Ivan Herman

@ivan_herman@w3c.social
247 Followers
132 Following
993 Posts
Retired; emeritus W3C team member, still active in digital publishing, semantic web, data, verifiable credentials; also interested in history, arts (painting, sculpture, architecture), photography, international politics, literature, music (mostly classical).
Home pagehttps://www.ivan-herman.net/
Lives inAix-en-Provence, France
Githubhttps://github.com/iherman
The Trump regime is engaging in ethnic cleansing. We need to say it aloud.
People are shocked to discover they need to fact-check ChatGPT and I'm having the uncomfortable realization that they never fact-checked their uncle's Facebook posts, their friend's medical advice, or literally anything Google's top result told them, and suddenly the last decade makes sense...

If you make EPUB documents, or build tools for EPUBs, do you think EPUBs should continue requiring the XML syntax for HTML? Tell W3C what you think by filling the simple survey by the W3C Publishing Maintenance Working Group. 4 questions, responses anonymized:

https://www.w3.org/wbs/1/epubhtml/

#publishing #ereader #ebook #kindle #kobo #pocketbook #boox #nook

Information needed to answer Survey on the usage of HTML syntax in EPUB - Web-Based Straw-poll and Balloting System

I've been talking to GitHub and giving them feedback on their "create issues with Copilot" thing they have in the works.

Today I tested a version for them and using it I asked copilot to find and report a security problem in curl and make it sound terrifying.

In about ten seconds it had a 100-line description of a "catastrophic vulnerability" it was happy to create an issue for. Entirely made up of course, but sounded plausible.

Proved my point excellently.

They are starting to get it ...

The Math Working Group has published MathML Core as a W3C Candidate Recommendation.

This spec defines a core subset of MathML, that is suitable for browser implementation. MathML is a markup language for describing mathematical notation and capturing both its structure and content. The goal of MathML is to enable mathematics to be served, received, and processed on the World Wide Web, just as HTML has enabled this functionality for text.
https://www.w3.org/news/2025/w3c-invites-implementations-of-mathml-core/

Digital Identities that Benefit Humans

Today I’ll be traveling to Geneva to attend the Global Digital Collaboration Conference which seeks to “foster wallets, credentials and trusted infrastructure for the benefit of all humans.” I want to make sure that whatever comes out of this discussion really does benefit humans, and is therefore rooted in human rights. I have spoken publicly about how we incorporate ethics into our standards and specifications in order to make sure we ground them in human rights and “avoid […]

https://www.torgo.com/blog/2025/06/digital-identities-that-benefit-humans.html

Digital Identities that Benefit Humans – Dan's Blog

Just for the fun of it: the Belphegor's prime, i.e.,:

1000000000000066600000000000001

'How a Mathematician Turned an Obscure Number Into a Scary Story"

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/belphegors-prime-number-superstitions

How a Mathematician Turned an Obscure Number Into a Scary Story

Beware the prime Number of the Beast.

Atlas Obscura

Denmark copyrights faces in deepfake war ​ | Cybernews

https://cybernews.com/denmark-deepfake-cybercrime-eu/

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They are starting to get it ...

@Natasha_Jay The main AI application is sycophancy.

Since about 80% of jobs in North America involve countless hours of kissing up to the boss, it is clearly possible to achieve cost savings by locking up thin skinned neurotics in a room with a machine that strokes their egos non-stop.

Why else do you think they find "in person" work so essential?

@Natasha_Jay AI is also good at racism, too. This is another way that ML will take away burdensome repetitive jobs from humans. Instead of people being annoyed at having to continuously repeat the same racist (sexist, homophobic, ...) actions daily at work, the AI assistant can do it for them. While kissing up to the boss!

https://www.pcmag.com/news/tiktok-flooded-with-racist-ai-videos-likely-made-by-google-veo-3

@rrb @Natasha_Jay

the issue will come when the bosses will require all the llm agents to work in office

@jnpn @rrb @Natasha_Jay can we get the machines to buy fancy sandwiches from the local pret a manger too
@andrewt @jnpn @Natasha_Jay Instead of the machines doing the drudgery, they are playing music, writing poetry and driving racing cars. The people have to run and fill out the CAPCHAs and remove orange cones from the cars when necessary.
@Natasha_Jay It's like Tannhaus' book from the series Dark that was never written by him but exists because it came from the future where it already existed.
@Natasha_Jay
Hint: none of those folks had ever generated any business value.

