#Associate Software Engineer

[allthecanadianpolitics]

The association representing professional engineers in Alberta is appealing a court decision that would allow a company to use the term “software engineer” in job advertisements. Engineers are concerned about how the decision could lead to more unregulated use of the term “engineer.”

APEGA, the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta, filed the appeal on Friday after a Nov. 9 decision from Justice J.S. Little found using the term did not breach the act governing engineers in Alberta.

Full article

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[likeawolfatthemoon]

i wish all tech workers a happy world halting due to bad microsoft antivirus update day

[digitalproductsautomation]

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[uniquejobs]

IBM Careers 2023 | Frontend Developer | Bangalore - Apply now

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[prokopetz]

The thing I like about the Blood Moon mechanic in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom is how it affords game-mechanical transparency to the player.

Like, we all know the reason it exists is because, like any complex open-world game, BotW and TotK periodically need to hit the reset button on all non-trivial changes to the world state; in games that don't, your save file has unbounded growth due to the need to keep track of every little thing you've ever done, and eventually the system runs out of memory, save/load performance goes to shit, or both. It's basic software engineering constraints dictating the shape of play.

The thing is, most open world games try to do this subtly, perhaps by setting individual timers for the consequences of different actions to expire, or by linking world-state cleanup to proximity to the player character, but in practice it never works – trying to be sneaky about it paradoxically makes it more obtrusive to the player by rendering it opaque and unpredictable, often prompting the development of superstitious gameplay rituals to work around it.

BotW and TotK take precisely the opposite tack and make it 100% transparent and 100% predictable. Once a week, at exactly the same time of day, there's a spooky cutscene and an evil wizard undoes every change you've made to the world that doesn't have an associated quest log entry. Why everything at once, and always on the same schedule? A wizard did it. Why exactly and only those changes that don't have quest logs attached? See again: a wizard did it.

And this isn't just a gameplay conceit. Everybody knows about the evil wizard! The fact that the evil wizard keeps resetting everybody's efforts to fix the befuckening of the world is a central plot point. There are organisations whose chartered purpose is to go around redoing stuff that's been undone by the wizard.

It makes me wonder what other potential synergies between fantasy worldbuilding and mechanical transparency are going unexploited.

[thestrangertime]

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[a-shade-of-blue]

Masterlist of Fundraisers from the Palestinians who directly contacted me. (19-21 August)

21 August

Mohammed El Shaer (@m-elshaer038): Muhammed is a 23 year old software engineer student who did not manage to complete his degree because of the genocide. HIs family house has been destroyed. He and his family (his mother, sister, brother and sister-in-law) are trying to evacuate to Egypt. (https://gofund.me/f93c78cb) (#88 on the verified fundraiser list by el-shab-hussein and nabulsi)

Leila Zaqout (Layla) (@joyfulpeacepolice): Layla is from a family of 8. She is a finally year pharmacy student who cannot graduate because of the war. Her neighbouhood has been destroyed and she was slightly injured in a bombing. She has recently contacted hepatitis A.Layla’s grandfather is an open-heart surgery patient. They are trying to evacuate out of Gaza. (https://gofund.me/e52f6176) (vetted by association, see post here. This campaign has been vouched for by @/ahmed79ss, whose campaign has been shared by 90-ghost (see here and here)) (VERY LOW FUNDS!!!! ONLY $220 USD raised of $155,000 target!)

Mahmoud Al-Sharif (@mahmoud-sharif, @mahmoud-sharif2): Mahmoud had lost his fingers and an eye due to Israel’s previous war on Gaza. He and his wife Soha have 3 children: Retal (12), Joud (11) and Nageh (8). They are trying to evacuate to Egypt.  (https://gofund.me/9c6c3ac9) (vetted by 90-ghost), 

Hazem Shawish (@hazemsuhail, @nisreensuhail, @kenzish): Hazem and Nisreen are from a family of 8. Their father had passed away due to hunger and inadequte healthcare. Their brother Samer has bipolar disorder, which has exacerbated due to the lack of essential medications. They are trying to evacuate to Egypt. (https://gofund.me/917ecb89) (Vetted by association. Nisreen is the sister in law of @samarsh97(shared by 90-ghost). See proof here. Also @nisreensuhail's Instagram (princess__.nisreen) goes all the way back to 2015. They also have a clean search result, see post here.)

