gru:Bz
Average millennial living life on the edge (of the Midwest). Probably too immature for Micro.blog but I like it here.
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Cranberry Bogs Use Spiders Instead Of Pesticides
You see, cranberry farms have been moving towards more organic farming methods which preclude the use of pesticides and so to keep the insect population down, the farmers encourage wolf spiders to live in the bogs.
I’m not particularly… comfortable around spiders, so to speak, but wolf spiders are one of my favorite species. They’re like little shy tarantulas. Still wouldn’t be caught dead on a cranberry farm but I’ll take spiders over pesticides.
Someone Made a Dataset of One Million Bluesky Posts for ‘Machine Learning Research’
The data isn’t anonymous. In the dataset, each post is listed alongside the users’ decentralized identifier, or DID…It’s also noteworthy that it’s a “snapshot” of time on Bluesky, meaning it could, and probably does, include since-deleted posts.
I mean in a way, it’s similar to the Internet Archive. But they never really archived social media accounts did they?
This dataset could be used for “training and testing language models on social media content, analyzing social media posting patterns, studying conversation structures and reply networks, research on social media content moderation, [and] natural language processing tasks using social media data,” the project page says.
This is literally made for training AI right? I guess it’s just a matter of whether or not the resulting chatbot is publicly released but then the actual data is already available anyway.
“A number of artists and creators have made their home on Bluesky, and we hear their concerns with other platforms training on their data. We do not use any of your content to train generative AI, and have no intention of doing so,” - Bluesky, official account
I don’t know. I can believe the devs aren’t personally training AI on it, but it’s definitely a thing you can feed to a LLM. Regardless of who physically does it.
Personally? I don’t have a problem with AI scraping the dumb shit I post online. But I can understand why an artist or seasoned writer wouldn’t want generative AI learning off of their trademark style and then bottling it up for a monthly subscription fee.
I don’t think this is a Bluesky issue, it just got caught in the middle because it’s in the spotlight right now. I’m not a programmer or an AI whisperer so I could totally be wrong, but couldn’t anyone create a dataset of a public social network’s content using their APIs and then train whatever they like on it?
It’s shitty, but the cat’s already out of the bag. If you’re posting anything online it can, and probably is, being trained on AI.
Update: Looks like they took down the data already:
I've removed the Bluesky data from the repo. While I wanted to support tool development for the platform, I recognize this approach violated principles of transparency and consent in data collection. I apologize for this mistake.
— Daniel van Strien (@danielvanstrien.bsky.social) November 26, 2024 at 9:19 PM
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‘Enshittification’ Is Officially the Biggest Word of the Year
2024 will go down in history as the year humanity managed to enshittify the entire planet.
Elon Musk wants to block the transfer of InfoWars' X accounts to The Onion
Musk’s lawyers now claim that users don’t actually own their profiles on the supposed “free speech platform.”
Of course not. That’s why corporate social media is terrible. Granted, it’s usually the other way around; taking an account that belongs to someone else because Elon wants the handle.
UK and Irish retailers pull products associated with Conor McGregor
Lucky for him the US loves rapists. His bottom shelf hooch will continue to do just fine over here. Hell, he might even get nominated for a Cabinet position.
Update: Ope, maybe not! Conor McGregor dumped by Proper No. Twelve Whiskey, multiple UK retail giants in wake of sexual assault verdict - Yahoo Sports
I still stand by my Cabinet position comment though 💁
Elon Musk Muses About Buying MSNBC: “How Much Does It Cost?”
The billionaire and buddy to the president-elect jokes about buying the liberal network. At least we think he’s joking.
His acquisition of Twitter started out as a joke too. I’d be surprised if he doesn’t at least make an offer. Fascist regimes need their state run media and he’s just preaching to the converted on Twitter now.
Would you live on a cruise ship for four years to escape the Trump presidency?
If only I had a cool $160,000 to secure a spot
Microsoft is testing a new in-game browser
Doing what they can to get people to switch to Internet Explorer Edge 😏
You deserve a better browser than Google Chrome
If you’ve been using Chrome because it came as the default browser on your phone, you might want to try something new. If you’ve been using Chrome for 15 years because it was so innovative when it was introduced, that’s no longer the case, and you should definitely try something new.
