#cto blogs

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Vivek Desai, Chief Technology Officer, North America at RLDatix – Interview Series

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/vivek-desai-chief-technology-officer-north-america-at-rldatix-interview-series/

Vivek Desai, Chief Technology Officer, North America at RLDatix – Interview Series

Vivek Desai is the Chief Technology Officer of North America at RLDatix, a connected healthcare operations software and services company. RLDatix is on a mission to change healthcare. They help organizations drive safer, more efficient care by providing governance, risk and compliance tools that drive overall improvement and safety.

What initially attracted you to computer science and cybersecurity?

I was drawn to the complexities of what computer science and cybersecurity are trying to solve – there is always an emerging challenge to explore. A great example of this is when the cloud first started gaining traction. It held great promise, but also raised some questions around workload security. It was very clear early on that traditional methods were a stopgap, and that organizations across the board would need to develop new processes to effectively secure workloads in the cloud. Navigating these new methods was a particularly exciting journey for me and a lot of others working in this field. It’s a dynamic and evolving industry, so each day brings something new and exciting.

Could you share some of the current responsibilities that you have as CTO of RLDatix?  

Currently, I’m focused on leading our data strategy and finding ways to create synergies between our products and the data they hold, to better understand trends. Many of our products house similar types of data, so my job is to find ways to break those silos down and make it easier for our customers, both hospitals and health systems, to access the data. With this, I’m also working on our global artificial intelligence (AI) strategy to inform this data access and utilization across the ecosystem.

Staying current on emerging trends in various industries is another crucial aspect of my role, to ensure we are heading in the right strategic direction. I’m currently keeping a close eye on large language models (LLMs). As a company, we are working to find ways to integrate LLMs into our technology, to empower and enhance humans, specifically healthcare providers, reduce their cognitive load and enable them to focus on taking care of patients.

In your LinkedIn blog post titled “A Reflection on My 1st Year as a CTO,” you wrote, “CTOs don’t work alone. They’re part of a team.” Could you elaborate on some of the challenges you’ve faced and how you’ve tackled delegation and teamwork on projects that are inherently technically challenging?

The role of a CTO has fundamentally changed over the last decade. Gone are the days of working in a server room. Now, the job is much more collaborative. Together, across business units, we align on organizational priorities and turn those aspirations into technical requirements that drive us forward. Hospitals and health systems currently navigate so many daily challenges, from workforce management to financial constraints, and the adoption of new technology may not always be a top priority. Our biggest goal is to showcase how technology can help mitigate these challenges, rather than add to them, and the overall value it brings to their business, employees and patients at large. This effort cannot be done alone or even within my team, so the collaboration spans across multidisciplinary units to develop a cohesive strategy that will showcase that value, whether that stems from giving customers access to unlocked data insights or activating processes they are currently unable to perform.

What is the role of artificial intelligence in the future of connected healthcare operations?

As integrated data becomes more available with AI, it can be utilized to connect disparate systems and improve safety and accuracy across the continuum of care. This concept of connected healthcare operations is a category we’re focused on at RLDatix as it unlocks actionable data and insights for healthcare decision makers – and AI is integral to making that a reality.

A non-negotiable aspect of this integration is ensuring that the data usage is secure and compliant, and risks are understood. We are the market leader in policy, risk and safety, which means we have an ample amount of data to train foundational LLMs with more accuracy and reliability. To achieve true connected healthcare operations, the first step is merging the disparate solutions, and the second is extracting data and normalizing it across those solutions. Hospitals will benefit greatly from a group of interconnected solutions that can combine data sets and provide actionable value to users, rather than maintaining separate data sets from individual point solutions.

In a recent keynote, Chief Product Officer Barbara Staruk shared how RLDatix is leveraging generative AI and large language models to streamline and automate patient safety incident reporting. Could you elaborate on how this works?

This is a really significant initiative for RLDatix and a great example of how we’re maximizing the potential of LLMs. When hospitals and health systems complete incident reports, there are currently three standard formats for determining the level of harm indicated in the report: the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s Common Formats, the National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention and the Healthcare Performance Improvement (HPI) Safety Event Classification (SEC). Right now, we can easily train a LLM to read through text in an incident report. If a patient passes away, for example, the LLM can seamlessly pick out that information. The challenge, however, lies in training the LLM to determine context and distinguish between more complex categories, such as severe permanent harm, a taxonomy included in the HPI SEC for example, versus severe temporary harm. If the person reporting does not include enough context, the LLM won’t be able to determine the appropriate category level of harm for that particular patient safety incident.

RLDatix is aiming to implement a simpler taxonomy, globally, across our portfolio, with concrete categories that can be easily distinguished by the LLM. Over time, users will be able to simply write what occurred and the LLM will handle it from there by extracting all the important information and prepopulating incident forms. Not only is this a significant time-saver for an already-strained workforce, but as the model becomes even more advanced, we’ll also be able to identify critical trends that will enable healthcare organizations to make safer decisions across the board.

What are some other ways that RLDatix has begun to incorporate LLMs into its operations?

Another way we’re leveraging LLMs internally is to streamline the credentialing process. Each provider’s credentials are formatted differently and contain unique information. To put it into perspective, think of how everyone’s resume looks different – from fonts, to work experience, to education and overall formatting. Credentialing is similar. Where did the provider attend college? What’s their certification? What articles are they published in? Every healthcare professional is going to provide that information in their own way.