Aya (@family-aya): Aya and her husband has 3 children. One of her child and her husband were injured, and several family members were martyred. Her father is a cancer patient, and her elderly mother is elderly has special needs. They are trying to raise funds for daily necessities including food. (https://gofund.me/2946907d) (shared by bilal-salah0. (Bilal-salah0's campaign is listed as #132 on the verified fundraiser spreadsheet vetted by el-shab-hussein and nabulsi. His campaign has reached its goal and he is trying to support other campaigns now, and has said that he would ensure the legitimacy of the campaigns he promote, see post here.))

20 August

Dina Mahammed(@dinamahammed99) Dina is 25 years old. She has a 3-year-old daughter and a 3-month-old son whom she gave birth to under the bombing. They are trying to evacuate out of Gaza. (https://gofund.me/1bff15a6) (Dina is @/mahmoud1995's sister, see post here and here. @/mahmoud1995's campaign has been shared by 90-ghost) 

Hamdi Al-Shaltawi (@hamdishiltawi): Hamdi is an economic student on his second year of study and he used to run a job. But now he and his family have been displaced. He is trying to evacuate himself and his family (his parents, two brothers and three sisters) out of Gaza. (https://gofund.me/ac7c2fa3) (#285 on the verified fundraiser list created by el-shab-hussein and nabulsi) 

Dina Abu Zour (@dinafamily): Dina is a mother of three children and currently pregnant. She is suffering from pregnancy-related proteinuria. One of her children has hepatitis, and her 13-year-old son has psychological issues after being detained by the military. Her husband also suffers from injuries after being captured by the military. (https://gofund.me/b06d2ec5) (#10 on the Bees and Watermelons verified fundraiser list.)

Ghada Ayyad (@ghadak24): Ghada is a 21-year-old palestinian woman. Her father is a healthcare worker and her mother a teacher. She is from a family of 8 including 3 children under 16 years old. They are trying to evacuate to Egypt. (https://gofund.me/51547832) (promoted and verified by Banyule Palestine Action Group, an Instagram based group that verifies campaigns "by comparing them with IG profiles and supplied photos and by having conversations with beneficiaries and their supporters." I have also seen other vetted campaigns promoted by this group (e.g. @/shymaafamily's campaign, which is #141 on their vetted fundraiser list by el-shab-hussein and nabulsi, has also been promoted by this group), so I do trust this group. Ghada's campaign has also been promoted by Youth For Falesteen. Moreover, here is Ghada's Instagram: ghada_family24. She has had her instagram since at least 2021 (she has been tagged in a post from 2021)) (22 Aug: LOW FUNDS! Currently €1,915 raised of €60,000 target!!)

19 August

Hassan Madi (@hassanmadi): Hassan got married 4 days before this current genocide. But now his home is destroyed, he has lost his job and they are now living in a tent. (https://gofund.me/6f65d728) (Vetted by association. Hassan is a nephew of @aya2mohammed, who has been vetted (#166 on the verified fundraiser list vetted by el-shab-husssein and nabulsi). See post here for proof. ) (22 Aug: LOW FUNDS! Only €100 raised of €50,000 goal)

Nour Al-Habil & Ayman Al-Habil (@nour20habil):  Nour is Ayman’s daughter and she has 9 siblings. Their house has been destroyed. Ayman’s 5-year-old son, Ahmed, has hepatitis, and his 3-year-old child has osteoporosis. (https://gofund.me/7adef23f) (Vetted and promoted by gaza-evacuation-funds! Shared by 90-ghost. Also vetted by association. Nour is also a niece of @aya2mohammed (#166 on the verified fundraiser list vetted by el-shab-husssein and nabulsi). See post here for proof.) (22 Aug: LOW FUNDS! Only kr7,795 NOK raised of kr700,000 goal!)

Lubna Al-Sir & Ahmed Hassan Al-Sir (@ahmadelser, @lobnaelser): Lubna and Ahmed have 3 children: Mohamed (9), Hassan (7), and Yazan(2). Their house has been destroyed and they are now displaced and living in tents. They are trying to evacuate out of Gaza. (https://gofund.me/aa7b3ff2) (shared by 90-ghost) (22 Aug: LOW FUNDS!!! Only €1397 raised of €50,000 target.) 

Mohammed Shamia (@mo-shamia): Mohammed is fourth year student of laboratory medicine. His uni in Gaza has been destroyed and he is trying to finish his education in Egypt. He is trying to evacuate 10 family members (his parents, grandparents, his brother, his sister as well as her husband and her three children). (https://gofund.me/303c68db) (#7 on the verified fundraiser list vetted by el-shab-hussein and nabulsi.)

