Blogs

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2024-03.

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Cat and Girl - 4000 of My Closest Friends

Tags: tech, copyright, law, art, ethics

How does it feel to just want to put something creative out there without being exploited? Very touching comic on the topic.

https://catandgirl.com/4000-of-my-closest-friends/

AI: the not-so-good parts - Xe Iaso

Tags: tech, ai, ethics

As an industry we definitely should think more often about the consequences of our actions. The incentives are indeed pushing us to go faster without much critical thinking.

https://xeiaso.net/talks/2024/prepare-unforeseen-consequences/

OpenAI Quietly Deletes Ban on Using ChatGPT for “Military and Warfare”

Tags: tech, gpt, war, ethics, business

Unsurprising move, they claim it’s for the betterment of mankind but in practice it’s mostly about capturing as much market share as possible.

https://theintercept.com/2024/01/12/open-ai-military-ban-chatgpt/

AI poisoning could turn open models into destructive “sleeper agents,” says Anthropic

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, security, supply-chain

The tone pointing at “open models” is wrong but the research is interesting. It still proves models can be poisoned (open or not) so traceability and secured supply-chains will become very important when using large language models.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/01/ai-poisoning-could-turn-open-models-into-destructive-sleeper-agents-says-anthropic/

Will the new judicial ruling in the Vizio lawsuit strengthen the GPL?

Tags: tech, foss, law

Very interesting ruling, this opens the door to more parties being able to sue to enforce the GPL not just the authors.

https://blog.tidelift.com/will-the-new-judicial-ruling-in-the-vizio-lawsuit-strengthen-the-gpl

Unity’s Open-Source Double Standard: the ban of VLC - mfkl

Tags: tech, vlc, 3d, foss, business

This is a stupid move on Unity’s part… they’re built on LGPL but ban others in their store to have LGPL dependencies. Shame on them. Good move from Videolabs though, wish them lots of success.

https://mfkl.github.io/2024/01/10/unity-double-oss-standards.html

Pluralistic: The Cult of Mac

Tags: tech, apple, interoperability, security

Apple keep indeed attracting a bunch of cultists… and this allows them to keep abusing their other customers.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/12/youre-holding-it-wrong/#if-dishwashers-were-iphones

Each Facebook User is Monitored by Thousands of Companies – The Markup

Tags: tech, facebook, attention-economy, surveillance

Some more insights on the extent of the companies snitching to Facebook.

https://themarkup.org/privacy/2024/01/17/each-facebook-user-is-monitored-by-thousands-of-companies-study-indicates

Meta/Threads Interoperating in the Fediverse Data Dialogue Meeting yesterday

Tags: tech, fediverse, facebook

Interesting notes, there seems to be good faith on the Meta side for now… but this leaves more questions than answers still.

https://reb00ted.org/tech/20231208-meta-threads-data-dialogue/

Where is all of the fediverse?

Tags: tech, fediverse, self-hosting, infrastructure

Interesting stats, not that easy to gather. This gives a good overview of where the fediverse instances are hosted though.

https://blog.benjojo.co.uk/post/who-hosts-the-fediverse-instances

Making my website faster - Cliffle

Tags: tech, web, fonts, css, optimization

Nice set of tricks to optimize load and render time of webpages.

https://cliffle.com/blog/making-website-faster/

LeftoverLocals: Listening to LLM responses through leaked GPU local memory | Trail of Bits Blog

Tags: tech, gpu, machine-learning, security

Interesting vulnerability, not all vendors are impacted though. GPU memory leaks can have unforeseen impacts.

https://blog.trailofbits.com/2024/01/16/leftoverlocals-listening-to-llm-responses-through-leaked-gpu-local-memory/

Speedbump: TCP proxy for simulating variable, yet predictable network latency

Tags: tech, networking, tools

Looks like an interesting tool to simulate difficult network conditions.

https://github.com/kffl/speedbump

Willow Specifications

Tags: tech, protocols, data, networking, p2p

Looks like an interesting protocol for resilient peer to peer data stores. Let’s see how it spreads.

https://willowprotocol.org/

Beware of misleading GPU vs CPU benchmarks

Tags: tech, cpu, gpu, computation, economics

A good reminder that even though GPU tend to be faster, the added complexity and price might not be worth it in the end.

https://pythonspeed.com/articles/gpu-vs-cpu/

Using pre-commit hooks makes software development life easier

Tags: tech, git, craftsmanship, tools

Can definitely recommend. The pre-commit project also make managing those a breeze.

https://itnext.io/using-pre-commit-hooks-makes-software-development-life-easier-ef962827aa96

Using “will” and “should” in technical writing | James’ Coffee Blog

Tags: tech, documentation, writing

Pick your words wisely. If it does happen every time use “will”.

https://jamesg.blog/2024/01/17/will-should/

Everyday storytelling for engineers. The CAO Method.

Tags: tech, engineering, communication

Nice suggestion for talking about your work in various type of situations. Definitely worth trying to frame it like this.

https://tonyfreed.substack.com/p/everyday-storytelling-for-engineers

Does Working from Home Boost Productivity Growth? | San Francisco Fed

Tags: tech, remote-working, economics

Interesting report. Apparently so far a more widespread use of remote work doesn’t seem to boost of hinder productivity growth at large scale.

https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic-letter/2024/january/does-working-from-home-boost-productivity-growth/

The warrior culture of ancient Sparta did some weird things to their society.

Tags: history, politics

Or why nationalism and war mongering are unwelcome dead ends. I never understood this fascination for Sparta by some people… if you look at what it was without some misplaced romanticism, it definitely looked like an horrible and paranoid environment to live in.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/01/sparta-300-warriors-history-slavery.html

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Bye for now!