Technology

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A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

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This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
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Hey Beeple and visitors to Beehaw: I think we need to have a discussion about !technology@beehaw.org, community culture, and moderation. First, some of the reasons that I think we need to have this conversation.

  1. Technology got big fast and has stayed Beehaw's most active community.
  2. Technology gets more reports (about double in the last month by a rough hand count) than the next highest community that I moderate (Politics, and this is during election season in a month that involved a disastrous debate, an assassination attempt on a candidate, and a major party's presumptive nominee dropping out of the race)
  3. For a long time, I and other mods have felt that Technology at times isn’t living up to the Beehaw ethos. More often than I like I see comments in this community where users are being abusive or insulting toward one another, often without any provocation other than the perception that the other user’s opinion is wrong.

Because of these reasons, we have decided that we may need to be a little more hands-on with our moderation of Technology. Here’s what that might mean:

  1. Mods will be more actively removing comments that are unkind or abusive, that involve personal attacks, or that just have really bad vibes.
    a. We will always try to be fair, but you may not always agree with our moderation decisions. Please try to respect those decisions anyway. We will generally try to moderate in a way that is a) proportional, and b) gradual.
    b. We are more likely to respond to particularly bad behavior from off-instance users with pre-emptive bans. This is not because off-instance users are worse, or less valuable, but simply that we aren't able to vet users from other instances and don't interact with them with the same frequency, and other instances may have less strict sign-up policies than Beehaw, making it more difficult to play whack-a-mole.
  2. We will need you to report early and often. The drawbacks of getting reports for something that doesn't require our intervention are outweighed by the benefits of us being able to get to a situation before it spirals out of control. By all means, if you’re not sure if something has risen to the level of violating our rule, say so in the report reason, but I'd personally rather get reports early than late, when a thread has spiraled into an all out flamewar.
    a. That said, please don't report people for being wrong, unless they are doing so in a way that is actually dangerous to others. It would be better for you to kindly disagree with them in a nice comment.
    b. Please, feel free to try and de-escalate arguments and remind one another of the humanity of the people behind the usernames. Remember to Be(e) Nice even when disagreeing with one another. Yes, even Windows users.
  3. We will try to be more proactive in stepping in when arguments are happening and trying to remind folks to Be(e) Nice.
    a. This isn't always possible. Mods are all volunteers with jobs and lives, and things often get out of hand before we are aware of the problem due to the size of the community and mod team.
    b. This isn't always helpful, but we try to make these kinds of gentle reminders our first resort when we get to things early enough. It’s also usually useful in gauging whether someone is a good fit for Beehaw. If someone responds with abuse to a gentle nudge about their behavior, it’s generally a good indication that they either aren’t aware of or don’t care about the type of community we are trying to maintain.

I know our philosophy posts can be long and sometimes a little meandering (personally that's why I love them) but do take the time to read them if you haven't. If you can't/won't or just need a reminder, though, I'll try to distill the parts that I think are most salient to this particular post:

  1. Be(e) nice. By nice, we don't mean merely being polite, or in the surface-level "oh bless your heart" kind of way; we mean be kind.
  2. Remember the human. The users that you interact with on Beehaw (and most likely other parts of the internet) are people, and people should be treated kindly and in good-faith whenever possible.
  3. Assume good faith. Whenever possible, and until demonstrated otherwise, assume that users don't have a secret, evil agenda. If you think they might be saying or implying something you think is bad, ask them to clarify (kindly) and give them a chance to explain. Most likely, they've communicated themselves poorly, or you've misunderstood. After all of that, it's possible that you may disagree with them still, but we can disagree about Technology and still give one another the respect due to other humans.
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US ordered TSMC, not Taiwan the country. The vast majority of sales are made to US based firms so they likely have a lot of sway.

US is the major customer of TSMC, so they can order them, not to mention we protect them with defense pacts, so they might want to actually listen. Pretty sure they make some of our military grade chips as well.

Cutting edge chips are used in cutting edge military hardware. TSMC provides a lot of the chips used in advanced American weapons. Turns out a faster chip in a missile makes the missile better able to make sophisticated split second decisions.

US can order most of its allies to do anything. Remember when the US thought Edward Snowden was on the Bolivian presidential airplane and within the span of like, half a hour, managed to get all of western europe to deny airspace to Bolivia, ground the literal presidential plane and search him like a dirty drug mule? Was pretty awkward after that when Snowden wasn't even there.

[Cobbled from Reddit thread]

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cross-posted from: https://lazysoci.al/post/19171536

My earnest hope is that all of the former WordPress community supporters and contributors, swivel and start investing their time and effort into WriteFreely.

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A network of accounts on X using stolen and possibly AI-generated images coordinated to engage with accounts supportive of Israel

This discovery follows previous research by the DFRLab and other investigators which exposed a similar network of inauthentic pro-Israel accounts which became active on Facebook, Instagram, and X after the beginning of the war in Gaza.

