gardenfelder.bsky.social
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gardenfelder.bsky.social
@gardenfelder.bsky.social
46 followers 63 following 25 posts
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rebeccasolnit.bsky.social
Wrote a thing. Again. Telling the truth is generally regarded as a matter of intention and moral character, but it's also a skill: the ability to delineate accurately what's going on out there and who exactly the parties are....
Categories Are Leaky (Over-Generalizations are Dangerous)
Many people seem to love sweeping generalizations. Not all people, but lots of people I come across trying to discuss the politics of our time fall back on pretending that a category of people is homo...
www.meditationsinanemergency.com
October 10, 2025 at 4:49 PM
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nic221.bsky.social
Is Technology Really in its Villain Era? Reflections from Gikii 2025 @ IVIR Amsterdam https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/technology-really-its-villain-era-reflections-from-gikii-19zwe #AI #regulation (regulate people, not things)
The entire "Villain Era" framing, as clever as it is, nudges us toward a familiar trap: the myth of Sin, where we cast technology as a modern-day scapegoat for our complex social failings. It's a seductive narrative because it gives us a simple, non-human culprit. It's the "job-killing robots", the "polarizing platforms", , the Joker's algorithm in Gotham City. This thinking inevitably leads to what I've called "policy hallucinations" in my work: laws written to appease the ghosts of our own making, regulating fantasies instead of functions. The problem with this approach is that it leads us directly to a graveyard of obsolete, technology-specific legislation. The pace of innovation ensures that today's villain is tomorrow's historical curiosity, leaving behind a law that is both irrelevant and inert. History is littered with these legislative ghosts. Any law passed today that attempts to regulate "Large Language Models" (LLMs) or "Generative Al" by name is, by its very nature, already The Enduring Wisdom of Regulating People, Not Things The alternative is not to abandon regulation, but to re-anchor it in a more durable foundation: technology neutrality. We must regulate what technology does or enables, not what it is. Our focus should be on curbing harmful behavior and negative outcomes, and incentivizing beneficial ones, regardless of the tool used.
September 24, 2025 at 3:07 PM
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erictopol.bsky.social
WSJ editorial board's take on Trump and Tylenol
wsj.com/opinion/tyle...
September 24, 2025 at 3:11 PM
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erictopol.bsky.social
✓ No basis in fact.
September 24, 2025 at 3:09 PM
Reposted by gardenfelder.bsky.social
techpolicypress.bsky.social
Prithvi Iyer examined three research papers that offer fresh insights into AI chatbots and their addictive tendencies. Learn more here:
What Research Says About AI Chatbots and Addiction | TechPolicy.Press
Prithvi Iyer considers three research papers that provide insights into how and why AI chatbots can be addictive by design.
www.techpolicy.press
September 24, 2025 at 3:23 PM
Reposted by gardenfelder.bsky.social
smcgrath.phd
🧪 A federal court has ordered the NIH and other agencies to restore grants terminated by the administration. The judge ruled that mass terminations without specific reasoning are unlawful and that researchers must have a forum to defend their rights. #AcademicSky
U.S. court orders NIH to restore killed grants to California researchers
Judge says district court is proper forum to protest mass grant terminations
www.science.org
September 24, 2025 at 2:28 PM
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erictopol.bsky.social
Comprehensive biologic characterization of a 117-year old supercentenarian, the world's oldest living person
www.cell.com/cell-reports...
September 24, 2025 at 3:48 PM
Reposted by gardenfelder.bsky.social
stephenturner.us
PRIME: A Multi-Agent Environment for Orchestrating Dynamic Computational Workflows in Protein Engineering www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧬🖥️🧪
September 24, 2025 at 3:55 PM
book is open access itself
September 17, 2025 at 9:11 PM
Reposted by gardenfelder.bsky.social
eff.org
The Ninth Circuit just delivered good news for digital privacy: abandoning a phone doesn't abandon your Fourth Amendment rights in the phone's contents. www.eff.org/deeplinks/2...
Appeals Court: Abandoned Phones Don’t Equal Abandoned Privacy Rights
The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers California and most of the Western U.S., just delivered good news for digital privacy: abandoning a phone doesn’t abandon your Fourth
www.eff.org
September 17, 2025 at 7:02 PM
Howard Bloom's latest:
www.amazon.com/Case-Sexual-...
A Case of the Sexual Cosmos: Everything You Know About Nature is Wrong
A Case of the Sexual Cosmos: Everything You Know About Nature is Wrong - Kindle edition by Bloom, Howard, Gafni, Marc. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading A Case of the Sexual Cosmos: Everything You Know About Nature is Wrong.
www.amazon.com
September 17, 2025 at 8:12 PM
Downplaying causes should not mean they are ignored
davekarpf.bsky.social Dave Karpf @davekarpf.bsky.social · Sep 17
There will always be funding for telling rich people what they want to hear.
owillis.bsky.social Oliver Willis @owillis.bsky.social · Sep 17
lol new clown car just rolled up
September 17, 2025 at 6:23 PM
Reposted by gardenfelder.bsky.social
eff.org
Building a decentralized, distributed web is vital to finding and preserving information for all, @archive.org founder @brewster.kahle.org tells EFF’s Cindy Cohn and @thejasonkelley.com on the latest episode of “How to Fix the Internet.”
Podcast Episode: Building and Preserving the Library of Everything
All this season, “How to Fix the Internet” has been focusing on the tools and technology of freedom – and one of the most important tools of freedom is a library. Access to knowledge not only creates ...
www.eff.org
September 17, 2025 at 3:05 PM
An instance of Literate Programming due to Donald Knuth
nic221.bsky.social Nicole Hennig @nic221.bsky.social · Sep 17
Jason Spielman • Designing NotebookLM https://jasonspielman.com/notebooklm #AI #NotebookLM (interesting notes from a designer of NotebookLM)
Text Shot: The mental model of NotebookLM was built around the creation journey: starting with inputs, moving through conversation, and ending with outputs. Users bring in their sources (documents, notes, references), then interact with them through chat by asking questions, clarifying, and synthesizing before transforming those insights into structured outputs like notes, study guides, and Audio Overviews.   By grounding the design in this linear but flexible flow (Inputs → Chat → Outputs) we gave users a clear sense of place within the product while keeping the complexity of new AI interactions digestible and intuitive.
September 17, 2025 at 6:21 PM
Reposted by gardenfelder.bsky.social
stephenturner.us
Regulating genome language models: navigating policy challenges at the intersection of AI and genetics link.springer.com/article/10.1... 🧬🖥️🧪
September 17, 2025 at 3:55 PM
Reposted by gardenfelder.bsky.social
nic221.bsky.social
🫧 Is AI a bubble? https://www.exponentialview.co/p/is-ai-a-bubble (long read but worth it. I like the historical comparisons) #AI #forecasts #economy #booms #bubbles
Infographic from Exponential View 2025 titled ‘Two reds = trouble, AI boom or bubble panel.’ It displays five dials measuring AI sector health: economic strain, industry strain, revenue growth, valuation heat, and funding quality. Most gauges are in the safe green zone, with industry strain in yellow. GenAl isn't there yet. Racing fast, the engine is whining, but not overheating. How long would it take for two gauges to get into the red? I've toyed around with combinations, and most scary scenarios take a couple of years to play out. (And not all scenarios are scary.) That said, so many macro factors, from a recession in the US, to rising inflation, a challenging interest-rate environment, and domestic or international politics, could dampen spirits. While we might not be solidly in bubbleland, it would be hubristic to assume the Al investment cycle is immune to those exuberant dynamics. Onward. For now.
September 17, 2025 at 4:50 PM
Reposted by gardenfelder.bsky.social
doriantaylor.com
something i have been finding super frustrating as i mutate into my final form* is stuff like:

