcement.