Per Axbom

Swedish communication theorist born in Liberia. Writing, speaking, teaching, podcasting and consulting for a more safe and compassionate Internet.

My posts are mostly in English, and sometimes in Swedish.

Active within #DigitalEthics #AiEthics #InclusiveDesign #Accessibility #UXDesign
#VisualExplainers #Mindmapping #ResponsibleInnovation #HumanRights #SustainableWeb

My first computer was a Sinclair ZX81.
My Fediverse platform is Akkoma.
My dog is a French bulldog.

Try to get paid for my work but I put most of it out there for free 😅

This is my 4th Fediverse account. My posts are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike unless otherwise specified.

#fedi22 tfr

Info & inspiration: https://axbom.info
Newsletter: https://axbom.com/newsletter
Username: Per Axbom (npub1aer…7756)
Pronouns: he/him

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Last Notes

2024-10-09 07:25:28

"Hannah Arendt considers humankind in terms of its ever-expanding capabilities. Her analysis reveals a troubling paradox: that as human powers increase through technological and humanistic inquiry, we are less equipped to control the consequences of our actions."
Boom.
https://kobo.com/en-SE/ebook/the-human-condition-27

2024-10-01 18:26:07

I really appreciate the Medications feature of the Health app in iPhone. It reminds me to take my different pills and lets me easily log that I’ve taken them. I’ve been taking a lot over the past six weeks, morning and evening. The app will even allow me to generate a rough visual of what each pill type looks like.
BUT… (there’s always a but isn’t there)
I’m not finding a way to adjust the number of pills so they are different on different days.
When it comes to the blood thinner (Warfarin) the dose is actually adjusted week by week based on my blood coagulation value (PT/INR), and it may be that for the same week I take two pills on the Tuesday and three on the Wednesday. I can only set a value for number of pills that is the same across all days of the week. Ideally I would want to be able to set up the dosage each time the prescription updates.
Unless of course I’ve missed a setting…?
This is not a huge deal because I obviously prepare my physical pill dispenser(s) according to the prescription. But it’d be nice to have the app match reality. Especially for the accuracy of the historical data, which I do enjoy looking at, and may come in useful.

2024-09-27 07:38:05

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Tack. Det är exakt det jag går o tänker. 😬

2024-08-14 17:15:36

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Thank you. 🙏

2024-07-14 15:38:00

Om ungefär en månad ska jag genomgå en öppen hjärtoperation. Det är en gedigen procedur där jag ska få en ny mekanisk hjärtklaff och även byta ut en sisådär 6-7 centimeter av aortan. Detta följs av sjukskrivning och rehabilitering med bland annat andningsteknik för att rädda lungfunktionen. Det tar cirka tre månader för mig att bara läka ihop. Trots att jag länge varit medveten om mitt medfödda hjärtfel kom beskedet om en snar operation ganska plötsligt och överraskande. Så hur hamnade jag här?
Idag en personlig berättelse, som ett sätt att bearbeta en stundande operation:
https://per.ax/hjartat

2024-07-09 12:07:56

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This is a fair perspective. For myself, I've landed several assignments/projects thanks to my LinkedIn presence. Given that I've abandoned Twitter I still feel I need a mainstream forum for the part of my freelancer life that entails paying my bills 😅 I do wish my blog/newsletter could replace this in the end.
I did leave LinkedIn for 8 months and in the end felt the need to return. With Twitter, Facebook and Instagram… I've never missed them. Well, I perhaps miss what Twitter once was. 😕

2024-07-09 07:08:50

Putting external links in the main body of posts on LinkedIn supposedly reduces the reach of that post, even though there is no official communication from LinkedIn supporting this presumption. So people keep putting links in comments because social media strategists tell them to, often based on small experiments done 4-5 years ago.
Putting links inside comments reduces accessibility for people with vision impairments, impaired cognitive abilities and reduced motor skills (and yeah, creates an obstacle for everyone who has to hunt for the link).
Now I even see people who are advocates for accessibility adopting this practice.
Ironically, I don’t even believe there any longer is the type of penalisation that people describe as their motivation for adopting a technique that reduces accessibility. I’ve read several reports now claiming that LinkedIn stopped penalising external links in 2020.
Ideally I would want LinkedIn to step in here and provide an official statement on the matter.
Adding links in comments is creating all sorts of problems and, while not our biggest online issue today, is a clear-cut example of systemic exclusion rooted in the idea that we don’t have to care about acccessibility if we can reach many more people without disabilities by “gaming an algorithm” in the most awkward of ways.
When accessibility advcocates do the same, they are subtly communicating that accessibility is important, but not THAT important.
The reason I’m so adamant about this is that it’s an algorithm issue that could so easily be fixed. Especially if it’s largely based on a misconception!
So my question is this: how might I reach someone on LinkedIn who would be able to provide an official statement that could help mitigate this outdated practice?
Any help is appreciated.
#Accessibility #a11y #LinkedIn

2024-07-08 08:28:59

Ironic how a smartphone is the dumb choice and a dumbphone is the smart choice.

2024-07-03 13:12:58

Vimeo’s stance on user content vis-à-vis generative AI:
”After extensive outreach and hearing your thoughts, we are taking a definitive stance contrary to many other community websites: Vimeo will not allow generative AI models to be trained using videos hosted on our platform without your explicit consent, even if you use our free offerings. In addition, we prohibit unauthorized content scraping (by model companies) and continue to implement security protocols designed to protect user-generated content.”
https://vimeo.com/blog/post/vimeos-position-on-ai/
#vimeo #aiethics

2024-06-24 06:41:40

Det är svårt att föreställa sig att det är en slump att regeringens hållning gällande ett av EU:s mest bekymmersamma förslag klubbas dagarna innan midsommarafton, när Sveriges befolkning är lagom semestersugen och rejält dåsig efter skolavslutningar.
Men nu sitter vi här med en officiell svensk hållning (framröstat i justiteutskottet med stöd av S, V och MP) som är precis tvärtemot den linje som utlovades i de flesta partiers valkampanjer till EU-valet för bara tre veckor sedan (M, L, V, MP). Det känns nästan svagt att kalla det svek.
Hoppas sillen smakade.
Läs hela texten här, med en genomgång av vad Chat Control är och varför så många kritiserar förslaget som kan skaka om våra demokratiska grundprinciper: https://per.ax/chatcontrol
#ChatControl

2024-06-20 07:10:45

Så Miljöpartiet gick inte bara emot sitt eget vallöfte gällande Chat Control, när de blir påkomna så ljuger de om att det var ett misstag (som om det ens det vore okej med misstag i så här viktiga frågor)… och sedan blir de påkomna med att det inte var ett misstag utan förankrat helt korrekt enligt MP:s rutiner.
Bedrövligt är bara förnamnet.
https://emanuelkarlsten.se/bildbevisen-miljopartiet-rostade-inte-fel-om-chat-control/

2024-06-20 06:07:45

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So many wizards hiding behind curtains!! Thanks for sharing.
@npub1q4l…q39g @npub1dvk…2djf

2024-06-19 20:49:16

One of the best posts about “AI” I’ve read. Enjoy.
"A friend of mine was invited by a FAANG organization to visit the U.S a few years ago. Many of the talks were technical demos of impressive artificial intelligence products. Being a software engineer, he got to spend a little bit of time backstage with the developers, whereupon they revealed that most of the demos were faked. The products didn't work. They just hadn't solved some minor issues, such as actually predicting the thing that they're supposed to predict. Didn't stop them spouting absolute gibberish to a breathless audience for an hour though! I blame not the engineers, who probably tried to actually get the damn thing to work, but the lying blowhards who insisted that they must make the presentation or presumably be terminated.”
https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/
Thanks for the tip, @npub1q4l…q39g, and thank you @npub1dvk…2djf for writing it!

2024-06-18 13:33:10

Det är häpnadsväckande, men ändå inte i denna alltmer bisarra värld. Regeringen väljer att ge sitt stöd till version 2 av Chat Control, något som innebär att flera partier gör en tvärvändning gällande det motstånd till Chat Control som de förmedlade i sina kampanjer till EU-valet för bara ett par veckor sedan(!)
Det är också riktigt, riktigt illa, för denna dröm för diktatorer kan klubbas redan imorgon. 😡
Oerhört viktigt gräv av Emanuel Karlsten:
https://emanuelkarlsten.se/regeringen-kuppar-igenom-chat-control-kan-klubbas-i-eu-redan-onsdag/
Oisin Cantwell har skrivit också:
https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/kolumnister/a/gw6wLa/sverige-har-gett-tummen-upp-till-chat-control

2024-06-14 07:23:00

I see people far in the future laughing so hard at the gullibility and foolishness of 21st century homo sapiens worshipping at the altar of technological divinity.
Well, either that or crying.

