M Berk
@mberk.bsky.social
Ethics. Political theory. Product management. Cat pics. Privacy. Consultant. I teach stuff. I got a lot of problems with you people. My life is measured in 2FA tokens.
“Alaoudh,…said: “I think it’s horrible because we were fighting tyrants back home and now we’re fighting tyrants and their cronies here where we are in exile. “It’s censorship – and what’s even worse is that they did not say we violated X’s rules or Meta’s rules.””
Stephanie Kirchgaessner@skirchy.bsky.social · yesterdayAfter initially resisting, Elon Musk's X now following through on Saudi requests to block content www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
If you haven’t already seen Remarkably Bright Creatures on Netflix, I cannot recommend it enough.
Every little bit helps, but this very much has the flavor of “lawmakers are working with Flock/industry to find the points they can give on to make this crisis go away, and it will very much be designed not to disrupt the surveillance state/biz.” Note that none of the proposals reduces surveillance
Oakland Privacy@oaklandprivacy.bsky.social · 2d agoCalifornia lawmakers are advancing a bill to tighten limits on automated license plate readers, including restricting data retention, access, and sharing after years of privacy concerns and documented misuse. calmatters.org/polit... #privacy #surveillance #alpr 1/3
How many metaphors can you mix and still make a cogent point?
Anil Dash@anildash.com · 2y agoGreat product design is about skating to where the faster horses are going to be, which is how it looks. If you ask people what they want, they'd say where the puck is, but real product is cars — and that's how it works.
The move, which is part of Heritage Foundation’s playbook, is to eliminate education for female coded professions, with the aim of “increasing the married birth rate.” bsky.app/profile/mber...
The New Republic@newrepublic.com · 2d agoPresident Trump is banning students majoring in degrees that don’t make enough money from taking out college loans. Degrees for social work, art, religious studies, teaching aides, and music will be hit the hardest. trib.al/aaAEu6v
I think FedEx sees a “fragile” label and takes it as a challenge. The delivery guy just THREW a box with fragile tape onto my porch. Some eggs broke. They were packed 3 layers deep in foam.
Google’s new company mission: give autocrats the tools they need to manipulate and control the population
Joseph Cox@josephcox.bsky.social · 5d agoNew from 404 Media: Google Earth has introduced an AI feature that lets anyone fabricate completely bullshit satellite images. In our own tests, we added a “bomb blast and crater” to an area of Los Angeles. This is a misinformation time bomb, will 100% be abused www.404media.co/google-earth...
New from 404 Media: Google Earth has introduced an AI feature that lets anyone fabricate completely bullshit satellite images. In our own tests, we added a “bomb blast and crater” to an area of Los Angeles. This is a misinformation time bomb, will 100% be abused www.404media.co/google-earth...
Parts of the GDPR are cited and interpreted by thousands of pieces of case law and guidance, but there's no easy and free way to find out what. We've made a tool which makes it super easy, for 13,000 citing documents, all in one place. More regulations to come! homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~ucqnmve/law...
Eighty percent of using Microsoft products is just closing out prompts to try new features.
“Companies whose futures depend on plastic production, including oil and gas giant ExxonMobil, are trying to persuade the federal government to allow them to put the label “recyclable” on bags and other plastic items virtually guaranteed to end up in landfills and incinerators.”
ProPublica@propublica.org · 7d agoMost plastic items are too small for recyclers to bother sorting and processing, or they're assembled in such a way that it's less expensive to just make new plastic. In fact, only 5% of Americans’ plastic finds new life. (Published Aug. 2024)
Talked to a neighbor who works at Google. She just went back after mat leave. Says her entire team, including her, is made of former FTE who were laid off, then rehired on half rate contracts, no benefits. The same team that worked together as FTE now work together as contractors. WILD.
This is an important point. Corporate America has been running to create operational mechanisms of least liability for decades now. AI is just the latest front on a concerted effort by corporations to block themselves from being sued.
Eryk Salvaggio@eryk.bsky.social · 2w agoSeeding the “maybe our model is exhibiting self-awareness?” narrative to obliterate the “OpenAI is a negligent and potentially criminal actor” narrative is a reputation management move exclusive to this industry. Not a stunt, but a desperate need to control the narrative.
Everyone should watch The Lives of Others, a 2006 German film by Florian Donnersmarck about ubiquitous Stasi surveillance in East Germany. It won the 2007 Academy Award for Best International Feature Film.
Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 2w agoDefinitionally, these are not “friends.”
Taking away someone's food and medicine makes you responsible for their death
I just learned that one side of my family came to the USA in 1635, and I tell you, I’m captivated by this. This side of the fam keeps the lore and people alive through stories going back to the 1700s, but 1635 defies my imagination. I want to know who they were, and what they wanted from life.
22. It's transparently clear that the author(s) started with the conclusion—let's demolish universities and replace them with a Peter Thiel model of public investment in inventors and entrepreneurs untainted by formal education and propelled by VC funding—and then tried to find supporting arguments.
Sing Emily, of arms and the man and the traffic! Fabulous thread by the celebrated (and reviled) translator of the Iliad a the Odyssey.
EMILY WILSON@emilyrcwilson.bsky.social · 2w agoThere is a lot to say about the Nolan Odyssey movie. But one point that I think has not been emphasized enough is: this is a film about living in LA, as Nolan, my erstwhile British compatriot and age mate, has done for years. I gather it’s a strange place.
LOL, "historically accurate." This is a story set 3,000 years ago that features Greek gods, a cyclops, a multi-headed sea monster, and a witch who turns a crew of men into pigs.
Just going to say here, I think I've said this before, a 'historically accurate' version of the Odyssey is not possible because the Odyssey does not take place in a historical setting - it takes place in a fantastical pastiche of four centuries, mixed in with gods and monsters.
Watcher Guru@watcher.guru · 2w agoJUST IN: Elon Musk says Grok will make a "full-length movie" of The Odyssey that is "historically accurate" by the end of this year.
I wrote "2025" on a form as this year's date, caught myself in the mistake, and corrected it to "2027." So that's how I'm doing. I no longer know my position in space and time.
“The problem is no longer getting people to express themselves but providing little gaps of solitude a & silence in which they might… find something to say.…What a relief to have nothing to say…b/c only then is there a chance of framing…the thing that might be worth saying.” —Gilles Deleuze
The famous rice lorry story, now in BSKY
Shiv Ramdas Mens Rice Activist@nameshiv.bsky.social · 2y ago4 yrs ago today, a family member managed a truly spectacular own goal, splintered his domestic bliss, & in the process, united the world for a day. On popular request, I shall now recreate the livetweet thread from that day So gather around children, for this is the tale of The Rice Truck Saga
If AI is so good, why can’t it auto skip every dang intro song to a TV show ever?
New business model just dropped: Insider Trading As A Service
The New Republic@newrepublic.com · 3w agoTruth Social is selling early access to Donald Trump’s posts. trib.al/yEgR5CG
The Taco Bell finger pointing is a psyop to redirect attention from the real culprit, the deregulation and lack of oversight in our food supply
