Nick @internic@social.cleverlibre.org

From Thursday, a story one might think would have gotten more headlines:

"Rabbis, faith leaders in Manhattan call for ceasefire, unity on 1st night of Hanukkah" https://abc7ny.com/rabbis-for-ceasefire-columbus-circle-hanukkah-jewish/14152874/

Introducing Wikifunctions: first Wikimedia project to launch in a decade creates new forms of knowledge

https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2023/12/05/introducing-wikifunctions-first-wikimedia-project-to-launch-in-a-decade-creates-new-forms-of-knowledge/

Very inspiring: Sorbonne University unsubscribes from Web of Science and Clarivate's bibliometric tools, and will support open alternatives instead, in particular @OpenAlex.

‘By resolutely abandoning the use of proprietary bibliometric products, it is opening the way for open, free and participative tools.’

Hope to see more institutes follow this transition from closed to open systems for research information!

https://www.sorbonne-universite.fr/en/news/sorbonne-university-unsubscribes-web-science

Tusky is looking for contributors!

The #Tusky team has lost a few contributors this year for various reasons, and we need your help building a kick-ass Mastodon app!

While we would also appreciate more technical contributors, we are specifically looking for:
- a person who can manage or help with our social account
- a project manager who can help us draft a Code of Conduct

Please help us spread the word 😊

Big, big news from Sorbonne University! They have decided to switch to OpenAlex for their publication database and bibliometric analytics, abandoning the use of proprietary products! https://www.sorbonne-universite.fr/en/news/sorbonne-university-unsubscribes-web-science

Wow! I just responded to a Lemmy (Fediverse Reddit analog) post from my Mastodon (Fediverse oldTwitter analog) account within my Mastodon GUI.

I didn't even realize it was a Lemmy post...

I clicked on the original Lemmy link and saw my Mastodon post as a reply within the Lemmy thread.

See attached for screenshots of the same conversation in both application's UI's.

The fediverse is fucking awesome.

#fediverse #activitypub #mastodon #lemmy

📣 I'm recruiting PhD students to join my new lab @GeorgiaTech
@gatech_scs
focused on networked systems. Interested? Apply by Dec 15 and mention my name!

The typical #Apple attitude regarding consumer tech has been “you don't need to know how this works, and you don't need any control over it, because it just works.”

This was okay when it actually just worked, but it seems like more and more, there are growing cracks and fissures in Apple's software quality control. My formerly warm (and, truthfully, smug) glow of satisfaction at my Apple gear is slowly being replaced by increasing flashes of impotent rage.

Get it together, #Apple.

Google admits it fudged a Gemini AI demo video, which critics say misled viewers

Google takes heat for a misleading AI demo video that hyped up its GPT-4 competitor.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/12/google-admits-it-fudged-a-gemini-ai-demo-video-which-critics-say-misled-viewers/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

▶️ $17.44 ◀️ That’s the average donation to Thunderbird so far in 2023. A gift roughly the price of a pizza helps provide jobs. It helps us bring Thunderbird to iOS and Android even faster. It helps us develop new features. It substantially improves our sustainability. YOU have that power! YOU can help give people a free, ethical alternative to corporate giants and walled gardens. Please donate today, and help Thunderbird thrive: https://mzla.link/eoy23_masto

#OpenSource #Android #iOS #Community

Talk about burying the lead!

Deaths anongst 45 to 64 y.o. due to COVID tripled 2020 to 2021.

"During the first year of the pandemic, older Canadians (65 years of age and older) accounted for 94.1% of COVID-19 deaths, while those aged 45 to 64 years accounted for 5.3%. In 2021, while the number of COVID-19 deaths among individuals aged 65 years and older (82.0%) remained high, the proportion of deaths among those aged 45 to 64 years nearly tripled to 15.5%."

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/231127/dq231127b-eng.htm

“I’m a pessimist about probabilities, I’m an optimist about possibilities.” – Lewis Mumford.

Daybreak is a new board game that sees players working together to fight climate change.

If only beating climate change was as easy as this game makes it seem (review in link):
https://librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com/2023/12/07/if-only-beating-climate-change-was-this-easy-a-review-of-the-boardgame-daybreak/

When in doubt, divide by two!

'Is AI leading to a reproducibility crisis in science?'

Data leakage 'can be subtle: if a random subset of test data is taken from the same pool as the training data... And if medical data from the same individual (or same scientific instrument) are split between training and test sets, the AI might learn to identify features associated with that individual or that instrument, rather than a specific medical ailment... That’s why it is essential to run ‘control’ trials'

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03817-6

New: Millions of patient scans and health records are spilling online, thanks to a decades-old protocol bug.

Security researchers say doctor's offices, hospitals and medical facilities have unintentionally made the private data and medical histories of millions of patients accessible to the open internet.

More from @carlypage, reporting from Black Hat Europe in London: https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/06/medical-scans-health-records-dicom-pacs-security/

I'm a published author now!!! https://micahflee.com/2023/12/hacks-leaks-and-revelations-the-art-of-analyzing-hacked-and-leaked-data/

The best time to install Firefox was 15+ years ago.

The second best time is now.

Delighted to have received one of the 15 per year "CMS shifter mug 2023” for my contributions as shift leader in the last 2 months of the year, and my integrated support in 2023.

As expected from the name of this #prize that rewards #teamwork, the prize is this lovely mug!

New huge AI story from 404 Media: leaked docs show Civitai, hot AI startup funded by VC firm a16z, generated images that could be child pornography. Even after this discovery, OctoML, the engine that powers the startup, decided to keep working w/ Civitai

This investigation is based on:
- Slack chats
- logs of what prompts Civitai users actually typed to generate images

This is the real threat posed by generative AI right now, today. People can talk about the end of humanity all they want. But basically no one is paying attention to these very real issues which are happening right this second.

https://404media.co/a16z-funded-ai-platform-generated-images-that-could-be-categorized-as-child-pornography-leaked-documents-show/

NEW: Today, we say goodbye to Facebook's PGP encrypted emails.

In 2015, Facebook gave users the chance to use their public PGP key to get encrypted emails from the social network.

Now the company is deprecating the feature.

RIP.

https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/05/used-by-only-a-few-nerds-facebook-kills-pgp-encrypted-emails/