Posts by g@fed.giorgiocomai.eu
(DIR) Post #9sK2KI9VFp9EaiPsJM by g@fed.giorgiocomai.eu
2020-02-23T07:25:13.226026Z
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@sean @nergal @schestowitz gold in the comments to that article:> In general, DATA is the PROBLEM, it is hazardous WASTE, not something we need to keep around. We don't want to preserve 99.99% of it. We want to erase it. We want it to fade away as it becomes irrelevant to our lives, like data did 50 years ago.
(DIR) Post #9uH7iuZYGjznqqPgVU by g@fed.giorgiocomai.eu
2020-04-21T17:10:19.775591Z
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@codesections @celesteh @sir I see your conversation has then moved on to other aspects, but just in case, here may be a useful reference on Gates Foundation & co. https://www.versobooks.com/books/2344-no-such-thing-as-a-free-gift
(DIR) Post #9uH98xg1RvoWxkQQzY by g@fed.giorgiocomai.eu
2020-04-21T17:40:59.154361Z
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@codesections @celesteh If it's not the politics, but the individual ethics, then there's of course a lot of what the philosopher Peter Singer wrote about that seems to be going your way, if I understood correctly your other posts. He wrote a lot about pragmatic, measureable, cost effective ways to change the world for the better, and how our instinctive ethics are misleading... here's an example in a video: https://invidio.us/watch?v=5xCLXADVuxgHe set up this organisation called "The life you can save" that promotes the idea of "effective giving"... with just a few dollars you may be saving a life: https://www.thelifeyoucansave.orgSo according to this line of thought you should take that good-paying job and be much more effective at saving lives that if you went to some of the poorest places on Earth to volunteer. These are big questions.
(DIR) Post #9vDRf86bOrcqhu8OBM by g@fed.giorgiocomai.eu
2020-05-19T20:04:44.032281Z
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Looking forward to reading this!
(DIR) Post #9xU6wUZxe3XFEF0jBo by g@fed.giorgiocomai.eu
2020-07-26T08:38:05.846123Z
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#OSM #OpenStreetMap folks! What's the best way to separate buildings?Some villages in Italy have buildings shapes taken from aerial... but instead of separating contiguous homes, they basically made a huge, oddly shaped building that basically is half the village. In real life, this is actually many houses of different colours, different heights, etc., and I'd like to fix some of these. I did it sometimes in Vespucci, but it is hugely time consuming. But even in the default online editor this does not seem straightforward.Am I missing something? Suggestions welcome!
(DIR) Post #9xn8jDpQgjTuazt9No by g@fed.giorgiocomai.eu
2020-08-04T20:33:00.110737Z
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This is part of a message sent by astronomers in 1999, addressing aliens in the Cygnus constellation. They felt this could be sufficiently universal that it would be understood.Can you figure out what this means? I'll give the correct answer in the reply to this message
(DIR) Post #A1lfayvbP8X4LriGvY by g@fed.giorgiocomai.eu
2020-12-01T20:05:45.734982Z
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I've been reading "data feminism" these days. I had high expectations and was sure I'd like the book, but I'm actually quite disappointed. Will probably share more thoughts as soon as I finish it, but in the meantime... has any of you read it or has seen interesting reviews?
