personally I think the MONA thing is hilarious, especially in the context of the Discourse.
for non-Australians, the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Tasmania had an area called the Ladies Lounge, where men were not allowed. They hung several fake Picassos, an antique mink rug that was actually polyester, and a bunch of fake tribal spears. The idea was that it was a criticism of the general idea of the patriarchy where men typically have a lot more opportunities for... pick a thing. Even when women were allowed in, what was actually inside were cheap replicas devoid of any amount of authenticity. It's ripping on token inclusion.
In an eye-watering display of self-awareness deficiency, a man then sued MONA for not being allowed in, claiming discrimination due to being a man. He claimed that as he had paid admission to the whole of MONA but was not permitted to this specific exhibit due to his gender, he was being discriminated against.
The Tasmanian Civil Tribunal agreed, and MONA was directed to admit men into a women's-only area. The irony is thick enough that you could cut it with a knife.
MONA, in response, dismantled the exhibit except for the fake Picassos. All the bathrooms at MONA are single-occupancy all-gender, but it turns out having a women's bathroom from which men are excluded *isn't* discriminatory, so they converted one into a women's bathroom and hung the fake Picassos in there, an exhibit of itself.
The art exhibit was basically a criticism of "turns out the only safe space for women away from men is a bathroom, and people will still claim that you're getting special rights because you get to see something nobody else can. Even if what you're seeing is a cheap replica, someone somewhere will claim that you have it good because you're getting something they don't."
Picasso's estate, however, took a rather dim view of unauthorised replicas being displayed in an art gallery in Tasmania, even though it was literally years between putting up the artwork and someone noticing. They've since been taken down with no further action.
MONA has declared that the Ladies Lounge will return as something where S26 of the Sex Discrimination Act doesn't apply, such as a church or boutique glamping experience.
They've also expressly stated that the Ladies Lounge includes ALL women, not just cis ones.
I love everything about this story. Fucking classic stuff coming out of the art world.
Wes Streeting: βThis ban [on puberty blockers] brings the private sector in line with the NHS. We are committed to providing young people with the evidence-led care that they deserveβ. Evidence shows that blockers are of great help.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/labour-government-may-puberty-blocker-152756755.html
This 2018 article from the Guardian lives rent-free in my head. I think about it often.
Michell Baker: βif we have Stem education without the humanities, or without ethics, or without understanding human behavior, then we are intentionally building the next generation of technologists who have not even the framework or the education or vocabulary to think about the relationship of Stem to society or humans or life.β
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/12/tech-humanities-misinformation-philosophy-psychology-graduates-mozilla-head-mitchell-baker?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other https://phpc.social/@ramsey/112780443425702602
Mitchell Baker says firms should hire philosophy and psychology graduates to tackle misinformationAlex Hern (The Guardian)
TIL that in the UK political system the two following statements are both true :
1) in order to vote for a candidate in a general election, you must provide photo ID.
2) in order to stand as a candidate in a constituency, to hopefully receive votes cast by those people mentioned in #1, you are *not* required to provide any photo ID.
The UK is insane.
Set up a UKVI account and access your eVisa if you have a biometric residence permit (BRP).Government Digital Service (GOV.UK)
Ads arenβt a means to offset costs as much as they try to push it.
Theyβre just a means to make *even more* money.
Hate this timeline of trying to monetize every waking second.
Itβs amazing to me how quickly OpenAI speed ran the cycle from βweβre just a bunch of nerds building cool tech to change the worldβ to βweβre at war with our employees who think weβre a soulless for-profit corporationβ.
It took Google decades to run through whatβs taken OpenAI months
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/07/13/openai-safety-risks-whistleblower-sec/
OpenAI whistleblowers filed a complaint with the SEC where they allege the AI company is silencing employees from sharing concerns about its AI technology.Pranshu Verma (The Washington Post)
Every time someone says "Snowflake should have enforced better security" I like to remind them that if Snowflake wasn't trivially easy to use, you wouldn't know the name Snowflake.
Real talk: security is friction and friction doesn't attract customers.
A #degooglification lesson, AKA "centralization is bad" even when the Good Guysβ’ do it because it makes you less resilient:
One of the key piece of many (but not all) degooglified Android systems is a tool called "microG". It basically "pretends" to apps that you have Google Services installed, emulating the many system APIs basically all apps depend on.
One of these APIs are Location. In fact, you used to be able to install "add-ons", download a CSV of cell-towers and run mobile cell tower-based approximate geolocation fully locally. Wellβ¦
https://github.com/Helium314/Local-NLP-Backend?tab=readme-ov-file
> Note that microG has stopped supporting UnifiedNlp backends with 0.2.28.
https://github.com/microg/GmsCore/releases/tag/v0.2.28.231657
> The new location stack does not support UnifiedNlp modules anymore. This was a step necessary to take to get locations properly working on latest Android versions. [β¦] For now, the new locations stack is relying exclusively on Mozilla Location Service for network based location.
You know what comes next?