2024-06-10 15:21:21

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Thank you! This is really helpful. Thanks for sharing.

2024-06-10 10:26:40

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It’s part of the Ambition Empower program which is a paid program where I teach, so no stream this time. But I know this is one of those talks I’ll want to be bringing to a wider audience so likely in September I could be ready to do a public one.

2024-06-10 09:44:52

Tomorrow I am giving a talk around the importance for designers to not strive for ‘digital literacy’ but rather for ‘nature literacy’.
I believe an understanding of our connection to nature is the only way people will find incentive to stop destroying it, and to make better decisions as creators. A willingness to spend time in nature every day is part of that mindshift.
Which is why I found this statistic so very disturbing. Our tech-centric world is teaching us to ignore nature:
"The average [US] person will now spend 93% of their life indoors.”
Only 7% of a lifetime outside. And likely a great deal of that time in environments made of concrete. This happens even though we know that a lack of exposure to sunlight is causing low energy levels, problems sleeping and depression.
Even though we inherently know how good we feel every time we immerse ourselves in greenery. My wife calls it “forest bathing” when we go on dog walks in the woods. And I recently learnt that this is simply a translation of the Japanese term ‘shinrin-yoku’, a term that emerged in the 1980s as a physiological and psychological exercise. The purpose was twofold: to offer an eco-antidote to tech-boom burnout and to inspire residents to reconnect with and protect the country’s forests.
During my first months in the Fediverse in 2022 I had two people reach out and mention to me that my writings reminded them of #solarpunk, which I had up 'til then never heard of. Solarpunk aspires to provide an alternative way of viewing the future with humans living in symbiosis with nature and technology – a future where technology is not destructive but only used purposefully where it boosts universal wellbeing and an ability to harmonise with the nature we ourselves are a small part of. Not the masters of. Not disconnected from.
What Solarpunk does for me personally is to provide a way to speak about a alternative futures, rather than get stuck in always criticising the current illusions of inevitable futures.
In a breakout session tomorrow I will be trying out the Solarpunk futures cards as an aid in thinking differently about digital design.
Would love to hear if anyone has experience with running or participating in a Solarpunk-related workshop and the types of concepts or ideas that resonate and contribute to pursuing a different way of making products and services.
"It is estimated that 80% of the environmental impact of products is determined during the product design phase.” – Publications Office of the European Union
—
Solarpunk futures storytelling game (free cards available in PDF format):
https://per.ax/solarpunkcards
A nice summary of the Solarpunk vision by Leonardo Amico:
https://per.ax/solarpunkvision
Getting back to nature: how forest bathing can make us feel better
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/08/forest-bathing-japanese-practice-in-west-wellbeing
This is your brain on nature (National Geographic):
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/call-to-wild

2024-06-09 05:23:02

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Ja det var väldigt fint.
Mitt favoritstycke:
"I ett gott framtida samhälle mäste två unika mänskliga egenskaper fa fritt spelrum: originalitet och omhändertagande.
Originalitet är förmågan att skapa något nytt på vilket område det vara må. För det krävs det kunskap och fantasi, två resurser som inte uppmuntras i dag.
Men omhändertagandet är än viktigare.
Maskiner kan göra mycket men aldrig möta en människa. När maskiner blir billigare än människor hotar de att ersätta människor där människor är oumbärliga - i mötet öga
mot öga. Det får inte ske i ett gott samhälle.
Naturen är också föremål för mänsklig
omtanke. Sa måste det vara mer än någonsin. Människan är ju själv ett stycke
natur. Hon måste tillse att alla vi naturvarelser lever väl."
– Sven-Eric Liedman

2024-06-07 09:21:30

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Haha, I like this line of thinking.

2024-06-06 08:37:09

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I’m truly in complete agreement with you, though I expect the bulk of domain registrations are from delusional ideas and startups that will never see the light of day.

