@aral@mastodon.ar.al2025-08-26 14:47:09
Hey everyone, every Tuesday, my friend @… asks for your help to feed her family. She can’t do it today (they’re trying to stay alive during a genocide) so she asked if I could do it on her behalf.
They need $500 each week for their family of 6.
Every single dollar makes a real difference
If you’re unable to donate, please consider sharing – it might r…
@tiotasram@kolektiva.social2025-07-25 10:57:58
Just saw this:
#AI can mean a lot of things these days, but lots of the popular meanings imply a bevy of harms that I definitely wouldn't feel are worth a cute fish game. In fact, these harms are so acute that even "just" playing into the AI hype becomes its own kind of harm (it's similar to blockchain in that way).
@… noticed that the authors claim the code base is 80% AI generated, which is a red flag because people with sound moral compasses wouldn't be using AI to "help" write code in the first place. The authors aren't by some miracle people who couldn't build this app without help, in case that influences your thinking about it: they have the skills to write the code themselves, although it likely would have taken longer (but also been better).
I was more interested in the fish-classification AI, and how much it might be dependent on datacenters. Thankfully, a quick glance at the code confirms they're using ONNX and running a self-trained neural network on your device. While the exponentially-increasing energy & water demands of datacenters to support billion-parameter models are a real concern, this is not that. Even a non-AI game can burn a lot of cycles on someone's phone, and I don't think there's anything to complain about energy-wise if we're just using cycles on the end user's device as long as we're not having them keep it on for hours crunching numbers like blockchain stuff does. Running whatever stuff locally while the user is playing a game is a negligible environmental concern, unlike, say, calling out to ChatGPT where you're directly feeding datacenter demand. Since they claimed to have trained the network themselves, and since it's actually totally reasonable to make your own dataset for this and get good-enough-for-a-silly-game results with just a few hundred examples, I don't have any ethical objections to the data sourcing or training processes either. Hooray! This is finally an example of "ethical use of neutral networks" that I can hold up as an example of what people should be doing instead of the BS they are doing.
But wait... Remember what I said about feeding the AI hype being its own form of harm? Yeah, between using AI tools for coding and calling their classifier "AI" in a way that makes it seem like the same kind of thing as ChatGPT et al., they're leaning into the hype rather than helping restrain it. And that means they're causing harm. Big AI companies can point to them and say "look AI enables cute things you like" when AI didn't actually enable it. So I'm feeling meh about this cute game and won't be sharing it aside from this post. If you love the cute fish, you don't really have to feel bad for playing with it, but I'd feel bad for advertising it without a disclaimer.
@v_i_o_l_a@openbiblio.social2025-06-26 10:28:25
"Unhappily, the book turns out to be a hoax from beginning to end."
– spannend, was wir alles so für bücher im bestand haben! 🙃
[ich wollte für die RVK-umsignierung herausfinden, um welche altsächsische chronik es da geht.]
[aus: https://doi.org/10.2307/411291, rezension zu: …
@AimeeMaroux@mastodon.social2025-06-25 07:16:23
It's the Day of #Hermes aka Mercurius Day aka #Wednesday! 🐏
"My own opinion is that Hermes gave Amphion these gifts, both the [magical] lyre and the headband, because he was overcome by love for him.
And the chlamys he wears, perhaps that also came from
@azonenberg@ioc.exchange2025-06-25 12:30:52
The full frequency sweep won't finish before I leave for REcon but I think I've finally got the ARF6 launch dialed in: better than -20 dB return loss from DC to 11.9 GHz, and better than -15.8 dB from DC to 30 GHz.
* Shrink vias from 0.45 pad / 0.25 drill to 0.35 / 0.15
* Use round vias for the signal lines as coupling seemed to be significant vs the square ones I tried to use to simplify meshing
* Keep non-functional via pads
* Single large ground plane cutout o…
@rachel@norfolk.social2025-06-26 07:55:50
@gedankenstuecke@scholar.social2025-05-26 14:21:08
«The real cost of AI is being paid in deserts far from Silicon Valley»
Of course it's not just the 'AI' boom but our tech consumption more broadly, but it's a good summary of how large-scale resource extraction is doing its part to destroy communities and the planet.
/HT @… for sharing the link!
https://restofworld.org/2025/ai-resource-extraction-chile-indigenous-communities/
@muz4now@mastodon.world2025-07-25 10:35:21
I just downloaded 3 recent albums from #UnsignedMusicians on #BandCamp - I look forward to sharing them with you over the next few days.
#IndieMusic
@timbray@cosocial.ca2025-06-23 18:41:47
Another “Long Links” curation of long-form works that probably nobody has time for all of, but one or two of which might enrich your life. Featuring: Population shrinkage, “evitability of enshittification”, vibe-coding tales, the usual cosmology fun, a story 70 years in the making, and Equus asinus. https://www.
@gedankenstuecke@scholar.social2025-05-26 14:21:08
«The real cost of AI is being paid in deserts far from Silicon Valley»
Of course it's not just the 'AI' boom but our tech consumption more broadly, but it's a good summary of how large-scale resource extraction is doing its part to destroy communities and the planet.
/HT @… for sharing the link!
https://restofworld.org/2025/ai-resource-extraction-chile-indigenous-communities/