I’d also add that if you’re using Chrome on iOS, you’re just using a shittier version of Safari that spies on you.
Gaetz withdraws from consideration for Trump’s attorney general role
“There is no time to waste on a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle, thus I’ll be withdrawing my name from consideration to serve as Attorney General,” Gaetz wrote.
Whoa he really doesn’t want that report to come out 😆
The FDA’s inspection took place in May, and Tom’s of Maine responded to its initial results in June. The FDA’s latest letter declares that the company’s June response was “inadequate,” so the agency is calling for further action.
Great way to freshen up after munching on some Boar’s Head deli meat with a side of listeria.
T-Mobile actually stopped some hackers from stealing customer data
T-Mobile detected suspicious activity in a recent attempt to access customer data and kicked the cyber criminals out before they were able to infiltrate deeper levels of the network.
Well now I’ve seen everything 🙃
The fight for Alex Jones' Infowars company heats up as Jones sues to hold on
I knew he wouldn’t go down without a fight. He’s just prolonging the inevitable, but he’s going to be as difficult and obnoxious as possible in the meantime.
Magnetic North Pole moves closer to Russia in a way scientists have never seen before
What a headline 😆
From 1600 to 1990, it is estimated to have moved about 10-15km a year. In the early 2000s, it sped up to around 55km a year…In the past five years, the magnetic north pole has significantly slowed down to about 25km a year.
At first glance it looks like a terrifying conspiracy theory about earth spinning off its axis and killing us all but I guess it’s pretty normal uneventful stuff.
RFK Jr. Told a Bunch of People the Government May Have “Planned” COVID
“Many people argue that this pandemic was a ‘plandemic,’ that it was planned from the outset, it’s part of a sinister scheme. I can’t tell you the answer to that. I don’t have enough evidence. A lot of it feels very planned to me. I don’t know.
I wonder when Alex Jones will get a cabinet seat.
I'm obsessed with this terminal emulator
Never thought I’d feel so strongly about a terminal app but I’ve been obsessed with Warp Terminal for the last week. It has built in AI so you can use natural language when you don’t know where to go next. I wish they had this kind of thing circa 2009 when I installed Ubuntu on my old HP Pavilion.
I’ve spent so many nights trying to install some obscure program, screwing something up and ultimately installing dependencies for dependencies for dependencies and breaking stuff to the point where I throw in the towel. Just used it a little bit ago to help me figure out how to get VS Code running on Wayland.
On the free account you get 100 queries per month, which isn’t a heck of a lot but if you go easy on them they can really bail you out when you need it. Lots of extra features on top of that, especially for coding and collaboration. I’m just lazy and like having the option to let AI do the work when I’m in over my head with everyday Linux stuff. Worth checking out if you spend a lot of time on the command line. I don’t think I need yet another subscription just for a terminal emulator but it’s so shiny and new and fancy 🤩
The majority of news influencers are conservative men, study finds
This morning, The Pew Research Center…published a deep 122 page report that found that the news influencer landscape skews male and leans disproportionately conservative, creating a concerning imbalance in our online news landscape that could ultimately have profound political consequences.
I find the whole influencer thing pretty wack to begin with but we do need more liberals in the space. And women. We need fucking crazy leftist conspiracy theorists actually. Clearly there’s a market for it.
Scientists Discover ‘Immortal’ Marine Creature That Can ‘Time Travel’
I’ve been a broken record on the sea aliens lately but this is pretty cool, and actually real.
Unreal Gold and Unreal Tournament are now free on the Internet Archive
An Epic spokesperson subsequently confirmed that it has given the green light for the games to be hosted on the Internet Archive, telling PC Gamer, “We can confirm that Unreal 1 and Unreal Tournament are available on archive.org and people are free to independently link to and play these versions.”
Finally some not terrible news relating to the Internet Archive! I was OBSESSED with UT ‘99 on the Dreamcast back in the day. Happy to see another classic saved from falling into complete obscurity.
Mountain lions in Los Angeles become night owls to avoid humans
Not a bad idea, honestly…