Paul Sutton @zleap@social.cleverlibre.org
- Website blog
- https://personaljournal.ca/paulsutton/about-me-n7gz
- IRC
- zleap@irc.libera.chat
Interested in Technology, Science, Chemistry, Education, Fediverse, GNU/Linux and free software.
Joined Mar 2020
Paul Sutton
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Canada wildfires an 'alarming example' of climate change: WHouse | AFP https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sLsyWbvqyk&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon
Paul Sutton
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My sister teaches in a Hawaiian immersion school (all classes from math to science to reading are taught in Hawaiian). The US is currently trying to shut her school down & force them into the 'standard' public schools. One Principal said recently, 'Kids must only speak English'. This is genocide.
Paul Sutton
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That's a relief.
Paul Sutton
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The absolute fastest way to be utterly enraged with every single part of modern computing is to try and walk someone with a brain injury through one of their regular tasks after some random piece of software has pushed an update in the background.
Paul Sutton
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"... the impact is real. The fact that over 500 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced, even if they don’t pass into law, it is having a devastating impact on the safety and well-being of our community...
"... it’s got the legislative impact, the human impact, and then it’s creating a culture of fear... because we know they’re trying to push us back into the closet..."
A National State of Emergency: Human Rights Campaign Sounds the Alarm over Anti-LGBTQ+ Laws in U.S
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/6/7/hrc_state_of_emergency
Paul Sutton
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Labour on course for landslide election victory, megapoll shows https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jun/07/labour-landslide-election-victory-poll-keir-starmer-rishi-sunak-conservatives-constituency-boundaries?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon #news
Paul Sutton
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“FBI warns of increasing use of AI-generated deepfakes in sextortion schemes | Ars Technica”
This was incredibly predictable. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/06/fbi-warns-of-increasing-use-of-ai-generated-deepfakes-in-sextortion-schemes/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social
Paul Sutton
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Attn Fedizens..
In the past several great #Fediverse conferences were organized. The last one was in 2020 and the great talks are online on #Peertube at https://conf.tube/c/apconf_channel/videos?s=1
Now there's another call for volunteers who'd like to organize the next #Conference 💥
An initiative started by @strypey that needs your help and involvement.
https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/anyone-keen-on-a-fediverse-conference-in-2023-24/3167
Please respond to the #SocialHub forum with your ideas and participation.
Boosts appreciated 🚀
@Tilopa@convo.casa
The site moans I am using an ad blocker, so I can only read part of the article before the annoying popup appears.
Concerned families!!, so basically adults, I am sure most kids are not actually all that bothered really, we need to grow up, either kids learn about bodies from seeing others naked, aloing with all the lumps and bumps we have OR they learn from social media / porn sites (and kids even as young as 9 have seen porn) where the images are manipulated to remove all blemishes, and they see body shaming as normal, try and change their bodies as they feel that they HAVE to in order to be accepted.
No wonder there are so many kids with mental health issues with regard to body image alone.
What do we want as a society?
Another day, an more senseless deaths in the crazy and pathetic US of A. There was a article on the late BBC news on Tuesday about St Louis, Missori, where it is a wild west of regular shootings, gun battles with innocent people usually caught in the cross fire.
@Tilopa@convo.casa
I agree, given we are born naked, being naked is far more natural, usually more comfortable esp in hot weather. We as adults need to grow up on this issue.
Paul Sutton
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Open letter to NATO sent today to mailbox.ypp@hq.nato.int
I want this message to be heard by all decision makers in NATO. You are failing Ukraine and you are failing all of us. I am a Polish citizen living in Scotland and I do not feel safe in my home. Russian missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead breached NATO airspace in December. You stayed silent. Now Russia blew up this dam which is the equivalent of using a weapon of mass destruction. You do nothing again. You are proving to us that there is no red line Russia can't cross and Kremlin is watching. You simply won't do anything meaningful to stop them. We are under attack. Russia interferes in our democracies, threatens our economies and our way of life. As long as Russia is allowed to commit genocide on NATO borders none of us are safe.
At this point I do not believe you will ever act. Putin may as well drop a tactical nuke and you will still offer 'thoughts and prayers'. Does anyone at your organization have something resembling a conscience or courage or I don't know any humanity left in you at all? The only adequate response from NATO is full military support to Ukraine now. All else is a dramatic failure on your part to do your job. Your apathy makes NATO a joke. #standwithukraine #kakhovkadam #natoinukrainenow #nato #Ukraine
The UK is full of BS, on the one hand we try and boast that we are 'leading the world' or will 'lead the world' when it comes to online safety, granted we have had a pandemic, but before the pandemic the government announced their online harms bill, (online safety bill)
Fast forward to June 2023, we still don't have this on the statuate books, other countries have taken the idea and acted and created laws to help protect users. Back in November 2022, we had the take over of twitter, since then it has slid in to the cesspit it is today, a Daily Mail article saturday from a facebook whistleblower highlights how their algoritms help amplify problems.
