European Alternatives do Exist

Following the Boycot Tariffs post finding alternatives in the tech domain is kind of the next obvious step. The European Alternatives website is a good point so start searching for alternatives to popular tech products, like browsers, cloud providers, hosting, email services, search engines, ….

Changing everything at once isn’t easy, but every minor thing that you can change is a minor thing that doesn’t need to cross the Ocean. And many small drops make a big Ocean (or can dry it up).

The Landscape of Lisp

A very interesting collection of resources on 4 different flavours of LISP (Scheme, CL, Clojure and Racket).

https://churchofturing.github.io/landscapeoflisp.html

is AI sexist?

WIRED tested the popular AI video generator from OpenAI and found that it amplifies sexist stereotypes and ableist tropes, perpetuating the same biases already present in AI image tools. – OpenAI’s Sora Is Plagued by Sexist, Racist, and Ableist Biases

The raging bull that is modern AI naturally has to reflect the men that built it. WIRED found out that OpenAI’s Sora is plagued with sexist and racist bias. Really? Is anyone surprised by this? Expecting that by having machines trained in the median content produced by humans, one would suddenly get master pieces of art, video or writing, is being naif or a fool. These machines can do many things, but one thing they can’t is to reason out of the prejudices in which they were trained in.

Ah, and some companies seem to believe that by stealing quality content their AI’s will be better.

How do you teach your kid to be a responsible citizen when you lead by the wrong examples?

AI is a mirror for our median society. If we wan’t to fix what we see in the mirror, we need to move up society’s median first, by cultivating excellence in education, fine arts, science, music and social behavior. Unfortunately many countries (both rich and poor) seem to be doing exactly the opposite for reasons only a hand full of despots/oligarchs can explain.

Simple things are the best. Wrote a ruby blogging software.

The title says it all. Probably out of boredom yesterday me and copilot–Well, mostly copilot–decided to write a static blog generator in ruby.

I first thought of python but I already know a lot of python and always wanted to see more ruby. I didn’t want to use any templates. Wanted everything in a single file. And wanted something that I could easily understand and modify.

And in a couple of hours, while sitting in front of the TV, with my laptop sitting in my lap I managed to get 99% of it working. Check blog.rb out at github. 160 loc and I have a very functional static blogging platform. It works by passing it a source folder and an output folder:

ruby blog.rb src blog

Every markdown file in the root of src is going to become a page with links in the header. All other markdown files become blog entries. It even generates an RSS.

if you want to use it just change the two lines with global parameters: The first is the blog title while the second is the script for tracking page views. You can make it an empty string or use your tracking script.

$titulo = ...
$umami = ...

The script also copies everything else that you have in your src folder to your blog folder making it easy to manage your assets, styles, scripts, whatever. Well, adapt it at will.

Boycott Tariffs - Buy 300+

BUY 300+

The US Mafia boss is going ahead with Tariffs on everything and everybody, to protect his boyfriend’s slumping business, and already a counter movement is emerging to boycott US products. Apps are being made to read products barcodes and tell consumers to buy/not to buy a product based on its origin.

We don’t really need a bar scanner for that. Humans are equipped with a better app. Use your eyes. Bar codes have the corresponding number bellow and if they start with numbers bellow 300 then they are out of date (except for some intermissions that are Canadian).

300 and above is where you want your barcodes to start. Closing in on home, 300-379 range is French/Monaco, 840–849 are Spain and Andorra and Portuguese goods start with 560.

Next time you need to buy something, think different, buy 300+.

In the end, the US has becoming the land of Bob the Builder morphed into roadside Car Salesman under the cloak of a Darth Vader and the greed of Corleone.

Wish us luck, because they are already doomed.

Differentiable Logic Cellular Automata

From Game of Life to pattern generation with learned recurrent circuits

by Pietro Miotti, Eyvind Niklasson, Ettore Randazzo, Alexander Mordvintsev

Imagine trying to reverse-engineer the complex, often unexpected patterns and behaviors that emerge from simple rules. (…) What if we could create systems that, given some complex desired pattern, can, in a fully differentiable fashion, learn the local rules that generate it, while preserving the inherent discrete nature of cellular automata?

This is really a nice work from the team at Google working on Paradigms of Intelligence. Mordvintsev was the inventor of DeepDream, that produced psychedelic images back in 2015.

What if we could directly learn these local rules, and create models that combine binary logic, the flexibility of neural networks, and the local processing of cellular automata?

What a nice question to have! I sense that this combination will in part afford explainability that today’s neural networks lack.

You recognize when something is going to be big when the authors explain it in such terms that you can follow their process even if you don’t understand the machinery behind their research. After reading this, I’m inclined to think this will have a powerful impact not only on image related tasks, but it will affect much broader fields.

Their work also points to robust computing, something that is of primary importance in a world of complex systems where modern complicated machines need to be resilient and robust. Think remote exploration (space, undersea, desert, whatever) where simple failures should not critical and result in full shutdown.

And a question, can something like DiffLogic CA, be used to learn the rules of a problem, but then be able to expand and improve? The effect observed of the diagonal construction of the checkerboard is a nice side effect. What would a DiffLogic CA capable of training on a dynamic problem do if it got that as input? These are completely speculative and in some sense absurd, or naive, but in any case I’ll be following this in the future.

read it in full at https://google-research.github.io/self-organising-systems/difflogic-ca/

I cannot user Uber because I violated their Terms of Use without ever being a uber client.