Amjad Sido (@amjadsido99, @amjadsido): Amjad has 2 children (Mosbah (6) and Abdul Rahman (3)). He is also living with his mother and 5 brothers. The occupation has destroyed their house and killed his father and two of his brothers. They are trying to evacuate out of Gaza. (https://gofund.me/0729ac5b) (#126 on the verified fundraiser list vetted by el-shab-hussein and nabulsi) 

Walid Al-Qatrawi (@waledps): Walid is an engineer from Gaza. He has 3 children: Adam, Hla, and Nay. They are trying to evacuate out of Gaza. (shared by 90-ghost) (https://buymeacoffee.com/waledps) (https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/GoFundWaledPs)

Click here for my Masterlist for fundraisers from 13 July - 25 July.

Click here for my Masterlist for fundraisers from 26 July -29 July.

Click here for my Masterlist for fundraisers from 30 July - 1 August.

Click here for my Masterlist for fundraisers from 2 August - 5 August.

Click here for my Masterlist for fundraisers from 6 August - 10 August.

Click here for my Masterlist for fundraisers from 11 August - 14 August.

Click here for my Masterlist for fundraisers from 15 August - 18 August.

How does vetting and verification work? See post here. (also read comments regarding 90-ghost and why we trust the campaigns he has shared)

See post here for other verified ways to send aid to Gaza.

Don't forget your Daily Clicks on Arab.org, it's free!!! and Every click made is registered in their system and generates donation from sponsors/advertisers.)

[mrrharper]

Neighborhood Association

Cale put down the last box and sighed. He could now officially state that he has moved. He looked around the living room and felt proud of himself, after working tirelessly for almost a week to turn this space into a home. The same couldn’t be said about his feeling towards the place his new home was located in.

He was forced to move after the rent in his last apartment was hiked by 25%. This was more than he could handle, so he decided right then and there that the would find a cheaper place to live. He went on Zillow and it didn’t take long before he found the place he was now living in. Gorgeous building, well-kept outside, spacious inside, with a stupidly low rent. He called the landlord first thing the following day. He signed the lease a week after that.

It was only then that his friends came up to him and made him realize what was the place he was about to move into. Pinewood, an outer suburb and the only Republican stronghold in the entire metro area. This was bad news for the young gay software engineer basically addicted to the queer city life. But he had already signed all the paperwork and he decided he would make this work. Each time he felt like this might not have been the best decision he reminded himself that even with the longer commute he was saving a lot of many. Yeah, maybe the town screamed “All-American conservative suburb”, but this was the price for financial stability, Cale told himself.

Cale heard a knock on the door. He walked up to the entrance and opened it. He was surprised to see no one in front of his house, not even a single person walking along the street. Then he looked down and saw a leaflet. Oh, that’s what this was about. He picked up the piece of paper and started reading as he went back inside. “The Pinewood East Neighborhood Association welcomes you in our area. We are glad you’ve decided to find your special place within our prosperous community and invite you to become an active member. Just scan the QR code and fill the form. FIND YOUR ROLE IN PINEWOOD.” Well, that’s nice, Cale thought to himself. He sat down on the couch and scanned the code on the leaflet. The form was pretty standard, for the most part. The only unusual part was the part where he was asked about hobbies. It was not an open question and Cale was forced to choose for only a couple of options. He rolled his eyes, who designed this form? He picked “morning runs and fitness”. He did try to get into he habit of running a year ago. And a year before running it was working out. So he guessed this was the option closest to the truth. He quickly finished filling up the whole form and sent it, quickly forgetting about the whole thing.

Two days later when he came back from work and walked up to his door he saw a package. He was surprised, he didn’t remember ordering anything. But as he looked closer he confirmed that the box was addressed to him. There was just one small typo, Caleb instead of Cale, but he was used to it. He picked the package up and took it inside to his living room. He then opened the box and saw a letter on top. It turned out it was a welcome package from the neighborhood association. Cale thought it was a nice gift, but didn’t care to see what was inside the package itself. The only thing he took out was the baseball cap with the association’s logo on it. When later that day he went out to run a few errands he put it on, because it was the closest to his hand as he was leaving the house. He came back late and after getting out of his clothes he went back to bed. He forgot to take the cap off.

Caleb slowly woke up. He stood up and stretched his arms. He felt a weird ache throughout his whole body, and he didn’t know why— damn, that sesh at the gym yesterday was rough. But that ache was the sign that it was working. He turned his head and watched his arm as he flexed his biceps.

He came up to his closet for something to wear. But he only saw a few faggy shirts and some tight pants. What the fuck, he thought. But then his mind was instantly covered by a weird fog and he walked into the living room and picked up a big box standing on the floor. He opened it and took out a black compression shirt and a pair of gym shorts. He quickly put them on and immediately felt better, his muscles filling up the clothes perfectly.