2024-06-06 06:51:07

If you see a domain name ending in .ai that means the island of Anguilla got some money, as it is the owner of this country domain.
”For each domain registration, Anguilla’s government gets anywhere from $140 to thousands of dollars from website names sold at auctions, according government data.”
In 2023 just over 20% of the government’s total revenue came from these registrations.
”[…] the government used the money to provide free health care for citizens 70 and older, and it has committed millions of dollars to finish building a school and a vocational training center. The government has also allocated funds to improve its airport; doubled its budget for sports activities, events and facilities; and increased the budget for citizens seeking medical treatment overseas.”
The island was hit hard by a hurricane in 2017 and tourism essentially disappeared during the covid pandemic. The .ai domain revenue has been a welcome injection into the economy.
Now you can’t say I never talk about AI in a positive light 😉
https://per.ax/angui

2024-06-05 05:23:51

In June 2023 I wrote:
«Will consumers perhaps come to see the phrase "AI-Powered System" in the same light as "Diesel-Powered SUV".»
Well, not yet it would seem.
In The Elements of AI Ethics from June of last year I build on The Elements of Digital Ethics from 2021. Which itself was the output of reading about digital harms for many years.
Seeing all of the categories of harms just get worse year on year is disheartening.
What goal is worth all this? I tend to fall back on a sentiment I use in my talks and teaching:
When a privileged group benefits from a technology, the more inclined they will be to ignore the harms done unto others by the same technology. Because drawing attention to the harm would suggest they should give up their personal gain to help someone else.
This appears to be true for the short term. In the long term the beneficiaries of technology will happily also ignore harm done unto themselves, as long as they get the experience boost in the moment.
What hope is there?
In my June 11 session for Ambition Empower I will be talking about how to champion technologies of compassion, drawing on work related to nature connectedness by P. Wesley Schultz, Marianne E. Krasny, F. Stephan Mayer and Cynthia M Frantz.
Technologies of compassion work in unison with an acknowledgement of our connection not only to each other but also to nature. Technology tends to separate us from nature, making us value it less - and causing us to increasingly worsen our own living conditions, and the conditions of all other species, over time.
But we can choose to design technology that takes nature into account.. Technology that works with, not against, nature. I believe this is what all schools must start teaching. Now.
Expect me to write more about this over the next year.
https://per.ax/aie
#solarpunk

2024-06-04 14:27:10

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Än så länge är det bara nya Copilot+ PC som har det. Så det är ingen ko på isen, ännu.

2024-06-04 06:04:19

Alien historians:
For fifty years computers were used for their purpose: to compute exact, predictable and explainable responses to exact, interpretable queries and inputs.
Then, in what human timekeeping referred to as the early 21st century, the most exploitative classes of the human race decided that the best use of computers was to compute inexact - yet semantically believable - responses to inexact human phrasing. Each inexact response was different for multiple identical queries, and easily manipulated through more inexact phrasing.
And they chose to call those responses intelligence. We can only presume the decades prior, trusting computers for exact calculations, forced them into a delusional state of mind. Probabilistic word salad was treated as divine instruction. As further evidence of this delusion, we can refer to the sequence of events that followed.
To produce vast amounts of ’intelligence’ required extreme amounts of energy, causing consumption to skyrocket. This was during a time when it would appear that the human race were well aware that they actually needed to do the opposite: reduce energy consumption to minimise the effects of their climate crisis and save themselves.
Needless to say, much of human civilisation collapsed into a smoking pile of confusion. After their demise, Earth was again able to thrive, after we removed the heaps of harmful waste orbitting around it.

2024-06-03 20:33:03

1. År 2020 sätter Microsoft som mål att nå negativa utsläpp år 2030.
2. De gasar på och kör i helt motsatt riktning från målet och ökar i stället sina utsläpp med mer än 30%.
3. År 2024 handlar allt om att bygga ut och bygga nya datacenter.
4. De accelerar alltså nu ännu snabbare bort från målet de satte.
5. Idag frågar en journalist ”Är det möjligt att nå målet när ni expanderar så kraftigt inom datacenter?”
6. Och får till svar ”I nuläget är det svårare än när vi satte det 2020. Men det är viktigare än någonsin att nå det, och det är vi fast beslutna att göra.”
7. Ingen följdfråga på det.
8. Ridå.

