Reddit moderators thought they were caretakers of a community and Spez reminded them they are overseers of a content farm for advertising revenue.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/29/23778997/reddit-remove-mods-private-communities-unless-reopen

Ten years ago, in 2013, Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility was dissolved after decades of important work because they couldn't find enough people to sustain it.

A sign of the times that we're now re-inventing institutions that computer science was unable/unwilling to sustain during one of its most lucrative periods.

https://www.publicsphereproject.org/content/cpsr-dissolution-and-gary-chapman-winner-cpsrs-norbert-wiener-award

One of the decisive moments in my understanding of #LLMs and their limitations was when, last autumn, @emilymbender walked me through her Thai Library thought experiment.

She's now written it up as a Medium post, and you can read it here. The value comes from really pondering the question she poses, so take the time to think about it. What would YOU do in the situation she outlines?

https://medium.com/@emilymenonbender/thought-experiment-in-the-national-library-of-thailand-f2bf761a8a83

Wow. RStudio (recently rebranded as Posit) is partnering with Palantir. Yes, the same Palantir with ties to Cambridge Analytica. The same Palantir that partners with and actively supports ICE and other oppressive surveillance.

This is really not ok ethically, and can only mean a bad direction functionally for the company's software going forward. I never use RStudio for research myself, but it looks like I'll stop using it in teaching.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/palantir-posit-partner-integrate-rstudio-115900656.html

#rstudio #palantir #posit #ice

Greetings to the fediverse!

Washington Privacy Organizers is a resource for privacy advocates, activists, and organizers here in "the other Washington". The state legislature is currently working on some exciting privacy bills. Over the next few months there's also likely to be activity in cities, counties, and Congress.

We'll use this account to share updates, action items, and Washington-specific privacy-related news. For more general privacy news, check @nexusofprivacy

#introduction

Digital Driver's License bill in Washington state -- TAKE ACTION to defend #privacy

SB 5105 requires Washington's Department of Licensing (DOL) to put together an implmentation plan for digital driver's licenses by the end of the year, and deploy the system by September 2024.

This timeframe is far too aggressive. As ACLU's What Digital Driver’s Licenses Could Mean for Privacy, Equity, and Freedom highlights, these systems have major risks -- and initial deployments of digital's drivers licenses in other states have caused major problems for domestic violence survivors, immigrants, and other groups who often bear the brunt of surveillance. And the recent fiasco in California, where a hacker was able to track GPS locations of all digital license plates, shows what can go wrong when systems are implemented without enough attention to security and privacy.

SB 5105 has a hearing on Monday afternoon. If you're a Washington resident, signing in "CON" is an easy way to let your legislators know you oppose this rushed implementation of a potentially-harmful technology.

1 Click here

2 From the drop down menu choose Con

3 Fill out the rest of the form and click on Submit registration

The deadline is 3:00 pm on Monday, January 23. Here's SB 5105's page on the legislature's site, which has link to the text and the video for the hearing.

#waleg

Updated https://find.sciences.social has two new lists.

Communication and Media Studies managed by @josh https://find.sciences.social/search?field=communication-and-media-studies

Economics managed by @czimm_economist https://find.sciences.social/search?field=economics based on the RePec list of economists on Mastodon https://ideas.repec.org/i/emastodon.html