Right after, Caleb looked up to see a pride flag hanging from one of the walls and a feeling of disgust filled his fog-covered head. He jumped up to the wall and grabbed the piece of fabric, then threw it on the ground. Then he came back to the box and took out a ‘thin blue line’ flag. That fit him way better and he quickly put it on the wall.

He heard his phone ring. He took his phone and answered.

“Yeah?”

“Good morning, this is Cathy form the Pinewood East Neighborhood Association. Is this Cale?”

“Ugh” Caleb grunted. Stupid woman. “It’s Caleb.”

“Oh, of course, my apologies” Cathy answered, but she didn’t sound like she was really sorry. “I’m calling to ask a few questions before we accept you as a full member”

“Sure, whatever” Caleb’s interest in the phone call was dwindling fast and he started flexing once again, watching his biceps go up and down.

“What’s your profession?” Caleb’s mind, completely covered by fog, didn’t know what to say.

“Ughhhh, soft…ware… was it… wait a minute—”

“Is it security guard, Caleb?”

“What?” He did not expect the woman to be such a psychic. “Yeah, yeah, security guard, duh.”

“Great, thank you Caleb, and one more question. There’s a group that wants to organize a Pride event in out beautiful city. How would you respond to such a proposal?”

“Hell no, we don’t want no queer near our place, isn’t that right? Bunch of degenerates” Caleb barked at the phone.

“I understand Caleb, and we agree, you’re absolutely right” The woman on the other side sounded almost… proud? “I won’t hold you any further, you have a job to go to. I’m glad you are fulfilling your role within our community. See you soon.” And then Cathy ended the call. Caleb shrugged, he wasn’t sure what was the deal with all this neighborhood shit, but why should he care? He was here for the low rent and the job that allowed him to spend half the day at the gym.

As he walked from the living room to the kitchen Caleb stopped in front of the mirror and started flexing. Damn, these guns of his looked impressive. And fuck, his chest was like a damn pillow, so sick. He watched his pecs flex in the mirror, moving under his compression shirt. These muscles were ready to smash degenerates and grab any pussy he wanted. When he was ready to leave the house, driven by instinct he went back to the box and picked up a pair of sunglasses he then immediately put on. Yeah, now he was ready to go to work and fulfill the role he was assigned in Pinewood. And brah, it felt fuckin’ great.

[smartkookiee]

How to Lose A Guy in 30 Days! || Series Page

Jeon Jungkook Series

❀。• *₊°。 ❀°。❀。• *₊°。 ❀°。❀。• *₊°。 ❀°。❀。•

❥pairing: Jungkook x Reader

❥genre/rating: strangers to lovers, 18+

❥description: How to Lose A Guy in 30 Days! A guide of what you shouldn't do in the first 30 days of a relationship if you don't want him running for the hills! You get to see my experiment with the things I did wrong in the first 30 days of a brand new relationship.

You have just received your first opportunity to write your own column at Composure Magazine. This is everything that you have ever dreamed of and should be simple enough, drive a guy away in 30 days. Across town Jungkook, who hasn't committed to anyone in years, is issued a bet that he can stay with the same person for one month. Both of you being so head strong to achieve your goals cause a myriad of hilariously disastrous dates, unexpected sparks, and a countdown that neither is ready for. 30 days to fall in love or fall apart. After all, all is fair in love and war.

❥warnings/tags: software engineer!Jungkook, writer!reader, in the universe of How to Lose A Guy in Ten Days, comedy, sort of a crack fic???, drinking, swearing, dirty talk, eventual smut, some angst, Y/N is a love girl (sigh), Jungkook used to be a playboy (heavier sigh), fluff, Y/N basically torturing Jungkook, Jungkook will never surrender lmao, I watched the movie recently and I haven't been able to get this idea out of my head (like seriously I plotted out the entire fic in like three hours), you don't have to have seen the movie to get this fic.

❥disclaimer: Fic is cross posted to ao3, every chapter I will give associated warnings and tags that apply.

❀。• *₊°。 ❀°。❀。• *₊°。 ❀°。❀。• *₊°。 ❀°。❀。•

CH.1 // CH.2 // CH.3 // CH.4 // CH.5 // CH.6 // CH.7 // CH.8 // CH.9 // CH.10 // CH.11 // CH.12 // CH.13 // CH.14 // CH.15 // CH.16 // CH.17 //

TEASER

❀。• *₊°。 ❀°。❀。• *₊°。 ❀°。❀。• *₊°。 ❀°。❀。•

[reasonsforhope]

"As a Deaf man, Adam Munder has long been advocating for communication rights in a world that chiefly caters to hearing people. 

