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modulus

@[email protected]

Interested in the intersections between policy, law and technology. Programmer, lawyer, civil servant, orthodox Marxist. Blind.

Interesado en la intersección entre la política, el derecho y la tecnología. Programador, abogado, funcionario, marxista ortodoxo. Ciego.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

modulus ,

There’s an entire political party built around it and you think people can’t talk about it openly?

maegul , to fediverse
@maegul@hachyderm.io avatar

UI differences are a big factor in the success/failure of decentralised federation of diverse platforms and content

And this seems a good example: bridged posts onto which has a lower character limit than Mastodon.

So, just like posts on mastodon, you don't get the full content of the post (which ends with an abrupt ellipsis here) and have to take a link to the original platform.

However powerful the underlying protocols, this isn't far from screenshots.

@fediverse

modulus ,

I wouldn’t really count Mastodon/Bluesky bridging as federation. They’re incompatible protocols that were never intended to work together (arguably Bluesky was explicitly designed to avoid using AP).

modulus ,

IMO bridging or translation isn’t federation per se. Also it seems unlikely that protocols would converge to that extent. In fact AP implementations are already different enough that even within the same protocol it’s hard to represent all the different activities instances can present.

modulus ,

Definitely, AP is not magic. But if even within one protocol round-tripping and full-fidelity is impossible or very difficult, that makes it only harder and less likely through a bridge.

modulus ,

For me the weirdest part of the interview is where he says he doesn’t want to follow anyone, that he wants the algorithm to just pick up on his interests. It’s so diametrically opposed to how I want to intentionally use social networks and how the fedi tends to work that it’s sometimes hard to remember there are people who take that view.

modulus ,

Can’t happen soon enough.

Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 (www.ohchr.org)

After five months of military operations, Israel has destroyed Gaza. Over 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 13,000 children. Over 12,000 are presumed dead and 71,000 injured, many with life-changing mutilations. Seventy percent of residential areas have been destroyed. Eighty percent of the whole...

modulus ,

Very informative. On paragraphs 61 and following, it clearly explains why the Israeli claims on human shields are improper and how attacks are not maintaining the principles of proportionality, distinction, and so on.

modulus ,

Very well-reasoned article, though the political constraints might end up making implementing its recommendations impossible. Hard to see how the US and EU could make the rhetorical shifts it would take. If events continue as they are now, the military realities may preclude it. While it seems advantageous to reach a negotiated settlement for all sides at the moment, this will not remain the case forever.

Seppo: Personal Social Web (seppo.social)

#Seppo empowers you to publish short texts (and images yet to come) and to network in the Social Web. By renting commodity web space and dropping a single file. Without being subject to terms and conditions. Without having to fret about small print or tech lore. And without the need for an IT-consultant. But rather having a...

modulus ,

So, not super sure what this is or how this works. Is the idea that you run the cgi, it sets up static files, and it responds to AP requests like follows, mentions, boosts and such? I realise lots of people don’t like long docs but I didn’t really understand the use case very well.

modulus ,

Why’s RFA not blacklisted?

A poll: are followers-only posts on Mastodon public? (infosec.exchange)

On Mastodon, Followers-only posts are only visible to your followers – and to admins of any instances your followers on. But if you haven’t turned on “approve followes”, anybody who’s logged in to an instance you haven’t blocked can follow you and get access to your followers-only posts....

modulus ,

On my instance, the following control measures apply:

  • Only public posts are visible through the web interface.
  • Only public posts appear on RSS.
  • Following requires approval.
  • Authorised fetch is required.

So I think I have reason to feel fairly strongly that follower only posts are not public, and even unlisted posts are reasonably restricted.

modulus ,

I don’t get why states do this. Lie? Yes, that makes sense. But lie so badly it’s inevitable they get caught? A lot of people, I would think, will now also have qualms believing anything coming from them, even things that might be true.

modulus ,

Not that hard left (I gave money to Sumar but I’m realistic that it’s the best we can get, more than what we want).

I know some people who are really pissed off about the amnesty, and personally I don’t get it. Like in what world is the personal fate of a few hundreds of people who, let’s say for the sake of the argument, ran an illegal referendum, more important than labour rights for everyone?

modulus ,

I would expect that, but I’m not just talking right wingers. I personally know Sumar voters who said they will now vote for cannabis party or any random thing because of the amnesty.

modulus ,

Hypothetically? Maybe, but it seems extremely unlikely. Even if the referendum would have run normally back then, what would have happened next?

