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Scribophile
Get feedback on your writing and become a better writer in our online writing group Scribophile is one of the largest and most award-winning online writing You’ve spent a lot of time writing your story. But how can you make it perfect before you start thinking about publishing? Scribophile is a writing group focused on getting you feedback on your manuscript. Our points-based peer critique system guarantees you’ll get feedback from writers from all walks of life. You can then use that feedback to polish your writing before you take the next step in your publishing journey.
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[2212.03551] Talking About Large Language Models
Thanks to rapid progress in artificial intelligence, we have entered an era when technology and philosophy intersect in interesting ways. Sitting squarely at the centre of this intersection are large language models (LLMs). The more adept LLMs become at mimicking human language, the more vulnerable we become to anthropomorphism, to seeing the systems in which they are embedded as more human-like than they really are. This trend is amplified by the natural tendency to use philosophically loaded terms, such as "knows", "believes", and "thinks", when describing these systems. To mitigate this trend, this paper advocates the practice of repeatedly stepping back to remind ourselves of how LLMs, and the systems of which they form a part, actually work. The hope is that increased scientific precision will encourage more philosophical nuance in the discourse around artificial intelligence, both within the field and in the public sphere.
The Expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI
Proving you're a human on a web flooded with generative AI content The dark forest theory of the web points to the increasingly life-like but life-less state of being online. Most open and publicly available spaces on the web are overrun with bots, advertisers, trolls, data scrapers, clickbait, keyword-stuffing “content creators,” and algorithmically manipulated junk. It's like a dark forest that seems eerily devoid of human life – all the living creatures are hidden beneath the ground or up in trees. If they reveal themselves, they risk being attacked by automated predators. Humans who want to engage in informal, unoptimised, personal interactions have to hide in closed spaces like invite-only Slack channels, Discord groups, email newsletters, small-scale blogs, and digital gardens. Or make themselves illegible and algorithmically incoherent in public venues.
Silent Synchronous Reading Sessions
Notes on how to run silent meetings and reading sessions There's an established concept called Silent Meetings. Much like it sounds, it's a meeting where for the most part no one talks. Rather than one PowerPoint dictator lecturing to a room full of checked-out people, silent meetings shift discussion into online collaborative documents. Everyone sits quietly on their own device and comments on a "Table Read" – a shared document in Google Docs or Figma or a webpage annotated with Hypothes.is People add comments and discussion points to the document directly. They're able to easily refer to specific parts, respond to other people's comments, and run multiple threaded discussions. Instead of one leader or instructor talking at many people, it's many people all talking to each other. David Gasca wrote up a comprehensive manifesto on the phenomenon in 2019 that dives into the implementation details for using them at companies. While it's a great concept for Corporateland, I'm keen to explore how we could use it for collaborative learning communities online.
Normcore LLM Reads · GitHub
Goals: Add links that are reasonable and good explanations of how stuff works. No hype and no vendor content if possible. Practical first-hand accounts of models in prod eagerly sought.
Ambient Co-presence
Creating a subtle, peripheral, and synchronous sense of shared space and context on the web
Robots that look like humans: A brief look into humanoid robotics
Humanoid robots (or simply humanoids) is often used to refer to robots whose shape is close to humans. However, this definition varies depending on people: some say that a humanoid should have a «full body» including two arms and legs, exactly like a human, but others focus more on its communication or task capacities and extend the definition to a wheeled mobile robot that has an «upper body» including a head, a torso, and two arms. This article intends to cover research on humanoid robotics in a broad manner in order to provide the global trends in the research in this field.
Why, robot? | Science Museum
Human beings have a strong tendency to attribute human form or behaviour to objects. We are used to seeing the human form expressed in art, but mechanism has also been a used as a medium for expressing our reimagined selves. This reimagining may seem a 20th century phenomenon, the natural result of a sci-fi-saturated culture, coupled with recent advances in computer technology. But in fact this phenomenon has existed for at least 500 years, and possibly much longer. The engineer al-Jazari's illustrations of automaton servants and musicians, which were published as far back as 1206 CE, are an early example.