The Intel software engineer and his wife — who is also Deaf — are often unable to use American Sign Language in daily interactions, instead defaulting to texting on a smartphone or passing a pen and paper back and forth with service workers, teachers, and lawyers. 

It can make simple tasks, like ordering coffee, more complicated than it should be. 

But there are life events that hold greater weight than a cup of coffee. 

Recently, Munder and his wife took their daughter in for a doctor’s appointment — and no interpreter was available. 

To their surprise, their doctor said: “It’s alright, we’ll just have your daughter interpret for you!” ...

That day at the doctor’s office came at the heels of a thousand frustrating interactions and miscommunications — and Munder is not isolated in his experience.

“Where I live in Arizona, there are more than 1.1 million individuals with a hearing loss,” Munder said, “and only about 400 licensed interpreters.”

In addition to being hard to find, interpreters are expensive. And texting and writing aren’t always practical options — they leave out the emotion, detail, and nuance of a spoken conversation. 

ASL is a rich, complex language with its own grammar and culture; a subtle change in speed, direction, facial expression, or gesture can completely change the meaning and tone of a sign. 

“Writing back and forth on paper and pen or using a smartphone to text is not equivalent to American Sign Language,” Munder emphasized. “The details and nuance that make us human are lost in both our personal and business conversations.”

His solution? An AI-powered platform called Omnibridge. 

“My team has established this bridge between the Deaf world and the hearing world, bringing these worlds together without forcing one to adapt to the other,” Munder said. 

Trained on thousands of signs, Omnibridge is engineered to transcribe spoken English and interpret sign language on screen in seconds...

“Our dream is that the technology will be available to everyone, everywhere,” Munder said. “I feel like three to four years from now, we're going to have an app on a phone. Our team has already started working on a cloud-based product, and we're hoping that will be an easy switch from cloud to mobile to an app.” ...

At its heart, Omnibridge is a testament to the positive capabilities of artificial intelligence. "

-via GoodGoodGood, October 25, 2024. More info below the cut!

To test an alpha version of his invention, Munder welcomed TED associate Hasiba Haq on stage. 

“I want to show you how this could have changed my interaction at the doctor appointment, had this been available,” Munder said. 

He went on to explain that the software would generate a bi-directional conversation, in which Munder’s signs would appear as blue text and spoken word would appear in gray. 

At first, there was a brief hiccup on the TED stage. Haq, who was standing in as the doctor’s office receptionist, spoke — but the screen remained blank. 

“I don’t believe this; this is the first time that AI has ever failed,” Munder joked, getting a big laugh from the crowd. “Thanks for your patience.”

After a quick reboot, they rolled with the punches and tried again.

Haq asked: “Hi, how’s it going?” 

Her words popped up in blue. 

Munder signed in reply: “I am good.” 

His response popped up in gray. 

Back and forth, they recreated the scene from the doctor’s office. But this time Munder retained his autonomy, and no one suggested a 7-year-old should play interpreter. 

Munder’s TED debut and tech demonstration didn’t happen overnight — the engineer has been working on Omnibridge for over a decade. 

“It takes a lot to build something like this,” Munder told Good Good Good in an exclusive interview, communicating with our team in ASL. “It couldn't just be one or two people. It takes a large team, a lot of resources, millions and millions of dollars to work on a project like this.” 

After five years of pitching and research, Intel handpicked Munder’s team for a specialty training program. It was through that backing that Omnibridge began to truly take shape...

“Our dream is that the technology will be available to everyone, everywhere,” Munder said. “I feel like three to four years from now, we're going to have an app on a phone. Our team has already started working on a cloud-based product, and we're hoping that will be an easy switch from cloud to mobile to an app.” 

In order to achieve that dream — of transposing their technology to a smartphone — Munder and his team have to play a bit of a waiting game. Today, their platform necessitates building the technology on a PC, with an AI engine. 

“A lot of things don't have those AI PC types of chips,” Munder explained. “But as the technology evolves, we expect that smartphones will start to include AI engines. They'll start to include the capability in processing within smartphones. It will take time for the technology to catch up to it, and it probably won't need the power that we're requiring right now on a PC.” 

At its heart, Omnibridge is a testament to the positive capabilities of artificial intelligence. 

But it is more than a transcription service — it allows people to have face-to-face conversations with each other. There’s a world of difference between passing around a phone or pen and paper and looking someone in the eyes when you speak to them. 

It also allows Deaf people to speak ASL directly, without doing the mental gymnastics of translating their words into English.

