I've been using Waterfox as my Firefox backup because for some reason my Firefox always crashes within 15 minutes of use, and it's always when I'm doing impirtant shit like banking or paying a bill. Which is what I typically use the 'legit' browsers for, and why I just use LibreWolf for daily browsing/fuckery. Using Waterfox feels like it calls less attention when on a government website as opposed to Librewolf.
Didn't know it was bought by an ad company once upon a time, but this is also why I spread out my browsing. I also use Ghostery, and I have Brave (for checking how things show up in a Chromium environment when programming) but I don't like Brave and rarely use it... Point is, gotta have multiple browsers either way.
This is it, in my experience. They think all you need to read is the bible and no other books. But if you're only reading the bible, you miss out on everything in all other books, which is a lot.
Her work is so beautiful, thank you for sharing.
yup yup, i try to keep a clean, decluttered interface, and having all my browser stuff around the discord stuff is not a clean or enjoyable look. I'll deal with it if it's really the only way but I'll try everything else first.
true, but I don't wanna have to log in every time I use it (I have my browsers set to clear cookies and history on close). If it's the only way I'll take the inconvenience, but trying to keep the startup process smooth if I can.
Really hoping adblockers for discord become a thing
Damn, even the nurses? Public education is even more of a mess than I thought.
This is so sad to hear.
what happened to school guidance counselors? they still exist, right?
Agreed honestly, the division of any thing by gender seems out of date these days. Go based on skill, age, or weight/height, something... just leave gender out of it.
On the other hand, if you put a transman with the women, he will have a clear advantage and it wouldn't be fair.
Kind of points out the obvious, but at least it's scientifically proven now.
corporate vs. free, then zoom into free and vs. bad instances. we still need something like TheBadSpace to help with safety and moderation.
connection: from the album "You Can Play These Songs with Chords"
"Publishers give you promotional money in exchange for purchase commitments and prominent placement—but once you take the cash, you’ve made your deal with the devil. You now must put stacks of the promoted books in the most visible parts of the store, and sell them like they’re the holy script of some new cure-all creed.
Those promoted books are the first things you see when you walk by the window. They welcome you when you step inside the front door. They wink at you again next to the checkout counter. "
How do they pick their monthly picks?
not memes for me but anime. there's no way to block whole instances i don't wanna see. if i don't wanna see ani.social on my feed at all i have to block every community on the instance, which is just not possible.
memes though is gonna be hard for you because a lot of people use meme formats to communicate in any topic. the science side of lemmy memes about science stuff. the programmers meme about computer stuff. but that's not all they do, there's more than just memes, there's actual discussion too. to completely get rid of memes and never see them on a lemmy feed again is gonna be an impossible task.
I haven't listened yet but this relates to something that's been bugging me and I haven't found the right place to write it. This is also part of why I never got into TikTok in the first place. I did have a TikTok account for a few days and tried to see what the hype was about after all these years. But I was immediately turned off by the fact that after a video plays it goes down straight to the next one. It's not like Insta where you can control the speed at which you scroll through the content. It forces speed onto you. I could only use the app for a few minutes before getting overstimulated and overwhelmed and had to close it. I never installed it again.
It all comes back to the manifestations of this need for efficiency. There's cultural pressure to consume the next content chunk, while incentives or abilities to stop and savor things have been removed.
I keep thinking of Thoreau's advice to "simplify, simplify." Corporations wanna keep adding all these extra features that supposedly increase efficiency but they just create complications and headaches for their users.
The American Psychological Association, representing 157,000 members, has issued a resolution calling for an end to trans care bans and misinformation around care.
Internal documents obtained by 404 Media show that Tumblr staff compiled users' data as part of a deal with Midjourney and OpenAI.
Tumblr and Wordpress are preparing to sell user data to Midjourney and OpenAI, according to a source with internal knowledge about the deals and internal documentation referring to the deals.
The exact types of data from each platform going to each company are not spelled out in documentation we’ve reviewed, but internal communications reviewed by 404 Media make clear that deals between Automattic, the platforms’ parent company, and OpenAI and Midjourney are imminent.
The internal documentation details a messy and controversial process within Tumblr itself. One internal post made by Cyle Gage, a product manager at Tumblr, states that a query made to prepare data for OpenAI and Midjourney compiled a huge number of user posts that it wasn’t supposed to. It is not clear from Gage’s post whether this data has already been sent to OpenAI and Midjourney, or whether Gage was detailing a process for scrubbing the data before it was to be sent.