I, Robot: How Human Appearance and Mind Attribution Relate to the Perceived Danger of Robots | International Journal of Social Robotics
Social robots become increasingly human-like in appearance and behaviour. However, a large body of research shows that these robots tend to elicit negative feelings of eeriness, danger, and threat. In the present study, we explored whether and how human-like appearance and mind-attribution contribute to these negative feelings and clarified possible underlying mechanisms. Participants were presented with pictures of mechanical, humanoid, and android robots, and physical anthropomorphism (Studies 1–3), attribution of mind perception of agency and experience (Studies 2 and 3), threat to human–machine distinctiveness, and damage to humans and their identity were assessed for all three robot types. Replicating earlier research, human–machine distinctiveness mediated the influence of anthropomorphic appearance on the perceived damage for humans and their identity, and this mediation was due to anthropomorphic appearance of the robot. Perceived agency and experience did not show similar mediating effects on human–machine distinctiveness, but a positive relation with perceived damage for humans and their identity. Possible explanations are discussed.
Reversing the boring web - The History of the Web
point. On the fringes of the internet, where things are small and specialized (even when they’re grim or shocking), there’s something far more captivating than the sanitized, controlled environments we’ve established on the modern web. And it is still very much out there, and I believe it is growing.
Minimalist static photoblog generator written in POSIX-compliant shell script
1600pr.sh is a minimalist static photoblog generator made up of a single POSIX-compliant shell script. It should work on most Unix-like systems. It passes ShellCheck and some effort has been made to ensure external tools (grep, sed, awk, etc.) are used in a portable way. The only external dependency is ImageMagick for creation of thumbnails and alternative sizes (for responsive images), however this can be disabled if you don't want those things. You can see it in action on minorshadows.net. Named after Fujifilm Neopan 1600 Professional (RIP). Inspired by (but not based on) Expose.
Exit to Community Stories & Strategies
Most businesses aim to get acquired or go public, which often pits founding teams against the communities they serve. We’re working to enable a third option: an Exit to Community. An E2C is a path for ownership to benefit all stakeholders: Founding teams can let go at the right time Communities can grow the business they value * Allies in consulting, policy, and academia can help businesses advance economic democracy To plan your E2C or help others, search our library. We’re curating a wealth of experience from founding teams and allies. We have 24 cases so far, and all of them offer inspiration and lessons for community ownership.
Quickscan Open Educational Practices - Acceleration plan
Working with Open Educational Resources has more impact on an institution than just on lecturers and the educational process. Does your institution already have a vision for working with OERs? Do you discuss it in staff evaluation interviews? To determine how far adoption of OERs has already progressed and what follow-up steps your institution can best take, the Towards digital (open) educational resources zone has developed a quickscan. Use this quickscan to find out where your organisation stands regarding the use of Open Educational Resources.
The Rocketgirl Chronicles: This Melbourne photographer's COVID-19 lockdown project went viral. Now, he's published a book - ABC News
In 2021, almost 200 days into Melbourne's rolling lockdowns, the Rovenko family decided it was time to start a new project to pass the time. "By the sixth lockdown, we'd done all the standard things like baking sourdough," says Andrew Rovenko, a creative technologist and freelance photographer who moved to Australia from Ukraine in 2004. Andrew's daughter — Mia, then four-years-old — was obsessed with space at the time. She'd bug her dad to read her books about the planets and pepper him with questions like 'What temperature is the sun?' and 'How does fusion work?' Andrew's wife, Mariya — who has a background in theatre costume design — came up with the idea to make Mia a homemade astronaut costume.
Rest of World
Rest of World is a nonprofit publication that challenges expectations about whose experiences with technology matter. We connect the dots across a rapidly evolving digital world, through on-the-ground reporting in places typically overlooked and underestimated. Why “Rest of World”? It’s a corporate catchall term used in the West to designate “everyone else.” Companies use it to lump together people and markets outside wealthy Western countries. We like the term because it encapsulates the problems we fight head-on: a casual disregard for billions of people, and a Western-centric worldview that leaves an unthinkable number of insights, opportunities, and nuances out of the global conversation.
Harvard Weblogs: What makes a weblog a weblog?
Berkman we're studying weblogs, how they're used, and what they are. Rather than saying "I know it when I see it" I wanted to list all the known features of weblog software, but more important, get to the heart of what a weblog is, and how a weblog is different from a Wiki, or a news site managed with software like Vignette or Interwoven. I draw from my experience developing and using weblog software (Manila, Radio UserLand) and using competitive products such as Blogger and Movable Type.