2024-06-03 18:33:57

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😁

2024-06-03 11:35:19

Just found the Solarpunk Futures storytelling game and now all I want to do is run a solarpunk workshop. 😊
https://thefuture.wtf
The free print-and-play version of the cards: https://per.ax/solarpunkcards

2024-06-03 10:55:37

Heja Sverige. Vår statsminister går ut och gör gemensam sak med ett amerikanskt storföretag, och hyllar dem för att de gör en rekordinvestering i sina egna datacenter, bokar upp resurser på vårt elnät, gör åverkan på natur och miljö – och ger dem sannolikt rabatt på elpriset för besväret. Investeringen kan summa summarum bli en kostnad för civilsamhället.
Allt för något som kallas för AI, och som ingen har definierat vad det är för något. Ett marknadsföringsbegrepp som kan betyda allt och inget. Just det, vi får några timmar i deras webbutbildning – troligen utan lärare – om deras egen proprietära “AI”, en webbutbildning som sannolikt redan ligger färdigproducerad. Tack för det Microsoft.
Söker journalister som kan problematisera detta…
Det här var mitt första utbrott. Ska fördjupa mig i respektive ämne på bloggen sedan.
Just det… det råkar vara ett storföretag som kritiserats starkt på senaste tiden för sina bristande säkerhetsrutiner… bland annat av Trafikverket, och släpper en dator med en funktion (Recall) som är som att bjuda cyberkriminella på buffé.

2024-06-03 09:40:02

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Exakt så. Jag kokar här…

2024-06-03 09:28:03

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Agree completely!

2024-06-01 06:08:31

When you have a qr code on a presentation slide you are welcoming people to take out their phones and get distracted by any notifications that happen to have appeared on screen, or just by the habit of tapping a specific app to check messages.
I actually miss business cards. But yeah, I still have a business card variant (just a url) that I sometimes hand out.

2024-05-22 04:42:56

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Wow, this is a great report with so many useful references. Thank you for sharing!

2024-05-18 07:21:05

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Thank you for teaching me the word jingoistic, I'm not sure I had even seen that word before. 🙏

2024-05-17 20:59:27

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Thanks Steffen!

2024-05-17 14:14:05

Instead of a traditional online forum I am considering starting a mailing list (think listserv). Some of my best best online conversations were on mailing lists in the late 90s. And e-mail is, after all, pretty cool.
Oh yeah, I’ve just been reading about how Slack is now ingesting your messages for their AI “training”.

2024-05-17 05:10:11

"It feels good to me, so therefore it must be a good thing."
The foundational fallacy of harmful behavior and systemic injustice.
Just seeing so much of it right now. 😢

2024-05-16 16:05:14

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Yes, that's exactly it. 😊

2024-05-15 10:52:17

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I had it on VHS when living in a country without television, so I’ve seen it multiple times 😅

2024-05-15 10:51:00

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Woot!? Galet.

2024-05-15 06:47:43

It's an odd one, but I think the movie Cherry 2000 was formative to me.
Made in 1985, released in 1988, it's a Mad Max-esque adventure where a tracker (Melanie Griffith) is helping a businessman (David Andrews) find an out-of-production fembot in the post-apocalyptic desert wastelands of the future, to replace his animatronic wife that breaks down at the start of the film.
The year in the movie is 2017. Cherry 2000 is the name of the discontinued robot wife.
Needless to say, businessman Treadwell learns that an animatronic partner perhaps isn't the right future for him.
Anyone else remember this film?
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0092746/

2024-05-15 06:06:52

Fan vad långt Google Translate har kommit ändå. Det är bara att applådera.
https://axbom.me/media/9faf3ab4-ee24-423f-8b8c-e3762c326ade/3D6B46AA-85F8-4C7C-8153-E78B38DE5E89.jpeg

2024-05-11 19:21:28

Always worth a watch.
The Battle for Your Time: Exposing the Hidden Costs of Social Media
https://www.ted.com/talks/dino_ambrosi_the_battle_for_your_time_exposing_the_hidden_costs_of_social_media
"Do we truly comprehend how much of our time and attention is given to technology? In his talk, Dino Ambrosi reframes how we think about our relationships to devices, and shares his ideas on how to create healthy digital habits."

2024-05-11 16:01:45

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Very cool! Thanks for sharing all those links!