We have just come out of a major hack on Capita and some of the largest UK companies, the government are just sleep walking perfer to argue they don't need to hand over whatsapp amessages unredacted to the covid inquiry, apparently boris has already done so, court case is costing taxpayers HOW MUCH?
The UK and other countries need technical skills, doctors, nurses (all STEM subjects) and we still fail to prioritise this, no wonder no one is listening we are a joke. To add to the problems, if you are studying post doc you are welcome, just you can't bring family members with you, which is just crazy and hardly going to encourage people to move.
Paul Sutton
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@Arkenston
It is maddening that media still reports #Ukraine and #Russia each blame the other for breaching the dam.
Russian spokespeople lose any credibility they may have had by promoting the absurd claim that Ukraine has any motivation for the disastrous breach of the #Kakhovka dam
And failing to say that makes the media complicit in Russian terrorism
Paul Sutton
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Instead of giving Trump advance notice of his arrest, which he will use to try to whip up violence, I hope that law enforcement simply shows up at Mar-a-Lago without warning,slaps the cuffs on him, throws him in the back of an ordinary squad car, and hauls his ass away. No more deferential or special treatment.
@drahardja @futurebird @pluralistic
I agree AI can have many benefits, however as with anything there are risks of it being misused for example.
I feel the biggest threat is the fact our education systems are not keeping up with technological advances. We still kids in the UK who are behind thanks to the pandemic, we need to be training people in technology, we need better cybersecurity training for example (at least in my view).
AI has the potential to create more IP, this will be the target of criminals who want to steal that, BUT surely with open access to AI, they will be using AI to help themk do that.
We need to take a good look at our education systems and update it so that we are training todays children with the skills / ethics of the future, equip them so they can research, and critically think that reseach so they can learn and develop properly. If nothing else so we can have the important conversations as to how they see the future, what do they want to inherit from the creators of AI, We need to involve everyone in that conversation, but it surely needs to be evidence based.
Paul Sutton
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@futurebird Similar take here by @pluralistic:
“These people have a reward function: “convince suckers that AI is dangerous because it is too powerful, not because it’s mostly good for spam, party tricks, and marginal improvements for a few creative processes.”
If AI is an existential threat to the human race, it is powerful and therefore valuable. The problems with a powerful AI are merely “shakedown” bugs, not showstoppers. Bosses can use AI to replace human workers, even though the AI does a much worse job — just give it a little time and those infelicities will be smoothed over by the wizards who created these incredibly dangerous and therefore powerful tools.”
Paul Sutton
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Big Tech steals from the news, but what it steals is *money*, not *content*. Talking about the news, excerpting it, linking to it, quoting it - these are all beneficial, normal news activities. If you can't talk about the news, it's not news - it's a *secret*.
--
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/2023/06/07/curatorial-vig/#app-tax
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Paul Sutton
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I love how so much of the AI debate is on things like:
* Will AI take people's jobs?
* Will AI destroy creativity?
* Will AI take over the world?
* Will AI be used to make people poorer?
And not:
* Will corporations that use AI get rid of people's jobs?
* Will corporations that use AI destroy creativity?
* Will corporations that use AI try to take over the world?
* Will corporations that use AI make people poorer?
Because these LLMs and machine learning systems and so forth aren't just wandering around randomly out there - they're owned by corporations. The corporations are the ones putting them to use. The executives that run those corporations are the ones making the decisions to pay people less, to increase their profits, to make creative people act as subeditors for LLMs.
It's the corporations, and the ethics-free systems that govern them, that cause these things. They're the ones pushing to have more AI.
The rest of us would be happy just having a bit more humanity in the world.
Paul Sutton
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Cosmic smoke & telescope mirrors?
Webb found complex organic molecules similar to smoke or smog in a galaxy more than 12 billion light-years from Earth. This sets a new record for the most distant detection of these big, complicated molecules: https://bit.ly/43M4YEG
#JamesWebb
- Website blog
- https://personaljournal.ca/paulsutton/about-me-n7gz
- IRC
- zleap@irc.libera.chat
Interested in Technology, Science, Chemistry, Education, Fediverse, GNU/Linux and free software.
Joined Mar 2020
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