An Ed-Tech Tragedy? | UNESCO
The COVID-19 pandemic pushed education from schools to educational technologies at a pace and scale with no historical precedent. For hundreds of millions of students formal learning became fully dependent on technology – whether internet-connected digital devices, televisions or radios. An Ed-Tech Tragedy? examines the numerous adverse and unintended consequences of the shift to ed-tech. It documents how technology-first solutions left a global majority of learners behind and details the many ways education was diminished even when technology was available and worked as intended. In unpacking what went wrong, the book extracts lessons and recommendations to ensure that technology facilitates, rather than subverts, efforts to ensure the universal provision of inclusive, equitable and human-centred public education.
GitHub - sissbruecker/linkding: Self-hosted bookmark manager that is designed be to be minimal, fast, and easy to set up using Docker.
Self-hosted bookmark manager that is designed be to be minimal, fast, and easy to set up using Docker.
I can't sleep
I can't sleep. I'm lying in bed every night, and images of Gaza are running through my head. Fathers holding their babies, dead, caked in dust. Bombs dropped on homes [1], on hospitals [2], on schools [3]. Tens of thousands of dead [4] in indiscriminate bombings [5]. Children crying, pulling through rubble to find their families [6]. Pro-Israeli investors have created a culture of fear in tech where supporters of Palestinian freedom feel unable to raise their voices. I have spoken to many people in tech who are afraid that if they speak up, they’ll be unable to raise their next round, and lose 5-10 years of work on their venture, for their families and for their employees. We must break the silence around the genocide in Gaza. I know this is a big ask. I know there are significant risks involved, and that's not your fault. But all the same, we cannot continue to be complicit in this genocide.
Mickey, Disney, and the Public Domain: a 95-year Love Triangle | Duke University School of Law
On January 1, 2024, after almost a century of copyright protection, Mickey Mouse, or at least a version of Mickey Mouse, will enter the public domain. The first movies in which the iconic mouse appeared – Steamboat Willie and the silent version of Plane Crazy[1] – were made in 1928 and works from that year go into the public domain in the United States on New Year’s Day 2024.[2] The public domain has had some famous recent arrivals, but this is the most anticipated entry yet. Why? It is not simply that Mickey is a famous copyrighted character. So are Sherlock Holmes and Winnie the Pooh, and while they entered the public domain with some fanfare, it paled in comparison to this event. I’d like to offer a tentative answer. The reason that this event gathers so much attention is that it is the story of a 95-year-old love triangle, a tangled drama that rivals any Disney movie for twists and turns. The protagonists are Mickey, Disney and the Public Domain, and their relationship positively exemplifies the social media weasel-words “it’s complicated.”
NASA’s Tech Demo Streams First Video From Deep Space via Laser
The video, featuring a cat named Taters, was sent back from nearly 19 million miles away by NASA’s laser communications demonstration, marking a historic milestone. NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications experiment beamed an ultra-high definition streaming video on Dec. 11 from a record-setting 19 million miles away (31 million kilometers, or about 80 times the Earth-Moon distance). The milestone is part of a NASA technology demonstration aimed at streaming very high-bandwidth video and other data from deep space – enabling future human missions beyond Earth orbit.
SolarSPELL – Solar Powered Educational Learning Library
The SolarSPELL (Solar Powered Educational Learning Library) initiative at ASU combines curated digital libraries, solar-powered, offline technology, and the training to build information literacy and internet-ready skills in offline environments, focusing on the half of the world that remains unconnected. SolarSPELL’s solar-powered, offline technology is rugged and ultra-portable so that it can go anywhere and reach anyone, even the most remote. The SolarSPELL digital library mimics an online experience by generating its own offline WiFi hotspot to which any WiFi-capable device (smartphone, tablet, laptop) can connect and freely, and safely, surf the library’s thousands of open access resources that are carefully curated and continually improved to meet local information needs. SolarSPELL’s digital library collections currently span primary and secondary education, health, agriculture, and the environment. Using a train-the-trainer model and working with in-field partners like Peace Corps and UNHCR, the SolarSPELL libraries are paired with locally based trainers for long-term support.
Invest in Open Infrastructure
Invest in Open Infrastructure is an initiative dedicated to improving funding and resourcing for open technologies and systems supporting research and scholarship. We do this by shedding light on challenges, conducting research, and working with decision makers to enact change. Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI) works to increase the investment in and adoption of open infrastructure to further equitable access to and participation in research. We do this by providing actionable, evidence-based guidance and tools to institutions and funders of open infrastructure, and piloting funding mechanisms to catalyse investment and diversify funding sources for open infrastructure.
