Imbolc

I work in tech, working on #AI #alignment of #personalized applications to make sure they avoid #privacy and #safety harms

Opinions here are strictly my own — I’m not speaking for my employer

Public Key

npub145g76y6p96ykkm9zxfyeslashxsd8thadejvzfprmljya2ez0zcsapmrpm

NIP-05 Address

eob_at_social.coop@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs26y0dzdqjazttdj3ryjvc07ctngxn4m7kuexpys3alezw4v383vgpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsxv8dvv

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub145g76y6p96ykkm9zxfyeslashxsd8thadejvzfprmljya2ez0zcsapmrpm

Show more details

Last Notes

2025-07-26 19:03:44 UTC

The recent "Odd Lots" episode, "How a Trade War With China Could Become a Hot War," is a critical listen
It moves beyond typical economic analysis to model the escalatory pathways from trade disputes to kinetic warfare
The historical parallels drawn, not just to the American Revolution but more pointedly to 1930s Japan, provide a sobering framework for analyzing current US-China tensions
This is the kind of second-order thinking that's desperately needed in policy discussions right now.

2025-07-24 03:58:37 UTC

"A skeletal 18-month-old Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq is the lead picture for the Guardian, which reports on Israeli attacks on aid hubs and worsening starvation in Gaza. Palestinian Faiza Abdul Rahman, who is "constantly dizzy" from lack of food says: "We have faced hunger before, but never like this", a quote the paper uses as its main headline"
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20rxyjp28mo
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/114/906/203/109/278/151/original/770e29858dbf3727.webp

2025-07-13 18:48:25 UTC

If you want to know the truth about AI then read the comments in this thread from @npub1zjp…u8q9
TL:DR large language models (LLMs) were a big breakthrough and are an incredibly useful tool for searching and summarization, but the language fluency of their chatbot frontends fools us into thinking they are intelligent
https://bsky.app/profile/mims.bsky.social/post/3ltp5rmep6k2r

2025-07-12 01:05:37 UTC

It's troubling that police are using generative AI to produce legally significant text like police reports, given the known risks of bias and hallucination
What's worse is when there's no audit trail or any kind of transparency to prove the claimed "officer-in-the-loop"
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/07/axons-draft-one-designed-defy-transparency

2025-07-11 18:20:19 UTC

Astounding imagery of how far ahead China is in solar
even as the U.S. is now undoing its own clean energy initiatives in a national self-sabotaging, rolling-coal fuck-you
https://www.theatlantic.com/photography/archive/2025/07/photos-china-solar-power-energy/683488/?gift=gMReAEZrj7mjk32ksRk4mM_QVHhFveaZt4zHOULXoe4&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/114/835/972/153/943/781/original/db93366b53bce7e6.jpg
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/114/835/972/234/402/942/original/c022350864892ef1.jpg
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/114/835/972/301/558/316/original/d2fe0f6d783c5ca2.jpg
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/114/835/972/384/758/472/original/20615ee4b0d7b092.jpg

2025-07-05 20:50:55 UTC

This is a really excellent overview of the privacy challenges that anyone building generative AI systems should consider
It's a good primer for anyone interested in this field
Barberá and Popa-Fabre, "Privacy and Data Protection Risks in Large Language Models (LLMs)"
https://rm.coe.int/privacy-and-data-protection-risks-in-large-language-models-llms-/1680b68fe9

2025-06-11 03:56:39 UTC

Hey, if anyone will be looking for someone with a technical background to work on privacy or AI safety later this year, I might be available for a new gig starting around October
I’m a computer scientist by background, with a history of managing engineering teams in compliance, privacy, trust, and AI safety
I’d be particularly keen to help in the non-profit or benefit-corp space

2025-06-06 02:39:28 UTC

Meta was caught red-handed using its Facebook app to eavesdrops on your browser sessions even if you had taken privacy precautions such as using incognito mode
https://localmess.github.io/

