RE: https://techhub.social/@shantini/115957020152303871
Being a marketer shaped my progressive politics more than I expected precisely because of this.
Once you see how much effort is being spent on marketing certain worldviews to you and how much of that can be studied, analyzed, and replicated - you can’t unsee it.
And you see the power that’s available for all of us to tap into to push back. The same kinds of marketing and communication tactics used against us can be used to amplify science, art, pro-social values, and progressive policy.
The right has been waging a coordinated campaign of swaying public opinion since at least the birth of the Federalist Society and backlash to Roe.
Their legal influence required creating an information and media apparatus that influenced first elite professional networks, then the public at large.
(For a recent example, just look at how much LLMS and AI have been relying on constant marketing and media attention for anyone to believe that these tools are “inevitable” or even “useful”. Their marketing and PR departments work very hard and are very well funded. For a reason.)
Series C, Episode 04 - Dawn of the Gods
VILA: Why don't we switch him off and put ourselves out of our misery.
AVON: I would advise against it. Orac may be gathering information that could prove useful to us.
VILA: Useful! He's got us into this mess.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/304/89
The birth of the Web — The World Wide Web was invented by British scientist Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 while working at CERN
Tim Berners-Lee, a British scientist, invented the World Wide Web (WWW) in 1989, while working at CERN. The web was originally conceived and developed to meet the demand for automated information-sharing between scientists in universities and institutes around the world.
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Technology and analysis of game interactivity for people with disabilities https://lseee.net/index.php/te/article/view/1601 "In games, the auxiliary methods of sensory impairment are mainly realized through sensory substitution, information enhancement and tactile feedback."<…
Can You Hear Me Now? A Benchmark for Long-Range Graph Propagation
Luca Miglior, Matteo Tolloso, Alessio Gravina, Davide Bacciu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17762 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.17762 https://arxiv.org/html/2512.17762
arXiv:2512.17762v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Effectively capturing long-range interactions remains a fundamental yet unresolved challenge in graph neural network (GNN) research, critical for applications across diverse fields of science. To systematically address this, we introduce ECHO (Evaluating Communication over long HOps), a novel benchmark specifically designed to rigorously assess the capabilities of GNNs in handling very long-range graph propagation. ECHO includes three synthetic graph tasks, namely single-source shortest paths, node eccentricity, and graph diameter, each constructed over diverse and structurally challenging topologies intentionally designed to introduce significant information bottlenecks. ECHO also includes two real-world datasets, ECHO-Charge and ECHO-Energy, which define chemically grounded benchmarks for predicting atomic partial charges and molecular total energies, respectively, with reference computations obtained at the density functional theory (DFT) level. Both tasks inherently depend on capturing complex long-range molecular interactions. Our extensive benchmarking of popular GNN architectures reveals clear performance gaps, emphasizing the difficulty of true long-range propagation and highlighting design choices capable of overcoming inherent limitations. ECHO thereby sets a new standard for evaluating long-range information propagation, also providing a compelling example for its need in AI for science.
toXiv_bot_toot
The front of the new Computing and Information Science building looked like a garden center when they were installing the landscaping
#photo #photography #cornell
As far as I understand (granted, I don't understand that much, but...) there is a legitimate and actively debated position in philosophy of mind and cognitive science regarding ant colonies.
That is, colony-level cognition may be real, not metaphorical. Ant colonies:
- integrate information over time
- exhibit memory (via pheromone landscapes)
- solve optimisation problems
- adapt flexibly to novel conditions
- show something like attention (resource …
From China, on visual-to-auditory sensory substitution: Image-to-sound conversion and automated classification for blind assistance https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3773365.3773472 2025 8th International Conference on Computer Information Science and Artificial Intelligence, in Wuhan, Chin…
I think the root of the “AI” evil is when AI researchers in the 1960s recognized that they outrageously underestimated the complexity of the human mind.
They became humiliated by their promises that AGI was just a few years away—and then went full goblin mode that’s lasting to this day.
Some of the OG researchers took it quite badly that they stalled and weren’t in the limelight anymore.
‣ Marvin Minsky (co-founder of MIT AI lab and arguably the most important early AI bro) went on to visit Epstein’s island multiple times.
‣ Karl Steinbuch, who came up with the German term for computer science ("Informatik")—who also was a literal Nazi (and likely war criminal) in World War II—later wrote articles in ultra-right magazines about things like “equal rights rob women of their children”.
‣ John McCarthy (inventor of Lisp, co-authored document that coined the term “Artificial Intelligence”) was a staunch Republican who years later claimed (in a serious article) that “thermostats have beliefs”.
[one moment, I am receiving more information]
‣ There’s a second Epstein Island AI pioneer? Who also was Chief Learning Officer at… Trump University? That would be Roger Schank (founded one of the first AI companies in the 1980s AI boom, it even had an IPO. Of course the 1980s AI bubble burst).
Obviously all of the above received all the awards in computer science and are very revered people.
Usually digital signs on campus are broken half the time, but the signs in the new Computing and Information Science building knock my socks off -- that's a statue of Ezra Cornell
#photo #photography #cornell
Got a survey from the Royal Society:
of course, they forgot Mastodon in their list of "where do you get information about new articles". I added it in the "other" box!
"what would make me recommend Royal Society journals to my colleagues?" Obviously, cutting all ties with Elon Musk, the nazi destroyer of science and our planet!
(Yes, they still have him as a fellow and this is their latest defense:
Finding a crate of ancient but precious CD-R and DVD-R's is like finding a chest of scrolls in the basement of a temple that burned down. There's a welcome prize, but many frustratingly missing fragments.
Back in 1994 when asked about the (very popular) bank of Compaq gaming machines packed with latest CDROMs being a core of the Information Highway exhibit at the Ontario Science Centre (god rest its soul), I would explain that the CDROM was a proxy for the bandwidth that was to come.
I think I got that more right than I knew: the CD-R/DVD-R is a TRANSPORT media, and certainly absolutely NOT a STORAGE media. It's charm is transport over very very very slow baud rates of perhaps 4GB/20 years. 😅
Series B, Episode 05 - Pressure Point
BLAKE: For the past year now, I've been collecting all the information I could find. With Orac's help, I now know more about Control than anyone outside the senior echelon of the Federation. I think I can destroy it. [Avon claps slowly.] I'm not going to minimize the danger. It's a high-risk operation. That is why I'm not going to ask any of you to come with me.
GAN: You think you could do it without us?
@mariyadelano@hachyderm.io
