Nick @internic@social.cleverlibre.org

I wuz robbed.

More specifically, I was tricked by a phone-phisher pretending to be from my bank, and he convinced me to hand over my credit-card number, then did $8,000+ worth of fraud with it before I figured out what happened. And *then* he tried to do it again, a week later!

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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/05/cyber-dunning-kruger/#swiss-cheese-security

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@tychotithonus

more and more as i try to help my mom deal with all the "new features" in her computer and phone that don't work for anyone with any sight, eye/hand, or skin chemistry issues, i'm back to this:

'no developer of any device software/OS that human beings use is allowed to touch a single line of code until they have spent 6 months doing user support at an assisted care facility'

Laugh all you want, but I think we're at an internet content singularity. Not because ML output rivals good human writing, but because "good" is irrelevant. The content we click on the most if the stuff that ML can spew out without breaking a sweat.

I semi-regularly joke about this, but I see a very real disparity on my blog. The somewhat silly articles I'm not proud of get 20k, 40k views. The ones I put real effort into stay under 1k.

We all crave clickbait that reinforces our views. And ML will oblige and drown us in it.

#Fairphone at #fosdem
- we extended the warranty to 5 years
*no reaction*
- and we publish schematics
*cheers, applauses*

"Write code for the web" by Manav Rathi https://mrmr.io/apple

This is from an iOS developer, but as an Android developer, I came to basically the same conclusion 10 years ago. The web isn't perfect, but it's a near-universal platform not owned by anybody.

Word cloud generated from your Google Scholar profile! What's yours look like? https://shiny.rcg.sfu.ca/u/rdmorin/scholar_googler3/

@ianbetteridge Petulant is a good word.

My instinctive reaction, as someone who has pencilled in an M3 MacBook Air this year, was “yeah but maybe I don’t want to now?”

Happy to share that the written version of "Resisting Dehumanization in the Age of 'AI'"(originally my keynote at #COGSCI22) is now available through Current Directions in Psychological Science:

https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214231217286

OK, poll time, and this one is a simple one (please share so I can get a decent sample). What is your main OS?

Tonight I’m making a stew in honor of Carl Weathers.

I was talking the other day about wavelets and I found this, from @johncarlosbaez 's blog "Azimuth". Here, John and a colleague used the Gabor transform, very related to wavelets, to analyze the Milankovich cyles, an important concept in climate science.

It's really interesting. The Gabor transform, as the wavelets, show information in both frequency and temporal domain, contrary to a Fourier transform that takes you completely to the frequency world or the temporal one.

For a signal whose components may have changed through time, the Gabor can help more than a Fourier analysis. This in fact is what happened with Milankovich, where "recently", in the last million years aprox. the eccentricity seems to be the stronger signal.

Milankovich vs the Ice Ages | Azimuth
https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2013/01/30/milankovich-vs-the-ice-ages/

Russia is likely acutely aware of these changes and may be trying to see how much they can get away with. And that’s the great irony here: For all the outrage over who *might* be trying to cross the physical border, there’s a striking silence around who has *already* breached our virtual borders.

This is something I hope the fediverse is discussing more deeply. I do think we need some centralized institutions. It's the only way to build trust and safety across a wide audience. I believe those can exist on top of the core decentralized platform without taking away the fundamental freedoms.
https://social.praxis.nyc/@nonlinear/111869457119128512

“Devices can overestimate oxygen levels of people with dark skin — leading to less or delayed medical care.”

‘Crackdown on skin colour bias by fingertip oxygen sensors is coming, hints FDA’
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-04144-6

#PulseOximeter #Science #Medicine

#Indiana Lawmakers Trying to Kill Historic Suit Seeking #Gun Industry Accountability
==

One city’s long-running lawsuit against the world’s largest gunmakers is jeopardized by a bill that would allow only the state to sue.

If passed, the law would be retroactive to Aug. 27, 1999 — three days before the lawsuit was filed.

#Guns #News #Lawsuits #Politics

https://www.propublica.org/article/indiana-guns-gary-lawsuit-gunmakers-hb1235?utm_medium=social&utm_source=mastodon&utm_campaign=mastodon-post

It's my right now feeling VERY FAR AWAY dream that someday software and technology development will be an area mentioned in the same sentence as healthcare, education, and environmental policies when we're talking about "research topics that use causal inference methodologies"

https://hdsr.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/laxlndnv/release/2

NEW: #Russia has jumped into the #Texas border controversy and is now cheering on civil war in the US and promoting the right-wing border convoy. Even more interestingly, I found evidence that disinformation accounts associated with the notorious Internet Research Agency (Russia’s “troll factory”) may be being “reactivated” to promote a secessionist movement in Texas.

My latest:
https://weaponizedspaces.substack.com/p/russia-amplifies-calls-for-civil

I've spent significant time on Bluesky and Mastodon for the last few months. They're very different experiences, and I like them both for different reasons. But I think they are headed in different directions. They're going to continue to diverge in terms of what they offer.