At RLDatix, LLMs enable us to read through these credentials and extract all that data into a standardized format so that those working in data entry don’t have to search extensively for it, enabling them to spend less time on the administrative component and focus their time on meaningful tasks that add value.

Cybersecurity has always been challenging, especially with the shift to cloud-based technologies, could you discuss some of these challenges?

Cybersecurity is challenging, which is why it’s important to work with the right partner. Ensuring LLMs remain secure and compliant is the most important consideration when leveraging this technology. If your organization doesn’t have the dedicated staff in-house to do this, it can be incredibly challenging and time-consuming. This is why we work with Amazon Web Services (AWS) on most of our cybersecurity initiatives. AWS helps us instill security and compliance as core principles within our technology so that RLDatix can focus on what we really do well – which is building great products for our customers in all our respective verticals.

What are some of the new security threats that you have seen with the recent rapid adoption of LLMs?

From an RLDatix perspective, there are several considerations we’re working through as we’re developing and training LLMs. An important focus for us is mitigating bias and unfairness. LLMs are only as good as the data they are trained on. Factors such as gender, race and other demographics can include many inherent biases because the dataset itself is biased. For example, think of how the southeastern United States uses the word “y’all” in everyday language. This is a unique language bias inherent to a specific patient population that researchers must consider when training the LLM to accurately distinguish language nuances compared to other regions. These types of biases must be dealt with at scale when it comes to leveraging LLMS within healthcare, as training a model within one patient population does not necessarily mean that model will work in another.

Maintaining security, transparency and accountability are also big focus points for our organization, as well as mitigating any opportunities for hallucinations and misinformation. Ensuring that we’re actively addressing any privacy concerns, that we understand how a model reached a certain answer and that we have a secure development cycle in place are all important components of effective implementation and maintenance.

What are some other machine learning algorithms that are used at RLDatix?

Using machine learning (ML) to uncover critical scheduling insights has been an interesting use case for our organization. In the UK specifically, we’ve been exploring how to leverage ML to better understand how rostering, or the scheduling of nurses and doctors, occurs. RLDatix has access to a massive amount of scheduling data from the past decade, but what can we do with all of that information? That’s where ML comes in. We’re utilizing an ML model to analyze that historical data and provide insight into how a staffing situation may look two weeks from now, in a specific hospital or a certain region.

That specific use case is a very achievable ML model, but we’re pushing the needle even further by connecting it to real-life events. For example, what if we looked at every soccer schedule within the area? We know firsthand that sporting events typically lead to more injuries and that a local hospital will likely have more inpatients on the day of an event compared to a typical day. We’re working with AWS and other partners to explore what public data sets we can seed to make scheduling even more streamlined. We already have data that suggests we’re going to see an uptick of patients around major sporting events or even inclement weather, but the ML model can take it a step further by taking that data and identifying critical trends that will help ensure hospitals are adequately staffed, ultimately reducing the strain on our workforce and taking our industry a step further in achieving safer care for all.

Thank you for the great interview, readers who wish to learn more should visit RLDatix.

[calpioninc]

Read the blog to understand how AI & Deep Learning can improve the production & quality of agricultural goods

[scoonsalicious]

Unwanted: Chapter 16, Unaccompanied - Pt. 4

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Avenger!Fem!Reader

Summary: When your FWB relationship with your best friend Bucky Barnes turns into something more, you couldn’t be happier. That is, however, until a new Avenger sets her sights on your super soldier and he inadvertently breaks your heart. You take on a mission you might not be prepared for to put some distance between the two of you and open yourself up to past traumas. Too bad the only one who can help you heal is the one person you can no longer trust.

Warnings: (For this part only; see Story Masterlist for general Warnings) Language, allusions to sexy stuff, a long overdue conversation with Steve.

Word Count: 2.4k

Previously On...: You went to Tony for answers about how Carthage ended up on the Quinjet; he asks you to attend his annual shareholder gala on Saturday. You, vomiting, + a bunch of stuffy rich people. What could go wrong?

A/N: Quick note about how text messages are written herein: Outgoing messages (in this instance, from Pocket to Bucky) will be indicated by ">>" in front of them. Incoming messages are labeled with the contact name the phone owner has for that person in their phone. In this instance, Pocket has Bucky saved in her phone as "Magic Dick🍆🦾" lol

NOTE! The tag list is a fickle bitch, so I'm not really going to be dealing with it anymore. If you want to be notified when I update, please enable notifications from my Blog page!

Banner By: The absolutely amazing @mrsbuckybarnes1917!

Thank you to all those who have been reading; if you like what you've read, likes, comments, and reblogs give me life, and I truly appreciate them, and you!

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The gala had barely begun and you were already exhausted. Your stomach bug hadn’t let up, and you’d been vomiting for the last two days. Fortunately, you were able to get an injection of an anti-nausea medication from one of the interns down in the med bay, so even though you didn’t currently have to worry about puking your guts out on some obscenely wealthy financier, you just had to deal with the constant exhaustion you’d been feeling from your illness. 

