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Hallo allemaal, we zijn verhuisd van server. Voorheen kon je ons vinden op social.npo.nl, vanaf vandaag zit Pointer, het journalistieke onderzoeksplatform van KRO-NCRV op mastodon.nl.

Ook hier delen we onze onderzoeken, nieuws en oproepen voor tips, deskundigheid etc. Heb je tips voor iets dat we moeten uitzoeken? Deel je ervaring hier op onze site (pointer.kro-ncrv.nl/deel-jouw-) of schiet ons aan hier op mastodon.

social.npo.nl/@Pointer_kroncrv

Study (N=6K) finds single women are not miserable spinsters. Women may have more social support beyond romantic relationships. Single men are unhappier. Inequitable household labor="more rewards for men & more costs for women in heterosexual partnerships." people.com/single-women-are-ha

Zo geinig.
Al jaren denk ik elke keer als ik de naam van het merk Jean Bâton zie 'Jan Stok'. Want ik houd van versimpelen.

Maar 😬
Ik leerde gisteravond dat de man achter Jean Bâton dus eh, Jan Stok heette 😂

En ik denk terug aan de man van een vriendin van mijn moeder die ook Stok heette. Wim.

Absolutely wild to me that things that didn't exist when I was a kid are now common place:
- wifi that can do 100MB/s
- external gpus that can play AAA games

Technology is so cool and it makes me so sad that it's used to harm so many people all the time.

What are things that excite you?
:boost_requested:

I made a quilted winter cover for the AC in my living room (in lieu of taking it out), and also a very silly joke.

I have seen high school essays that are more comprehensive...

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"A comprehensive guide with examples"

... article has 3 paragraphs and 3 short bits of example code

subtoot, negative, vague 

Every once in a while I am not so subtly reminded that "appears nice and not actively malicious" does not make one an ally or even someone you can count on for minor support against oppression

AI and sentience; Sorry, I'm still on about this 

To sum up, AI needs to be regulated for:

* Enclosure of the digital commons
* De facto colonial torture of human curators of training corpuses
* Environmental impact

The following are just intentional distractions:

* AI sentience and welfare
* AI superintelligence

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prediction, funding, AI, re: google antitrust case, mozilla 

@kescher Actually, let's try to predict the sequence of events in more detail, and I'm curious how close I'll end up being:

Mozilla will do a desperate funding drive, not just asking for donations, but also internally ask around to find investors in their own network. Nobody is willing to invest enough money for activist reasons to keep it afloat. Because of the entrenched structure of the organization, they cannot make it work with smaller offers of investments.

Eventually, a 'friendly' investor shows up who just so happens to be invested in an AI company. The AI company runs a proprietary cloud service, sure, but they've been looking to do better and go against the grain of the industry, and so they wish to partner with Mozilla, on the premise that Mozilla's ethical AI efforts are a good starting point for renewing their product to go in a more ethical direction.

However, their stakeholders need to be kept happy too, so in the short term, they would like for Mozilla to expand their AI offerings with something that integrates with their proprietary, hosted offerings. It will be optional, of course, and it would have a data protection agreement, and wouldn't it be good for the users too? After all, some AI models are just Too Hard to run locally, so for the really difficult things, they could shell out to the hosted service.

And so an integration with that proprietary service appears. There may be a paid plan associated with it, maybe for the more impressive tasks. It's all optional, so you can simply choose not to use it, so it's no problem, right? And in the end, that service will become more ethical due to Mozilla's involvement!

Huh, the AI market is trending down, it seems things are not going well, and investors are getting cagey, so the renewal of their product will have to be delayed to some later, eventual point, and for now they'll have to stick with the existing closed platform. But it's only temporary, and hey, in financially hard times we all need to do our part, right?

It's now three years later. ProprietaryCorp's AI system is still integrated into Firefox, Mozilla is now dependent on their yearly funding, so they can't just remove it. They never really came through with the ethical renewal of their platform, but they're nice people to work with, and nobody wants to rock the boat. Firefox now has a long-term integration with a proprietary hosted AI service that ensures its continued use.

Been doing handheld battery maintenance since last night. All my PSP Streets and PSP Gos were dead so a little overdue. Just the Gos left for PSPs, then on to Vita, then Nintendo.

If you have anything with lithium rechargeable batteries, here's a reminder to check their charge levels occasionally so they don't end up as spicy pillows!

@schratze i can connect my phone to my computer with bluetooth, and send audio from the phone to it

i have a jellyfin instance hosted on that computer, it is accessible through a domain name

the jellyfin instance contains my music collection, i can play it from my phone

through KDE connect i can control the media on my phone with KDE's media controls

isn't symbiosis beautiful :D

It's not safe to turn off your computer. There are enemies nearby.

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google antitrust case, mozilla 

So. What's our contingency plan for Mozilla losing Google's funding again?

Any recommendations for an #Android app for keeping track of taking medicines/vitamins? Reminders etc.?

I used MediSafe for years, but they've enshittified it, now wanting 50€/yr to keep track of 3+ medicines/vitamins.🙄
play.google.com/store/apps/det

Huh. One of the last non-electrified rail lines in the Netherlands (the Maaslijn) is finally getting electrified!

I see so many adults and professionals talking about how they are using LLMs to deepen their understanding of things, but I think this ultimately dives headlong into the “Gell-Mann amnesia” effect — these people think they are learning, but it only feels that way because there are ignorant enough about the topic they're interested in to not detect that they are being fed utter bullshit.

How shall we answer this? I think it speaks most urgently for people who actually know things, those with "intellectual power", to democratise our knowledge, throw aside the totems that make our fields inaccessible and obscure, and open the gates to the multitudes who wish to learn.

At first it seems like it would be easy to compete with LLMs (because they say only bullshit), but to actually compete with LLMs we need to produce educational materials that actually explain things properly. Any 'proof by intimidation' will immediately send our student to the LLM. The moment you rely on something that you haven't explained, same deal. So it may be that this era has a silver lining: we must finally teach mathematics properly.

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