A reminder for anyone working on a tech platform Make sure you consider this privacy threat model: Your server data could be subpoenaed by forced-birth zealots in the red states so they can prosecute those who arrange travel for women to a state where abortion is legal

AP News

Alabama's attorney general says the state can prosecute those who help women travel for abortions

Alabama’s attorney general argued in a court filing that the state has the authority to bring conspiracy charges against groups who help women tr...

Some really interesting insights in this paper looking at "hallucination" in LLMs: Creativity and hallucination are really the same kind of emergent behavior, differently named only based on whether they are desirable or not https://medium.com/@sayandev.mukherjee/hallucinations-and-emergence-in-large-language-models-b54952a17972 Both creativity and hallucination are caused by training with such vast amounts of data that there are long-distance connections in the underlying "consent space" which make all concepts be directly linked to all other concepts They can be avoided by limiting such long distance connections during the LLM training, so that each concept is only linked to concepts to which it has a reasonable close semantic connection

Maybe we can get people to care about the climate crisis of they hear that it will effect their sex life Article in French about how most sex in France historically happens in summer (with a note on "summer penis") but maybe not any more given the heat waves

Science et vie

La hausse des températures a-t-elle une incidence sur notre vie sexuelle ?

Le soleil et la chaleur ont-ils un impact sur notre vie sexuelle ? Selon la science, c'est oui, dans une certaine mesure !

Stalkerware is unethical for its intended purpose, often part of domestic abuse It also leaves data vulnerable to hackers, e.g. in this story by @zackwhittaker@mastodon.social They posed as anti-stalkerware vigilantes, but they still have data of vulnerable people

TechCrunch

A Brazilian phone spyware was hacked and victims’ devices 'deleted' from server | TechCrunch

The Portuguese-language spyware app has been used to compromise over 76,000 devices to date, the leaked data shows.

Quelqu'un qui connaît le processus législatif français sait-il si ce projet de loi très problématique est susceptible de devenir loi? Il oblige les navigateurs Web à effectuer un blocage contrôlé par le gouvernement

Open Policy & Advocacy

La proposition française de bloquer les sites web via le navigateur nuira gravement à l’internet ouvert mondial – Open Policy & Advocacy

Dans une tentative louable, mais périlleuse de lutter contre la fraude en ligne, la France s’apprête à obliger les créateurs de navigateurs �...

Does anyone familiar with the French legislative process know whether this very problematic bill is likely to become law? It mandates government-controlled blocking by web browsers

Open Policy & Advocacy

France’s browser-based website blocking proposal will set a disastrous precedent for the open internet – Open Policy & Advocacy

Article 6 (para II and III) of the SREN Bill would force providers to create the means to mandatorily block websites on a government provided list ...

Logarithmic distance

Pablo Carlos Budassi

Home - Pablo Carlos Budassi

'Every person’s map of the world is as unique as the pattern of their iris.'

Trump's ad: "Look at who's persecuting me, and in case you racists missed the point, note there are three black faces there" Me: "That looks like a great model for a new Mt. Rushmore monument"

Love this visualization, where you can enter a city name and see where it was in different geological eras

Ancient Earth

Earth looked very different long ago. Search for addresses across 750 million years of Earth

With increased restrictions on the Internet, including banning of Tor and other VPNs, Jordan is consolidating its position as "not free" on freedom rankings The king ignored calls to scrap the law And this is a US ally!

Human Rights Watch

Jordan: Scrap Draconian Cybercrimes Bill

Human Rights Watch joined Access Now, Article ARTICLE 19, and 10 11 other organizations on July 24, 2023, in urging the Jordanian government to wit...

This is weird A simple Newtonian system of a ball rolling on a dome can in theory have events with no cause It seems pretty esoteric, but this explanation makes it more clear by considering time reversal

The Dome

Is Singapore the Peoria of the world? In the Vaudeville era "Will it play in Peoria?" was asked to question where a show had universal appeal What is the equivalent for the world? According to The Inglehart-Welzel Cultural Map it looks like Singapore is the most average country in the world, with Chile, Greece, and South Africa not far behind Maybe that is where you should be testing your products!

It's nice when someone notices when we make progress towards making privacy controls easier to find and use on Google Search

Android Police

Google is unburying privacy and terms in Search

Google is making privacy and terms more discoverable on Search pages

Coit Tower Lasers

RIP Jane Birkin whose song "Je t'aime... moi non plus" inspired a generation of horny Irish teenagers to learn French

This is the coldest summer of the rest of your life It will only get hotter Climate change is real

Hofstadter weighs in with a blistering critique of LLMs, by way of a close reading of GPT-4 text purporting to emulate himself

The Atlantic

Gödel, Escher, Bach, and AI

A dazzlingly fast chatbot cannot replace the authentic and reflective voice of a thinking, living human being.

A #privacy concern you probably hadn't thought of...

TechCrunch

Police want robotaxi video footage to help solve crimes | TechCrunch

Police have asked Waymo and Cruise for video evidence from self-driving cars to help solve crimes. What does that mean for surveillance?

One of the things keeping me busy in work ... (Speaking just for myself, I think DMA is a good law. And I particularly like that it mostly applies to large companies, avoiding GDPR's flaw of putting burden on small organizations with the least capacity to respond.)

The Verge

Seven big tech companies say they’re platform gatekeepers under EU law

TikTok’s parent company joins Apple, Google and others on the list

The Verge

Seven big tech companies say they’re platform gatekeepers under EU law

TikTok’s parent company joins Apple, Google and others on the list

The temperature in the shade here in the Napa Valley is 38⁰C (101⁰F) But the radiant heat from our driveway is an astounding 67⁰C (152⁰F) That's the temperature for a medium-well done steak!