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The difference between a helpmeet and a parasite is power. If we want to enjoy the benefits of intermediaries without the risks, we need policies that keep middlemen weak. That's the opposite of the system we have now.

Take interoperability and IP law. Interoperability (basically, plugging new things into existing things) is a really powerful check against powerful middlemen. If you rely on an ad-exchange to fund your newsgathering and they start ripping you off, then an interoperable system that lets you use a different exchange will not only end the rip off – it'll make it less likely to happen in the first place because the ad-tech platform will be afraid of losing your business

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Apologies for the late vid, still emotionally recoving from the recent US news

Either way, AMD is killing it with the gaming performance gains with their newest 9800X3D CPU!

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If you're reading this congrats!🎉

You're one of the few who gets to learn about AMD's secret cpu launch lol

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The weird way AI assistants get their names

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cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/4455823

Archived link

Kenya is hosting unprecedented lawsuits against Meta Inc., the parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram. Mercy Mutemi, who made last year’s TIME 100 list, is a Nairobi-based lawyer who is leading the cases. She spends her days thinking about what our consumption of digital products should look like in the next 10 years. Will it be extractive and extortionist, or will it be beneficial? What does it look like from an African perspective?

Question: Behind the legal battle with Meta are workers and their conditions. What challenges do they face in these tech roles, particularly content moderation?

Mercy Mutemi: Content moderators in Kenya face horrendous conditions. They’re often misled about the nature of the work, not warned that the work is going to be dangerous for them. There’s no adequate care provided to look after these workers, and they’re not paid well enough. And they’ve created this ecosystem of fear — it’s almost like this special Stockholm syndrome has been created where you know what you’re going through is really bad, but you’re so afraid of the NDA that you just would rather not speak up.

[...]

Content moderation work, annotation work, and algorithm training, [...] in its very nature involves a lot of exposure to harmful content. That work is dumped on Kenya. Kenya says it’s interested in digital development, but what Kenya ends up getting is work that poses serious risks, rather than meaningful investment in its people or infrastructure.

[...]

When the initial version of ChatGPT was released, it had lots of sexual violence in it. So to clean up an algorithm like that, you just teach it all the worst kinds of sexual violence [...] if you ask ChatGPT to show you the worst rape that could ever happen, there are now metrics in place that tell it not to give out this information because it’s been taught to recognize what it’s being asked for. And that’s thanks to Kenyan youth whose mental health is now toast, and whose life has been compromised completely

[...]

Big Tech is not planting any roots in the country [of Kenya] when it comes to hiring people to moderate content or train algorithms for AI. They’re not really investing in the country in the sense that there’s no actual person to hold liable should anything go south. There’s no registered office in Kenya for companies like Meta, TikTok, OpenAI.

[...]

Instead, what you have are these middlemen. They’re called Business Process Outsourcing, or BPOs [...] It’s almost like they’re agents of big tech companies. So they will do big tech’s bidding. If the big tech says jump, then they jump. So we find ourselves in this situation where these companies purely exist for the cover of escaping liability.

[...]

[The workers'] mental health is destroyed – and there are often no measures in place to protect their well-being or respect them as workers. And then it’s their job to figure out how to get out of that rut because they still are a breadwinner in an African context, and they still have to work, right? And in this community where mental health isn’t the most spoken-about thing, how do you explain to your parents that you can’t work?

[...]

I think when you give people work for a period of time and those people can’t work again because their mental health is destroyed, that doesn’t look like lifting people out of poverty to me. That looks like entrenching the problem further because you’ve destroyed not just one person.

[...]

MM: Let me just be very categorical. My position is not that this work shouldn’t be coming into Kenya. But it can’t be the way it is now, where companies get to say “either you take our work and take it as horrible as it is with no care, and we exploit you to our satisfaction, or we, or we leave.” No. You can have dangerous work done in Kenya, but with appropriate level of care, with respect, and upholding the rights of these workers. It’s going to be a long journey to achieve justice.

[...]

[Edit typo.]

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cross-posted from: https://poptalk.scrubbles.tech/post/1628369

Workers are striking after trying a failing multiple times to negotiate fair pay, standardize Remote/Hybrid options, and other basic rights. The strike comes the day before election day.

I guess fingers crossed at the NYT that the election website doesn't tip over from too much traffic....

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cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/4456663

Archived link

He Zongying, a female technician employed at a FinDreams Battery factory in Wuhan, a subsidiary of Chinese EV giant BYD, suffered verbal abuse and threats from a male colleague. She immediately reported the issue to the company and also contacted the police. But, to her surprise, the company initially refused to hand over the surveillance footage of the incident to authorities, provided her with no clear path to file a complaint, and then chose to fire her rather than pursue her claim.

Meanwhile, the official union tasked with protecting her rights remained silent. Thus, despite the company’s stated commitment to corporate responsibility, its mechanisms for resolving claims of harassment proved not only ineffective but even resulted in the victim being punished by the company for raising the issue in the first place.