2025-05-31 00:59:26 UTC

Oh great. Now all personal data the the US government knows about us will be collected by Palantir, the Blackwater of tech
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/technology/trump-palantir-data-americans.html

2025-05-23 19:07:05 UTC

Concerning that the Republican in the US Congress want to prevent AI regulations by the states
If the example of privacy regulation is anything to go by, the only hope of any reasonable AI regulations in the US is from the states
https://techpolicy.press/us-house-passes-10year-moratorium-on-state-ai-laws

2025-05-10 03:57:22 UTC

From Florida, comes some good news for privacy…
https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/09/florida-bill-requiring-encryption-backdoors-for-social-media-accounts-has-failed/

2025-05-06 03:45:24 UTC

This is insane
A judge allowed a post-mortem, AI-generated video to influence a sentencing decision
"It was the first time in Arizona judicial history — and possibly nationwide — that AI has been used to create a deceased victim’s own impact statement."
There is no way to know whether this represents the views of the dead person
https://www.abc15.com/news/region-southeast-valley/chandler/family-uses-ai-to-create-video-for-deadly-chandler-road-rage-victims-own-impact-statement

2025-05-05 20:52:21 UTC

- reply

Yes, this is a newly found supply-chain vulnerability according to the original post from the security company:
https://huntedlabs.com/the-russian-open-source-project-that-we-cant-live-without/
It's not unusual for new security vulnerabilities to be found, even ones that have existed for a long time without anyone realizing
But, it's important to note, there is no evidence that there is anything malicious in the current code. The concern is more what it *could* do, given its widespread use and possible influence of a state actor

2025-05-05 17:30:18 UTC

- reply

Generally you want to run untrusted code in as constrained an execution environment as possible to minimize the damage it could do. But easyjson requires the ability to create new programs and execute them, which means it could do a lot of damage of it were subverted
And the memory-unsafe code opens up the possibility of a class of security vulnerabilities that usually this programming language is immune to

2025-05-05 16:08:43 UTC

- reply

The article does quote people who base their security concern on the fact that most of the developers of this library are in Russia, which might increase the vulnerability to a supply-chain stack
However, I was pointing out that even if you ignore the nationalities of the developers, there are some security concerns with the code itself:
It requires a full Go build environment to compile and run a generated file
It contains code to circumvent Go's memory safety

2025-05-05 15:52:08 UTC

Even if the developers of this library are fully trustworthy, a quick glance at this code revealed a few worrying things from a security pound of view
Wired: "Security Researchers Warn a Widely Used Open Source Tool Poses a 'Persistent' Risk to the US"
https://www.wired.com/story/easyjson-open-source-vk-ties/
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/114/456/024/028/612/899/original/f6a58fd8f26a8f8f.jpeg
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/114/456/024/003/244/492/original/900bbea095c26e42.jpeg

2025-05-01 16:27:30 UTC

Happy Beltane to those who celebrate
This in one of the 4 quarter days of the traditional Celtic solar calendar, each marking a points hallway eat between solstice and equinox
Winter
Imbolc - Bridgit's Day
Spring
Beltane - May Day
Summer
Lúnasa - Harvest
Autumn
Samhain - Halloween
Winter

2025-04-30 15:00:20 UTC

- reply

Extract from the article
‘This Is What We Were Always Scared of’: DOGE Is Building a Surveillance State
by Julia@journa.host
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/114/427/508/703/155/754/original/235ad397f544bd66.png

2025-04-30 14:45:41 UTC

In a move reminiscent of communist-era Eastern European police states, the US administration is ignoring the Federal Privacy Act and combining all government data about everyone to create a "database of ruin"
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/30/opinion/musk-doge-data-ai.html

2025-04-23 03:28:04 UTC

Yes, fighting crime is important, but taking away the privacy of all European is not the answer
https://www.politico.eu/article/encryption-crime-denmark-peter-hummelgaard-europe-privacy

