CSS Naked Day
I dag er åbenbart CSS Naked Day. Selvom det har eksisteret siden 2006 har jeg ikke hørt om det før i dag.
The idea behind CSS Naked Day is to promote web standards. Plain and simple. This includes proper use of HTML, semantic markup, a good hierarchy structure, and of course, a good old play on words. In the words of 2006, it’s time to show off your
<body>for what it really is.
Der er selvfølgelig stor opbakning fra min side!
Biodiversitet kan godt betale sig
Diversificering af landbruget har jo tidligere været beskyldt for måske at være nok så positivt for biodiversiteten, men også for at have nogle negative sider - især for ikke at kunne opnå et tilstrækkeligt højt udbytte. Men det vi rent faktisk ser er, at der ikke er noget udbyttetab i landbruget fra de forskellige diversificeringsstrategier - heller ikke når vi inkluderer data fra europæiske storskala-landbrug, lyder det i konklusionen.
Hvad venter vi på?
Konklusionen der referes til er fra denne artikel om et omfattende studie af biodiversitet i landbruget.
Via @anarkitty
Genocide
A few toots hit me hard this morning.
First we have this from @zip:
there's something real fucking dark about how AI is too inaccurate for tracking people around a grocery store so they have humans to make sure every last item is paid for, whereas if your AI is generating targets for a genocide then a serious error rate is perfectly within acceptable parameters.
For context:
The news of yesterday that Amazon had 1000 humans reviewing the outcome of their so called AI powered "Just Walk Out" technology, and is now shutting it down.
Amazon is giving up on the cashier-less "Just Walk Out" technology at its Amazon Fresh grocery stores. The Information reports that new stores will be built without computer-vision-powered surveillance technology, and "the majority" of existing stores will have the tech removed. In the early days, Amazon's ambitions included selling Just Walk Out to other brick-and-mortar stores. The problem was that the technology never really worked.
And the news of today that Israel is heavily relying on AI to identify and locate what they consider Hamas terrorists, with an immense amount of collateral damage.
In an unprecedented move, according to two of the sources, the army also decided during the first weeks of the war that, for every junior Hamas operative that Lavender marked, it was permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians; in the past, the military did not authorize any “collateral damage” during assassinations of low-ranking militants. The sources added that, in the event that the target was a senior Hamas official with the rank of battalion or brigade commander, the army on several occasions authorized the killing of more than 100 civilians in the assassination of a single commander.
It made me think of the 20 year old game called September 12th: A Toy World. In short, the game is about killing terrorists with missiles. But the terrorists walk around a crowded place among civilians. And if you happen to kill any civilians while trying to get rid of the terrorists (which is inevitable), surviving civilians are turned terrorists by your actions.
The game was a comment on The War on Terror back then. Israel seems to have mistaken the message of the game and distorted it into something completely different: If they make sure to kill enough civilians as collateral damage, they will all – eventually – turn into terrorists. And thus make them everyone valid targets.
@Mer__edith tooted while sharing the article about the Israeli AI systems:
I have a lot more to say, but I'll hold it for now and simply wonder aloud...
Which BigTech clouds are the "Lavender" & "Where's Daddy?" AI systems running on? What APIs are they using? Which libraries are they calling?
What work did my former colleagues, did I, did you contribute to that may now be enabling this automated slaughter?
Related to that story as well, @cozymel tooted:
I don't think enough people appreciate that what's happening in Palestine is the future of all police states. Israeli fascists are trying out the technology for other fascists to use elsewhere. If we keep letting them get away with it, sooner or later it will be used on you and me.
This is so true. The USA keeps funding Israel and their war machine, because the conflict is a valuable testbed for modern and next generation warfare.
npm install everything
Evan Boehs and friends set up an experiment to install everything from npm and quickly ran into problems of an unexpected kind when trying to execute it.
Just a few hours after our last package hit the site, the first issue was filed. It acutely explained that we had rendered them incapable of removing their own package, which formerly had zero dependents. We instantly halted our celebrations, and tried to get to the root of the problem.
Ultimately, they ended up being thrown out of npm and GitHub, despite acting in good faith and proactively trying to solve the issues along the way.
GitHub has responded to Laura’s article, saying that the packages have been removed because “We found the project to be in violation of GitHub’s Acceptable Use Policies”, despite never naming a single rule we broke that didn’t involve blatantly false information. They have not, to this day, responded to or even acknowledged our numerous futile attempts to contact them.
A thing I learned from reading this story, is that npm apparently is owned by GitHub – who in turn is owned by Microsoft. I find having such a big part of the infrastructure for most of the web (and open source in general) under the control of Microsoft a bit worrying.
Via @fatrat
Frills' website is personal
Frills shares some of her thoughts about blogging:
But to heck with it. This website is personal. It can and will show my struggles with writing, my incoherence and inconsistency because that is my experience, it will also share my unique and interesting perspective on life because that is also my experience.
Via @cory