Gage wrote:
>“the way the data was queried for the initial data dump to Midjourney/OpenAI means we compiled a list of all tumblr’s public post content between 2014 and 2023, but also unfortunately it included, and should not have included:
- private posts on public blogs
- posts on deleted or suspended blogs
- unanswered asks (normally these are not public until they’re answered)
- private answers (these only show up to the receiver and are not public)
- posts that are marked ‘explicit’ / NSFW / ‘mature’ by our more modern standards (this may not be a big deal, I don’t know)
- content from premium partner blogs (special brand blogs like Apple’s former music blog, for example, who spent money with us on an ad campaign) that may have creative that doesn’t belong to us, and we don’t have the rights to share with this-parties; this one is kinda unknown to me, what deals are in place historically and what they should prevent us from doing.”
Gage’s post makes clear that engineers are working on compiling a list of post IDs that should not have been included, and that password-protected posts, DMs, and media flagged as CSAM and other community guidelines violations were not included.
Automattic plans to launch a new setting on Wednesday that will allow users to opt-out of data sharing with third parties, including AI companies, according to the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, and internal documents. A new FAQ section we reviewed is titled “What happens when you opt out?” states that “If you opt out from the start, we will block crawlers from accessing your content by adding your site on a disallowed list. If you change your mind later, we also plan to update any partners about people who newly opt-out and ask that their content be removed from past sources and future training.”
404 Media has asked Automattic how it accidentally compiled data that it shouldn’t share, and whether any of that content was shared with OpenAI. 404 Media asked Automattic about an imminent deal with Midjourney last week but did not hear back then, either. Instead of answering direct questions about these deals and the compiling of user data, Automattic sent a statement, which it posted publicly after this story was published, titled "Protecting User Choice." In it, Automattic promises that it's blocked AI crawlers from scraping its sites. The statement says, "We are also working directly with select AI companies as long as their plans align with what our community cares about: attribution, opt-outs, and control. Our partnerships will respect all opt-out settings. We also plan to take that a step further and regularly update any partners about people who newly opt out and ask that their content be removed from past sources and future training."
Another internal document shows that, on February 23, an employee asked in a staff-only thread, “Do we have assurances that if a user opts out of their data being shared with third parties that our existing data partners will be notified of such a change and remove their data?”
Andrew Spittle, Automattic’s head of AI replied: “We will notify existing partners on a regular basis about anyone who's opted out since the last time we provided a list. I want this to be an ongoing process where we regularly advocate for past content to be excluded based on current preferences. We will ask that content be deleted and removed from any future training runs. I believe partners will honor this based on our conversations with them to this point. I don't think they gain much overall by retaining it.” Automattic did not respond to a question from 404 Media about whether it could guarantee that people who opt out will have their data deleted retroactively.
News about a deal between Tumblr and Midjourney has been rumored and speculated about on Tumblr for the last week. Someone claiming to be a former Tumblr employee announced in a Tumblr blog post that the platform was working on a deal with Midjourney, and the rumor made it onto Blind, an app for verified employees of companies to anonymously discuss their jobs. 404 Media has seen the Blind posts, in which what seems like an Automattic employee says, “I'm not sure why some of you are getting worked up or worried about this. It's totally legal, and sharing it publicly is perfectly fine since it's right there in the terms & conditions. So, go ahead and spread the word as much as you can with your friends and tech journalists, it's totally fine.”
Separately, 404 Media viewed a public, now-deleted post by Gage, the product manager, where he said that he was deleting all of his images off of Tumblr, and would be putting them on his personal website. A still-live post says, “i've deleted my photography from tumblr and will be moving it slowly but surely over to cylegage.com, which i'm building into a photography portfolio that i can control end-to-end.” At one point last week, his personal website had a specific note stating that he did not consent to AI scraping of his images. Gage’s original post has been deleted, and his website is now a blank page that just reads “Cyle.” Gage did not respond to a request for comment from 404 Media.
Several online platforms have made similar deals with AI companies recently, including Reddit, which entered into an AI content licensing deal with Google and said in its SEC filing last week that it’s “in the early stages of monetizing [its] user base” by training AI on users’ posts. Last year, Shutterstock signed a six year deal with OpenAI to provide training data.
OpenAI and Midjourney did not respond to requests for comment.
A team of scientists has figured out how to convert planet-warming carbon dioxide into a harmless powdery fuel that could be converted into clean electricity
The U.S. military industry is both a cause and a consequence of climate change.
Bitcoin’s environmental impact grows as the price rises.
Robot that uses AI to pull weeds may reduce poisonous herbicide use by 70%.
States that adopt updated building codes also could see big savings in energy bills
Want to buy a car on Amazon? Well, now you might get your chance. The e-commerce giant will launch vehicle sales in the U.S. next year and allow local car dealers to sell directly to customers on its site.
Thanks, I hate it