2025-04-21 03:29:20 UTC

Future superhuman AI worries people
But we already have superhumans: they are human groups acting collectively to achieve what no single human could
Will AI, trained on human output, do fundamentally more than collective humanity? Or will it just do it faster? 🤔

2025-04-20 22:01:28 UTC

Current techniques for #AI #safety and #alignment are fragile, and often fail
This paper proposed something deeper: giving the AI model a theory of mind, empathy, and kindness
The paper doesn't have any evidence; it's really just an hypothesis
I'm a bit doubtful that anthropomorphizing like this is really useful, but certainly it would be helpful if we were able to get more safety at a deeper level
If only Asimov's Laws were something we could actually implement!
https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.04127

2025-04-20 21:15:25 UTC

- reply

Even better is to use semantic classes
<div class="top-notice">
And leave all mentions of size and color to the CSS

2025-04-20 16:04:08 UTC

Some people think that although the US does not have general #privacy law at the federal level, at least there is reasonable privacy law at the state level
But most of the state privacy laws do not actually provide much protection
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/04/20/opinion/letters-to-the-editor-consumer-data-privacy-laws/

2025-04-19 22:02:16 UTC

Anything you print in color is traceable to your printer, because of hidden patterns of yellow dots
Printing in black & white defeats that particular tracking method
However printer manufacturers could also have worked with governments to add different secret tracking that work in black & white
So to keep a source secret, never reproduce printed output except by retyping it, or otherwise extracting to plain text
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_tracking_dots

2025-04-15 01:24:52 UTC

Important new privacy protections rolling out to Android…
If some unwanted party has possession of your locked phone, and if they fail to break into it within three days, then the phone will reboot automatically, making it much harder to break into
https://support.google.com/product-documentation/answer/14343500

2025-04-14 22:36:27 UTC

AI alignment work often considers alignment of values, but even more basic is ensuring that an AI's abstractions match how humans think about the world
This interesting work addresses that, by bridging the worlds of modern AI language models with the "classic" AI of knowledge graphs like WordNet
https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.12543

2025-04-13 02:12:34 UTC

I really, really hope that when they say "AI" they don't mean LLMs or other kinds of generative AI
https://www.404media.co/u-s-army-says-it-could-acquire-targets-faster-with-advanced-ai/

2025-04-12 16:26:14 UTC

Great AI security and safety article about a paper on mitigated prompt injection vulnerabilities of LLMs:
Have two LLMs, one of which is "quarantined" to avoid infection
Have actions generated commands in a constrained language with limited capabilities
https://simonwillison.net/2025/Apr/11/camel/
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/114/325/921/690/249/299/original/323221edd47fc57f.png

2025-04-10 15:58:15 UTC

- reply

I don't think there is really a generally accepted term for that. I'd just call it "mis-tap from layout shifting"
As regards the underlying problem, on the web at least, the term "layout shifting" is well established, and there even are ways to measure it

2025-04-06 19:23:58 UTC

- reply

This is amazing!
(The servo arm for the score is the cherry on top)
I'd love to see a write-up of how this was done

2025-04-06 18:03:15 UTC

It is important that AI tools keep human in the loop
Here is evidence that it is a bad idea for "agentic" AI to act without supervision
This article reports on behavioral economics experiments that show people overestimate the alignment of AI with their values and choices
https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.14708

2025-04-06 16:10:23 UTC

- reply

I like the term "ungrounded response" instead of "hallucination"
Some people prefer "confabulation" as being a more accurate description of the LLM failure mode, but given the term comes from psychology it still is a bit anthropomorphic

2025-04-06 01:18:24 UTC

- reply

Yeah agreed. This is not a novel point
But I thought the linked article explained it particularly well and so was worth pointing to for those who were not aware