TL;DR - I quit. Uber keeps blocking my account and I never used the service.

This is my experience with Uber, or lack of:

I’ve never used Uber before, always used traditional taxis. But one day I decided to give Uber a try. Downloaded the App onto my phone and proceeded to register. I entered my phone number and received my PIN to activate the account. Then, when entering my email, a message said the account was disabled. It said that I had to contact support on a z.uber…. url. I did that, and to my surprise this is the message they sent back:

We’re sorry to hear about what happened to your account, David‍.

We’ve looked into your account and it has been suspended for activity that violates our Terms of use. Please know that it will be unavailable until further notice.

We appreciate your understanding regarding this matter.

What? How is it possible that during the registration I violated the Terms of Use? I replied with:

How can I have violated the Terms of Use if it was my first time downloading the App? I’ve never used Uber before. This makes no sense.

To this, a diligent (AI?) agent? responded:

We’re sorry to hear about the confusion this may have caused, David‍.

We’ve reviewed your account, and we won’t be lifting the suspension at this time.

Please see our Terms of Use for more information.

Your patience is appreciated.

At this point it is clear that there’s a mistake somewhere. My take is that someone misspelled an email and entered my email instead. When I tried to register with my email it flagged me. But this is stupid. At this point I’m out of Uber without ever using it.

I just replied in frustration:

Well, not today or ever then. Shortest client you ever had.

Curiously, if you talk with your feet and walk away they come back to you. A few minutes latter they replied:

We’re sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused you, David‍.

We have made an adjustment to your profile and removed the restriction.
We also suggest performing basic troubleshooting before using the Uber app. This ensures you’re using the latest version available and resolves any known issues. You can follow the steps below for basic troubleshooting:

-Uninstall the app

-Restart your phone

-Re-download the Uber app

If this problem continues, please let us know and we will assist you further.

We appreciate you for taking the time to contact us.

By now I had already deleted the app. But I am a good boy and did the remaining steps. This time the app let me register. I immediately added 2FA and proceeded to create a new password. Not a good start but Let’s give them the benefit of doubt.

UPDATE: 2 days latter

My account is again disabled (or deleted, or whatever).

I received an email from Uber support asking information about the issue <sic?>. Thought it was resolved, but no, apparently Uber f88ked up again. I tried to open the app and again it was taking me to the setup page. When entering my phone number it gave me the “your account is disabled, contact support” sh*t. Pressing “search for my account” gave “there’s no account associated with this phone number”.

Yes. Uber great service (SARCASM). Now, another talk to an AI bot just for fun. At this moment I can’t trust this company service anymore and will not return.

Mais um ataque para o fim da ciência em Portugal

“Estamos a planear rever o estatuto do bolseiro de investigação, eliminando definitivamente as bolsas pós-doc [ou de pós-doutoramento]”, anunciou Ana Paiva, secretária de Estado da Ciência,… –in Público

Há governos que não gostam do saber, que não gostam da democracia, que não gostam do contraditório, que não gostam do progresso.
Este é só mais um ataque sob o pretexto de acabar com a precariedade na ciência.
Os que fazem ciência em Portugal não a fazem porque se trata de uma boa carreira em Portugal.
Há 30 anos que não é uma boa carreira com sucessivos cortes, com precariedade, com o transformar de mentes brilhantes em assalariados baratos para as universidades-fábrica falidas que temos.
Acabar com bolsas de pós doutoramento é acabar com uma via de alguns se aguentarem na academia mais um ano, mais seis meses, mais… até que se cai da árvore da ciência (talvez uma figueira ressequida cheia de espinhos).
Vai haver um caminho para se fazer ciência, só um, cada vez mais estreito, onde só um camaleão de mil cores conseguirá subir ao topo da figueira.
E esse caminho será (já é) para filho do primo do amigo que faz parte do júri.

Há governos assim, que gostam deste “Zero-Euro Budgeting” em que se corta tudo.
Onde só se anuncia que não se gasta nem mais um tostão.
Onde o plano “bom” será sempre apresentado depois.
Onde não há sensibilidade para perceber que o coitado do camaleão mais uma vez tem que entrar em stress, mudar de cor, tentar mudar de figueira ou simplesmente deixar-se cair no mar de espinhos que estão lá em baixo.

The brits are going to regret this

Apple is taking the unprecedented step of removing its highest level data security tool from customers in the UK, after the government demanded access to user data. – from BBC

The removal of security endangers society’s most fragile. It is just a matter of time until other actors will take advantage of the weakness introduced by lowering your security standards. Worse is that removing the advanced data protection from the UK is not a guarantee of anything right now, as the UK requested backdoor access to any account independently of location.

The only real solution is to use the cloud with some kind of double enciphering mechanism, one controlled by the cloud provider (that you can’t trust, and another one controlled by you). A pain in the Axxx but a necessity in modern ages.

Also read this

Two weeks ago, Apple was ordered to insert an encryption backdoor (more on that in a moment) into iCloud. – The new oil

The amount of crap politicians don’t understand would fill an ocean, but the amount of topics on which they think they can legislate is even bigger. We all need to take care and with our privacy. Don’t expect governamental agencies to protect you. They are like HR. They are there to protect the company.

Vietnamese graphic design

Just came across an archive of particular interest: The Vietnamese Graphic Design collection is really interesting, spanning many years and styles. I really love some of the 1970s posters calling for action. A beautiful use of time.