One of the cool uses of #muddle is a form of puzzle-setting. Start with the idea that a muddling (mixing) of different (OC(AONT(x)) streams is meant to be decoded and figure out inventive ways in which brute-force strategies can be used to separate them.

One puzzle-like aspect of this could be that the RNGs that are used for each encoded stream could be a substring of a particular text... say one of them is the text of the US constitution, another a version of the GNU public licence, or Flatland, or whatever. These would be sliced up and used as seed material for the block ID associated with every OC packet.

You could use any number of texts, provided the longest common substring of all the texts combined was shorter than the chosen seed/block ID size.

#muddle #algorithms

"Leaving Facebook: Why People Are Logging Off" --

"a) Privacy Concerns & Data Misuse" --
"b) Overwhelming Ads & Algorithmic Feeds" --
"c) Toxicity, Drama, and Negativity" --
"d) Unwanted Recommendations & Forced Follows" --
"e) Time & Mental Health"

https://dev.to/therabbithole/leaving-facebook-why-people-are-logging-off-and-where-theyre-going-33lm

#facebook #leaving #delete #privacy #misuse #data #personaldata #algorithm #algorithms #feed #toxicity #drama #unwanted #wasteoftime #time #mentalhealth #health #psychology

"As online content increasingly becomes abstracted from the original work, what purpose does making the full version even serve?"

Mia Sato for The Verge: https://www.theverge.com/report/920005/social-media-clipping-podcasts-clavicular-marketing-mrbeast

#Longreads #Internet #Tech #SocialMedia #Clipping #Algorithms #Viral

"Given the current state of play, what we’re concerned about is how little we actually know about how these AI tools work and what their long-term impact will be to citizens, especially as governments have access to troves of sensitive personal data in order to further develop and fine tune the technology. How are government AI models storing and processing data about public servants, citizens and/or residents of a country, whether in experimental sandboxes or beyond?

There are merits to streamlining tedious administrative tasks, but there are still big questions that must be answered around data privacy, transparency and automated decision-making if the government is about to promote and embed wide-spread agentic AI use for civil services.

On the data privacy front, several questions arise:

- How will personal data, including sensitive data, be processed and used by the AI tools deployed? What data protection safeguards will be in place to prevent data leakage?
- When involving third-party vendours, what are the contractual safeguards governments and AI companies have around data processing arrangements?
- What are the data protection safeguards governing fine-tuning?

Data protection in the govAI context is especially important when we consider how highly sensitive, and sometimes secret, government data might be that could end up being processed by a black box algorithm - e.g., where an employee or colleague lives, any confidential documents that appear in meeting notes, etc."

https://privacyinternational.org/long-read/5767/big-oil-big-algorithm-public-money-private-models

#AI #BigTech #GenerativeAI #Privacy #DataProtection #Algorithms #BlackBoxes

Behind TikTok: Zhang Yiming
https://negativepid.blog/behind-tiktok-zhang-yiming/

#tikTok #zhangYiming #byteDance #socialMedia #softwareArchitecture #algorithms #tech #techInventors #techInvestors #techCompanies #bigTech #cyberPsychology #mentalHealth #negativepid

#Austria Plans #SocialMedia Ban For Under-14s

Austria plans to restrict under-14s from using social media platforms over concerns about addictive #algorithms and harmful content. The government says draft legislation should be ready by the end of June, though details around enforcement and age verification have yet to be finalized
#privacy #security #ageverification

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/03/27/1826207/austria-plans-social-media-ban-for-under-14s?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed

Impagliazzo's Five Worlds
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Rs9_cIEbWY

"A Personal View of Average-Case Complexity" by R. Impagliazzo (1995)

Algorithmica: P = NP, Hard problems are easy to solve. Optimization is effortless.

Heuristica: NP is hard in the worst case, but easy on average.We can't prove problems are easy, but they usually are in practice.

Pessiland: Hard-on-average problems exist, but one-way functions do not.We can't solve problems, but we also can't do cryptography. The worst case.

Minicrypt: One-way functions exist. Private-key cryptography (AES, SHA) is possible, but public-key is not.

Cryptomania: Public-key cryptography is possible. Oblivious transfer and secure multi-party computation exist.