2024-05-11 06:18:03

Ghost now begins building their integration with ActivityPub. First post is out.
https://activitypub.ghost.org/day-0/

2024-05-10 21:07:58

Started rewatching Veronica Mars. Wow I love this show.

2024-05-10 19:43:36

Does anyone know of an email service, add-on or tutorial that allows for mimicing the one feature that intrigues me about HEY e-mail: opt-in for receiving emails from someone.
i.e. the default would be that someone who is not yet an approved sender ends up in a separate inbox where I have to confirm if I want to keep receiving email from them or not. I think HEY calls this ’the screener’.
Or if you’ve tried this fature and don’t like it, that would be cool to hear about as well.

2024-05-10 11:21:07

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Precis just nu är en jättebra tid att skaffa Freja+, som du kan logga in med på t ex Skatteverket och 1177 när BankID inte fungerar.
Det är hyfsat enkelt för dig som har tillgång till ett pass och en telefon som kan läsa av chip (de flesta moderna telefoner). Börja med att ladda ner appen så vägleds du via den.
Läs mer här: https://frejaeid.com
Att ha flera sätt för inlogg ökar din motståndskraft mot det som pågår just nu (BankID ligger nere).

2024-05-10 11:05:28

Hmm, något stör ut Swish och förmodligen BankID.

2024-05-10 05:52:58

Our thumbs moving across screens. Day in. Day out. Our energy devoted to serving the machines and their overlords. Reality itself being distorted by virtual, augmented and generated alternatives.
The overlords don't even have to hide their ambitions anymore. Whatever they speak is gospel.
The Matrix was not a warning of a future to come where we are hooked up to machines, emptied of our energy to serve the desired immortality of our own oppressors.
It was a call to wake up and pull the cord.
#RandomThoughts

2024-05-08 13:38:32

We’re automating our way out of knowing how to adapt to unforeseen circumstances.

2024-05-05 12:23:32

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Thanks, I absolutely have that. Which makes it even more annoying that Siri can't access it after peope have been complaining about this for years online.
Often when I park my car it would be nice to quickly confirm if it's an even or odd week (to avoid a ticket). With the shortcut I just installed, now I can. ⚡️

2024-05-05 11:46:54

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I actually just wen't with the shortcut someone else already built.
https://www.reddit.com/r/shortcuts/comments/obsxb5/what_week_is_it_a_simple_shortcut_that_answers/

2024-05-05 11:44:43

Siri doesn't seem to even be able to tell me what week number it is.
Happy to be proven wrong on this. And I'd rather not depend on building my own shortcut…

2024-05-04 07:42:33

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The cat sat IN the door? 😀

2024-05-04 07:41:05

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The cat sat IN the door? 😀

2024-05-04 07:11:56

How people trust these tools for decision-making is beyond me…
https://chat.openai.com/share/534ac2bd-332c-43d5-a26c-4b1bd8050c38
https://axbom.me/media/a737c669-324a-4c80-a47c-937481f44521/7E0939CD-C999-4F70-B377-8E11F18353B9.jpeg

2024-05-04 07:07:39

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Tack! 😁

2024-05-04 06:33:45

Trying a new regimen today. Every hour, before I can use my phone, I need to do 10 pushups. If I don’t use my phone that hour, I don’t have to do them. If the time is 9:45 and I haven’t used my phone yet that hour, but want to do so, I have to do 10 pushups.
And yes, I’ve done my first 10 before writing this. 😁💪
Will be interesting to see how many pushups I end up with today. Gonna be so buff in a couple of months. 😅

2024-05-04 06:23:22

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The embedded image is an early version. The updated version from January 2023 includes XMPP. This is why it’s always good to link to the source 😊
https://axbom.com/fediverse/

2024-04-30 22:06:24

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Jag gör ju inte det, men har en vän som hjälpt mig.

2024-04-30 16:15:35

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That's everything an old geek needed to hear 😅 Thanks Łukasz.
Fun fact: I once tried getting hold of [axb.om](http://axb.om) (Oman). I got quite far into the process but when they wanted an official stamp from the Swedish king I gave up. 😁

2024-04-30 12:01:33

I believe I will find people here who appreciate how utterly satisfied I feel being able to use this url:
https://per.ax/bom
😎

2024-04-28 06:46:26

In my 20s I knew very little but was confident I knew quite a lot. Today I know much more and am much more confident that I know very little.