Just a few more hours, you told yourself as you brushed off the advances of yet another man old enough to be your father. Not once had anyone actually wanted to discuss the Crisis Prediction Algorithm System. It seemed you were being viewed more as potential arm candy than Stark Industries’ CTO. That alone was enough to leave you longing for an early night in your bed. 

You did look amazing, though, you had to admit, even if you’d had to go a little heavy on the makeup to mask your pallor. When you asked Tony for a new dress, you’d anticipated taking the girls on a shopping trip. Tony, however, had other ideas and had sent a designer from one of the city’s top fashion houses to the Tower to collect your measurements, and then, the following day, a garment bag appeared in your room containing a striking dress in shimmering Iron Man-red. The bodice was form fitting and strapless, with an asymmetric neckline, and the skirt was full and came down to just below your ankles. 

It was gorgeous, and when your hair and makeup had been completed, you looked like a princess straight out of a fairy tale. You’d sent a picture to Bucky and he’d immediately sent you back a series of panting emojis that had you laughing. The following string of text that described exactly what he wanted to do to you in the dress then had you panting, yourself. Fuck your parameters, apparently.

But now, you couldn’t wait to get out of it for an entirely different reason. The call of your pajamas was so alluring. Not only were you physically tired, but you were bored out of your mind. As this was a Stark Industries party, and not an official Avengers gathering, most of your friends had opted not to come. Rhodey was here, now almost fully recovered from his gunshot wounds, but Tony wouldn’t leave his side, so he was constantly being surrounded by people and you couldn’t really find an opening to go talk to him.

When you’d asked Nat and Wanda if they wanted to come with you, Wanda had politely declined, letting you know that she and Vision already had plans to go out of town for the weekend, while Nat just scoffed at you. “I would literally rather swallow broken glass, Pocket,” she’d said. “Those things are boring as fuck and there is not enough money you could possibly pay me to go to one, sorry.” She’d ended up going bar hopping with Clint and Sam, instead.

So, there you were, all by yourself, not even able to distract yourself with the elaborate spread of food that Tony had provided, as the thought of eating still turned your stomach, when you felt a hand at your elbow.

“Hey,” Steve said softly. His presence took you by surprise– you couldn’t even remember the last time you’d truly spoken to one another, aside from clipped conversations about work and missions. “That’s a lovely dress.” A slight blush tinted his cheeks. “How are you feeling, by the way?”

“Steve, hi. Um, I’m good, thank you. Just really tired. Not quite in the right headspace to schmooze, you know?” you asked him, trying to fight off the awkwardness you were feeling at speaking to him again after so long. “You look very dashing tonight.” And he did, with his dark navy suit and cream button-up. 

He smiled, then held out a hand. “Would you care to dance?” he asked. You thought about it for a second. You didn’t want to lead him on, let him think you had any interest beyond the platonic relationship you’d always shared, but you were so fucking bored. One dance couldn’t hurt.

“I’d love to,” you said, taking his hand and letting him lead you to the dance floor.

He was surprisingly light on his feet, given his hulking frame, and he led you through the steps with ease. You somehow managed to only step on his toes twice, which gave you both a good laugh.

“I must have forgotten all my finishing school lessons,” you teased.

“Nah, you’re doing great.” Steve sent you out for a spin, but as he twirled you back into his arms, you were overcome with a wave of dizziness and stumbled. You felt your knees give out and your body begin to collapse in its exhaustion.

“Whoa,” said Steve, using his super soldier reflexes to grab you before you could fall and hold you steady. “I got you. You wanna sit down? Rest a bit?”

You nodded and he led you over to a quiet corner where some couches had been arranged for that very purpose. He guided you down to sit, then placed himself next to you, concern clouding his features.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“Yeah,” you said. “Just, you know, between the nausea and the vomiting, I haven’t really been able to keep a lot of food down over the last two days. It’s got me so tired. I think I overdid it with a dance number.”

Steve chuckled, then stood up. “Let me go get you something to drink,” he said. “It’s important that you stay hydrated.” You nodded, and he was off.

With a sigh, you reached into your clutch and pulled out your phone, sending a quick text to Bucky, but knowing that, due to the time difference, he was probably sleeping.

>> I miss you.

You were quite surprised, then, when you saw the three dots appear almost immediately.

Magic Dick🍆🦾: Not that I don’t miss you too, because I desperately do.

Magic Dick🍆🦾: But aren’t you supposed to be livin' it up like Cinderella at the ball?

You chuckled at that before responding.

>> This Cinderella is tired and bored and would much rather be snuggled up in bed with her metal-armed Prince Charming watching a movie or literally any other activity aside from being at this ball unaccompanied. 

Magic Dick🍆🦾: You better be talking ‘bout me, doll. 

>> How many other metal-armed men do I have in my life, dipshit? 

>> Why are you even awake, anyway?

Magic Dick🍆🦾: I’m just teasin’ you, smart ass ;) 

Magic Dick🍆🦾: I’d much rather be curled up in bed with you doin any variety of bedly activities, too >:) 

Magic Dick🍆🦾: And I’m up because we’re getting ready to act on our intel and raid the communications office we were sent to find. 

Magic Dick🍆🦾: Hit 'em at dawn when they’re least suspectin’ it, ya know?

>> Jesus Christ, baby! Be careful! 