“For me, English is my second language,” Munder told Good Good Good. “So when I write in English, I have to think: How am I going to adjust the words? How am I going to write it just right so somebody can understand me? It takes me some time and effort, and it's hard for me to express myself actually in doing that. This technology allows someone to be able to express themselves in their native language.” 

Ultimately, Munder said that Omnibridge is about “bringing humanity back” to these conversations. 

“We’re changing the world through the power of AI, not just revolutionizing technology, but enhancing that human connection,” Munder said at the end of his TED Talk. 

“It’s two languages,” he concluded, “signed and spoken, in one seamless conversation.”"

-via GoodGoodGood, October 25, 2024

[ahaura]

(Dec. 1)

Article: Recruiters Drop Elbit Systems after Palestine Action Campaign

After weeks of action, the sole recruiters for the British operations of Israel’s largest weapons company, Elbit Systems, have confirmed via email to Palestine Action that they ended their association with Elbit on the evening of the 29th November. For two months, activists in the Palestine Action network had disrupted iO Associates at their premises across the country, to impede their ability to recruit roles for Israel’s war machine. 

iO Associates recruited the likes of engineers, software developers, and finance staff for positions across the sites of the British branch of Israel’s largest weapons company, Elbit Systems. Elbit are the largest supplier to the occupation military, providing the vast majorities of its drones, munitions, surveillance gear, and parts for its tanks, jets, and precision missiles. From Britain specifically, they manufacture parts for Israel’s killer drones, along with weapons sights, tank parts, and more, exporting these technologies to Israel in great volume yearly. This is the nature of the business that IO was Associates with, and were IO Associates biggest client.

In response to their facilitation of Elbit’s criminal activities, iO’s offices were stormed and occupied in Manchester on the 1st September, and again on the 7th October. Activists painted iO offices red on October 9th in London, Reading, and Manchester. They were forced to vacate their Manchester offices from the 11th October, after the premises were also stormed by the Youth Front For Palestine, and then finally targeted in Edinburgh twice, on the 11th and 17th October. After being forced to vacate their offices, having their online presence tarnished, and (as confirmed to us by former employees) losing their staff who resigned in opposition to their arms trade partnership, iO Associates have finally cut ties with Israel’s weapons trade. 

This is part of an expansive strategy by Palestine Action, by disrupting the suppliers and facilitators of Elbit’s presence in Britain. It has seen Elbit’s accountants (Edwards), haulage providers (Kuehne + Nagel), landlords (JLL) and many other complicit companies targeted, alongside the hundreds of actions at Elbit sites themselves, continuing to resist the presence of Elbit warmongers in Britain, and constantly reminding those associated with them that they have blood on their hands.

As a result of iO Associates dropping Elbit Systems, the recruiters have been removed as a target of Palestine Action’s campaign. All targets who still facilitate Israel’s weapons trade are listed on elbitsites.uk

[digitalproductsautomation]

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[mariacallous]

On Saturday, an Associated Press investigation revealed that OpenAI's Whisper transcription tool creates fabricated text in medical and business settings despite warnings against such use. The AP interviewed more than 12 software engineers, developers, and researchers who found the model regularly invents text that speakers never said, a phenomenon often called a “confabulation” or “hallucination” in the AI field.

Upon its release in 2022, OpenAI claimed that Whisper approached “human level robustness” in audio transcription accuracy. However, a University of Michigan researcher told the AP that Whisper created false text in 80 percent of public meeting transcripts examined. Another developer, unnamed in the AP report, claimed to have found invented content in almost all of his 26,000 test transcriptions.

The fabrications pose particular risks in health care settings. Despite OpenAI’s warnings against using Whisper for “high-risk domains,” over 30,000 medical workers now use Whisper-based tools to transcribe patient visits, according to the AP report. The Mankato Clinic in Minnesota and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles are among 40 health systems using a Whisper-powered AI copilot service from medical tech company Nabla that is fine-tuned on medical terminology.

Nabla acknowledges that Whisper can confabulate, but it also reportedly erases original audio recordings “for data safety reasons.” This could cause additional issues, since doctors cannot verify accuracy against the source material. And deaf patients may be highly impacted by mistaken transcripts since they would have no way to know if medical transcript audio is accurate or not.

The potential problems with Whisper extend beyond health care. Researchers from Cornell University and the University of Virginia studied thousands of audio samples and found Whisper adding nonexistent violent content and racial commentary to neutral speech. They found that 1 percent of samples included “entire hallucinated phrases or sentences which did not exist in any form in the underlying audio” and that 38 percent of those included “explicit harms such as perpetuating violence, making up inaccurate associations, or implying false authority.”