Yet another network location backend for the UnifiedNLP/microG project - Helium314/Local-NLP-BackendGitHub
Mozilla shuts down its location services because of a patent troll :
https://github.com/microg/GmsCore/issues/2237
As was announced at mozilla/ichnaea#2065, Mozilla will retire MLS soon. The final deadline for third parties seems to be set to June 12.GitHub
βOne mile on a bike is a $.42 economic gain to society, one mile driving is a $.20 loss.β
βWhich means that Copenhagen, a city of 1.2 million people, saves $357 million a year on health costs because something like 80% of its population commutes by bicycle, even in winter.β
https://grist.org/biking/one-mile-on-a-bike-is-a-42-economic-gain-to-society-one-mile-driving-is-a-20-loss/
Copenhagen, the bicycle-friendliest place on the planet, publishes a biannual Bicycle Account, and buried in its pages is a rather astonishing fact.Christopher Mims (Grist)
It turns out Google Chrome ships a default, hidden extension that allows code on `*.google.com` access to private APIs, including your current CPU usage
You can test it out by pasting the following into your Chrome DevTools console on any Google page:
chrome.runtime.sendMessage(
"nkeimhogjdpnpccoofpliimaahmaaome",
{ method: "cpu.getInfo" },
(response) => {
console.log(JSON.stringify(response, null, 2));
},
);
More notes here: https://simonwillison.net/2024/Jul/9/hangout_servicesthunkjs/
It turns out Google Chrome (via Chromium) includes a default extension which makes extra services available to code running on the `*.google.com` domains - tweeted about today [by Luca Casonato](https://twitter.simonwillison.net
Today I had βthe talkβ with my partner.
No, not that one, the one about how cloud infrastructure is operated by furries.
So I turned off the new Firefox advertiser-friendly stuff.
But somehow I feel this isn't enough. I want to do more than just turn the feature off, I would prefer to submit poisoned and false data to it continually.
Anyone know a plugin that will flood this bullshit system with fake AI lies or anything like that?
In the page explaining why they silently forced this bullshit on me they say "Attribution is very important to advertisers"
Fuck advertisers. Fuck them. You get that Firefox? It is not your job to be kind to advertisers, it is your job to fuck them on my behalf.
Hopefully my MP shouldn't need much, if any, prodding to do the right things: https://lgbt.libdems.org.uk/resources/trans-educational-resources/trans-101
Content warning: transphobia, cis people who vote Labour read this, ukpol
Arrived back safely from #Anthrocon2024 as of yesterday. Back in the cool Winter weather of Sydney π¦πΊ. Happy #FursuitFriday and have a great weekend!
βοΈ @lupesuits
π· AscariFennec
#furry #fursuit #LupeSuits #FoxFursuit #anthrocon #FursuitPhoto #FoxFurry #AustralianFurry #CuteFursuit #FurryConvention #FurCon
Dragons looking good at the recent #AC2024!
#FursuitFriday #Fursuit #Fursuiting
π² Dracore
𧡠Komickrazi
π·: Monzathekobold
Today is Hawaiian shirt day. So, you know, if you want to, go ahead and wear a Hawaiian shirt and jeans. #AC2024 #FursuitFriday
π·@ravenpaws
Yup, it's true. Firefox 128 includes new adtech features that are turned on by default and announced with very little fanfare, so most people might not even know they're there.
Well, this is me telling you they're there. You might want to go ahead and take a minute to opt out.
Here's the little helpful explainer from Mozilla about how it all works:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/privacy-preserving-attribution
My read seems to be: Mozilla says website surveillance is generally bad and should be defended against. Cool. No notes. Firefox actually has a lot of nice anti-tracking and privacy features there and that's the main reason why I like Firefox.
But, and I swear I'm not even joking a little bit here, Mozilla goes on to say that advertisers might be happier if Firefox itself just tracked you directly and sent activity reports back to them.
Doesn't that sound great?
Now, to Mozilla's credit, they claim to anonymize the activity reports. And you can still meaningfully opt out of the whole system.
But WTF, mate?! I use Firefox *because* it fights against adtech. Or at least it used to. Now, Mozilla just lets adtech right in the front door and hopes you won't notice?
Well, we noticed. Mozilla is damage and we need to route around it.
UPDATE: The about:config setting for this is `dom.private-attribution.submission.enabled`. It's a bool. Set it to false to turn it off.
Firefox 128 introduces privacy-preserving attribution, allowing advertisers to measure campaign performance while protecting user privacy.support.mozilla.org
Hello privacy-forward friends. You might want to uncheck this checkbox that comes pre-checked in the latest iteration of Firefox (if you are still using it. I realize you may not be, yes I still am). The vibe I get is that it's like "cookie trackers lite" and still not cool.
What Firefox says: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/privacy-preserving-attribution
Hat tip and read more from @mcc https://mastodon.social/@mcc/112775362045378963
Attached: 1 image So this, from Firefox, is fucking toxic: https://mstdn.social/@Lokjo/112772496939724214 You might be aware Chromeβ a browser made by an ad companyβ has been trying to claw back the limitations recently placed on ad networks by theβ¦Mastodon
Content warning: Latex meow meow