2024-04-28 06:40:50

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Verkligen. Jag blir lika illa till mods varje gång jag ser citat i tidningarna utifrån vad våra politiker skriver på X. Att det fortsatt ses som en "officiell" kanal är bara pinsamt ostrategiskt för ett land som hävdat att man ska bli ledande inom digitalisering nästa år.

2024-04-26 07:46:06

In a recent post I first wrote “third-world countries”, considered changing it to developing countries, then edited to “Global South”.
There is a lot of baggage in language that imperfectly labels entire groups of countries, while also carrying with it many negative connotations.
Then I came across Dayo Olopad’s op-ed talking instead about a shift in thinking to “fat” and “lean” countries. While perhaps I would have preferred the use of “bloated” rather than “fat”, Olopad’s insights are worth sharing:
« “Lean” societies approach consumption and production with scarcity in mind. In the so-called least developed nations of sub-Saharan Africa, where the gross national income averages just $2,232 per capita, populations are young and hungry — at times for food, but mostly for opportunity. Nothing can be taken for granted or wasted. But resource constraints have provoked an astonishing bounty of homegrown solutions to the problems philanthropists like Mr. Gates address with charity. If necessity is the mother of invention, lean economies have a distinct advantage. »
It shold be obvious by now that “fat” economies need to learn to be more like the “lean” countries.
« As the old adjectives about Africa — “hopeless,” “war torn,” “impoverished”— fade, fat economies must stop assuming that poor countries should mimic them and instead embrace their models for social innovation and efficiency. The post-crash ethos of doing more with less is essential in modern Africa. And for philanthropists like Mr. Gates and world leaders who have committed to solving big problems, lean thinking is imperative. »
https://archive.is/oU4RZ

2024-04-26 07:28:14

As more of the world is coming to terms with the psychic con that is generative AI, some of the images from Altman’s businesses are just ludicrous, almost like “well we just borrowed all the props from fortune-telling and seance”.
Never forget that Worldcoin is the brainchild of Sam Altman. His minions are travelling to third-world countries with a crystal ball, sorry orb, and asking people to look into with the promise of more fortune in their futures.
This story is from 2022 but the Worldcoin scam is still going strong, even if Kenya suspended their operations:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/richardnieva/worldcoin-crypto-eyeball-scanning-orb-problems

2024-04-25 18:40:52

Real-time footage of the AI bubble bursting…
VIdeo description:
A wooded,, green area with a close-up of a large soap bubble forming inside the loop of a string and slowly, in slow motion, growing larger and larger before it pops. Overlaid on the video are scattered text quotes that appear and disappear, as if they are speaking in unision with the bubble growing and popping:
What is it?
It’s AI
How can it do that?!
It’s mindblowing.
It’s going to take over the world.
It looks so real.
This is all happening so fast!
We need to invest 7 trillion to make it grow bigger y’all!
But it’s not making any money!
I can control it.
It’s actually pretty silly.
But you just have to believe!
And it’s using so much energy!
And water…
Wait, is this all a hallucination?
(soap bubble pops)
Ah, fuck.
Clean that up please.
Sam, has your orb scanned all the eyeballs yet?
Yeah, we need everyone to keep an open mind here.
https://axbom.me/media/8eccc091-5992-4d08-81f0-771a4a9f8e6d/1EC2BB96-ADA7-4367-8739-BC7A56181B40.mov

2024-04-25 04:07:54

”One participant was a British former journalist become computer tycoon who had been awarded a lordship.”
Well well well… that would be Clive Sinclair, inventor of the first computer I owned, the Sinclair ZX81.
Very much worth a read:
https://dair-community.social/@timnitGebru/112329743209523481

2024-04-23 10:08:53

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https://www.docuseal.co

2024-04-23 06:57:06

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And whenever people wonder about trackers I always want to play them the sound from @bert_hubert@fosstodon.org’s googerteller:
https://axbom.com/the-creepy-sound-of-online-trackers/

2024-04-23 06:51:22

Some of you may have seen me researching online signing services yesterday, testing about five different services through their trial accounts. One of those companies just called me up(!) and wanted me to book me in for a demo of their product.
I said I went with Docuseal because it’s open source and I have control over my own data as I can self-host. “Oh is that important to you, why?”, he asked. So I actually went on a rant about digital ethics, indieweb and how we are tracked whatever products we use these days.
So that sent him off on a rant about how they use blockchain and are based in the EU and no data ever leaves the EU and the data always belongs to the customer.
So I’m like, “well how did the fucking blockchain protect me from you calling me at 8.30 in the morning!?”*
*Hmm, I actually didn’t say that last part because it just hit me when I hung up. And I have a hard time being rude on the phone. But wow I wish I did say that. Let’s just agree I did.

