An old friend who’s now working on a Master’s in Renewable Energy in New Zeland needs participants for a survey on perspectives of renewable energy:

Anyone over the age of 16 who can read English is invited to contribute to my research by completing the anonymous survey at this link: https://vuw.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6DMyUTAVc1lv6Iu
I would also be grateful if you would share this with your networks, especially those in Aotearoa New Zealand. The survey will be available until 10 April 2026.
Thank you!

@IceCubesApp , your app now hangs forever if I tilt my phone too far while composing a post

Already said this earlier in the thread, but it bears repeating: The journal is aware of these problems and refuses to retract the article, despite our explicit request for them to do so. The Luddite then submitted an official response, to be published alongside the paper, but it's been languishing in review for several months while the company continues to use the fraudulent science to woo the press and the public.

Nature* published an article titled "Loneliness and suicide mitigation for students using GPT3-enabled chatbots"

https://www.nature.com/articles/s44184-023-00047-6

Even among the awful #AI hype articles, this one is egregious, and that's before taking into account the sensitivity of the subject matter.

Here's my response, where I break down this outrageous piece of marketing pseudoscience:

https://theluddite.org/#!post/replika

If you want to help preserve the science and cultural data the Trump administration are removing, and you have (or can get) a spare computer with some data storage, one thing you can do is use that storage to help make sure copies of some of that data is preserved. You can follow this thread as a guide to get started

From: @moritz_negwer and @SafeguardingResearch
https://mstdn.science/@moritz_negwer/114530798269681954

I’ve been wondering how these AI companies expect to make money with a product that has no potential to do what they claim it can do; maybe this is it: provide a free cheating tool effective enough that people become dependent on it, then raise the price. If people never learn how to do things themselves, they’ll try to pay. It might even work well enough long enough to make some money, but at a tremendous cost to society.

From: @timnitGebru
https://dair-community.social/@timnitGebru/114509383380404840

Just learned that there's a place named Llanfair­pwllgwyngyll­gogery­chwyrn­drobwll­llan­tysilio­gogo­goch, which has a website at https://www.llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.co.uk/

Which makes me wonder, is there a limit on the length of a DNS name? Are there DNS implementations that will malfunction on a name that long?

“But an afterword to this sorry chapter won’t be adequate. A milquetoast “reconsideration” of a weeks-long campaign to drive out the only candidate to have beaten Trump electorally won’t undo the damage to the country done by a second Trump term. Even a series of resignations, at this point, wouldn’t undo what’s been done, but it would at least signal that what’s happened here will not happen again.”

From: @damemagazine
https://newsie.social/@damemagazine/112797619127423956

Nothing about this makes any sense. Biden’s been old the whole time, but with his staff he’s been very effective, despite a thoroughly obstructed Congress. The primaries are done, the delegates are locked, the candidates have been chosen. Elections are decisions about governance, at which Biden has excelled, but all the messaging is all about his own party replacing him. It’s appalling, especially in the face of project 2025.

From: @mekkaokereke
https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/112748086075865536

More than 2,000 covid deaths per week, and rising, for 3 weeks now. I hope this is the peak of the post-holiday surge, but I’m not holding my breath

From: @WeeklyAmericanPandemicDeaths
https://mastodon.social/@WeeklyAmericanPandemicDeaths/111784004363890761

More than 2,000 covid deaths per week for 2 weeks in a row. The post-holiday surge continues.

From: @WeeklyAmericanPandemicDeaths
https://mastodon.social/@WeeklyAmericanPandemicDeaths/111744216795772774

I think this is as close to an introduction thread as I'm going to write: https://mastodon.social/@ShadSterling/111535289917697756

Answering one atrocity with another is not self-defence. Israel has reason to be cautious, even suspicious, about what others might do against them, but that doesn't make it okay for them to sustain a campaign of bombing civilians. It's horrifying that opposing bombing civilians is at all controversial.

(2/2) The very very short summary is that Fidelity Investments is the brokerage that offers the best user experience, and https://gosteward.com/ is the only non-brokerage that is both acceptable and accessible

After a windfall in 2021 I made a lot of small investments while trying to figure out a proper investment plan, and eventually made a spreadsheet to compare accounts. Here is a link for anyone else making similar decisions who might find my comparisons useful: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14tuJTcBN0zGd_tnGPGltQaKaxohJX8c7ItIlugd969s/edit?usp=sharing