In one case from the study cited by AP, when a speaker described “two other girls and one lady,” Whisper added fictional text specifying that they “were Black.” In another, the audio said, “He, the boy, was going to, I’m not sure exactly, take the umbrella.” Whisper transcribed it to, “He took a big piece of a cross, a teeny, small piece … I’m sure he didn’t have a terror knife so he killed a number of people.”

An OpenAI spokesperson told the AP that the company appreciates the researchers’ findings and that it actively studies how to reduce fabrications and incorporates feedback in updates to the model.

Why Whisper Confabulates

The key to Whisper’s unsuitability in high-risk domains comes from its propensity to sometimes confabulate, or plausibly make up, inaccurate outputs. The AP report says, "Researchers aren’t certain why Whisper and similar tools hallucinate," but that isn't true. We know exactly why Transformer-based AI models like Whisper behave this way.

Whisper is based on technology that is designed to predict the next most likely token (chunk of data) that should appear after a sequence of tokens provided by a user. In the case of ChatGPT, the input tokens come in the form of a text prompt. In the case of Whisper, the input is tokenized audio data.

The transcription output from Whisper is a prediction of what is most likely, not what is most accurate. Accuracy in Transformer-based outputs is typically proportional to the presence of relevant accurate data in the training dataset, but it is never guaranteed. If there is ever a case where there isn't enough contextual information in its neural network for Whisper to make an accurate prediction about how to transcribe a particular segment of audio, the model will fall back on what it “knows” about the relationships between sounds and words it has learned from its training data.

According to OpenAI in 2022, Whisper learned those statistical relationships from “680,000 hours of multilingual and multitask supervised data collected from the web.” But we now know a little more about the source. Given Whisper's well-known tendency to produce certain outputs like "thank you for watching," "like and subscribe," or "drop a comment in the section below" when provided silent or garbled inputs, it's likely that OpenAI trained Whisper on thousands of hours of captioned audio scraped from YouTube videos. (The researchers needed audio paired with existing captions to train the model.)

There's also a phenomenon called “overfitting” in AI models where information (in this case, text found in audio transcriptions) encountered more frequently in the training data is more likely to be reproduced in an output. In cases where Whisper encounters poor-quality audio in medical notes, the AI model will produce what its neural network predicts is the most likely output, even if it is incorrect. And the most likely output for any given YouTube video, since so many people say it, is “thanks for watching.”

In other cases, Whisper seems to draw on the context of the conversation to fill in what should come next, which can lead to problems because its training data could include racist commentary or inaccurate medical information. For example, if many examples of training data featured speakers saying the phrase “crimes by Black criminals,” when Whisper encounters a “crimes by [garbled audio] criminals” audio sample, it will be more likely to fill in the transcription with “Black."

In the original Whisper model card, OpenAI researchers wrote about this very phenomenon: "Because the models are trained in a weakly supervised manner using large-scale noisy data, the predictions may include texts that are not actually spoken in the audio input (i.e. hallucination). We hypothesize that this happens because, given their general knowledge of language, the models combine trying to predict the next word in audio with trying to transcribe the audio itself."

So in that sense, Whisper "knows" something about the content of what is being said and keeps track of the context of the conversation, which can lead to issues like the one where Whisper identified two women as being Black even though that information was not contained in the original audio. Theoretically, this erroneous scenario could be reduced by using a second AI model trained to pick out areas of confusing audio where the Whisper model is likely to confabulate and flag the transcript in that location, so a human could manually check those instances for accuracy later.

Clearly, OpenAI's advice not to use Whisper in high-risk domains, such as critical medical records, was a good one. But health care companies are constantly driven by a need to decrease costs by using seemingly "good enough" AI tools—as we've seen with Epic Systems using GPT-4 for medical records and UnitedHealth using a flawed AI model for insurance decisions. It's entirely possible that people are already suffering negative outcomes due to AI mistakes, and fixing them will likely involve some sort of regulation and certification of AI tools used in the medical field.

[mbari-blog]

Serving up the tiniest cuteness 🥰

Zooplankton can be subdivided into two major groups. Holoplankton (copepods and krill) spend their entire lives as plankton and thus provide major food sources for pelagic fisheries. Meroplankton (larvae of animals like barnacles, mussels, annelids, and fish) spend only part of their lives as plankton.

Copepods like the one in this video can be found in massive numbers across the world ocean. They play an important role in ocean food webs as predators—they eat even smaller diatoms and phytoplankton—and prey on animals like jellies, fish, and filter feeders.