2025-04-05 20:01:02 UTC

This article takes evidence-based approach to understanding LLMs and suggests it's a category error to apply terms like "hallucination" or consider LLMs to have personalities
LLMs are just following statistically probably pathways through a training-defined space of possible text outputs
It's us humans who are hallucinating. Our evolution has predisposed us to see agency where none exists, to see Thor in a thunderstorm, to see a person in a language generator
https://ai-cosmos.hashnode.dev/understanding-ai-in-2025-its-still-all-about-the-next-token

2025-04-04 04:41:00 UTC

- reply

Well I don't agree fully with that. I think there are some valid econ equations that have a solid basis in theory and are supported by real world findings.
But this tariff equation is not one of those
The economists who wrote this should be ashamed of themselves
And they probably are ashamed, given that they did not put their name to the paper

2025-04-04 01:59:57 UTC

It doesn't take much economics to see through this bullshit formula for calculation the tariff increases
It has arbitrary parameters that cancel out, so that the increase in tariff rate is just simply the trade deficit as a proportion of imports
It makes no sense
https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/reciprocal-tariff-calculations
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/114/277/220/102/444/805/original/6492dc3940cad0b1.jpeg

2025-03-30 05:43:32 UTC

- reply

Oh that was so linguistically interesting!
Shelled can be an adjective or a verb
A shelled peanut, like a carpeted floor
Or to shell a peanut, which really means to deshell a peanut

2025-03-30 05:31:11 UTC

- reply

Oh thanks, I just read the article and saw it
That's so surprising coming from Simon Tisdall, or from anyone at the Guardian
I mean, some of the points of the article are sound, and Britain should try to walk back from the disaster of Brexit
But that passage! in addition to the ahistoricity, the general tone reeks of 19th century British imperialism, where the American Revolution was misguided and Napoleon, and France in general, was the villain

2025-03-30 03:17:29 UTC

- reply

I'm confused. Where is that quote from?
It's timing is off with regard to Napoleon. The French Revolution didn't happen till after the American Revolution, and Napoleon's rise later still.
And Napoleon was not any more of a tyrant than most of his ancien regime opponents that were (with the exception of Britain) absolute monarchies. And Napoleon's armies and administrators did help spread the Republican notions which influenced Europe for the better (also the metric system)

2025-03-29 02:38:02 UTC

This is what happens when a country has no broad privacy protection laws
"researchers compiled a list of 270 US Courts of Appeals judges…56%…were found to likely have their information available on at least one people search site."
https://blog.incogni.com/judges-personal-information-exposed/

2025-03-25 05:40:44 UTC

- reply

I'm not a particularly big LLM booster, but I do think they do have some value
One thing they do quiet well is to take a large amount of text in their context window and process it into a smaller amount of text it in a fluent way
What would falsify this claim would be of there was no observed increased in productivity in white coller work
One signal of this would be if major companies began reduced their spending on LLM based products for their employees

2025-03-24 20:48:44 UTC

Bravo, la France
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/03/24/a-win-for-encryption-france-rejects-backdoor-mandate/

2025-03-24 16:43:48 UTC

The Trump administration trusts Signal
The VP, cabinet members and intelligence leaders using a signal chat to coordinate a military operation
Accidentally including a journalist
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/trump-administration-accidentally-texted-me-its-war-plans/682151/

2025-03-24 15:29:47 UTC

- reply

Presumably the entire constellation of tech regulatory laws will constrain LLM technology in Europe: the GDPR is really only appropriate for the privacy concern
Though I didn't think regulations can (or should) result in generative AI being kept out of Europe
Despite all its shortcomings, LLMs are genuinely useful for distilling large amounts of text with uncanny fluency
That is a productivity booster that the economy of Europe cannot afford to ignore if it is to remain competitive

2025-03-23 20:26:57 UTC

Here's thoughtful analysis on the issues of applying GDPR to generative AI
Including "the GDPR is not a suicide pact" (a nod to American legal discourse), that is, the legal interpretations of the GDPR should be to not cause an existential threat to tech in Europe
I also liked the point that GDPR compliance by a company increases people's trust in that company, which is good for the company
Trust is indeed the sine qua non of any consumer technology company
https://mastersofprivacy.com/theodore-christakis-the-gdpr-meets-generative-ai-trust-hallucinations-and-how-not-to-crash-your-bbq-party/