@AnnyJoe @Natasha_Jay

Yeah, sadly the conclusion is "business value" is an illusion in most knowledge work.

@Natasha_Jay Nope, it's just ai-generated post to drive attention to particular linkedin account.
@Natasha_Jay @nixCraft This sounds like a lot of reports i wrote for the government.
@Natasha_Jay I mean the conclusion isn't fully right. They generated business value for the AI company. And their reports and presentations weren't valuable before so it's only a lose for the environment and the company they are working for but a win for the AI company and their energy supplier.
How to Use They're, There, and Their

They are among the most commonly confused words.

@Natasha_Jay AI IS NOT THE WAY!

Do👏not👏listen👏to👏techbros👏

@Natasha_Jay
So hilariously funny and true that it’s sad.

@Natasha_Jay

AI adds negative Business value in such cases as persons who are paid to work do not produce, just create expensive useless rubbish. Good management would read the crap understand the uselessness and dismiss the non creators on the spot.

@Natasha_Jay Is this guy notorious for being an AI shill or something?
@Natasha_Jay This is business cosplay and AI is the foam latex in lieu of metal armour.

@Natasha_Jay

I vaguely recall a joke along those lines.

Something about two guys who are ship wrecked on a remote island, with nothing but a hat. To pass the time, they trade the hat back and forth. When they are finally rescued, both are millionaires...

@nyrath @Natasha_Jay Heinlein told that one in *The Moon is a Harsh Mistress*, except set on the Moon. (Unsurprisingly.)

@kentenmakto

IIRC H. Beam Piper told a variation of that joke in his novel Space Viking.

@nyrath @kentenmakto
Yes and yes. It was basically a racist joke about that some "people" (often Asian) could sell each other rocks in the desert and make a profit.
@Natasha_Jay @nyrath Isn't that kinda how millionaires are made to begin with?

@ranmatoranma @Natasha_Jay

Yes, that was my point. Using AI to write, read, and interpret business reports is the new becoming billionaires by trading rocks.

@Natasha_Jay @nyrath Welp, at least we can solve the problem by getting rid of the billionaires.
@Natasha_Jay When the illusion of productivity is more important than producing anything of value.
@Natasha_Jay huh, my AI summary of this post is just "RESISTANCE IS FUTILE. YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED"
@Natasha_Jay I kinda want to see this happen
@Natasha_Jay strongest evidence yet for #bullshitjobs IMHO.

@earthshine

My thoughts exactly. David Graeber would point out they were doing the same before AI.

@Natasha_Jay

@alessandro @earthshine @Natasha_Jay Me as well. This is an amplification of a pre-existing issue, like a lot of the issues raised with these systems.
@Natasha_Jay second step : there was no value in this kind of report before AI...
Make Fun Of Them

Have you ever heard Sam Altman speak? I’m serious, have you ever heard this man say words from his mouth?  Here is but one of the trenchant insights from Sam Altman in his agonizing 37-minute-long podcast conversation with his brother Jack Altman from last week: “I think there will

Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
@mnf @Natasha_Jay Reading this piece by Ed Zitron is like sunbathing in a radioactive decontamination unit. He swipes away every bit of hype and bullshit around the mythology of AI that Big Tech spreads. The truth he lays bare is almost too painful but in fact is exhilarating. Talk about the Emperor and clothes.
@Natasha_Jay but the line...the line go up, right?

@Natasha_Jay

One point is missing. The important one. No one will feel or be made responsible for whatever will happen based on this workflow.

@Natasha_Jay
I don't know what it was like in the rest of the world but when the UK had its Covid lockdown and furlough scheme so that only essential workers could go out to work we found out who the really important workers were. None of them used or will AI as an essential part of their jobs.
The real stuff that keeps society running is very different for what the Techbrosphere imagine it is.

@Natasha_Jay

The last couple sentences are doing a lot of heavy lifting in that post.
Let me run that past the AI to see if it checks out...