(DIR) Post #A1mgHh95ab2ioJLfns by g@fed.giorgiocomai.eu
2020-12-01T23:03:15.889538Z
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@Gina In brief, the book takes it from a promising start, pointing at how "data feminism", means, basically, to use data to challenge dominant power structures. There's a lot of references to intersectionality, the importance of community, and context. So far, so good, I'm all for it.My main concerns are:1. it's all focused on the United States, and I'm not sure having only examples from the U.S. is really helpful for thinking at this best in Europe, or other parts of the world... for example, much of the debate on race and marginalised communities is so peculiarly American that it does not travel so well. One may say, ok, the authors are American, it's normal that they focus on the place they know best. But my take is... nope, no way, internationalism is an important part of how I see feminism. If one is interested in powerful examples of intersectional feminism one *must* look beyond their own country, both to understand and responde better to their own challenges as well as to build networks of international solidarity. I'm sure the authors nominally support all of this, but I've read ~80% of the book and it's all U.S.A., with minor examples from Canada and Australia. 2. their whole conversation is about challenging power structures, and they take as their starting point the "matrix of domination". When I first looked at it, I thought it mostly made sense. But chapter after chapter I realised ever more clearly that the economy barely features in their understanding of what oppresses us. It's (almost) all about how race and gender intersect, leading to all sorts of discrimination. I'm ~80% into the book, and there's still no distinct acknowledgment of the role of capitalism, neoliberalism, class... whatever you want to call it. I don't expect necessarily marxist feminism, but yes, I do expect some degree of anti-capitalism, or at the very least some more explicit criticism of capitalism as it currently works. But no, it's still all race and gender... this is, of course, important, but in a book-length debate on challenging power structures, being blind to money and their impact on power dynamics is problematic.3. Finally, in a book that in a way is all about politics, there is no reference to politics... there's no left and right, no progressives and conservatives. Ok, the "matrix of domination" works across all society, I get it, but I cannot unsee what different political forces stand for, including in Europe... think e.g. of the ongoing #StraikKobiet in Poland. Ignoring the political dimension of this all is problematic.Perhaps I'm just too much used to reading feminist books published by Verso... radical, internationalist, with examples and stories from across all continents, unashamedly leftist... from "generic" books such as "Radical happiness" https://www.versobooks.com/books/2819-radical-happiness - to the great "Revolting prostitutes" - https://www.versobooks.com/books/3039-revolting-prostitutes - (based on lived experience, with stories from across the world, and a lot of attention to migrants, which I believe is key for intersectional feminism in Europe, but barely mentioned in "data feminism"), or e.g. "Full Surrogacy Now" by Sophie Lewis, which widely discusses cross-border dynamics. So what we're left with is a book with some interesting ideas about community-driven data activism and data journalism, a reasonable debate of data ethics and the importance of context for data analysis and data-based advocacy, and some debate on (mostly) well known examples of gender-based discrimination and how it intersects with race.It wants to be empowering, and I do think it *can* be empowering in some contexts... but to me, it is politically underwhelming and somewhat parochial in its focusing so much on the U.S.But I don't want to be too critical, I think it's good for debates, and there's some useful inputs for broader conversations.Anyway, the book is also available online in Creative Commons: https://data-feminism.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/frfa9szd/release/3Attached, the 7 defining features of "data feminism" and the "matrix of domination"
(DIR) Post #A2cnuP3ZaKLIfXTpbs by g@fed.giorgiocomai.eu
2020-12-26T21:31:27.510402Z
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The share of electricity being produced with fossil fuels has remained stable since the 1980s.Such a pain to look at the inaction and the empty promises...https://ourworldindata.org/worlds-energy-problem
(DIR) Post #A2k70fHowRLv1SSTbM by g@fed.giorgiocomai.eu
2020-12-30T23:51:47.814986Z
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Oh, Google translate explicitly aknowledges gender-specific translations, nice! https://support.google.com/translate/answer/9179237Let's see how this works in practice if we add an adjective!Oh... surprise, surprise...
(DIR) Post #A2tW8LiaF6ZsiFxJo0 by g@fed.giorgiocomai.eu
2021-01-04T11:54:08.489782Z
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Quote comparing late Soviet year and contemporary Russia, but, I feel, relevant to other contexts:> "Before, when a person walked into the store and found only empty shelves, they blamed the system, but now, when they walk into a store chock full of consumer goods but cannot afford to buy them, they blame themself. This is even truer when they admit that other people no more capable or intelligent have somehow adapted to this system and prospered. " - https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/01/04/the-kremlin-need-have-no-fear-of-mass-economic-protests-a72537
(DIR) Post #A2theq5xw4NTgjaUM4 by g@fed.giorgiocomai.eu
2021-01-04T13:15:05.928253Z
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@kravietz Agreed, it's simplified for the sake of the argument, but at its core, there's a lot of truth there.Letting the individual believe they are themselves to blame for all their ills is something we've seen also across Western Europe... not only having the poor believe they have nobody but themselves to blame for their poverty, but also, e.g., that the people have nobody to blame but themselves (or their neighbour) for public health failures in recent months.
