Tootfinder

"The understanding that the total supremacy of the “data” discourse was always a problematic, neoliberal way of seeing and structuring the world, of legitimizing violence according to the needs of those in power."
(Original title: The “Data” Narrative eats itself)
https://tante.cc/2025/09/15/…

The "Data" Narrative eats itself
“The first model fakes the data, then the second model trains on the fake data. Any problems in the synthetic data set are amplified further. Then the second model — based on fake data — is used to treat real patients. This is, of course, all fine.” Today I want to take David Gerard’s recent […]

wiki_link_dyn: Wikipedia link dynamics (2011)
Six networks of the evolving hyperlink structure among wikipedia articles, for simple English (en), German (de), Dutch (nl), Polish (pl), Italian (it), French (fr), taken in August 2011. Each edge is timestamped, and an edge (i,j) indicates that article i hyperlinks to j. The edge sign indicates the addition ( 1) or deletion (-1) of that link at the specified time.
This network has 100312 nodes and 1627472 edges.
Tags: Informati…

Raiders EDGE Maxx Crosby reminds 49ers he's elite during joint practice https://raiderswire.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/raiders/2025/08/15/raiders-edge-maxx-crosby-reminds-49ers-hes-elite-at-…

Making Power Explicable in AI: Analyzing, Understanding, and Redirecting Power to Operationalize Ethics in AI Technical Practice
Weina Jin, Elise Li Zheng, Ghassan Hamarneh
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.10588

Making Power Explicable in AI: Analyzing, Understanding, and Redirecting Power to Operationalize Ethics in AI Technical Practice
The operationalization of ethics in the technical practices of artificial intelligence (AI) is facing significant challenges. To address the problem of ineffective implementation of AI ethics, we present our diagnosis, analysis, and interventional recommendations from a unique perspective of the real-world implementation of AI ethics through explainable AI (XAI) techniques. We first describe the phenomenon (i.e., the "symptoms") of ineffective implementation of AI ethics in explainable AI using…

TL;DR: what if instead of denying the harms of fascism, we denied its suppressive threats of punishment
Many of us have really sharpened our denial skills since the advent of the ongoing pandemic (perhaps you even hesitated at the word "ongoing" there and thought "maybe I won't read this one, it seems like it'll be tiresome"). I don't say this as a preface to a fiery condemnation or a plea to "sanity" or a bunch of evidence of how bad things are, because I too have honed my denial skills in these recent years, and I feel like talking about that development.
Denial comes in many forms, including strategic information avoidance ("I don't have time to look that up right now", "I keep forgetting to look into that", "well this author made a tiny mistake, so I'll click away and read something else", "I'm so tired of hearing about this, let me scroll farther", etc.) strategic dismissal ("look, there's a bit of uncertainty here, I should ignore this", "this doesn't line up perfectly with my anecdotal experience, it must be completely wrong", etc.) and strategic forgetting ("I don't remember what that one study said exactly; it was painful to think about", "I forgot exactly what my friend was saying when we got into that argument", etc.). It's in fact a kind of skill that you can get better at, along with the complementary skill of compartmentalization. It can of course be incredibly harmful, and a huge genre of fables exists precisely to highlight its harms, but it also has some short-term psychological benefits, chiefly in the form of muting anxiety. This is not an endorsement of denial (the harms can be catastrophic), but I want to acknowledge that there *are* short-term benefits. Via compartmentalization, it's even possible to be honest with ourselves about some of our own denials without giving them up immediately.
But as I said earlier, I'm not here to talk you out of your denials. Instead, given that we are so good at denial now, I'm here to ask you to be strategic about it. In particular, we live in a world awash with propaganda/advertising that serves both political and commercial ends. Why not use some of our denial skills to counteract that?
For example, I know quite a few people in complete denial of our current political situation, but those who aren't (including myself) often express consternation about just how many people in the country are supporting literal fascism. Of course, logically that appearance of widespread support is going to be partly a lie, given how much our public media is beholden to the fascists or outright in their side. Finding better facts on the true level of support is hard, but in the meantime, why not be in denial about the "fact" that Trump has widespread popular support?
To give another example: advertisers constantly barrage us with messages about our bodies and weight, trying to keep us insecure (and thus in the mood to spend money to "fix" the problem). For sure cutting through that bullshit by reading about body positivity etc. is a better solution, but in the meantime, why not be in denial about there being anything wrong with your body?
This kind of intentional denial certainly has its own risks (our bodies do actually need regular maintenance, for example, so complete denial on that front is risky) but there's definitely a whole lot of misinformation out there that it would be better to ignore. To the extent such denial expands to a more general denial of underlying problems, this idea of intentional denial is probably just bad. But I sure wish that in a world where people (including myself) routinely deny significant widespread dangers like COVID-19's long-term risks or the ongoing harms of escalating fascism, they'd at least also deny some of the propaganda keeping them unhappy and passive. Instead of being in denial about US-run concentration camps, why not be in denial that the state will be able to punish you for resisting them?

heise | Fahrradnavis mit Solartechnik im Test: Höhere Laufzeit dank Sonnenergie
Solarladung statt Steckdose: Wir testen, wie lange Coros Dura, Garmin Edge 840 Solar und Garmin Edge 1040 Solar unter Sonne und Wolken durchhalten.

One verse takes us a long way.
#Bible #faith

TIL Intel has already published a few more FIT spec revisions that I had missed.
https://edc.intel.com/content/www/de/de/design/products-and-solutions/software-and-services/firmware-a…

"The first model fakes the data, then the second model trains on the fake data. Any problems in the synthetic data set are amplified further. Then the second model — based on fake data — is used to treat real patients. This is, of course, all fine."
Sythetic data using "AI" is such a toxic pattern that keeps being amplified (because of the structures that guide "science")
(Original title: Medical research ethics is hard — but fake AI data is easy!)

Medical research ethics is hard — but fake AI data is easy!
Medical research means dealing with ethics boards — who keep asking all these pointed questions on how you’re going to use people’s most personal data. What if we just … fake the data? Sorry,…

Umfrage: Sehr viele Menschen tragen auch daheim Kopfhörer
Medienforscher beobachten Kopfhörer-Boom in Deutschland: Viele Menschen bleiben auch in den eigenen vier Wänden für sich allein, wenn sie etwas streamen.
h…