• 4 Posts
  • 66 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 29th, 2024

help-circle




  • Oh come on, just accept that the wording of the headline is wrong and misleading.

    If a Country is named in the headline like this, it is always implied to be the state/government. No other interpretation makes sense, the society is surely not using ai to censor.

    Even if we consider that not to be the case, just for the sake of the argument, you still can not say “a few people at this project” = “Germany (Society)”. I heavily caution you to not go down the generalization route of “a select group” = “german society”. You ought to think about what that assertion would mean in the context of hamas and palastinians.

    Also TU is a public university, so it’s still an emanation of the state, state-funded and state-controlled.

    While universities get funding from the state, they are mostly free to research what they choose. On the projects website is also no sign of direct funding by the state. You are free to criticize the research, but what you are implying is that the state should censor the direction of research because you don‘t like it, which is quite ironic.


  • This is a clickbait headline. The headline implies that the German State is using AI to censor. It is not! While there might be a lot to criticize the German State/Goverment for, this is not it.

    It is a different actor developing a model, not the state. One can rightly criticize that, but that is definitely protected under scientific freedom.

    […] the Decoding Antisemitism project at the Center for Research on Antisemitism at the Technical University Berlin […]. With the help of a large language computing model, the project aims to create “an [AI] algorithm that will automatically recognize antisemitic statements in web comments . . . so that antisemitic posts can be removed more efficiently and accurately” by online platforms.



  • Most people don’t know that it wasn’t just VW. Sadly I don‘t think you will find any moral acting car manufacturer out there.

    Automakers who have been caught using a defeat device within a diesel vehicle, in a similar manner to Volkswagen include: Jeep and Ram under FCA[391] (now a part of Stellantis), Opel[392] (when under GM), and Mercedes-Benz.[393]

    While not all using defeat devices, diesel vehicles built by a wide range of carmakers, including Volvo, Renault, Mercedes, Jeep, Hyundai, Citroen, BMW, Mazda, Fiat, Ford and Peugeot[48][49] had independent tests carried out by ADAC that proved that, under normal driving conditions, many diesel vehicles exceeded legal European emission limits for nitrogen oxide (NOx), some by more than 10 times, and one by 14 times.[49]

    Beyond exclusively diesel or passenger vehicles, automakers such as: Hino[414] (subsidiary of Toyota), Hyundai and Kia,[415] Nissan,[416] Mazda, Yamaha Motors, Suzuki,[417] Subaru,[418] and others have been proven to be falsifying fuel economy or emissions on non-diesel powered and/or commercial vehicles.

    Soure (Wikipedia)


  • The preceding open letter to Organic Maps shareholders gives some context for the decision to fork.

    The Organic Maps project has been built and promoted under the premise of being an open community project, so it’s troubling to discover that the majority of shareholders consider it to be their sole property. More concerns include lack of transparency and accountability in project governance and violation of stated Free and Open Source Software values. (see Addendum for the details)[…]

    Interesting and troubling read, didn’t know that about Organic Maps.







  • Tldr:

    To balance AOSP’s open nature with its product development strategy, Google maintains two primary Android branches: the public AOSP branch and its internal development branch. The AOSP branch is accessible to anyone, while Google’s internal branch is restricted to companies with a Google Mobile Services (GMS)licensing agreement.

    Beginning next week, all Android development will occur within Google’s internal branches, and the source code for changes will only be released when Google publishes a new branch containing those changes. As this is already the practice for most Android component changes, Google is simply consolidating its development efforts into a single branch.









  • I disagree that the implication is only about lack of awareness. Further my point wasn’t that Linux is underused because of a lack of awareness. My point is that user popularity is not a valid measurement for usability.

    Awareness definitely plays a role in user numbers but there are other more important factors. For example awareness of Linux doesn’t beat what comes preinstalled, this is a much bigger factor if we are talking about all desktop users in my opinion. Linux could have the best usability out of all desktop OS, most would still not change preinstalled OS for different reasons e.g. not knowledgeable enough, indifference etc… You might argue that if it was the OS it would come preinstalled, but then you would be ignoring the economic reasons that guide that. I still maintain that popularity of an OS is not a metric that can be used to infer usability. As long as there are different hurdles to getting to the actual using part, actual usability can‘t be determined by popularity.

    On a side note about awareness:

    Maybe it’s a generational thing?

    It could very well be, or it could potentially be something geographical. Anecdotally in my friends group of university students(20-26year olds) in a non-technical-field, not a single Person (beside me) knew what Linux was, and most had never heard the term before I mentioned it in a conversation. Neither would my parents. So maybe not a generational thing. I think you might be viewing the extent of awareness from the eyes of someone broadly in the tech field?