• where did i put that thing
• why can't i version-control pieces of a document
• why do i have to copy information instead of transforming and reusing it

(* Graph Gremlin™, apparently)
September 17, 2025 at 12:44 PM
Reposted by gardenfelder.bsky.social
matrix.org
We've just released v1.16 of the Matrix specification! Extensible profiles, room version 12, and more are now part of the specification.

Read all about it (and what's next up in spec-land) on the blog: matrix.org/blog/2025/09...
Matrix v1.16 release
Matrix, the open protocol for secure decentralised communications
matrix.org
September 17, 2025 at 5:34 PM
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erictopol.bsky.social
A groundbreaking paper published @nature.com today—the first large health language model—predicts >1,000 diseases for a person and when.
Implications here:
erictopol.substack.com/p/dawn-of-a-...
Dawn of A New Era of Primary Prevention in Medicine
Recent groundbreaking reports highlight our newfound potential to prevent diseases
erictopol.substack.com
September 17, 2025 at 3:37 PM
In that context, this is good read:
www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...
September 16, 2025 at 6:43 PM
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eff.org
EFF isn't afraid to punch above our weight ✊ That's why we call out—and even sue—governments and companies that illegally spy on you. But we can't do this work without public support. Donate today! eff.org/join
35 Years for Privacy & Free Speech
EFF is on a mission to protect your civil liberties and human rights wherever they meet tech, but it’s only possible with your help.
supporters.eff.org
September 16, 2025 at 6:11 PM
Reposted by gardenfelder.bsky.social
olivia.science
If useful, I unpack this mostly in these two:

Theories 💭🤔 — Guest, O. (2024). What Makes a Good Theory, and How Do We Make a Theory Good? doi.org/10.1007/s421...

AI, technology, including scientific models 🤖⚙️ — Guest, O. (2025). What Does 'Human-Centred AI' Mean?. doi.org/10.48550/arX...
What Makes a Good Theory, and How Do We Make a Theory Good? - Computational Brain & Behavior
I present an ontology of criteria for evaluating theory to answer the titular question from the perspective of a scientist practitioner. Set inside a formal account of our adjudication over theories, ...
doi.org
September 16, 2025 at 4:28 PM
A shining light just went out. RIP, Robert Redford
September 16, 2025 at 5:02 PM
Reposted by gardenfelder.bsky.social
ronentk.me
Such a wise and timely essay.
1) Attending is a moral skill. Human flourishing requires “the capacity to attend—steadily, generously, and well.”
>
September 14, 2025 at 4:51 PM
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eff.org
AI can play a role in the world of libraries, says Brewster Kahle, the founder of the @archive.org: digitizing, preserving, and easing access to information. Listen here to our interview on the last episode of this season of How to Fix the Internet: www.eff.org/deeplinks/2...
Podcast Episode: Building and Preserving the Library of Everything
All this season, “How to Fix the Internet” has been focusing on the tools and technology of freedom – and one of the most important tools of freedom is a library. Access to knowledge not only creates
www.eff.org
September 14, 2025 at 6:04 PM