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Keep your AI claims in check

A creature is formed of clay. A puppet becomes a boy. A monster rises in a lab. A computer takes over a spaceship. And all manner of robots serve or control us.

Click to view the original at ftc.gov

Hasnain says:

I wonder/hope this was written with a few specific companies in mind. Refreshingly well written, especially coming from the government.

"Are you aware of the risks? You need to know about the reasonably foreseeable risks and impact of your AI product before putting it on the market. If something goes wrong – maybe it fails or yields biased results – you can’t just blame a third-party developer of the technology. And you can’t say you’re not responsible because that technology is a “black box” you can’t understand or didn’t know how to test."

Posted on 2023-02-27T23:47:26+0000

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The legacy of fy_iceworld, Counter-Strike's divisive and hugely popular custom map

I remember playing a Counter-Strike map in 2001 called fy_iceworld. It was a small simple grey killbox of a map that vi…

Click to view the original at rockpapershotgun.com

Hasnain says:

Ah, the nostalgia.

“This is perhaps the central tragedy of fy_iceworld. The game industry benefits from its legacy, but the conditions that spurred its influence no longer exist. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2019 does not offer a freely downloadable level editor for players to make new custom maps, nor does it allow a decentralized network of player-managed multiplayer servers to distribute these custom maps. We can only play what someone else has decided for us. This climate change has ensured that there will never be another fy_iceworld.”

Posted on 2023-02-25T06:17:07+0000

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Justice Department Says Google Destroyed Evidence Related to Antitrust Lawsuit

The department alleges Google had a past practice of setting employee chats to auto-delete.

Click to view the original at wsj.com

Hasnain says:

From the court memo - yikes.

Although I guess this is nice for google employees that chats can finally get retained so they can easily find useful info.

"> The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure required Google to suspend its auto-delete practices in mid-2019, when the company reasonably anticipated this litigation. Google did not. Instead, as described above, Google abdicated its burden to individual custodians to preserve potentially relevant chats. Few, if any, document custodians did so. That is, few custodians, if any, manually changed, on a chat-by-chat basis, the history default from off to on. This means that for nearly four years, Google systematically destroyed an entire category of written communications every 24 hours.

> All this time, Google falsely told the United States that Google had “put a legal hold in place” that “suspends auto-deletion.”"

Posted on 2023-02-25T00:48:03+0000

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Hasnain says:

The map showing the homes of the dead kids right next to the factories is damming. And even if they can’t prove causation, why not close the factories cause they were already deemed illegal?

“Over the past three years, Mazhar has seen a significant increase in cases of adult asthma among her friends and family.

“Everyone’s coughing now,” she continued. “But there is no push towards awareness or advocacy about pollutants and toxicity. We need more air quality monitors, more green corridors, more industrial zone monitoring. In the informal settlement behind the Korangi Industrial Zone, everyone is coughing, everyone has chest infections.”

In Ali Muhammad Goth, lung disease is chronic, among both adults as well as children. 36-year-old Abdul Hafeez Leghari, a longtime resident, calls it ghuttan—a feeling of perpetual suffocation, an inevitable byproduct of living next to plastic and rubber factories, breathing in toxic fumes, day in and day out. “

Posted on 2023-02-24T17:08:49+0000

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Hasnain says:

At this point I have stopped questioning any news about Twitter antics because of course it’s totally believable that Elon refused to pay the Slack bill.

“There’s never a good time for a company to lose its primary communication infrastructure. But the loss of Slack is likely to be particularly stressful for employees working on Musk’s latest big idea: open-sourcing the algorithm that ranks tweets in the timeline.

On Monday, Musk announced (by replying to a random account, naturally) that Twitter plans to open source its algorithm next week. “Prepare to be disappointed at first when our algorithm is made open source next week, but it will improve rapidly!” he wrote.

It’s unclear whether Twitter will actually hit that deadline — Musk seems to announce a new thing coming “next week” all the time, and often those deadlines pass and whatever feature was allegedly coming is never heard of again. (Remember the feature that would tell you if you’re shadowbanned? Or improvements to the search function? Or the content moderation council? Or letting creators charge for video?)”