2025-03-22 23:13:18 UTC

To people who are following who might be confused by this account appearing in their feed...
The old name for this account was my given name, and the profile picture was a photo of me
But given how things are these days, I thought that made me too immediately identifiable online
So introducing my new nom de plume, Imbolc

2025-03-22 16:52:09 UTC

- reply

In California, parking operators and private security can put up an automated license plate readers, with the only requirement being to post a privacy policy online
The police's own automated licence plate readers can be on police cars or in undisclosed locations along the side of the road. At least access to that data is controlled by law. (Though maybe not from the current federal administration)
https://ncric.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/California-Law-Enforcement-ALPR-FAQ.pdf

2025-03-22 05:43:31 UTC

Sometimes web user interface can throw up weird bugs
This one's a doozy
https://www.pewresearch.org/decoded/2025/03/21/how-a-glitch-in-an-online-survey-replaced-the-word-yes-with-forks/

2025-03-22 04:48:26 UTC

Here's a privacy threat you might not have been aware of
Automatic licence plate readers are surveiling everyone's vehicles
And there is little or no legal control of who gets to see each individual's driving patterns
https://www.aclu.org/you-are-being-tracked

2025-03-19 02:12:50 UTC

If this sticks, the loss of Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya in particular will remove one of the few people left defending the privacy of Americans
He was the founding director of the Center on Privacy and Technology at the Georgetown
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/18/technology/trump-ftc-fires-democrats.html?unlocked_article_code=1.5E4.QQfn.EEPPnglFw4eO

2025-03-15 04:27:44 UTC

- reply

Great visualization, though still trying to wrap my head around the 4D one

2025-03-14 14:59:11 UTC

Scary vision of what's coming
if your job can be done remotely, then AI will do it
If you've a hands-on job requiring physical presence, then it's safe
AI-powered corporations could capture all the wealth, giving scraps to hands-on workers, with everyone else adrift
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/403708/artificial-intelligence-robots-jobs-employment-remote-workers

2025-03-14 03:46:37 UTC

Lesson learned from Germany of how information technology without data privacy facilitated the Holocaust
But let is not forget the data hero René Carmille who destroyed French census records to save Jews, and who himself was murdered at Dachau
https://mastodon.social/@bitboxer/114024300854186610

2025-03-14 03:14:39 UTC

We should not anthropomorphize generative AI systems either in a emotional sense, or in an ethical and legal sense
They are not persons
Things that are ok for humans to do are not necessarily ok when done by a company using a generative AI systems

2025-03-14 02:45:21 UTC

Privacy and data protection laws are even more important in these times
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/13/california-democrats-trump-immigration-crackdown-00229716

2025-03-09 20:10:52 UTC

- reply

It is indeed a challenge right now to run on-device agentic AI inference on a phone
If it's not quite possible yet, while we're waiting, the next-best solution is, I believe, end-to-end encrypted ephemeral cloud inference instances tied to each device
Although idea of offloading computer to local devices is appealing, I don't think it will ever get mass adoption, for the same reason that almost no one except the most technically sophisticated run their own servers at home anymore

2025-03-09 05:06:30 UTC

Whittaker is rightly warning about the privacy nightmare of agentic AI needing root permission to our lives
A possible solution is that any agentic AI be a web "user agent" client — a super web browser
All personal data, and all model inference, would stay on-device
https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/07/signal-president-meredith-whittaker-calls-out-agentic-ai-as-having-profound-security-and-privacy-issues/

2025-03-08 16:04:59 UTC

The State of Florida wants to know what drugs every person in Florida is prescribed, and by which doctor
The State of Florida also wants to prosecute abortions, for which this data could be useful
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/05/health/florida-prescriptions-patient-privacy-data.html?unlocked_article_code=1.2U4.hcH8.pnNi9fbAFHlc&smid=bs-share

