tobychev @tobychev@social.cleverlibre.org

Around median age 41 you get more people over age 65 than under 15. There are 10 large (20mil) countries past that point: Japan, Italy, Germany, Spain, Ukraine, Korea, France, Canada, Poland, UK. #demography #aging

U.S. admits it hasn’t verified Israel’s UNRWA claims, media ignores it

Secretary Blinken admits that the U.S. has been unable to investigate the “evidence” presented by Israel claiming 13 of UNRWA’s 13,000 Gaza employees participated in October 7. Biden took Israel’s word for it anyway.

https://mondoweiss.net/2024/02/u-s-admits-it-hasnt-verified-israels-unrwa-claims-media-ignores-it/?utm_content=bufferac018&utm_medium=social&utm_source=mastodon&utm_campaign=buffer

#Palestine #Israel #Gaza
@palestine @israel

The rise of Donald Trump as a politician has made many argue that there are two justice systems in America, one for the rich and one for the poor.

In business, it’s also now clear that there are also two systems of accountability. One for the billionaire CEOs and the other for everyone else.

https://www.wsj.com/tech/elon-musk-tesla-money-drugs-board-61af9ac4?st=ung9dncdjnt3bfr&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Interesting announcement at #FOSDEM. The folks working on matrix (open source multiple messaging app) just announced that they’ve been working with WhatsApp to implement cross platform messaging.

This is because it’s mandated by the European Digital Markets Act.

Deadline for this to happen is March 7th (i think), when we see what is actually possible. Can a kind soul share a link to a helpful summary where I can learn more?

The level of destruction in Viña del Mar is just unfathomable, in how the city went from recovering seaside resort and logistics town to charred heap in just a day. 51 confirmed dead. Much of my family there has evacuated; one friend's mom has already lost her home. And things are still out of control. No water bombers, an all volunteer fire corps, and entire factories and mountainsides burning. Approaching 10,000 hectares in just a couple days.

https://www.youtube.com/live/tcYmfiyuC-4?feature=shared

Really great (absolutely terrifying) research by plasma physicist @carlysagan is being highlighted today on https://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=02&month=02&year=2024

Is there *anything* that tens of thousands of disposable satellites won't completely fuck up?

Satellite companies need to stop launching until they fund research on the upper atmosphere and magnetosphere(!) and show their plans are safe (which...is probably impossible since they aren't safe).

Really lovely how #censorship has been thriving in German institutions these last few months. Countless academics, writers and artists who have expressed solidarity with Palestine or dared to criticise Israel have had their contracts and engagements cancelled.

I hope one day there will be some realisation that this was deeply, deeply the wrong moral high horse to sit on.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/feb/01/laurie-anderson-ends-german-professorship-pro-palestine-letter

#Bard can now generate images. Attempts to make "safe" #AI continue to be both overreaching in their censorship and simultaneously porous and ineffective at reducing actual harm (e.g. the Swift images).

Making the AI print statements about the risks of bias and harm rather than responding to user requests is neither "safety" nor ethics. It's virtue signalling from a toaster.

The below prompts are in the same conversation, and were the only context in that conversation:

#Google #AIethics

It's extremely funny to see US senators parroting the conspiracy that the Chinese version of TikTok only promotes positive & educational content whereas the US version is addictive and harmful.

The conspiracy comes from the fact that the Chinese version of TikTok has a mandatory "kids mode" enforced for anyone under 14, which imposes time limits and content restrictions, as a result of strong regulatory pressure from the Chinese government.

Like twice a year US congress makes the TikTok CEO fly in from Singapore so they can yell at him and ask why the Chinese version of TikTok (Which he has nothing to do with) is regulated, whereas the US version is not, as if congress isn't entirely responsible for making said regulations, but were instead too busy eating lead paint and being xenophobic.

"the U.S. has lost almost one-third of its newspapers and nearly two-thirds of its newspaper journalists since 2005. The shocking decimation of the journalism industry has led to the proliferation of ever-expanding news deserts in which more than one half of American counties have little or no access to local news. And it will only get worse." https://lpeproject.org/blog/taking-media-out-of-the-market/

@danlyke Their iOS app seems a little more interesting, pulling text from other websites into a new page with answers, but it divorces everything from the original sources and makes it impossible to judge what is reliable, etc. From an information credibility perspective, this blind reliance on AI seems like a nightmare.

In the comments Andrew Gelman recommended I make the figure like this, which I have to admit is probably better.

It's been ten years, so a short story about the "gotofail" bug.

Someone came to me about a catastrophic vulnerability in Apple's TLS implementation.

I shit you not, they'd overheard someone at a bar drunkenly bragging about how they were going to sell it to a FVEY intelligence agency for six figures.

They didn't know exactly what it was, just some vague details and the key point is that it allowed use of the real certificate.

This was enough for me to find the bug (yay open source), which would go on to be known as "gotofail", and produce a working exploit in less than a day.

The details were anonymously back channelled to Apple, who released a fix.

@matthew_d_green posted on Twitter about it, concerned by the Apple's vague release notes.

I used a burner phone to share the details with him anonymously.

Then everyone forgot about the whole thing because heartbleed.

¯_(ツ)_/¯

– Poängen med humanitärt hjälparbete är att hjälpa civila. Den individ som gör fel ska straffas och organisationens rutiner ska granskas men man ska inte förstöra för hjälparbetarna i stort, säger han i SVT:s Aktuellt.

https://www.svt.se/nyheter/utrikes/toppdiplomaten-om-israels-terrorsiffror-tror-jag-inte-pa-alls #svpol #israel #unrwa

"Where Is Hamas Getting Its Weapons? Increasingly, From Israel.":

https://archive.is/Bjy5N

28/1: "Låg behörighet skapar vinst"

Skolverkets statistik visar att friskolor har lägre lärarbehörighet än kommunala skolor. Obehöriga lärare har lägre lön än behöriga lärare men friskolor kompenseras med grundpeng baserad på kommunens lönekostnader. Detta skapar vinst.

Privacy-oriented X front-end #Nitter is shutting down following changes to guest accounts

Nitter is dead after Twitter/X stops allowing guest accounts. Nitter was a front-end for Twitter that worked without JavaScript… @alternativeto

RIP.

#twitter #privacy #opensource

https://alternativeto.net/news/2024/1/privacy-oriented-x-front-end-nitter-is-shutting-down-following-changes-to-guest-accounts/

Using drones to remove ice from power lines