Zooplankton are notoriously difficult to sample. Despite opportunities for mixing, individual zooplankton are tiny, and species are often patchily distributed. Coastal oceans are physically dynamic, high-energy environments. Winds, currents, and upwelling fronts affect the availability of nutrients and distribution of food that control zooplankton growth and dispersal. To tackle these challenges, the MBARI team developed the SIMZ program to explore more efficient zooplankton sampling and identification methods.

Traditionally, tow-nets are used to sample plankton along paths through the water. Because these paths often cross smaller environmental patches, they frequently lack the precision to associate zooplankton species' distribution and abundance with particular physical and biological processes. MBARI engineers have equipped an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) with gulpers—bottles that rapidly inhale discrete water samples—to better understand the spatial patchiness in zooplankton abundance. The AUV is equipped with sensors that measure things like temperature and salinity, and onboard computer software that instructs the Gulper AUV to recognize and autonomously sample specific environmental patches, such as upwelling fronts or chlorophyll layers. This "surgical" approach to ocean sampling allows SIMZ researchers to study the effects of specific physical processes on zooplankton distribution and diversity.

[chososcamgirl]

𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐑𝐎𝐃𝐔𝐂𝐈𝐍𝐆 - the old heads

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m. list

background !

the five friends have been a close knitted group ever since highschool, and that didn’t change throughout college or after.

shoko graduated with valedictorian and top of the class and nanami was bitter about it for 3 days and didn’t talk to shoko at all. she completed her md and residency and now is an orthopaedic surgeon. choso and gojo both studied computer science in college however gojo just barely passed all his classes not because he wasn’t completing the work but because he was absent for almost half of them. satoru often takes advantage of the few skills he learnt in his classes and makes troll sites and leaks people’s ip on val after he loses (he shortly becomes semi-famous for this). choso, who actually paid attention in class, now works for a software company. nanami graduated with a degree in engineering and is planning to start his own company with the help of suguru who teaches with a degree in business and hospitality.

suguru, choso and satoru all live in a condo together and are all rather living pretty comfortably. whilst shoko and nanami choose to live separately and own a house each, they all live within the same block so if ever they need help, it’s just a 2 minute drive. upon graduating with a degree in business and hospitality, suguru opens up a new cafe. he has been planning this for the past year and nothing was stopping him now that he has all the expenses paid off. even though satoru is a trust fund baby and offered to give him all the money for it early on, suguru declined not because of his pride but because he needed to do this on his own for himself.

fun facts !

ᨘ໑▸ the characters included in this post are all aged 27-28 years old.

ᨘ໑▸ choso always scolds satoru about his digital footprint but that man does not GAF.

ᨘ໑▸ the whole group meets atleast once a week - which is usually friday nights at the condo in which they all eat dinner together - choso always ends up being the cook because not only does he volunteer but because he makes knows how to make a mean dish. the night usually ends in a board game which always ends up with gojo sulking and throwing a tantrum, accusing the winner (which is nanami most of the time) of cheating and then drinking until he forgets about the whole thing and starts dancing on the table.

ᨘ໑▸ due to satoru’s antics with trolling and doxxing and his new found fame, the whole group is blew up by association.

ᨘ໑▸ suguru adopted a stray black and white cat left on the side of the road. he called her ‘spring’. he loved her until her last breath up until she died 5 years later when he was 18. he cried for a week and gojo comforted him whole time. it was bittersweet but he knew she was in a better place. this was one of the reasons the cat cafe he’s opening is going to be home to multiple strays which will be up for adoption.

ᨘ໑▸ someone made a velocity thirst edit of choso after finding out about him through gojo and it’s now repeatedly played during dinner.

ᨘ໑▸ nanami and choso hated eachother in highschool because both of them claimed to be my chemical romance’s #1 fan

ᨘ໑▸ gojo was not joking in those tweets..

a/n: if i ever make typos plz do not make fun of me </3

#𝐂𝐀𝐓 𝐂𝐀𝐅𝐄

synopsis ; the season of sun-kissed oceans and golden-hued moments is before you! however being a broke college student is not an ideal look to have, especially at your age. desperately seeking solace from financial woes, you and your bestfriend stumble upon an unexpected opportunity - a cat cafe. crafting lattes and pampering purring patrons seems easy enough, right? that fantasy lasts about one day before reality claws in.

🏷️taglist: @coquetteslvt @aliventboo @izakyun @luvvmae @tuihiatus @soonajeeme @ascybous @rotten1angel @catobsessedlady @myguumi @enhleui @viviennevianna @spacebaby1 @iheartlinds @haikyuu-tothetop @mua-for-now @waytootiredforthisss @j2upiters