Maybe it wasn’t a good thing you hadn’t gone on the mission– you didn’t even have the energy to imagine yourself having the energy to conduct a raid in your current state.

Magic Dick🍆🦾: Always, doll. Gotta get back to my best girl, don’t I?

>> You absolutely do. Cause if I found out you died, I will kill you.

Magic Dick🍆🦾: I have no doubt that if someone were to find a way to murder me from beyond my grave, it would be you.

Magic Dick🍆🦾: Shit. Sorry sweets, I gotta go.

Magic Dick🍆🦾: Try to have fun. I love you.

>> I love you too, Buckaroo.

You stared at the screen for a moment longer, but there was no further reply. Wonderful. Now you would be spending what little energy you absolutely did not have to spare worrying about Bucky’s safety.

Steve returned then, handing you a cold glass dripping with condensation. “It’s lemonade,” he said as you took a sip. “I know how much you like lemons.”

You smiled in thanks, but it came out more like a grimace. Steve noticed immediately.

“Are you alright? Does it not taste good? I could go get you something else…”

You put a reassuring hand on his arm. “No, Steve, the lemonade’s fine. Thank you for getting it for me; that was very thoughtful. It’s just,” you sighed, “I was texting Bucky. He and Carthage are running a raid on a communications office as we speak, and now I’m just nervous and worried about him.”

Steve’s brow creased. “Oh,” he said, though you could tell there was more behind the word than the single syllable would imply. “I didn’t realize the two of you had gotten back together.”

Fuck. You were by far too tired to be having this conversation. Squeezing your eyes shut for a moment, you decided it was time to confront the giant elephant that had been sitting between you and the Captain for far too long. “We haven’t, not officially, anyway, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t still love each other, in spite of everything that’s happened. We’re just working on building trust. Or rather, he’s working on building trust, and I’m working on determining if I can trust him again. It’s a process.”

Steve’s shoulders sagged, the movement so minute you would have missed it if you hadn’t been watching him so closely in the moment. You took a deep breath before you continued.

“Look, Steve,” you began, “I know about your feelings for me.” His eyes shot up to meet yours, and he opened his mouth to protest, but you gently held a hand up to stop him from speaking. You needed to get everything you had to say out while you still had the energy to do so. “I’ve known for a bit, and while I’m truly flattered, and honored, that you care for me, I’m also so sorry that I don’t feel the same way about you. You’re a good man. A wonderful man, and I know most people would tell me I’m an idiot for not reciprocating, but I just don’t share those feelings.”

“It’s because of Berlin, isn’t it?” he asked softly, not meeting your gaze, and for a moment, you could see the small, shy boy Bucky had told you about from his youth.

“Berlin altered our relationship, it’s true,” you told him, “but the nature of my feelings for you were cemented long before that. You’re my family, and do I love you, but I love you as a member of that family. The way I love Tony, and Nat, and Thor, but maybe a little better than I love Clint.” Steve chuckled softly at that, and you smiled, glad you could make him laugh even a little. “I’m sorry this isn’t the answer you want to hear, and I’m sorry that you’ve had to watch me be with your best friend. None of it was ever done with the intention of deliberately causing you pain, but at the same time, I need to do what’s going to make me happy, and I hope you can accept that, as my friend and a member of my family.”

Steve looked like he was going to argue with you for a moment, but he kept his mouth shut and just nodded. “Yeah,” he said eventually. “I can accept that. It hurts,” he chuckled humorously, “but I want both you and Bucky to be happy.”

“Thanks, Stevie,” you said, suppressing a yawn. “Holy shit, I’m tired. I think I’m going to call it a night. I put in enough time to fulfill my obligation to Tony.” You stood, but immediately stumbled, the motion of standing enough to make you dizzy.

Steve was instantly on his feet, an arm out to steady you. “I got you,” he said. He put a hand to your forehead, checking your temperature. “You don’t seem to have a fever, but I’m getting worried about you, Pocket. I should escort you down to med bay.”

You waved the suggestion off. “No, it’s fine. The last thing I want is a bunch of doctors poking and prodding at me all night. I’ll be fine, I just need to sleep.”

“You can barely even stand up on your own,” Steve protested. “Let me at least walk you back to your room. Make sure you get there without falling over.” You were going to tell him you’d be fine on your own when a wave of nausea overtook you.

“Yeah, okay,” you said, clutching tightly to his arm for support. You had planned on going over to Tony and Pepper to say a proper goodbye, but given the way you were currently feeling, an Irish one was going to have to do, instead. 

Steve put a hand to your back and led you out of the banquet hall. You had to stop more than once to steady yourself, and you were grateful for Steve’s assistance. By the time he’d walked you to your door, you were running on fumes.

“Do you need help getting inside?” he asked, looking worried.

“No,” you assured him. “I’ll be okay. I am literally just going to collapse into my bed. Might not even bother taking the dress off, to be honest.”

Steve blushed, and you regretted putting the idea of you getting out of your clothes into his head. “Well, if you’re sure,” he said, running a hand behind his neck, the movement so similar to Bucky that it threw you for a moment. “If there’s anything you need in the night, anything at all, don’t hesitate to call me, alright?”

“Sure, Steve,” you said as he placed a gentle kiss to the crown of your head. You were grateful for his help, but you knew that, even if you were suddenly dying, you would not, in fact, be calling him. “Thanks for your help.”