In fact, the declaration of independence lasted seconds, because anyone who knows anything can realise the extreme infeasibility of a unilateral declaration and all it would entail.

that said, if the Spanish state is so fragile a vote could split it, then it should probably split.

modulus ,

I played it and enjoyed it. The first time round I didn’t really know what I was doing in terms of game mechanics, just went by what I would do in that place, and my moderation speed fell to 0 so I lost.

Second time I managed to finish the game, with some compromises but not too awful.

modulus ,

Not saying this won’t have any negative effects on people, however I think it’s a little premature to guess at what it will be like. About 3/4 of the article is commenting what it will do to men when we find out only at the end women are the majority of users.

modulus ,

There is literally no instance in which expanding the scope of copyright law is a good thing. Never.

modulus ,

The biggest issues for me are:

  1. No centralisation means there’s no canonical single source of truth.
  2. Account migration.
  3. Implementation compatibility.

No single source of truth leads to the weird effect that if you check a post on your instance, it will have different replies from those on a different instance. Only the original instance where it got posted will have a complete reply set–and only if there are no suspensions involved. Some of this is fixable in principle, but there are technical obstacles.

Account migration is possible, but migration of posts and follows is non-trivial, Also migration between different implementations is usually not possible. Would be nice if people could keep a distinction between their instance, and their identity, so that the identity could refer to their own domain, for example.

Last, the issue with implementation compatibility. Ideally it should be possible to use the same account to access different services, and to some extent it works (mastodon can post replies to lemmy or upvote, but not downvote, for example).

modulus ,

As far as I can tell, this is incorrect. If there’s a post on instance A, a reply from instance B, and someone on instance C follows the OP on A but not the RP on B, they will only see the OP without the reply.

Source: I very often notice this because I run a single-user instance, and when I open a thread it’s incomplete, lacking posts from instances that I have not suspended.

modulus ,

Not that I expect a lot of consistency from imperialists, but essentially the same lines of argument can be used regarding the Russian Federation.

An advisory opinion would effectively settle Israel’s “bilateral dispute” without the state’s consent.

Ditto for .ru and .ua.

The court is not equipped to examine a “broad range of complex factual issues concerning the entire history of the parties’ dispute”.

Same thing, especially if we get back to the formation of the Soviet Union, independence referenda, and so on.

An advisory opinion would conflict with existing agreements between the parties and negotiation frameworks endorsed by the UN.

This would be Minsk I and II.

The request is not appropriate as it asks the court to “assume unlawful conduct on the part of Israel”.

Ditto.

Ukraine’s top Freedom Caucus ally gets cold feet (www.politico.com)

He [Rep. Andy Harris] said of Ukraine’s springtime offensive that was intended to turn the tide of the war: “I’ll be blunt, it’s failed.” And he was blunt, too, about the prospects for a victory ahead: “I’m not sure it’s winnable anymore.”

modulus ,

With more sober assessments of the course of the conflict on both sides of the Atlantic, we may hope for a prompt attempt at serious negotiation and, if fate is kind, an end to the hostilities.

modulus ,

How come nobody thought of this? Brilliant! I guess the war is over then?

modulus ,

No such implication is there. All I said was serious negotiations, which given the state of facts entails the prospect of territorial concessions. I don’t expect the negotiations would lead to a simple redrawing of the borders to take account of what each side materially holds at present. In fact, I don’t have much of a preconceived idea of what such negotiations would be like other than I find it extremely unlikely that Crimea will return to Ukrainian control. That’s the point of negotiation: finding out what the belligerents can live with.

modulus ,

I’m not. Crimea is not a fourth of Ukraine’s territory (27000 km^2 out of 603000 km^2). That’s about a 1/22nd part.

modulus ,

Historically many if not most conflicts started with the breach of an agreement. Without getting bogged down in irrelevant detail, there are issue of self-determination of Crimea, which repeatedly in 3 referenda (2 if you wish to exclude the last one) pronounced in favour of either autonomy or being part of the CIS (effectively Russian Federation). Likewise, and setting aside the 2014 events for the moment, there also were agreements that, in principle, may have served as a valid status quo, such as Minsk II, and were not complied to by the parties.

