technology

maybe fewer people are falling for this crap than the press would have you believe

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/dating-coaches-online-pushing-traditional-gender-roles-rcna143464

Simmons, the researcher, said these influencers are selling a lifestyle that offers a tantalizing alternative for women aiming to escape a life of dead-end 9-to-5s, especially in what they see as a bleak economic climate. And many are tapping into their resentment against a brand of feminism that hasn’t felt inclusive, or that simply hasn’t fulfilled its promise.

“But I’m not sure that turning yourself into a project to seduce a man is empowering at all,” Simmons said. “It just provides a kind of quick and easy solution to a few women, but it doesn’t liberate women as a whole.”

mmm... if only there was a political project that liberates men and women together as a whole, instead of just few. Oh, well.

Obviously done so Elon looks like less of a hypocrite in his quixotic OpenAI lawsuit. However, it is notable in that it's the largest LLM to date with open and commercially licensed weights (314B params). It's way too large for any consumer to actually run, but having direct access to a model this big may benefit researchers looking into safety and bias in AI.

My phone barely manages to load the site. Pages crash and when they do load it's around 10-15 seconds. Pretty much all newer js-dependant websites are like this for me. I simply don't use most newer websites on my phone. Maybe eventually I'll buy a new phone, but things work fine on my laptop so I mostly use that and having a phone from this decade is bourgeois decadence.

A while back I thought maybe I should take a crack at writing a fast and simple read-only frontend that I can use on my phone similar I guess to nitter, invidious, bibliogram, etc.

So I went ahead and did just that: https://diethex.net

Hilariously, I actually wound up doing this TWICE. The first time I finished it up last June and then the site migrated to lemmy v3 so I had to rewrite almost everything which I just now got around to this month. Here's the code in case anyone wants to read it: https://git.sr.ht/~kota/hex

When a page is requested all of its data (comments, posts, etc) are cached for the next 20 minutes which dramatically reduces requests to the actual website when you're browsing around. Also every page is statically generated from simple html templates on the server; so javascript isn't required. I wound up adding a tiiiny bit of optional js to allow opening and closing comments. So you can swipe to the left on a phone to close a comment.

If hexbear is already fast for you then there's no point in using this, but figured I'd say something in case there's anyone else with my issues.

From the article:

What's really gross is the next part. Clicking "Yes" installs the Bing Chrome extension as well as changing the default search provider, and Chrome alerts the user in another dialog box that something potentially malicious is trying to update their settings. Google's browser recommends you click on a "Change it back" button to undo the tweak.

But Redmond is one step ahead, displaying a message underneath Chrome's alert that reads: "Wait – don't change it back! If you do, you’ll turn off Microsoft Bing Search for Chrome and lose access to Bing AI with GPT-4 and DALL-E 3."

Feels a little odd putting this under "technology"

Liberia, Benin, Ghana and Burkina Faso were heavily affected, according to data from Netblocks, which monitors cybersecurity and the governance of the internet.

The internet infrastructure company Cloudflare said in a post on X that major internet disruption was continuing in the Gambia, Guinea, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Benin and Niger.

Namibia and Lesotho were also affected.

“There seems to be a pattern in the timing of the disruptions, impacting from the north to the south of Africa,” Cloudflare Radar said.

ai is gonna like take over the world everybody. just wait for agi bro I'm telling ya dog.

Shown is a man, woman, girl family, but every 2 adult 1 child family now shows the same, with similar icons for the other numbers of each.

Actually it looks like Google still represents women and girls in the new ugly icons, but man and person (gender neutral) show up the same as do boy and child (gender neutral).

This is literally no steps forward, many steps back. Especially for Apple, wiping out both sexual orientation and gender representation. And Google conflating male and gender neutral is pretty bad too. I see no good reason for this change, not even a profit-motivated reason. I think it might have something to do with representing race. i.e. a silhouette is more race neutral than yellow. But they could just support mixed race families instead.

Microsoft on the other hand supports all the possible family combinations of both gender and skin tone, which Apple and Google never supported. Here's the built in Windows 11 tool to make a family. Each person's gender and skin tone can be changed.

Tangent: on the other hand, Microsoft refuses to support country flag emojis for some reason which is annoying.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2061061

I was a little skeptical about Ibis, mainly for practical/technical reasons, not philosophical differences (link).

But something today really changed my mind as to the necessity of figuring out those practical/technical hurdles... I discovered that Wikipedia has widely cited associated site "WikiSource" as its only source for the contents of Salvador Allende's final speech before his death, and now that widely referenced page has been deleted from the site, for "Copyright violation", despite the fact that it almost certainly wasn't, and even if it were, no person in their right mind would ever claim it as such. On the wikipedia side, there's been no updates to the many references to that page, and on the WikiSource side, no serious discussion on the implications of just nuking that highly relevant to the public interest speech from their site, and no coordination between the two.