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[Later on], she was called into a meeting with two male colleagues from the factory and a female staff member from Human Resources. But, instead of addressing her complaint, the meeting resulted in He being written up for two violations of company policy. To add insult to injury, one of these violations even stated that she had humiliated and verbally abused the man who had harassed her. She expressed her confusion, pointing out that the incident was on tape and asking why her attempt to stop his harassment was now being characterised as “humiliation and abuse.” In response, her supervisor merely stated that she could have handled the situation differently.

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The second penalty He Zongying received was for exhibiting “improper conduct” and engaging in “repeated misbehaviour within a three-month period.” In addition to the initial altercation, this penalty also involved He allegedly leaving her workstation without authorisation on other occasions.

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Over the following week or so, she was instructed to await further notice and was told that she needed not come into work. When she was finally instructed to return, however, she found that she had been removed from all technical tasks and instead given janitorial duties. Meanwhile, all the days she had been forced to take off by the company had been deducted from her salary.

[...]

BYD Contradicts its own Corporate Responsibility Policies, Union Offers No Support

In its labour rights protection policy, FinDreams Battery states that employees are valuable assets and offers various channels through which employees can provide feedback. The company’s 2023 “Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance Report” even outlines specific complaint mechanisms and mental health support services offered to workers. The parent firm BYD has also stated in its own corporate responsibility statements that it “firmly opposes workplace violence and harassment.”

[...]

[Edit typo.]

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cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/4447520

Seven French families have filed a lawsuit against social media giant TikTok, accusing the platform of exposing their adolescent children to harmful content that led to two of them taking their own lives at 15, their lawyer said on Monday.

The lawsuit alleges TikTok's algorithm exposed the seven teenagers to videos promoting suicide, self-harm and eating disorders, lawyer Laure Boutron-Marmion told broadcaster franceinfo.

The families are taking joint legal action in the Créteil judicial court. Boutron-Marmion said it was the first such grouped case in Europe.

"The parents want TikTok's legal liability to be recognised in court", she said, adding: "This is a commercial company offering a product to consumers who are, in addition, minors. They must, therefore, answer for the product's shortcomings."

TikTok, like other social media platforms, has long faced scrutiny over the policing of content on its app.

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Archived link

The largest book publisher in The Netherlands has confirmed it plans to use artificial intelligence (AI) to translate some of its books into English, The Bookseller can exclusively reveal.

Utrecht-headquartered publisher Veen Bosch & Keuning (VBK) was acquired by Simon & Schuster earlier this year. It was Simon & Schuster’s first acquisition of a non-English-language publisher, which it said at the time would help it access “broader European markets”.

A spokesperson for VBK told The Bookseller: “We are working on a limited experiment with some Dutch authors, for their books to be translated into English language using AI. There will be one editing phase, and authors have been asked to give permission for this.

[...]

Ian Giles, chair of the Translators Association at the Society of Authors (SoA), said: “This is concerning news. Earlier this year, the SoA found that one third of literary translators are already losing work to AI. Where work itself is not lost, translators struggle to increase their prices in the face of the AI challenger. This pressure on translators’ incomes jeopardises our ability to support ourselves in what is a highly precarious industry.”

[...]

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cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/4454212

Archived link

[...] Thousands of businesses, executives and entrepreneurs [...] rely on the island to turn their AI visions into reality. From Nvidia Corp. and Microsoft Corp. to OpenAI, the world’s AI frontrunners are increasingly turning to Taiwanese companies to fabricate their chips, build their servers and cool their devices. That in turn has made the island’s stock market the hottest major bourse in Asia over the past year, led by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Hon Hai Precision Industry Co.

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There are risks for Taiwan. For the first time in decades, an entire technology production ecosystem will be centered not in China but its tiny neighbour. Growing tensions between the US and China may have dissuaded some AI companies from producing hardware in the mainland. Yet the rising importance of Taiwan makes it all the more alluring for Beijing, which has long described the island as a breakaway province it will eventually reclaim.

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The island is now chock-full of lesser-known firms that are just as essential for global AI development. These linchpins include server maker Quanta Computer Inc., power leader Delta Electronics Inc. and Asia Vital Components Co., a pioneer in creating computer cooling systems. Collectively, Taiwanese firms are poised to play an outsized role in an AI market that’s projected to reach $1.3 trillion by 2032.

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As its economy grew, [Taiwanese] companies became more sophisticated manufacturers and began to open factories in mainland China. But they always kept their most advanced techniques at home.

In recent years, the increasingly aggressive US trade sanctions on China have forced companies to scout out alternative production locations, knocking the country out of many supply chains.

In less than two years, for example, those curbs have effectively sidelined China’s AI hardware industry. Taiwan’s exports of servers and graphics cards — the building blocks of data centers for training AI models — in the first nine months of 2024 were more than double China’s output, according to data collected by Bloomberg. That’s a sharp reversal from previous years.

[...]

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