Crank.report Survey

The gene autocorrect problem was spotted nearly 20 years ago and appears to be getting worse. The proportion of genetics papers with autocorrect errors was estimated in 2020 to have reached 30 per cent. The Human Gene Name Consortium decided to rename the genes in question, wisely accepting that this would be easier than weaning researchers away from Excel. 

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These little badges used to mean ‘notable person’ (in a chaotic and inconsistent way typical of the old Twitter) and are now supposed only to mean ‘real person’ (but often don’t) - and they give you both amplification in all the algorithms and a share of revenue if you drive a lot of replies. The more you troll, and the more furious replies you generate, the more Twitter promotes you and the more Twitter pays you.

#Area #CommunityOrganizing #SocialMedia

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#UCLA #MarchingBand

If this ActivityPub-fueled change takes off, it will break every social network into a thousand pieces. All posts, of all types, will be separated from their platforms. We’ll get new tools for creating those posts, new tools for reading them, new tools for organizing them, and new tools for moderating them and sharing them and remixing them and everything else besides.

#Area #IndieWeb #ActivityPub

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Using Midjourney, we chose five prompts, based on the generic concepts of “a person,” “a woman,” “a house,” “a street,” and “a plate of food.” We then adapted them for different countries: China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, and Nigeria. We also included the U.S. in the survey for comparison, given Midjourney (like most of the biggest generative AI companies) is based in the country. 

#Area #AI

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This study estimates the number of transgender teenagers affected by five types of laws and policies from the 2023 legislative session—gender-affirming care bans, bans on sports participation, bathroom bans, gender-affirming care “shield” laws, and conversion therapy bans.

#Area #HumanRights #LGBTQ

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Human well-being and dignity should be our North Star—with innovation in a supporting role.

#Area #AI

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A Theory of Change exercise prompts individuals to think beyond research outputs and consider the broader implications of their work. It compels researchers to articulate the intended impacts and establish the causal links between their research and desired outcomes. In this way a ToC helps make underlying assumptions explicit. The process challenges researchers to identify key audiences and determine effective communication channels. In co-creation settings, a ToC provides a structure for this overall design process.

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#area #theoryofchange

As we emerge into post-pandemic public spheres, we have the opportunity to imagine new versions of the public sphere, evident in concepts such as the 15-minute city, in which all needs can be met within a quarter-hour walk; the creation of third spaces to interact outside of home and work; and more broadly in the efforts to make both urban and rural areas greener and more flourishing.

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I’m taking the emerging adult to college this weekend.

I made a playlist.

Data helps illuminate the issues in our communities and allows to identify gaps in our understanding. Filling those gaps with knowledge and insights of grassroots organizations is exactly why I am motivated to work on this project.

How Google’s Data Commons uses AI to make data more accessible

In other words, vendors are competing on the quality, characteristics, and sometimes ideological slant of their models.

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This is so much bad, I don’t know where to start. — crank.report

Continuously executing against the obvious plan gets you much further than you’d think.

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We are charging our commercial customers for our Copilots, and if their use creates legal issues, we should make this our problem rather than our customers’ problem.

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My hope is that most of the money will go directly to newsrooms, and to the sorts of shared infrastructure that every newsroom needs. I also hope that this shared infrastructure will be open sourced as much as possible, so that any public interest organization can take advantage — thereby increasing the impact of these donations.

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The lack of official data creates an impossible choice of invisibility or putting ourselves in life-threatening scenarios.

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This marks one of the country’s largest mass arrests in recent years targeting homosexuality.

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As I’ve written before, I would like to see a kind of tech union for newsrooms that would provide technical advice and commodity technology under an open source license, and then represent newsrooms in technical forums like the W3C.

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If I ask Midjourney for an image in the style of a particular artist, some people consider this obvious and outright theft, but if you chat to the specialists at Christie’s or Sotheby’s, or wander the galleries of lower Manhattan or Mayfair, most people there will not only disagree but be perplexed by the premise - if you make an image ‘in the style of’ Cindy Sherman, you haven’t stolen from her and no-one who values Cindy Sherman will consider your work a substitute (except in the Richard Prince sense).

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