Posted on 2023-02-24T05:39:58+0000

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Tax Breaks Threaten Remote Work If Cities Start Enforcing Them

Many tax incentives hinge on employees coming to the office. Officials are deciding whether to enforce them as downtowns bear the cost of hybrid work arrangements.

Click to view the original at bloomberg.com

Hasnain says:

“Critics of tax incentives to attract businesses say the durability of hybrid work should be a wake-up call for governments. “Maybe company-specific incentives aren’t the safest, lowest-risk form of investment here,” said Greg LeRoy, the executive director of Good Jobs First, a nonpartisan think tank that advocates for economic development accountability. “We would always argue that the better strategy is to invest in public goods that make a place sticky,” like infrastructure, education and amenities.”

Posted on 2023-02-22T04:53:44+0000

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“The New York Times” Is Repeating One of Its Most Notorious Mistakes

The paper’s anti-trans coverage parallels its failings over gay rights and AIDS. But the Times appears determined not to learn from its own history.

Click to view the original at thenation.com

Hasnain says:

“Thirty years after Rosenthal’s admission, the Times is still trapped in the same bunker when it comes to LGBTQ issues. It is still at pains to distance itself from what it clearly believes to be an activist mob that doesn’t understand what Real Journalism is all about. It is still so instinctively appalled at the notion that its critics might be right that it is choosing the path of aristocratic contempt.”

Posted on 2023-02-22T04:34:51+0000

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Hasnain says:

“What’s happening to teenage girls is the fallout of the crisis, not the crisis itself. We know what the real emergency is: Men’s violence and desire to control women’s bodies in one way or another. But American culture has no interest in finger-wagging at boys to stop harassing and raping girls, nor are politicians keen to stop passing legislation that dictates the details of women’s health and lives.

And so instead of stopping this nightmare, we try to teach girls how to survive it.

But how much do we really expect them to endure? At what point will the adults of this country say enough? We are failing our most sacred responsibility: To care for our children.”

Posted on 2023-02-20T17:24:00+0000

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Review found ‘falsified data’ in Stanford President’s research, colleagues allege

His paper was called “the miracle result.” But it never turned into an Alzheimer’s treatment. Now, four former Genentech senior scientists and executives allege that an internal review in 2011 discovered the paper had been based on fabricated research — and that Marc Tessier-Lavigne kept the...

Click to view the original at stanforddaily.com

Hasnain says:

So if this was Pakistan I’d imagine the student reporter here would be expelled the same day. Wonder how Stanford will handle it.

“Genentech, in a written statement to The Daily, confirmed that an internal review took place in 2011, a fact that was not previously public. The company characterized the review as “routine.” When asked whether this was accurate, the scientist whom The Daily confirmed belonged to the research review committee said, “no no no no no no.””

Posted on 2023-02-18T04:40:39+0000

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It Is Journalism’s Sacred Duty To Endanger The Lives Of As Many Trans People As Possible

The task of reporting is not a simple one. Each and every day, reporters and editors at publications like The Onion make difficult decisions about which issues should receive attention, knowing that our coverage will influence not only how people think, but also how they act. This responsibility is....

Click to view the original at theonion.com

Hasnain says:

So hard hitting and cathartic, especially in light of the recent crap NYT pulled in response to the letter from their own contributors calling them out on their transphobia.

“Naturally, courageous reporting like ours has its detractors. Our critics accuse us of transphobia and are trying to murder us online, with their online mobs. They want to destroy our right to free speech and have us arrested by all the police. What gives? Why would you arrest us, when it’s those deviant trans people you ought to be arresting instead? Do you know what the science says about trans people getting arrested, huh? What if we could find data saying trans people should be more likely to get arrested? What will our detractors say then? They’ll be silent, as well they should be, and free speech will survive one more day.

For more evidence of our time-honored journalistic commitment to endangering lives, please see our previous coverage of gay people, immigrants, Black people, and women.”

Posted on 2023-02-17T18:55:27+0000