Brad Lanham @brad@mastodon.lanham.id.au

not everything in this talk is perfect and i dont know that i agree with these guys that we even could thoughtfully regulate it — but it is so nice to see someone actually talking about what is happening with transform models (AI) in an informed way. it has been really frustrating to watch how the media has fully failed to grasp what is going on here

https://vimeo.com/809258916/92b420d98a?fbclid=PAAaZoRfbgozcBLAuWnf4ed-nKaFkxdnnyMgOafHpzjEKB-NzyRg_MgDDjXIM

"What we know is not nearly as sensitive as how we know it." -Rob Joyce, Director of the Cybersecurity Directorate at NSA

I wrote 8,000 words on Mastodon, Twitter, and owning your data—from the perspective of someone that worked at Twitter for nine years.

https://paulstamatiou.com/mastodon/

Must-watch speech from Senator @Paulatics on Bill C-18, warning against increased dependence on tech giants. the risks to copyright, CRTC regulatory powers over print journalism, and big money going mainly to broadcasters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw44rJS2TTw

Is there going to be a recession? Don't ask an economist ask a real person. Today's cartoon. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/10/recession-fiscal-slump-depression-what-is-going-on

Playing older PC games on modern machines will leave a little to be desired in the graphics department, but there are ways to improve the look of your favorite classic titles. Here's how to do so: https://me.pcmag.com/en/pc-games/14552/upscale-everything-7-ways-to-get-better-graphics-on-old-pc-games

Today's cartoon is a guardian exclusive octopus sex scandal!! https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/06/exclusive-the-octopus-sex-scandal-that-rocked-the-antarctic (not actually exclusive)

The Twitter Backup Tool is the first auto-updating archive of your Twitter account! Think of it as an inflatable life raft to keep in your pocket as you dance on the deck of the HMS Twittanic for the last time. 🛟

https://www.producthunt.com/posts/twitter-backup-tool

Vale Will Steffan

Global tributes have flowed for Professor Will Steffen, the eminent climate scientist and communicator who passed away on Sunday night in Canberra.

Three of his friends & colleagues remember the giant of a man:

#Climate #climatechange #Australia

https://theconversation.com/weve-lost-a-giant-vale-professor-will-steffen-climate-science-pioneer-198873?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1675196299-1

I don't have time to send individual messages, so please forgive me for resorting to a round robin.

An interview with the creator of the Heroic Games Launcher

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/01/an-interview-with-the-creator-of-the-heroic-games-launcher/

#Gaming #Linux #SteamDeck

The world is a significantly sweeter now.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2023/01/13/rot-in-hell-pell/

Beautiful ancient glass. A 2000 year-old Roman mosaic glass bowl. On display at the V&A Museum. 📷 my own.

Since the 1960s, this glass bowl has been thought to be of more recent date, possibly 19th century. Recent scientific analysis has helped reattribute it to the Roman period. Read more: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O2002/bowl-unknown

#Archaeology
#Art

The artist Ippolito Caffi (1809–1866) was a painter of ruinscapes working in Venice.

He often used intricate arrangements of smoke, light and shadow to turn ruins into otherworldly and unsettling landscapes.

The bit about a lawyer being stopped from entering a music hall in the US because its facial recognition system picked up that she's part of a law company that's suing them is even crazier than I thought.

The law company isn't suing the music hall - it's suing a restaurant, in another state, which is owned by the hall's parent company MSG Entertainment. MSG gone ahead and harvested photos of all the lawyers in the firm and fed it to an image recognition system to ban them from every MSG Entertainment owned location.

People always tell me that if you've got nothing to hide then you've got nothing to fear. She's got nothing to hide and they still went after her.

If this doesn't start making people worried about facial recognition then there's serious trouble coming.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/12/facial-recognition-flags-girl-scout-mom-as-security-risk-at-rockettes-show/

I've waited a few days to post this about the #mastodonmigration. Here is the evolution of the new accounts in #mastodon after the events in the last week. After each new ban/suspension in the #bluebird we see a spike in new accounts in #mastodon. But recent growth seems to be more steady at around 50k per day. Since the #bluebird purchase by Musk, more than 3 million new accounts were created in #mastodon.

Freedom of Speech*^

*subject to change depending on what Elon is thinking & feeling that day, and what the NYT said about him

^subject to change without notice and if you’ve noticed you can f**k right off you woke liberal lefty journalist you

If you're trying to find journalists on Mastodon, I've created a verified database of several hundred here: http://presscheck.org. Since the backlog has become enormous, the unverified waiting list is now public also: http://presscheck.org/pending