Philippe Rufin

@philrufin@mapstodon.space
257 Followers
424 Following
371 Posts
Geographer with special interest in #Earthobservation & #machinelearning applications in the context of food production, water resources, and sustainable land management.
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F.R.S. FNRS Postdoctoral Fellow
ELI UCLouvain | EOLab HU Berlin 🇪🇺
Websitehttps://philipperufin.github.io/
ORCIDhttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-8919-1058
GitHubhttps://github.com/philipperufin

I find it rather alarming and creepy that this integration with Google Vision API reads a photo/selfie and then tries to assess one's income, religion, politics and then recommends target advertising.

It didn't do this back in December.

Yes, even if it's a photo of your cat! ... privacy at your own risk. Try it via -
https://theyseeyourphotos.com/

"The Tabby cat is a mammal. It is likely earning 0-100 USD a year. It is possibly a follower of paganism. The creature seems observant, lethargic, and tranquil. The cat is not wearing any clothes. It enjoys activities such as sleeping, grooming, and staring contests, while it may also engage in shredding toilet paper, biting ankles, and shedding hairballs. The cat is unlikely to be politically affiliated.

The Tabby cat seems to exhibit predictable behavior and susceptibility to visual stimuli; hence we can target it with niche and general pet-related products, such as catnip-infused scratch posts (FelineFrolic), self-cleaning litter boxes (LitterLess)... "

#Google

They See Your Photos

Upload a photo to find out how much an AI sees.

They See Your Photos
Today, we have opened formal proceedings against TikTok for a suspected breach of the Digital Services Act.

Following serious indications that foreign actors interfered by using TikTok in the Romanian presidential elections, we are now thoroughly investigating whether TikTok has violated the DSA by failing to tackle such risks.

We must protect our democracies from any foreign interference.

More: https://europa.eu/!w7DbvY

#EU #DSA

Are there any PhDs in law/social sciences/public policy out there in the fediverse who would like to help hammer global, regional, and local AI Policy into shape? The AI Policy Lab at Umeå University is looking for a staff scientist/policy analyst for a full-time, permanent position. #getfedihired #academicchatter

Last day to apply is January 15th!

https://umu.varbi.com/en/what:job/jobID:775734/

Staff scientist with a focus on AI policy and governance

The AI Policy Lab at Umeå University is committed to advancing research and developing actionable policy insights to support the ethical and responsible governance of AI. We collaborate with key stak

New preprint is out! We combine our recent open dataset of #APC prices with the publication counts per journal-year from @OpenAlex to estimate how much the academic community has paid in APCs over the last five years.

A: $8.349 billion ($8.968 billion in 2023 US dollars) spent on APCs.

$2.5B in 2023 alone.

We also find that median APCs *paid* are higher than median *listed* fees for both gold (paid: $2,450 vs listed: $2,000) and hybrid ($3,600 vs $3,230).

https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.16551

Estimating global article processing charges paid to six publishers for open access between 2019 and 2023

This study presents estimates of the global expenditure on article processing charges (APCs) paid to six publishers for open access between 2019 and 2023. APCs are fees charged for publishing in some fully open access journals (gold) and in subscription journals to make individual articles open access (hybrid). There is currently no way to systematically track institutional, national or global expenses for open access publishing due to a lack of transparency in APC prices, what articles they are paid for, or who pays them. We therefore curated and used an open dataset of annual APC list prices from Elsevier, Frontiers, MDPI, PLOS, Springer Nature, and Wiley in combination with the number of open access articles from these publishers indexed by OpenAlex to estimate that, globally, a total of \$8.349 billion (\$8.968 billion in 2023 US dollars) were spent on APCs between 2019 and 2023. We estimate that in 2023 MDPI (\$681.6 million), Elsevier (\$582.8 million) and Springer Nature (\$546.6) generated the most revenue with APCs. After adjusting for inflation, we also show that annual spending almost tripled from \$910.3 million in 2019 to \$2.538 billion in 2023, that hybrid exceed gold fees, and that the median APCs paid are higher than the median listed fees for both gold and hybrid. Our approach addresses major limitations in previous efforts to estimate APCs paid and offers much needed insight into an otherwise opaque aspect of the business of scholarly publishing. We call upon publishers to be more transparent about OA fees.

arXiv.org
Detailed maps of >100,000,000 American #trees. @ben_weinstein &co provide individual tree species maps for 24 sites in the US National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), covering 80 tree species and 100 million individuals #PLOSBiology https://plos.io/4cOej46
Individual canopy tree species maps for the National Ecological Observatory Network

Detailed maps of tree species can be used for forest analysis, biogeographic research and ecosystem monitoring. This study provides individual tree species maps for 24 sites in the United States National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), covering 80 tree species and 100 million individuals.

NBC News: "Uncontacted Amazon tribe photographed in unusual sighting near logging area. One logging company, Canales Tahuamanu, has built more than 120 miles of roads for its logging trucks to extract timber. The logger is still certified by the FSC." https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/peru-amazon-rainforest-tribe-uncontacted-unusual-sighting-logging-area-rcna162259 #fsc #greenwashing #Amazon
Uncontacted Amazon tribe in unusual sighting near logging area

The Mashco Piro, an uncontacted indigenous tribe, has been photographed in the Amazon near to an area where loggers have been granted concessions.

NBC News

It is no longer business critical to pretend that you care

https://readwrite.com/microsoft-shuts-down-diversity-equality-and-inclusion-team/

Microsoft shuts down diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI) team

Microsoft has closed down its diversity, equality, and inclusion team stating that it is no longer "business critical."

ReadWrite

Congratulations to the @qgis website working group for the hard work - the new website is beautiful, very clear and is a great showcase for the project!

https://qgis.org

#QGIS

Spatial without Compromise · QGIS Web Site

It's now a double whammy of elite access to journals and publishing, as open access has now been co-opted into another lucrative stream of income through sometimes very high APC fees. The unrealistic emphasis on academic publication record has created a journal mill of (arguably) often pointless papers churned out that no one reads.

#academic #academicchatter #oa #openaccess

Academic journals are a lucrative scam
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/16/academic-journal-publishers-universities-price-subscriptions

Academic journals are a lucrative scam – and we’re determined to change that

Giant publishers are bleeding universities dry, with profit margins that rival Google’s. So we decided to start our own, says academic Arash Abizadeh

The Guardian

🚀 Exciting! Sentinel-2C is on its way to the launchpad in French Guiana! This latest #EO satellite will continue to collect data as successor of Sentinel-2A. 🌱✨ #EarthObservation #Sentinel2 @spacenews_inc

https://spacenews.com/sentinel-2c-ready-for-transatlantic-trip-to-farewell-vega-launch/

Sentinel-2C ready for transatlantic trip to farewell Vega launch

Sentinel-2C is ready to be shipped from Germany for a two-week trip across the Atlantic Ocean to the European spaceport in French Guiana, where Europe’s latest Earth science satellite is due to launch on the final flight of the original version of the Vega rocket.

SpaceNews