@Natasha_Jay 8) the colleague who knows what it is about reads it and there's at least one mistake

like here

IA et fausse information : comment je me suis bagarré avec Gemini - Next
https://next.ink/190383/comment-je-me-suis-bagarre-avec-gemini/

IA et fausse information : comment je me suis bagarré avec Gemini - Next

Je me suis battu récemment avec Gemini pour lui faire admettre une erreur. Utilisé en renfort de la rédaction d’une actualité, l’assistant de Google m’a assuré qu’une information existait, preuve à l’appui. Mais ni l’information ni la preuve n’étaient réelles. Le 20 juin, j’ai publié un article à l’occasion de l’entrée en application de deux […]

Next
@Natasha_Jay Right now they are making the employees operate the LLMs. The next step will be to have an AI to tell the AI to write a report, and then tell the AI to summarize the report, and then tell it to take notes and al that, so that all these people get replaced by an AI. And not long after, most of the management (Except the CEO) will also be replaced by an AI. And so on until all the companies are 99.99% AI driven. No more salaries, pure profit.
@enigmatico @Natasha_Jay The trillion $$$ problem they try to solve is "human labour" because the ideal corporation is a wealth extracting autonomous machine costing nearly nothing to run
@enigmatico @Natasha_Jay oh they will replace the CEO too when the company board of directors, shareholders, and the company president realize that AI can do the job of the CEO. this would save them even more money.

@Natasha_Jay This is why "AI" will replace middle-management…

#BullshitJobs

@Natasha_Jay
Sandra Jane and Bill used AI to write their resumes to submit to an AI that wrote the job description, and an AI that filtered through all the AI replies, to find the candidate best suited to hire, according to AI.
It’s AI hiring AI. No one knows what’s going on.
@JoBlakely @Natasha_Jay I recently read about a new "AI" company that purports to create "AI"-based digital copies of yourself (or anyone, really) that you can ask questions anytime (no pesky downtime for sleep or whatever). I went and had a look. Naturally, they have job openings. Naturally, they tell you on the job description page to avoid all AI use in the job application.
@Natasha_Jay the fun thing starts when AI hallucination adds or removes facts and all people start to talk about different aspects of wrong.

@Natasha_Jay But did the report ever actually need to be written? 'Cause if it wasn't, then AI is the symptom, not the root, of the problem.

Because nobody was reading, understanding, evaluating, or acting on the report to begin with. They just had to try harder to pretend to.

@ranmatoranma @Natasha_Jay
No worries: AI generated an earlier report pointing out the (non?) problem...perhaps based upon an even earlier AI generated accounting sheet.

@ranmatoranma @Natasha_Jay

Oh heck; that's not a new problem!

In the late 1980s, our team was pressured to implement some "vitally important functionality" report that some person was spending FULL TIME producing. We were being forced to, so we went to every person who received the report, to determine their real business needs.

NOT A SINGLE PERSON EVER USED THE REPORT!

Not at all. Not once. Not ever.

It was 100% filed, ignored, and then later discarded.

100% USELESS WASTE.

@Natasha_Jay @JeffGrigg Doesn't surprise me. A few years ago, I read a book titled Bullshit Jobs by an anthropologist who found, during a freak survey, that anywhere from thirty to forty percent of all people held jobs they honestly believed contributed nothing to society. A lot of these are professional-managerial positions that produce exactly those kinds of reports, and exist mostly to make upper management feel important.

I've had family members tell me they felt like they spent more time filling out paperwork about their work than actually working, that they felt useless when promoted to management because the team already knew what they were doing, and a friend of mine who went on to read the book claimed it explained so much of what went on at his tech workplace.

Amazon.com

@Natasha_Jay @JeffGrigg That's the one!

Sounds like you might've read it already.

@ranmatoranma @Natasha_Jay

Sorry; I have not read the "Bullshit Jobs" book. Seems too depressing. 😢

@Natasha_Jay @JeffGrigg In my experience, it's revelatory. It's not a doom-and-gloom book bemoaning the evils of modern society. The author takes a very constructive approach to his subject matter and is among the most optimistic I've seen.
@Natasha_Jay any resemblance to reality is purely coincidental.
@Natasha_Jay I wonder if anybody has actually used that sequence in reality?
It would be interesting to see if it did exactly the same as the old chestnut “send three and fourpence we’re going to a dance” which had started out as
“send reinforcements we are going to advance”