Facebook Is Being Overrun With Stolen, AI-Generated Images That People Think Are Real
The once-prophesized future where cheap, AI-generated trash content floods out the hard work of real humans is already here, and is already taking over Facebook. In many ways, this is a tale as old as time: people lie and steal content online in exchange for likes, influence and money all the time. But the spread of this type of content on Facebook over the last several months has shown that the once-prophesized future where cheap, AI-generated trash content floods out the hard work of real humans is already here, and is already taking over Facebook. It also shows Facebook is doing essentially nothing to help its users decipher real content from AI-generated content masquerading as real content, and that huge masses of Facebook users are completely unprepared for our AI-generated future.
I can’t write about Gaza — Crooked Timber
I can’t write about Gaza because to write about Gaza would be to devise some premises, arguments and conclusions, when all I want to say is stop. I can’t write about Gaza though too many civilians have been killed. How many would be enough?
Pipe Dreams: The life and times of Yahoo Pipes
Want to know whether the latest logged earthquakes were near you? Aggregate 100 top news sites, but only see items that mention cats? Get a steady stream of sport scores, scraped from sites that don’t offer an RSS feed? Find a rental apartment amidst those posted on Craigslist and other online apartment listings that fits your price range and is near a park? Exclude stories on topics you’re not interested in from publications you already follow? Yahoo Pipes—or, officially, Pipes by Yahoo!, a rare switcheroo of the company’s name—was a service that offered all that and more in a single platform. Individual “Pipes,” as it were, were both personal and public—the service seemed like a portent of the future that techno-utopians were then predicting. But like many great products and services of its time, it never quite came to pass. Also like many great ideas in the mid-’90s to mid-’00s—that nostalgic first decade of the commercial internet—Pipes started with one person who built a small team to knock out some code that they thought might just change the world… or at least kick a dent in it.
New & Unreleased H5P Creations by Oliver Tacke | A Detailed Showcase! - YouTube
In this episode of EdTech Designer, host Ben introduces viewers to the latest developments in H5P by Oliver Tacke, the Lead H5P Ambassador and the mind behind SNORDIAN, a software development and consulting business specialising in H5P. The video highlights four exciting content types: the revamped Personality Quiz, (Refurbished) the innovative Content Calendar (Proposed), the engaging Phrase Randomizer (Proposed), and the newly released groundbreaking Game Map.
Humanities Commons – Open access, open source, open to all
Welcome to Humanities Commons, the network for people working in the humanities. Discover the latest open-access scholarship and teaching materials, make interdisciplinary connections, build a WordPress Web site, and increase the impact of your work by sharing it in the repository.
Leveraging Transformative AI to Support Curriculum Alignment | by Jamie Alexandre | Learning Equality
When implementing an edtech project, either you invest in creating a whole new set of teaching and learning materials yourself, or you take advantage of a wealth of Open Education Resources that have been created by others and released under free and open licenses. These open resources, however, were generally created with specific contexts in mind, and are scattered across various sources on the Internet, each of which is organized differently. Curriculum alignment is the process of organizing, adapting, and contextualizing resources to the standards and learning objectives of the national curriculum or textbook that is relevant to the learners and educators being served by a program — and is a critical ingredient in enabling discovery and use of these resources to support effective learning. Learning Equality’s open-source product suite Kolibri (https://learningequality.org/kolibri/) includes an easy tool, Kolibri Studio, for aligning content from the Kolibri Library of nearly 200,000 open resources, along with one’s own materials, to specific curricular standards. While this process is simpler and more fluid than the spreadsheet-based methods used by many who do alignment work, it still involves tedious and time-consuming tasks, which can raise cost and capacity barriers. When adding on to that the need for rapid alignment to new standards when a crisis arises, it becomes clear why UNHCR has been strongly advocating for and supporting this work towards automation. So what parts of this process are we automating? The first area we set out to automate, culminating in a Kaggle machine learning competition we co-hosted earlier this year, was the matching of resources to specific objectives and topic areas within a target curriculum. We now have some very efficient and effective multilingual recommender models that are openly released, and also being integrated into Kolibri Studio to support streamlined workflows.