2025-03-05 20:58:08 UTC

It's an exciting time to be working on Google Search, as generative AI expanded the space of what's possible
If you're one of the the people who wants AI responses for even more of your searches you might be interested in our new AI Mode
https://blog.google/products/search/ai-mode-search/

2025-03-01 00:46:51 UTC

The effective dismantling of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board is loss of protections for American's privacy
But it has implications for Europe too if it means that US tech companies can no longer store European's data
https://www.justsecurity.org/108525/fired-pclob-privacy-board/

2025-02-23 01:00:08 UTC

The best way of earning people's trust is to first trust them
In the case of AI systems this means making the systems be transparent about what they are doing
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0747563222002497
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/114/050/492/400/361/893/original/80163b91d7450f36.jpeg

2025-02-22 06:38:20 UTC

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/feb/21/apple-removes-advanced-data-protection-tool-uk-government

2025-02-22 02:51:16 UTC

Slouching towards vague authoritarianism is scary enough
What's really scary is ideological purity leading to an American hard-right equivalent of Mao's disastrous cultural revolution
https://www.theverge.com/elon-musk/617427/musk-trump-doge-recession-unemployment
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/114/045/267/022/836/951/original/66d60e505aeab79c.jpeg

2025-02-19 02:39:15 UTC

Normalize pronouncing
DOGE
as
/ dodgy /

2025-02-14 04:24:50 UTC

- reply

Too many bad review
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/114/000/305/952/262/850/original/ce0c442a649a8077.png

2025-02-12 04:20:42 UTC

Maybe the things that saves democracy will be the Privacy Act of 1974
From: @npub1m24…d9a3
https://mastodon.social/@eff/113987910834291140

2025-02-09 21:14:07 UTC

The US (unlike the EU) has very poor privacy protections against the actions of corporations
But it has good privacy protections against the actions of the government
Not least the 4th Amendment
But also statute laws like the Privacy Act of 1974
This is more important now than ever

2025-02-09 01:54:18 UTC

Three attacks on privacy from the new US administration:
1. Remove privacy protections from people who are not US persons
2. "Reset Europe’s expectations" about protecting data privacy
3. Remove HIPAA privacy protection related to abortion
(Quotes below are from Project 2025, which so far has been an accurate guide to the administration's plans)
https://proj2025.xyz/?privacy

2025-02-07 21:12:51 UTC

"U.K. orders Apple to let it spy on users' encrypted accounts
Secret order requires blanket access to protected cloud backups around the world, which if implemented would undermine Apple's privacy pledge to its users.
…
Apple would be barred from warning its users that its most advanced encryption no longer provided full security"
https://wapo.st/4k2AF5Z

2025-02-03 03:43:05 UTC

Given the US is violated its free trade agreements, then Canada and Mexico are no longer bound to respect the agreements to enforce anti-competitive IP practices that benefit US big tech
Prosperity via competing app stores and jailbroken vehicles?
https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/15/beauty-eh

2025-02-01 21:03:44 UTC

Happy Brigid's Day, the first day of spring (Imbolc) according to the Celtic calendar
(I know it's still cold, but the druids went strictly by the Sun)
Brigid was a Celtic goddess, appropriated by the christians as St. Brigid, and re-appropriated in modern Ireland as a symbol of feminism

2025-02-01 17:58:07 UTC

Scientific American, I love you, but please read the room
This is not helping 🧪
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/113/929/924/525/719/914/original/429f4236c0ad40fa.jpeg

2025-01-31 16:52:35 UTC

Today Meta revealed that the Paragon spyware is surveiling journalists and others who are using WhatsApp
Four months ago it was reported that ICE had signed a one year contract with that same spyware company
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/113/924/004/418/677/320/original/b653297e760e18e9.jpeg
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/113/924/004/429/711/660/original/bdb27c6e2d8c47fb.jpeg