You wished each other a goodnight, and soon you were once again within the sanctuary of your room. Managing to summon the will from somewhere, you shimmied out of the dress, draping it over your vanity chair; it was, after all, probably far too expensive to either sleep in or leave in a puddle on the floor overnight. You debated whether or not to take the time to remove your face full of makeup but, God, your bed was just so inviting, you’d deal with the consequences in the morning.

<- Previous Part / Next Chapter ->

[tabe4]

Picrew~

I made a Picrew~ I ill probably add more options over time but for now it has all the basic items I wanted from the base game, plus a few additional options~

If you want a pawpad colour separate from the paw lines, select the final paw lines option and head over to the body markings 2 section to select from a few different pad types.

Please note that because of Picrew's limitations, body/ear/hair markings have to be manually selected for the corresponding base choice you have made. If you find your markings are outside of the lines and didn't mean for this to happen, please double check the body base type (paws, mouse, or bunny)

The second set of face markings has the tears on an additional layer so they appear on top of the eyes.

For now, certain colours are linked to each other to simulate the game's limitations (while some options remain unlinked due to picrew limitations or otherwise). I might unlink them later~

Please feel free to inform me of any errors! And you're always free to submit your creations to this blog! I have added a Picrew tag (#picrew posts) to the submissions page for you to use (and for others to block~). I will always be happy to see them! You can submit or post to your blog and tag @tabe4 if you wish~

Terms of Use:

You can use the Picrew to make OCs for Tabe4 or in general

You cannot make monetary profit off of images made using the maker. This includes virtual currency that can be exchanged for money.

You can use the maker to inspire you for adopts, but DO NOT sell characters made with the maker without redesigning them in some way as others can easily recreate your character, even by accident.

You may edit, crop, or manipulate the images made with this maker for personal use, roleplay, or references, as long as you don't claim the art as your own, or "unknown"/"CTO"/etc.

---

[mariacallous]

Several of the most prominent alt-weekly newspapers in the United States are running search-engine-optimized listicles about porn performers, which appear to be AI-generated, alongside their editorial content.

If you pull up the homepage for the Village Voice on your phone, for example, you’ll see reporting from freelancers—longtime columnist Michael Musto still files occasionally—as well as archival work from big-name former writers such as Greg Tate, the Pulitzer Prize–winning music critic. You’ll also see a tab on its drop-down menu labeled “OnlyFans.” Clicking on it pulls up a catalog of listicles ranking different types of pornographic performers by demographic, from “Turkish” to “incest” to “granny.” These blog posts link out to hundreds of different OnlyFans accounts and are presented as editorial work, without labels indicating they are advertisements or sponsored.

Similar content appears on the websites of LA Weekly, which is owned by Street Media, the same parent company as the Village Voice, as well as the St. Louis–based alt-weekly the Riverfront Times. Although there is a chance some of these posts could be written by human freelancers, the writing bears markers of AI slop.

According to AI detection startup Reality Defender, which scanned a sampling of these posts, the content in the articles registers as having a “high probability” of containing AI-generated text. One scanned example, a Riverfront Times story titled “19 Best Free Asian OnlyFans Featuring OnlyFans Asian Free in 2024,” concludes with the following sentence, exemplary in its generic horny platitudes: “You explore, savor, and discover your next favorite addiction, and we’ll be back with more insane talent in the future!”

“We’re seeing an ever-increasing part of old media be reborn as AI-generated new media,” says Reality Defender cofounder and CTO Ali Shahriyari. “Unfortunately, this means way less informational and newsworthy content and more SEO-focused ‘slop’ that really just wastes people’s time and attention. Tracking these kinds of publications isn’t even part of our day to day, yet we’re seeing them pop up more and more.”

LA Weekly laid off or offered buyouts to the majority of its staff in March 2024, while the Riverfront Times laid off its entire staff in May 2024 after it was sold by parent company Big Lou Media to an unnamed buyer.

The Village Voice’s sole remaining editorial staffer, R.C. Baker, says he is not involved with the OnlyFans posts, although it appears on the site as editorial content. “I handle only news and cultural reporting out of New York City. I have nothing to do with OnlyFans. That content is handled by a separate team that is based, I believe, in LA,” he told WIRED.

Likewise, former LA Weekly editor in chief Darrick Rainey says he, too, had nothing to do with the OnlyFans listicles when he worked there. Neither did his colleagues in editorial. “We weren’t happy about it at all, and we were absolutely not involved in putting it up,” he says.

Former employees are disturbed to see their archival work comingling with SEO porn slop. “It’s wrenching in so many ways,” says former Riverfront Times writer Danny Wicentowski. “Like watching a loved home get devoured by vines, or left to rot.”

This is a new twist in the grim growing world of AI slop. WIRED has reported on a variety of defunct news and media outlets that have been resurrected by new owners and stuffed with AI-generated clickbait, from a small-town Iowa newspaper to the beloved feminist blog the Hairpin. In the case of the alt-weeklies and OnlyFans listicles, the clickbait is appearing alongside actual editorial content, both archival and new.

It is unclear how this effort has been coordinated between the sites, or whether there are several parallel efforts ongoing to produce OnlyFans-centric listicles. LA Weekly and the Village Voice are both owned by the same parent company, Street Media, and some of their OnlyFans content is identical. Meanwhile, the Riverfront Times publishes its OnlyFans blogs under the byline “RFT staff.”