2024-04-23 04:58:18

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Fick mig att tänka på den fina bloggen Paradox Pairs:
https://www.paradoxpairs.com/paradox-pairs-index/

2024-04-22 18:24:24

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After some own research today I’ve come to find that the open source software Docuseal works quite well, and it’s included in my Cloudron setup. So I'm now self-hosting a solution that will meet my ongoing needs for digital signatures 😊
https://www.docuseal.co

2024-04-22 15:24:15

Hm, so what online signing service do you all use for signing agreements with several parties involved?
And that you would recommend…

2024-04-21 12:16:52

I should be doing bookkeeping and instead I'm building an accessible blog template using Pico CSS.
#StoryOfMyLife

2024-04-20 09:37:06

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Spot on. 😁 [@mattotcha](https://mastodon.social/@mattotcha)

2024-04-20 05:34:20

Don't wash the Cybertruck in direct sunlight.
So essentially:
• Keep away from bright lights
• Keep away from water
I'm just waiting on the rule that you can't feed the Cybertruck after midnight.
https://futurism.com/cybertruck-brick-car-wash

2024-03-28 06:37:50

There is a broad understanding for the need to fly less, as the aviation industry accounts for more than 2% of global emissions. Yet the data centres we depend on for computing already account for more than that, by some estimates up to 4% of global emissions.
But there are few calls or campaigns to compute less. If anything, it would appear that humankind has decided the best way forward is to compute more.
We are quicky becoming a generation of… generation.
Generate more images and video, stream your television shows, record your meetings, surveil your employees and customers, snap 10 photos of every scene to make sure you get the perfect one. Run it through an AI filter. Save everything in the cloud indefinitely. Keep feeding the generative tools with all that content. Rinse and repeat.
Except don't rinse.
All the while, oblivious governments are subsidising the establishment of more data centres to the detriment of local communities.
The data centres are the factories of our time. But we can not see them or their carbon footprint, so they are very easy to ignore. So we do. If we can stick with calling them clouds they even feel fluffy.
"A 2018 paper by researchers Lofti Belkhir and Ahmed Elmeligi forecast that computing would exceed 14pc of global emissions (based on 2016 levels) by 2040."
That was before generative AI.
« Data processing and storage has such a large carbon footprint for three reasons.
First, servers require electricity to run. Second, they need to be kept cool, which uses more power and also water. Third, the equipment itself is made from expensive resources and needs to be repaired and replaced.
“Computer hardware contains rare earth minerals and all sorts of stuff shipped from all over the world,” says Craven. »
« “One of the reasons why networking emissions are so high is because there is so little desire and capability to switch machines off because it will increase what we call the latency,” says Hussain.
Society demands that everything happens immediately, which means cloud services run constantly. “Everybody keeps everything humming at peak mode, just in case,” adds Hussain. »
A generation of generation. I mean, at least it's catchy, right?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/05/30/silicon-valley-data-giants-net-zero-sustainability-risk/

2023-10-15 06:41:28

The idea appears to be to let computers exponentially proliferate some of the tasks they excel at: numbers, statistics, labelling people, copying, collecting data and mass surveillance. Rather than sit down and talk about how we boost the values we as humans wish to proliferate: compassion, love, care, connection and belonging.
Few are talking about how the former is antithetical to the latter.
I’m not saying ”stop using computers”, I’m saying ”stop letting computers assume the leadership position”. Computers can act as aids for compassion, love, care, connection and belonging. Think of games, text-to-speech and long-distance communication. But computers arrive there by instruction code from humans. Not the other way around.
The more alarming truth is this: computers can be used to destroy compassion, love, care, connection and belonging much faster than we can keep up with building it. Sometimes that destruction is with intent, but often it is oblivious.