#cryptography #compsci #complexity #algorithms

@stefan @mastodonmigration @Kichae @baralheia

agreed 1,000%

some people don't want alterations that make an easier intro to the fediverse because they don't want "normies" on #mastodon/ #fediverse

to me this is disgustingly elitist

but nevermind that:

so you want the great mass of your society at the mercy of plutocrat #socialMedia #algorithms and polluting so many minds with #bigotry and lies and driving your society off a cliff?

no, you don't

you want the "normies" on the fediverse

Does #capitalism still deliver, or does it only destroy our living space for #profit?

Anyone who is not completely blind can see the slope is getting steeper. We are like on the Titanic. The iceberg is right ahead. Everyone stares at it like a deer in headlights. Frozen. Or weirdly fascinated. No one moves.

Capitalism does not even need #democracy. It runs just fine in #China. The #rich get richer at breathtaking speed. They gain more power every day. Meanwhile, many people are exploited. Some even go hungry.

#Infrastructure falls apart where it brings no profit. Gains are privatized. Losses are shared by everyone. Capitalism works great for arms races and wars. It also works great for rebuilding after. Only #peace seems to bring too little profit.

#Diseases without profitable drugs are ignored. Human suffering does not always sell well. But social-media #algorithms that shake democracy? Very profitable. Public goods, #privacy, data protection, #ethics — all side characters. Hard to monetize. The #future and sustainability also feel optional when today’s shareholder payout boosts #power and profit.

Why do we believe that people driven by greed and contempt will build a better future? Maybe #humanity does not really care about democracy or ethics. Maybe it only cares about #consumption. Ads promise that buying things will make us #happy. And of course, anyone against capitalism should throw the first #smartphone.

Running water, electricity, full supermarkets — all nice. Until you notice the food is packed with sugar and salt. Fresh fruit and vegetables carry poison. The oceans are overfished. The fish comes with #microplastics as a bonus. Wild animals vanish, pushed out by humans. Only farm animals multiply by the millions. They #suffer. #Nature breaks.

This story does not feel like it has a happy ending. Not if we keep scrolling and call it progress.

#civilization #question #news #system #matrix #politics #economy #business #freedom #mankind #collapse #apocalypse #war #terror #military #crisis #pollution #extinction #emissions #climate #disaster #security #fascism #earth #food #poison #problem

States are probing “surveillance pricing,” where retailers use personal and location data to set individualized prices, led by a new California privacy investigation. 🕵️
The cases highlight opaque algorithmic pricing, discrimination risks, and pressure for stronger transparency and data rights rules. ⚖️

🔗 https://news.bloomberglaw.com/privacy-and-data-security/states-probe-firms-using-personal-data-location-to-set-prices

#TechNews #Privacy #Data #Surveillance #Pricing #Algorithms #CCPA #California #Retail #Grocery #Hotels #AI #ConsumerRights #Transparency #Regulation #BigData #USA #US

@boscoandpeck
Copy that! I have the same experience.

Some people I was able to find in the #fediverse, a significant number of people I lost track of, found new interesting accounts to follow and a segnificant number of new accounts I follow are surprisingly high quality. I might even say that posts are better, more balanced and more in-depth than what I was used to on #twitter. The #algorithms on a lot of platforms tend to push clickbait and don't do quality posts justice.

@OpenMediaOrg

The State of Anti-Surveillance Design

To outsmart #surveillance systems, it’s helpful to understand them. #Facialrecognition —which identifies an individual face—works differently from #biometric scans that look at a person’s #iris or #fingerprints , & those systems work diff from #ALPR , which could in theory match an individual’s movements to a car through a DB. & consumer-level facial recognition systems, like #Pimeyes , operate using diff #algorithms & DB
#privacy

https://www.404media.co/the-state-of-anti-surveillance-design/

(English)

*The danger of #BigTech-owned #SocialMedia platforms for societies*

1/2

I strongly agree. Apart from the China 🇨🇳 controlled #TikTok, there is the central problem of the anti-democracy, rightwing #Techno Feudalist #US #BigTech platforms, such as #X or the ones owned by #Meta.

At the very least, the rage-promoting #Algorithms are fuelling the polarization of society, burning away social cohesion and conens, even destroying the #Truth and undermining democratic
@fredix @InternetDev

Elon's Grokipedia fails the most basic user test: did I ask for all of this?

Type in "Python" and put on a seatbelt!

#algorithms