Street Media owner Brian Calle did not respond to WIRED’s requests for comment. Chris Keating, the Riverfront Times’ former owner, says he is bound by a confidentiality agreement and cannot name the new buyer, but that he “does not believe” Calle is part of the purchasing company controlling the new Riverfront Times.

Daniela LaFave, an Austin-based SEO expert who is bylined on the majority of the Village Voice OnlyFans blog posts as well as some of the LA Weekly posts, confirmed to WIRED that she is the same person named as the author. She declined to answer whether she used AI tools to create the posts.

Another frequent byline on the Village Voice and LA Weekly posts, “Jasmine Ramer,” has published 910 articles primarily for these two outlets in the past year, according to the public relations platform Muck Rack. (Sample headlines: “Top OnlyFans Sluts 2024” and “Top 10 Finnish OnlyFans & Hottest Finnish OnlyFans 2023.”) There is a profile on LinkedIn listed as a senior staff writer at LA Weekly for an Austria-based woman named Jasmine Ramer, but there is little other digital footprint for the writer. When Reality Defender analyzed the profile photo on Ramer’s LinkedIn account, it found it was likely AI-generated. There is also at least one other account using the same photo claiming to be a digital marketing executive in the UK. (WIRED did not receive a response when it asked Ramer for comment via LinkedIn.)

OnlyFans is an online porn behemoth, one which has spawned numerous cottage industries, like professional proxy chatters who impersonate the platform’s stars. There are marketing agencies devoted to promoting OnlyFans creators, and many social platforms from Reddit to X are swarmed with bots trying to entice potential customers. These efforts are known as “OnlyFans funnels.”

Risqué sex ads have played a major role in the rise and fall of some alt-weeklies. The founders of Village Voice Media, which once owned the Village Voice, LA Weekly, and the Riverfront Times as well as other US-based alt-weeklies, created the classified website Backpage.com in 2004 to compete with Craigslist. It created a lucrative revenue stream, buoying many titles for years, but ginned up major controversy for hosting sex ads.

Vice President Kamala Harris, serving as California attorney general at the time, dubbed the company “the world’s top online brothel” in 2016 and arrested its founders and CEO for facilitating prostitution. With this recent history in mind, the decision to lean into sexual advertorial is especially brash.

It may be that these alt-weeklies are creating these blog posts in an effort to drum up web traffic to their sites, which could in turn help boost digital ad sales. They may also be accepting money from the accounts or from representatives of the accounts promoted, which would mean the posts were unlabeled advertorial. “Online ads, print ads, they all dried up,” Rainey says. “But this OnlyFans stuff is there.”

“OnlyFans has no financial arrangement with these outlets,” an OnlyFans spokesperson who identified herself only as “Brixie” told WIRED via email.

“I think the creators are paying,” says Luka Sek, SEO manager for an OnlyFans promotion company called SocialRise. “An agency that handles multiple models, or someone doing the marketing for such agencies.”

Whatever the reason, it marks a grim new pit stop for declining media publications, one in which blatant SEO bait sits side by side with culturally valuable archival journalistic work and, in the case of the Village Voice, ongoing contemporary reportage.

Tricia Romano, a former Village Voice writer who recently published an oral history of the newspaper, The Freaks Came Out to Write, sees the arrival of AI slop as keeping with the recent deterioration of alt-weeklies. “This is the logical dystopian conclusion,” she says. “But who’s reading it?”

[velvetrogue]

Starter Call - Round Un

Do you want a thread with me?

Have you been following me for a while but unsure how to make the first move?

Do we have a thread or two already, but you'd like more?

Do we have a million threads but you'd like a million and one?

Have we written before but you're keen to get back in the saddle?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, here's an idea for you! xD

I've looked through my open starters since I launched this blog two months ago, and I've found over a dozen which have either not had any replies so far, or whose threads have gone cold.

I'd love to start threads from any of these, so I'm advertising them here for any current or new followers to consider!

Cassandra Burnwood - 37, bisexual, heist crew leader

Esme Kennedy - 35, bisexual, actress

James Bond - 36, heterosexual, 00 agent

Jasper Breeland - 32, bisexual, photojournalist

Killian Taylor - 27, pansexual, dock worker

Leo Christ - 40, heterosexual, consulting detective

Javier Cuevas - 29, pansexual, criminal fixer

John Marston - 34, pansexual, rancher / bounty hunter

Alexei Calvet - 35, heterosexual, ballerino

Kyle Davenport - 47, pansexual, President

Lyndon Hamilton - 35, bisexual, tech CTO

Truman Rutherford - 33, heterosexual, archaeology professor

Daniel Walden - 44, bisexual, political consultant

Feel free to ask me any questions before replying, and please read my 'core rules' and styling rules here too.

I hope these starters can spark some inspiration so we can get writing together soon!