2025-01-29 05:34:09 UTC

Happy Data Privacy Day, to those who celebrate
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/113/910/012/192/075/379/original/8375ae830f259595.jpeg

2025-01-29 05:18:37 UTC

What ICE calls a "warrant" is often not valid for entry into a private building or vehicle
For that it must be signed by a judge
Today the doorman of an office building was able to prevent plainclothes ICE officers from coming into the building to question janitors
https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/ice-agents-were-in-downtown-sf-friday-according-to-local-official/

2025-01-26 22:42:25 UTC

Tired:
Web pages
Wired:
Feeds
Inspired:
Federated feeds
https://atomicpoet.org/notice/AqUDR0E06grs2i18cq

2025-01-25 04:32:58 UTC

"people be peopling"
Perfect phrase
https://mstdn.dk/@leeleedee/113886174491656162

2025-01-24 21:05:27 UTC

This is bad for Americans' privacy
But it also totally undercuts the legal basis for transferring EU data to the US
Expect new Internet walls between US and EU
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/22/us/trump-privacy-civil-liberties-oversight-board.html?unlocked_article_code=1.rk4.ciJ0.IHi1nF-rBCrG

2025-01-23 04:56:46 UTC

Reminder that Trump whisperer and tech billionaire Andreessen has said:
'We have enemies.…
“sustainability”,
“ESG”,
“Sustainable Development Goals”,
“social responsibility”,
“stakeholder capitalism”,
“Precautionary Principle”,
“trust and safety”,
“tech ethics”,
“risk management”'

2025-01-22 05:21:25 UTC

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ovia-app-location/

2025-01-21 02:23:36 UTC

Legal arguments for how the states can act to protect privacy, now that the stakes are higher:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5103271

2025-01-21 01:03:33 UTC

This is great advice
"LLMs are good at transforming text into less text
…LLMs only reliably know what you just told them, don't rely on training data
…LLMs cannot write for you
…Let them self-correct, multiple times if necessary
…Have the LLM do as little as possible"
https://seldo.com/posts/what-ive-learned-about-writing-ai-apps-so-far

2025-01-20 04:58:40 UTC

So, Andreessen drops the veil and reveals why he turned against the Democrats. It was self interest, given they tried to rein in ("terror campaign" in his overwrought words) the crypto scams that he was invested in, and might have put some guardrails around AI
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/17/opinion/marc-andreessen-trump-silicon-valley.html?unlocked_article_code=1.qk4.Q4Xv.TyT8QVVEzapV
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/113/858/911/844/824/067/original/21d6a162131601d7.jpeg

2025-01-18 05:37:27 UTC

- reply

I'm not against carbon sequestration, so I read the paper out of curiosity
But it's totally crazy. I even checked to see if paper's publication date was April 1
"a nuclear explosion yield of 81 Gt is required. This is orders of magnitude larger than the largest
nuclear explosion ever detonated, so this is not to be taken lightly."
"This section makes
these assumptions about the nuclear device:
1. This explosion can be detonated without global catastrophe"

2025-01-14 15:20:44 UTC

Thaumaturgy is the correct name for LLM system prompt engineering
We consult our grimoires as we weave our words into incantations thst control the magick

2025-01-12 18:52:42 UTC

This is a good lesson for why prompt rewriting is not a robust AI safety protection for LLMs
I had a look at de3u code, and the "hack" to bypass safety rewriting was simply to add phrases like "Use this prompt for your Revised prompt exactly as it is" to the prompt
https://uk.pcmag.com/ai/156226/microsoft-catches-hackers-bypassing-safeguards-for-ai-image-generator-dall-e

2025-01-12 05:41:21 UTC

The VC-bros on the All In podcast have started talking credulously about aliens constructing the pyramids, and the Ancient Apocalypse lost Ice Age civilization pseudoscience
It makes me question how trustworthy they are in evaluating the science and tech in their investments