So, sure, some form of trust-building will be necessary. But what’s the alternative? Endless war?

modulus ,

Certainly this smells worse and worse. It makes no sense to claim that:

  1. The cable is false.
  2. But leaking it breaches official secrets laws.
  3. And its content is irrelevant anyway.

Full marks for a triply contradictory stance.

modulus ,

As far as I can tell, Stian Jenssen apologised about the way the comment had been made and interpreted, but not about the substance. Specifically:

A day later, he gave an interview to the same newspaper, VG, that had reported on his original comments. “My statement about this was part of a larger discussion about possible future scenarios in Ukraine, and I shouldn’t have said it that way. It was a mistake,” he said. But Jenssen did not walk back the idea that a land-for-Nato-membership deal could ultimately be on the table. If there were serious peace negotiations then the military situation at the time, including who controls what territory, “will necessarily have a decisive influence,” the chief of staff said.

So clearly at least some people in NATO consider that a peace deal may entail territorial concessions. Which like it or not is a realistic position to take.

modulus ,

But Ukraine is not a member. There is no reassurance required, or given, by NATO supplying non-members. In fact one could easily make the opposite claim: NATO depleting its own ammunition stores is doing the opposite of reassuring its members, by decreasing its own margins of safety.

modulus ,

That NATO official has apologised about the form and lack of context, then restated that territorial concessions are likely:

But Jenssen did not walk back the idea that a land-for-Nato-membership deal could ultimately be on the table. If there were serious peace negotiations then the military situation at the time, including who controls what territory, “will necessarily have a decisive influence,” the chief of staff said.

modulus ,

Just about the way of expressing it, the idea is still on.

modulus ,

Yep, it’s good to see that sovereignty will be respected. These international orgs like OAS and AU can go either way, it depends on a lot of factors.

modulus ,

At least it doesn’t sound like they will have much diplomatic cover to do it. Such an invasion would very simply be a violation of, shall we say it, the rules-based international order™.

modulus ,

There’s a surprising amount of that, not to mention… not sure whether to go into it but…

Seanchan stuffThose collars that can control people who channel are also used in a very kinky way.

That said, there’s also a few times when there’s the same stuff on men by women, and, I think, on women by men. But since the Aiel wise ones and Aes Sedai alike are societies of women, well, there’s a lot of that going on.

Google says AI systems should be able to mine publishers’ work unless companies opt out, turning copyright law on its head (www.theguardian.com)

In its submission to the Australian government’s review of the regulatory framework around AI, Google said that copyright law should be altered to allow for generative AI systems to scrape the internet.

modulus ,

Worth considering that this is already the law in the EU. Specifically, the Directive (EU) 2019/790 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 April 2019 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market has exceptions for text and data mining.

Article 3 has a very broad exception for scientific research: “Member States shall provide for an exception to the rights provided for in Article 5(a) and Article 7(1) of Directive 96/9/EC, Article 2 of Directive 2001/29/EC, and Article 15(1) of this Directive for reproductions and extractions made by research organisations and cultural heritage institutions in order to carry out, for the purposes of scientific research, text and data mining of works or other subject matter to which they have lawful access.” There is no opt-out clause to this.

Article 4 has a narrower exception for text and data mining in general: “Member States shall provide for an exception or limitation to the rights provided for in Article 5(a) and Article 7(1) of Directive 96/9/EC, Article 2 of Directive 2001/29/EC, Article 4(1)(a) and (b) of Directive 2009/24/EC and Article 15(1) of this Directive for reproductions and extractions of lawfully accessible works and other subject matter for the purposes of text and data mining.” This one’s narrower because it also provides that, “The exception or limitation provided for in paragraph 1 shall apply on condition that the use of works and other subject matter referred to in that paragraph has not been expressly reserved by their rightholders in an appropriate manner, such as machine-readable means in the case of content made publicly available online.”

So, effectively, this means scientific research can data mine freely without rights’ holders being able to opt out, and other uses for data mining such as commercial applications can data mine provided there has not been an opt out through machine-readable means.

modulus ,

Why not? Copyright is a monopoly. Generally society benefits from having it as weak as possible.

modulus ,

IMO the hardest part is the legal side, and in fact I’m not very clear how MS skirted that issue other than through US lax enforcement on corporations. In order to have a db like this one must store stuff that is, ordinarily, illegal to store. Because of the use of imperfect, so-called perceptual hashes, and in case of algorithm updates, I don’t think one can get away with simply storing the hash of the file. Some kind of computer vision/AI-ish solution might work out, but I wouldn’t want to be the person compiling that training set…

modulus ,

Perhaps the manual reporting tool is enough? Then that content can be forwarded to the central ms service. I wonder if that API can report back to say whether it is positive.

The problem with a lot of this tooling is you need some sort of accreditation to use it, because it somewhat relies on security through obscurity. As far as I know you can’t just hit MS’s servers and ask “is this CSAM?” If something like that were possible it might work.