They cite some Chilean copyright law, copied from the spanish language WikiSource, but then somehow come to the opposite conclusion that the esWS people did! This was a user-submitted english translation too, so they threw out all of that user's work over a speculative claim by some friggin internet janitor and didn't think that might be relevant. And none of this would have ever come up if they didn't try to become their own source, rather than citing independent websites and other sources... So. Fucking. Stupid.

And this is after they had the EXACT same discussion 10-12 years ago. It was deleted, and then later restored, based on the EXACT same line of chilean law. But someone decided it was time for a revisit a few months back and now all the links to it are dead again. Just in case, idk, the family of salvador allende decides to sue wikipedia? fat fucking chance

Also to add insult to injury, the first line of their "Copyright Discussions" page is as follows:

This page hosts discussions on works that may violate Wikisource's copyright policy. All arguments should be based entirely on U.S. copyright law.

I get that due to treaties chilean law is probably relevant here but this is all just a wank-off between Um Actually moderators so it still made me rage a little

Anyhow thankfully archive.org aren't such dweebs and I can share with you here the contents of the speech:

Speech:

Surely this will be the last opportunity for me to address you. The Air Force has bombed the antennas of Radio Portales and Radio Corporación.

My words do not have bitterness but disappointment. May they be a moral punishment for those who have betrayed their oath: soldiers of Chile, titular commanders in chief, Admiral Merino, who has designated himself Commander of the Navy, and Mr. Mendoza, the despicable general who only yesterday pledged his fidelity and loyalty to the Government, and who also has appointed himself Chief of the Carabineros [national police].

Given these facts, the only thing left for me is to say to workers: I'm not going to resign! Placed in a historic transition, I will pay for the loyalty of the people with my life. And I say to them that I am certain that the seeds which we have planted in the good conscience of thousands and thousands of Chileans will not be shriveled forever.

They have force and will be able to dominate us, but social processes can be arrested by neither crime nor force. History is ours, and the people make history.

Workers of my country: I want to thank you for the loyalty that you always had, the confidence that you deposited in a man who was only an interpreter of great yearnings for justice, who gave his word that he would respect the Constitution and the law and did just that. At this definitive moment, the last moment when I can address you, I wish you to take advantage of the lesson: foreign capital, imperialism, together with the reaction, created the climate in which the Armed Forces broke their tradition, the tradition taught by General Schneider and reaffirmed by Commander Araya, victims of the same social sector who today are hoping, with foreign assistance, to re-conquer the power to continue defending their profits and their privileges.

I address you, above all, the modest woman of our land, the countrywoman who believed in us, the mother who knew our concern for children. I address professionals of Chile, patriotic professionals who continued working against the sedition that was supported by professional associations, classist associations that also defended the advantages of capitalist society. I address the youth, those who sang and gave us their joy and their spirit of struggle. I address the man of Chile, the worker, the farmer, the intellectual, those who will be persecuted, because in our country fascism has been already present for many hours -- in terrorist attacks, blowing up the bridges, cutting the railroad tracks, destroying the oil and gas pipelines, in the face of the silence of those who had the obligation to act. They were committed. History will judge them.

Surely Radio Magallanes will be silenced, and the calm metal of my voice will no longer reach you. It does not matter. You will continue hearing it. I will always be next to you. At least my memory will be that of a man of dignity who was loyal to his country.

The people must defend themselves, but they must not sacrifice themselves. The people must not let themselves be destroyed or riddled with bullets, but they cannot be humiliated either.

Workers of my country, I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Other men will overcome this dark and bitter moment when treason seeks to prevail. Go forward knowing that, sooner rather than later, the great avenues will open again and free men will walk through them to construct a better society.

Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers!

These are my last words, and I am certain that my sacrifice will not be in vain. I am certain that, at the very least, it will be a moral lesson that will punish felony, cowardice, and treason.

Santiago de Chile, 11 September 1973

I know this is far from the worst thing Wikipedia has ever done, but it really got to me, and I feel an organization with its priorities in order would never behave this way. And in a federated system, not only could I use an instance with its priorities in better order, but also other sites would have likely mirrored the content.

Has anyone had luck using 3rd party Toner with their Brother printer in the last year? I know the firmware has changed in the last few years to prevent this, but I am wondering if 3rd party manufacturers have managed to circumvent the firmware changes.

I'm debugging email on my webserver and this has been most enlightening. Apparently the Sun Protection Factor of the server is significant somehow.

Lol

Doomsday cults can never admit when they are wrong. Instead, they double down. We failed to make artificial intelligence so we pivoted to artificial life. We failed to make artificial life so now we’re trying to program the messiah.

https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/us-billionaire-drowns-tesla-after-rescuers-struggle-cars-strengthened-glass-1723876

https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/saudi-humanoid-robot-gropes

https://www.cnn.com/style/vietnam-farms-jack-latham-beggars-honey/index.html