[flapjacs]

New Firefox update (version 128) enables adtracking

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1e45mih/firefox_enables_adtracking_for_all_users/

The wording is a little strange, but the general consensus is to opt out. One of their devs had the absolute nerve to say

"Opt-in is only meaningful if users can make an informed decision. I think explaining a system like PPA would be a difficult task. And most users complain a lot about these types of interruption. In my opinion an easily discoverable opt-out option + blog posts and such were the right decision." [x]

"You're too stupid to make this decision, so we'll make it for you." Wow, thanks! They neither explain it clearly (and admit that) nor told anyone (they said it was announced in emails, but then acknowledge that their average user doesn't look at stuff like that) ofc we cant make an informed decision. I'm still trying to figure out if this means they put a filter between the tracker and us that's already grabbing this info -or- if they're doing the trackers work for them by sending the info before the tracker even asks for it.

Based on how overly worded everything is and they can't be bothered to make it simple to understand, and that a lot of people don't keep up on these things, the assumption would be that more people will leave this unchecked than not, so they might not get all of us but better more than not, therefore, you want to uncheck it. As always, take my analysis with a grain of salt, and look into it yourself. But the way it's worded just seems like they've fucked us either way. Their CTO said none of this matters if you have adblock, which is bullshit for a number of reasons, but that isn't foolproof. Companies/websites are doing their damnedest to circumvent adblockers all the time. cough tumblr cough

TO OPT OUT:

go to settings>privacy & security -or- type "about:preferences#privacy" in your search bar

scroll down to "website advertising preferences"

uncheck box marked "allow websites to perform privacy-preserving ad measurement

If you do not see it, you might have an older version of firefox. It doesn't seem to be on mobile yet.

WELL SHIT. WHILE YOU'RE AT IT: There's a "Firefox Data Collection and Use" section, make sure to uncheck all that too. Amazing.

[simsouthflorida]

[worldlibertytv]

See 35th Annual Caribbean Tourism Organization’s Caribbean Week in New York events- 2024 in our World Liberty TV, Travel Channels @ https://www.worldlibertytv.org/35th-annual-caribbean-tourism-organizations-caribbean-week-in-new-york-events-2024/

[jcmarchi]

Microsoft unveils Phi-3 family of compact language models

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/microsoft-unveils-phi-3-family-of-compact-language-models/

Microsoft unveils Phi-3 family of compact language models

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Microsoft has announced the Phi-3 family of open small language models (SLMs), touting them as the most capable and cost-effective of their size available. The innovative training approach developed by Microsoft researchers has allowed the Phi-3 models to outperform larger models on language, coding, and math benchmarks.

“What we’re going to start to see is not a shift from large to small, but a shift from a singular category of models to a portfolio of models where customers get the ability to make a decision on what is the best model for their scenario,” said Sonali Yadav, Principal Product Manager for Generative AI at Microsoft.

The first Phi-3 model, Phi-3-mini at 3.8 billion parameters, is now publicly available in Azure AI Model Catalog, Hugging Face, Ollama, and as an NVIDIA NIM microservice. Despite its compact size, Phi-3-mini outperforms models twice its size. Additional Phi-3 models like Phi-3-small (7B parameters) and Phi-3-medium (14B parameters) will follow soon.

“Some customers may only need small models, some will need big models and many are going to want to combine both in a variety of ways,” said Luis Vargas, Microsoft VP of AI.

The key advantage of SLMs is their smaller size enabling on-device deployment for low-latency AI experiences without network connectivity. Potential use cases include smart sensors, cameras, farming equipment, and more. Privacy is another benefit by keeping data on the device.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Large language models (LLMs) excel at complex reasoning over vast datasets—strengths suited to applications like drug discovery by understanding interactions across scientific literature. However, SLMs offer a compelling alternative for simpler query answering, summarisation, content generation, and the like.

“Rather than chasing ever-larger models, Microsoft is developing tools with more carefully curated data and specialised training,” commented Victor Botev, CTO and Co-Founder of Iris.ai.

“This allows for improved performance and reasoning abilities without the massive computational costs of models with trillions of parameters. Fulfilling this promise would mean tearing down a huge adoption barrier for businesses looking for AI solutions.”

Breakthrough training technique

What enabled Microsoft’s SLM quality leap was an innovative data filtering and generation approach inspired by bedtime story books.

“Instead of training on just raw web data, why don’t you look for data which is of extremely high quality?” asked Sebastien Bubeck, Microsoft VP leading SLM research.  

Ronen Eldan’s nightly reading routine with his daughter sparked the idea to generate a ‘TinyStories’ dataset of millions of simple narratives created by prompting a large model with combinations of words a 4-year-old would know. Remarkably, a 10M parameter model trained on TinyStories could generate fluent stories with perfect grammar.

Building on that early success, the team procured high-quality web data vetted for educational value to create the ‘CodeTextbook’ dataset. This was synthesised through rounds of prompting, generation, and filtering by both humans and large AI models.

“A lot of care goes into producing these synthetic data,” Bubeck said. “We don’t take everything that we produce.”

The high-quality training data proved transformative. “Because it’s reading from textbook-like material…you make the task of the language model to read and understand this material much easier,” Bubeck explained.

Mitigating AI safety risks

Despite the thoughtful data curation, Microsoft emphasises applying additional safety practices to the Phi-3 release mirroring its standard processes for all generative AI models.

“As with all generative AI model releases, Microsoft’s product and responsible AI teams used a multi-layered approach to manage and mitigate risks in developing Phi-3 models,” a blog post stated.  

