The street that my mum lives in is a one-way street, but wasn't marked as such on #Google Maps. This caused many drivers to drive the wrong way. I have tried to edit it on Google Maps (there is such functionality), but to no avail. No matter how often I submitted a change (with photos of street signs!), Google said "Sorry, we could not verify it".

Solution: Edit the street on #OpenStreetMap! A few months after I did this, Google seems to have stolen the data, as it regularly does, and now the street is correct in both datasets!

Across the world, right now, billionaires, oligarchs, and corporations are using their wealth to silence dissent, undo decades of social and environmental progress, and manipulate the game in their favour.

It's #TimeToResist the billionaire takeover.

Join us! 👉 https://www.greenpeace.org/international/act/time-to-resist/

Using ChatGPT too much damages your critical thinking skills - Microsoft Research

Read the full report here https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/the-impact-of-generative-ai-on-critical-thinking-self-reported-reductions-in-cognitive-effort-and-confidence-effects-from-a-survey-of-knowledge-workers/

An observation on AI hype in higher education.

My university (Russell group) is part of the hype. In committees, I found myself isolated when raising criticism. Endless seminars and workshops on how to make innovative uses of genAI in teaching, in assessment, in tutoring. Revolting. I decided not to fight an unwinnable battle and instead I merely protect my own courses from the poison.

Just a few months later, the tone has changed. Many of the most excited pro-AI voices now share articles that have "bullshit" in the title, or share AI-critical messages they sent to their students.

Reality always wins.

GenAI corrupts students' learning, and sooner or later this can no longer be ignored. These enthusiastic colleagues re-think AI once they have marked 100 essays of inauthenticity.

This may not yet be the bubble bursting, but it's an encouring sign and much sooner than expected. And it goes some way to restore my faith in the profession.

#noAI #HigherEducation #AcademicChatter

Thrilling story time~

A lady living next door mentioned to me that she'd lost many photos of her late husband when her old laptop died. I asked if she considered taking the hard drive out of the laptop to recover the photos. She told me she did not know she could do that, and, moreover, a person at the computer shop told her there was no guarantee the data could be recovered, and it would cost a lot of money.

Long story short, I took the hard drive out of her old laptop and tried to connect it to our home computer. The disk didn't power up.

I looked closer and noticed signs of rust on the disk's board. The situation seemed a biiit hopeless.

But my fiancee washed the board in alcohol and removed the busted capacitor that caused a short between VCC and GND... and the disk powered up.

It is not working well (it keeps complaining about stuff on the dmesg board), but it works well enough to copy gigabytes of photos stored on it.

Happy end~

An extremely welcome initiative from the 🇪🇺 #eu:

🔋Phone Batteries must retain 80% capacity after 800 cycles.

📱Phone makers must provide 5 years of updates,

🪛 are banned from discriminating against repair shops,

🔧 and must provide parts for 7 years after EOL

#EUpol #sustainability #tech #smartphones #CircularEconomy

https://www.androidpolice.com/eu-new-rules-will-shake-up-android-update-policies/