Posts by college_physics@defcon.social
(DIR) Post #AS1NosclriGba6S9ho by college_physics@defcon.social
2023-01-25T09:02:37Z
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@darius surveillance capitalism is fairly specific form of commercialism. The question is whether the fediverse can be free of commercial motive of any kind. I believe the answer depends on scale. As a niche project between tech savvy individuals spending hobby time it could be a profit-motive free zone. But as a replacement for mass social I struggle to see how that could be. Even if entirely funded as public good there will be friction around procurements. Life is not simple.
(DIR) Post #AS1nPRZNukVZF2Ougq by college_physics@defcon.social
2023-01-26T07:30:10Z
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@publius @darius the metastatic behavior is largely the result of creating private legal entities that incentivise their members to behave in a certain way while the corresponding public entities (regulators) malfunction in incompetence and capture. For oligopolies commercialism is a fig leaf.The challenge remains how to scale the open source phenomenon and ethos several orders of magnitude so that it actually becomes relevant for society.
(DIR) Post #ASApOTQNTuff2FUaf2 by college_physics@defcon.social
2023-01-30T16:04:21Z
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@Fairphone actually looks like netherlands minus friesland 😂
(DIR) Post #ASNODHFDFfvfNa2f9U by college_physics@defcon.social
2023-02-05T17:29:06Z
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@simon now that we know that an improved search experience is possible (was not too hard to guess tbh) a key question is what does it take to replicate this in an efficient, privacy respecting way. I suspect it doesn't take a gazillion parameter model to parse a select corpus (whether its a collection of pdf, online manuals etc) and improve on something like recoll or other desktop engine
(DIR) Post #ASWxUN4Y59UPCCa0VU by college_physics@defcon.social
2023-02-10T08:17:57Z
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@w3c its good to be optimistic but there are entire countries where there is one "web" and its called facebookFinding more sustainable models to keep the web alive is now an existential matter
(DIR) Post #ASi0PllDQvPV2wU6LY by college_physics@defcon.social
2023-02-15T16:09:28Z
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@simon Its quite bizarre that this is happening. We are talking about corporate behemoths. Why would they rush with something like this? I can't think of any reason that is benign.
(DIR) Post #AT2hCAVmnJKKwmE8R6 by college_physics@defcon.social
2023-02-25T15:43:31Z
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@simon @tomscott the thing is, it is not digital tech as such, it is what one might "legal tech" that will shape how the information universe will evolve. In one sentence: "who gets legal access to what data (including code as data) and what can they legally do with it". The pattern of using a stream of data to predict an expected value is old, generic and has wide applicability. That is what banks have been doing with credit scoring (a sort of low IQ AI) for decades. It is a highly regulated business because it messes up with peoples lives. From adtech to crypto the tech industry in its various recent incarnations has been getting away messing with people's lives with impunity. We have been in sort of stasis for more than a decade not because there weren't good enough algos. The "system" is simply unable to find a consistent legal framework that is compatible with earlier notions of ownership, privacy and agency so it is simply kicking the can...
(DIR) Post #ATMtjYRoaJy9ZqVkTQ by college_physics@defcon.social
2023-03-07T09:41:46Z
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@blacklight more or less on the same boat here.we can only mourn how an objectively better alternative universe has been stolen from us - a lost decade at least, if not moredigital technology is so pliable, it is really not that hard to imagine wonderful things built around itbut increasingly it is not about the upside and engineering utopias but how to limit disaster and at least not degenerate into a mad universe or disinformation, surveillance, hate, unsustainable consumption and resident evilescape hatches are still visible, one benign side-effect of all these serial monopolies is that there is a lot of fragility - it goes with the territory of *not* having competition or any other pushback mechanism (e.g. regulation)lets hope that there is now a critical mass of people who understand how much is at stake and are willing to take actions in a coherent directionI dont think another lost tech decade is a fathomable prospect.
(DIR) Post #ATcMwQVvCnPEmGJxi4 by college_physics@defcon.social
2023-03-14T19:29:56Z
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@ParadeGrotesque keep in mind though that in most parts of the world there is not even a pretense of a carnival gameJust those who serve and those who get served