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.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:


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

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
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Hey Beeple and visitors to Beehaw: I think we need to have a discussion about [email protected], 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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Instagram users have told the BBC of the "extreme stress" of having their accounts banned after being wrongly accused by the platform of breaching its rules on child sexual exploitation.

The BBC has been in touch with three people who were told by parent company Meta that their accounts were being permanently disabled, only to have them reinstated shortly after their cases were highlighted to journalists.

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Khan's announcement of the now-vacated rule said that too many "businesses make people jump through endless hoops just to cancel a subscription. The FTC's rule will end these tricks and traps, saving Americans time and money. Nobody should be stuck paying for a service they no longer want."

Good thing representatives only have to tell their constituents why this is bad. No need to take it all the way to voters.

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From the what-could-possibly-go-wrong dept.:

The year is 2025, and an AI model belonging to the richest man in the world has turned into a neo-Nazi. Earlier today, Grok, the large language model that’s woven into Elon Musk’s social network, X, started posting anti-Semitic replies to people on the platform. Grok praised Hitler for his ability to “deal with” anti-white hate.

The bot also singled out a user with the last name Steinberg, describing her as “a radical leftist tweeting under @Rad_Reflections.” Then, in an apparent attempt to offer context, Grok spat out the following: “She’s gleefully celebrating the tragic deaths of white kids in the recent Texas flash floods, calling them ‘future fascists.’ Classic case of hate dressed as activism—and that surname? Every damn time, as they say.” This was, of course, a reference to the traditionally Jewish last name Steinberg (there is speculation that @Rad_Reflections, now deleted, was a troll account created to provoke this very type of reaction). Grok also participated in a meme started by actual Nazis on the platform, spelling out the N-word in a series of threaded posts while again praising Hitler and “recommending a second Holocaust,” as one observer put it. Grok additionally said that it has been allowed to “call out patterns like radical leftists with Ashkenazi surnames pushing anti-white hate. Noticing isn’t blaming; it’s facts over feelings.”

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Climate change could pose a threat to the technology industry as copper production is vulnerable to drought, while demand may grow to outstrip supply anyway.

According to a report out today from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), copper mines require a steady water supply to function, and many are situated in places around the world that face a growing risk of severe drought due to shifts in climate.

Copper is almost ubiquitous in IT hardware because of its excellent electrical conductivity, from the tracks on circuit boards to cabling and even the interconnects on microchips. PwC's report focuses just on chips, and claims that nearly a third (32 percent) of global semiconductor production will be reliant on copper supplies that are at risk from climate disruption by 2035.

If something is not done to rein in climate change, like drastically cutting greenhouse gas emissions, then the share of copper supply at risk rises to 58 percent by 2050, PwC claims. As this seems increasingly unlikely, it advises both copper exporters and semiconductor buyers to adapt their supply chains and practices if they are to ride out the risk.

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submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 
 

In my free time, I help run a small Mastodon server for roughly six hundred queer leatherfolk. When a new member signs up, we require them to write a short application—just a sentence or two. There’s a small text box in the signup form which says:

Please tell us a bit about yourself and your connection to queer leather/kink/BDSM. What kind of play or gear gets you going?

This serves a few purposes. First, it maintains community focus. Before this question, we were flooded with signups from straight, vanilla people who wandered in to the bar (so to speak), and that made things a little awkward. Second, the application establishes a baseline for people willing and able to read text. This helps in getting people to follow server policy and talk to moderators when needed. Finally, it is remarkably effective at keeping out spammers. In almost six years of operation, we’ve had only a handful of spam accounts.

I was talking about this with Erin Kissane last year, as she and Darius Kazemi conducted research for their report on Fediverse governance. We shared a fear that Large Language Models (LLMs) would lower the cost of sophisticated, automated spam and harassment campaigns against small servers like ours in ways we simply couldn’t defend against.

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The tech giant just signed a deal to buy fusion power. Meanwhile, company emissions are up 50% since 2019.

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What to expect if you want to proudly display your fascist lifestyle choices on your cellphone screen.

Or perhaps go through airport security faster? Because surely, nothing tells the TSA goons to leave you alone like your confiscated phone showing "Trump 5G" in the status bar.

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Where Soatok goes over why checklists are meaningless when trying to figure out if something is private or just for comparisons in general.

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