Can you elaborate on the hash problem?

Sure. When you have an image, you can do lots of things to it that change it in some way: change the compression, the format, crop it, apply a filter… This all changes the file and so it changes the hash. The perceptual hash system works on the basis of some computer vision stuff and the idea is that it will try to generate the same hash for pictures that are substantially the same. But this tech is imperfect and probably will have changes. So if there’s a change in the way the hash gets calculated, it wouldn’t be enough with keeping hashes, you’d have to keep the original file to recalculate, which is storing CSAM, which is ordinarily not allowed and for good reason.

For a hint on how bad these hashes can get, they are reversible, vulnerable to pre-image attacks, and so on.

Some of this is probably inevitable in this type of systems. You don’t want to make it easy for someone to hit the servers with a large number of hashes, and then use IPFS or BitTorrent DHT to retrieve positives (you’d be helping people getting CSAM). The problem is hard.

Personally I was thinking of generating a federated set based on user reporting. Perhaps enhanced by checking with the central service as mentioned above. This db can then be synced with trusted instances.

Something like that could work, maybe obscuring some of the hash content (random parts of it) so that it doesn’t become a way to actually find the stuff.

Whatever decisions are made have to be well thought through so as not to make the problem worse.

modulus ,

Well, in a way that’s what we’re doing now, and by and large it works but obviously there’s some leakage, which is impossible to bring down to zero but which makes sense working on improving.

The other side of the coin is that the price of this moderation model is subjecting a lot more people to a lot more horrible shit, and I unfortunately don’t know any way around that.

Wikipedia Fighting Overseas SLAPP Suit Because Someone Didn’t Like The Factual Info Posted About Them (www.techdirt.com)

The case started in August 2021 with a complaint that de Paço was upset about the Portuguese and English language versions of the articles about him. The first judicial pass went well. But that’s where the good news ends. The next level of Portugal’s court system decided the lower court was wrong about everything, which...

modulus ,

Clearly this particular suit by this particular person is iffy. However, I don’t think this framing is very good: the fact Wikimedia is headquartered elsewhere shouldn’t make it immune from being sued where an affected party lives.

Also, this part of the article seems a bit contradictory:

Just because someone doesn’t like what’s written about them doesn’t give them the right to unmask contributors. And if the plaintiff still believes he’s been wronged by these contributors, he can definitely sue them personally for libel (or whatever). What he has no right to demand is that a third party unmask users simply because it’s the easiest target to hit.

Ok, but how does he sue them personally without knowing who they are? It’s fine to say this shouldn’t be regarded as libel (I agree, it’s a factual point, should be covered by exceptio veritatis or whatever) but I think it’s a bit dishonest to say you can’t hit Wikimedia, go after the individual users; but also, Wikimedia shouldn’t be forced to reveal them.

Much better if the court would consider this information as being accurate and in the public interest.

Of course the GDPR cuts two ways here, because political information is an especially protected category, with certain exceptions (notorious information). So I’m not sure how the information on this person’s affiliation to the far right was obtained and so on.

modulus ,

I generally agree, though I could be convinced of recurring payment in the case of high speed APIs that need a lot of updates to keep working. Chasing an API can be a lot of work.

Of course, a solution to that is having an up-front payment and letting people update as they wish–if there’s new value in the new releases presumably they will.

modulus ,

Thank goodness. But now what? I wonder if we’ll have another election by the end of the year.

Hoping for the undoubtedly difficult negotiations to yield a left government instead.

modulus ,

It’s not primarily the younger voters going fash though. Otherwise I mostly agree with your comment.

modulus ,

I find it impossible not to see it as a symmetric situation. The notion the US is restricting access to chips for natsec reasons may be true, if that includes restricting Chinese economic and technical development to maintain its hegemony. That China responds in kind is not only to be expected, but also fair from any possible neutral stance. The special pleading is especially apparent here. “No, it’s different when they do it to us because we’re the good guys.” Really?

modulus ,

Greg Egan’s Distress has some of that.

modulus ,

In spite of which, there’s a pretty good chance that the government will change in the upcoming elections in July. There’s been lots of good economic policy, but it isn’t satisfying people.

modulus OP ,

Hi there,

Just replying to this post to indicate that Lemmy seems to have fixed this. At least from lemmy.ml, paragraphs now appear properly separated to NVDA on Firefox. Yay!

This was, silly or not, one of the most annoying Lemmy a11y niggles for me. Forward!

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