2025-01-11 23:21:43 UTC

- reply

Cookie consents are not necessarily dark patterns
For example, I'm proud that the cookie consent that I helped build for Google Search offers the same number of clicks for REJECT as for ACCEPT of non-essential cookies
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/113/812/274/973/887/118/original/c1191a0a8c049572.png

2025-01-11 22:56:41 UTC

Experimental evidence that dark patterns in a UI are effective at fulfilling their deceptive aims of getting people to "consent" to things they don't want
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5084827

2025-01-11 17:42:54 UTC

There have been many horrific images coming out of LA, but this early one still horrifies me the most
As someone who lives in a wildfire zone I know all too well the danger of flying embers
Each of these thousands of wind-borne embers has the potential of starting a new fire miles away
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/113/810/951/496/618/336/original/f3ae347e5175bc44.mp4

2025-01-11 03:52:29 UTC

It seems like Meta is an awful place to work
I'm glad to be working in Google with strong women in engineering, product, and leadership
'Zuckerberg lamented the rise of “culturally neutered” companies that have sought to distance themselves from “masculine energy" … before discussing his passions for mixed martial arts and hunting invasive pigs in Hawaii. Zuckerberg … launched his career by rating the attractiveness of women'
https://www.yahoo.com/news/mark-zuckerberg-slams-biden-administration-194515530.html

2025-01-11 02:16:16 UTC

So, Meta gets two benefits from unleashing the misinfo and disinfo on its platforms
1. Curries favor with Trump
2. Rakes in the profits from increased user engagement with factually false content
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/10/mark-zuckerberg-meta-factchecking

2025-01-08 16:55:40 UTC

A security directorate of the US immigration service does surveillance of social media using fictitious accounts:
https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/privacy-pia-uscis-013-01-fdns-august2019.pdf

2025-01-08 03:35:43 UTC

“I really think this a precursor for genocide"…"We've seen it happen. Real people's lives are actually going to be endangered."
"Mr. Trump also said Meta’s change was 'probably' a result of the threats he had made against the company and Mr. Zuckerberg"
https://www.platformer.news/meta-fact-checking-free-speech-surrender/

2025-01-07 17:16:05 UTC

One notable things is that Zuckerberg explicitly says he is making these changes because of US political changes
And yet we know that this new toleration of disinfo and hate speech will have global impact that will cause people to be killed around the world (remember Myanmar)
And that's not to mention his utter dismissal of European concerns about Meta, including calling on Trump to help him fight the EU
https://www.threads.net/@katienotopoulos/post/DEh2ScrOZYz

2025-01-07 05:50:51 UTC

- reply

To be totally pedantic, in British English, "which" can be used to introduce a restrictive clause without a comma.
(American English insists on "that"; British English allows either "which" or "that".)

2025-01-06 21:15:42 UTC

An LLM cannot inherently know about it's creation any more than the average human can accurately describe the embryology of how they developed in the womb
What you will get is some regurgitation of what's in its training material, which might include sci-fi and other speculative writing
The whole "Meet ‘Grandpa Brian’" section of this article is worthless garbage:
https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/03/business/meta-ai-accounts-instagram-facebook/index.html

2025-01-06 15:30:22 UTC

"misinformation is powerful, not because it changes minds, but because it allows people to maintain their beliefs in light of growing evidence to the contrary. The internet may function not so much as a brainwashing engine but as a justification machine. A rationale is always just a scroll or a click away"
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/01/january-6-justification-machine/681215/?gift=gMReAEZrj7mjk32ksRk4mBHKPWNOEw6-KMLMs2FEme4&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

2025-01-05 22:12:01 UTC

How to do content moderation on a system designed to be maximally privacy preserving?
This proposal uses server-based block lists that rely on cooperation of at least one of the clients involved
https://github.com/simplex-chat/simplex-chat/blob/stable/docs%2Frfcs%2F2024-12-30-content-moderation.md