(DIR) Post #A2xrPGb1PkvHQ6AOKu by g@fed.giorgiocomai.eu
2021-01-04T15:33:02.301441Z
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@kravietz right, right, both valid points. I was extrapolating that part to broaden the conversation, but sticking to Russia, I think you're right. And yet, when I think in particular at this other part:> "Stolen elections, politicians who cheat people’s expectations, police brutality and the persecution of popular public figures can still shake people out of their lethargy – but economic injustice no longer can."...of course, economy is always to some extent part of the issue, but it's rarely the core demand. It is not, for example, in the case of Belarus in recent months. But even back to Russia, what united the last big wave of protests in Russia (2011 presidential elections to Bolotnaya), the unifying issue was "for fair elections", not economy (even if Udaltsov and other leftists were part of the protest). Tsikhanouskaya is not a threat because of its distinct economic policy. Neither is Navalny (even if that is already a different story).
(DIR) Post #A3dmQo55G3GGUlLqi0 by g@fed.giorgiocomai.eu
2021-01-26T14:44:00.734023Z
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WebRTC is now a W3C and IETF standards https://www.w3.org/2021/01/pressrelease-webrtc-rec.html.en
(DIR) Post #A3uLO1cz2Z8AZ8yYNc by g@fed.giorgiocomai.eu
2021-02-03T19:47:06.731618Z
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Nice read on a breach into Stackoverflow networks, and privilege escalation. They had a number of quite bad practices for such a big company, even if many of them are probably not so uncommon. The fun part, however, is how much the intruder kept searching Stackoverflow to find out how intrude further into Stackoveflow systems :) https://stackoverflow.blog/2021/01/25/a-deeper-dive-into-our-may-2019-security-incident/#infosec
(DIR) Post #A3zppiEsIhw5cWJq9Q by g@fed.giorgiocomai.eu
2021-02-05T20:22:59.325148Z
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Quick reminder that nuclear does not have much of a future, mostly because it's too expensive. By the time a new plant would go into production, it would still be far more expensive than renewables. What the graph does not show is just how incredibly cheap renewables are expected to be very soon compared with fossil fuels: new investments in fossil fuel for energy production make no sense, from no point of view besides that of people who have vested interests. Insistence of building pipelines such as North Stream II (bad for climate, bad for economy, bad for geopolitics) is beyond puzzling.https://m.dw.com/en/germany-looking-for-final-repository-for-nuclear-waste-global-outlook/a-56449115
(DIR) Post #A3zruNEK2SHtooPXH6 by g@fed.giorgiocomai.eu
2021-02-06T12:11:53.321832Z
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@servant_of_the_anime_avatars To be clear, I also think that Germany took a terrible, terrible decision in anticipating the closure of nuclear powerplants, and keeping coal powerplants instead. The point I made is not about nuclear VS coal (or gas).
(DIR) Post #A3zuD3SLyreLtz0eHI by g@fed.giorgiocomai.eu
2021-02-06T11:42:20.188949Z
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@frankie95 Actually, the graph I posted is about expected costs in 2030.
(DIR) Post #A3zuD4lX72aNxkzToO by g@fed.giorgiocomai.eu
2021-02-06T11:51:07.763281Z
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@frankie95 Thinking with the price, production, and consumption patterns of today for things that start to work,say, in 10 years, and are expected to work for decades after that,is part of the reason why we are still investing in gas pipelines and powerplants which are almost certain to become stranded assets. If the cost of nuclear and renewables remained stable at their 2005 (or even 2015) values, then sure.. but it's an assumption we know to be wrong.
(DIR) Post #A44mXNHc9B43LHxq7c by g@fed.giorgiocomai.eu
2021-02-08T15:40:26.138794Z
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All "proof of work" crypto are an ecological disaster, and such should be legally outphased as soon as possible.But any thoughts on "proof of stake" cryptocurrencies (and PoS blockchains more in general)? If we remove the *ecological disaster* aspect, then we can value the thing on its own merit. At the present stage, I struggle to see the benefit beyond marginal cases that don't deserve the ongoing hype, but welcome thoughts.