Category: misc

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Bookmarked ChatGPT sees Tweets: A Double-Edged Sword by Henk van Ess

Bing Chat is connected to the internet, allowing internet searches when you ask the chatbot something. This includes Twitter. It then weaves those online finds into the texts it puts together off your prompt. Henk van Ess shows how quickly the content from a Twitter message gets incorporated (and changed if additional messages are available). With just three tweets he influenced Bing Chat output. This also opens a pathway for influence and dissemination of mis-info, especially since the recent quality changes over at Twitter. The feedback loop this creates (internet texts get generated based on existing internet texts, etc.) will easily result in a vicious circle (In her recent talk Maggie Appleton listed this as one of her possible futures, using a metaphor I can’t unsee, but which does describe it effectively: Human Centipede Epistemology)

Bing/ChatGPT’s rapid response to tweets has a double-edged sword. Bing quickly corrects itself based on tweets … But those with specific agendas or biases may attempt to abuse the system … We’ve seen it all before. This is similar to Google Bombing…

Henk van Ess

Bookmarked a message on Mastodon by David Speier

David Speier is a freelance journalist who researches the German far right. In this thread on Mastodon he describes the work they’ve done to check statements from interviews with a former far right member, and to connect them to other source material (photos from events, other people, reports etc.). Of interest to me here is that they used Obsidian to map out people, groups, places, events and occurrences, to verify, to see overlaps and spot blind spots. Nice example of taking something that is inherently text and image based and use Obsidian to ferret out the connections and patterns. There are some topics that currently pop-up in my work in very different projects, and more purposefully teasing out the connections like in this example seems a useful notion.

In einer #Obsidian-Datenbank haben wir Kontaktpersonen, Gruppen, Orte und Ereignisse zusammengeführt. Mehr als 70 umfangreiche Belegdokumente untermauern die einzelnen Aussagen von „Michael“

David Speier

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Bookmarked In Norway, the Electric Vehicle Future Has Already Arrived (by Jack Ewing)

De verregaande elektrificatie van auto’s in Noorwegen heeft een paar interessante effecten. De luchtkwaliteit in Oslo is sterk verbeterd. Stikstof emissie is ‘bijna opgelost’ in die stad. Niet alleen omdat er zo veel elektrische auto’s rondrijden, maar ook omdat aannemers bouwmachines verregaand hebben geëlektrificeerd. Ook dat beperkt de stikstof uitstoot verder. Zonder problemen met een overbelast elektriciteitsnetwerk ook.

Dat komt niet uit de lucht vallen. In 2013 sprak ik een Noorse jurist op een conferentie in Ljubljana die me toen verbaasde door me te vertellen dat elektrische auto’s in Noorwegen al de meest verkochte nieuwe auto’s waren. Dus al meer dan een decennium worden er vooral EVs op de weg gebracht. De Noorse overheid begon al in de jaren 90 (!) met het stimuleren van elektrisch rijden d.m.v. subsidies en belastingvoordelen. Dat is zelfs nog ruim een decennium voor we hier een premier kregen die in 2013 visie als vies en hinderlijk woord publiek afschafte.

We are on the verge of solving the NOx problem

Tobias Wolf, Oslo’s chief engineer for air quality

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On the internet nobody knows you’re a dog.

Peter Steiner, 1993

It seems after years of trollbots and content farms, with generative algorithms we are more rapidly moving past the point where the basic assumption on the web still can be that an (anonymous) author is human until it becomes clear it’s otherwise. Improving our crap detection skills from now on means a different default:

On the internet nobody believes you’re human.

until proven otherwise.

Bookmarked Sounds emitted by plants under stress are airborne and informative (by Itzhak Khait et al.)

This sounds very much like the Triffids. For a moment there I was suspicious of the timing, but the finding that plants make ultrasounds is over a decade old, judging by this 2012 paper about ‘bioacoustics’. This new publication describes that such sounds carry meaning and can be interpreted, for which they developed an algorithmic model. As a kid I built receivers for bat sounds, maybe I should build one for the living room to judge when our plants need water?

  • Plants emit ultrasonic airborne sounds when stressed
  • The emitted sounds reveal plant type and condition
  • Plant sounds can be detected and interpreted in a greenhouse setting

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    We have a wide range of Hue lights in our home. They’re programmable for different times of day and settings.
    The default behaviour is that after having been without power they light up bright and white.
    This is true when you toggle the physical wall switch, but also after a power outage.

    When we leave home for a longer time we use the physical switches to power off all lights.
    Power outages during the night however mean all the lights in the house come on. And power outages are now occurring a few times a year as the networks are apparantly struggling with the load balancing required for distributed electricity generation. As happened last night. E noticed, I slept through it all, and switched everything off again.

    An online search revealed it is possible to change the behaviour of the Hue lights when power comes back on. However because this default behaviour is stored on the lightbulb you have to set it for all Hue bulbs separately. In the Hue app in Settings, go to Lights where you’ll find all the bulbs listed. Go to each one and set Power On to ‘power loss recovery’. That way the lights will return to the setting (on or off) they had when the power went off. (The other options are the default full brightness, the last lighting setting getting switched on, or a custom setting getting switched on)


    Dinner during a power outage last December