This included further training examples to reinforce expected behaviours, assessments to identify vulnerabilities through red-teaming, and offering Azure AI tools for customers to build trustworthy applications atop Phi-3.

(Photo by Tadas Sar)

See also: Microsoft to forge AI partnerships with South Korean tech leaders

Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is co-located with other leading events including BlockX, Digital Transformation Week, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo.

Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

Tags: ai, artificial intelligence, language models, microsoft, open source, phi-3, small language models

[calpioninc]

How AI & Deep Learning are helping the Healthcare Industry to Resolve Their Major Challenges

Did you know that the impact of AI in the Healthcare industry is immense, with 42% of companies exploring AI for its implementation in the future?

To fully comprehend the significance of the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on these advancements, it is crucial to understand the scale at which AI in Healthcare is utilizing data to analyze, predict, and provide the appropriate recommendations to generate revenue and maintain health practice-patient relationships.

Are you facing similar challenges?

Read our latest blog on how AI and Deep Learning are resolving the major challenges in the healthcare industry and transforming it for future growth.

[sigery]

tf Travelers/Lords/Etc

Lord Night (True Ending?)

Blacky (multi familial, bad ending # 1 'gem')

Nee Nee (is there a name for this verse?, traveler)

Mad King (lonely bean, non canon)

'Baby Traveler' (tf Bloodmoon family, baby mishaps)

Hazard (rle, traveler)

Kitten (rle, s-traveler)

Ghosty (rle, bad ending #2 'dead but not gone')

Void (rle, bad ending #3 'dungeon')

NB (rle, bad ending # 1.5 'early release gem' non canon?)

Mer Night (rle, non canon?)

Mer Blacky (rle, non canon?)

'Baby Traveler' (rle, baby mishaps, canon?)

Erebus (lg, s-traveler)

Static ("horror" au, traveler?)

Void (Inferno, bad ending #3 'dungeon')

Void (Saturn, bad ending #3 'dungeon')

That pre-trapped Lunar (Inferno, 'Eclipse is scared')

Refracted Glow (RBB, traveler?)

Void (CC, bad ending #3 'dungeon')

ctos!Traveler (Lord Jeopardy, traveler)

There are almost definitely more but this is off the top of my head.

@madcatdaderpydrawer-blog, @synthcoyote, Inferno Anon*, @amphiptere-art, @artoutoftheblue)

*not sure if I'm supposed to tag your actual account since you still use anon mostly?

[scoonsalicious]

Unwanted: Chapter 17, Unanswered - Pt. 1

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Avenger!Fem!Reader

Summary: When your FWB relationship with your best friend Bucky Barnes turns into something more, you couldn’t be happier. That is, however, until a new Avenger sets her sights on your super soldier and he inadvertently breaks your heart. You take on a mission you might not be prepared for to put some distance between the two of you and open yourself up to past traumas. Too bad the only one who can help you heal is the one person you can no longer trust.

Warnings: (For this part only; see Story Masterlist for general Warnings) Language, 🤮, really corny made up headlines that I am disproportionally proud of.

Word Count: 1.6k

Previously On...: The night of the gala, you had a heart-to-heart with Steve, and it seems like he understands that there will never be anything more between you than friendship. Bucky's off on a raid, and you're still sick as a dog.

A/N: Cue the sitcom-level misunderstandings and miscommunications! Onward toward shenanigans! Just kidding! It's gonna be angst!

NOTE! The tag list is a fickle bitch, so I'm not really going to be dealing with it anymore. If you want to be notified when I update, please enable notifications from my Blog page!

Banner By: The absolutely amazing @mrsbuckybarnes1917!

Thank you to all those who have been reading; if you like what you've read, likes, comments, and reblogs give me life, and I truly appreciate them, and you!

Taglist: (Sadly, tag list is closed; Tumblr will not let me add anyone new. If you want to be notified when I update, please Follow me for Notifications!) @jmeelee @cazellen @mrsbuckybarnes1917 @blackhawkfanatic @buckybarnessimpp @hayjat @capswife @itsteambarnes @marygoddessofmischief @sebastians-love @learisa @lethallyprotected @rabbitrabbit12321 @buckybarnesandmarvel @fanfictiongirl77 @calwitch @fantasyfootballchampion @selella @jackiehollanderr @wintercrows @sashaisready @missvelvetsstuff @angelbabyyy99 @keylimebeag @maybefoxysouls @vicmc624 @j23r23 @wintercrows @crist1216 @cjand10 @pattiemac1@les-sel @dottirose @winterslove1917 @harperkenobi @ivet4 @casey1-2007 @mrsevans90 @steeph-aniie @bean-bean2000 @beanbagbitch @peachiestevie @wintrsoldrluvr @shadowzena43

Tumblr will not let me directly tag the following: @marcswife21 @erelierraceala @jupiter-107 @doublejeon @hiqhkey @unaxv @brookeleclerc

As soon as you woke up the next morning, you were in the bathroom, throwing up once again. You were very much over this, thank you. Maybe you should go down to med bay and get checked out. You’d do it if you were still feeling poorly by the end of the day.

You went to the sink to rinse out your mouth and nearly jumped when you caught sight of yourself in the mirror– sleeping in your makeup had not done you any favors, that was obvious now. You looked like a rabid raccoon with the way your mascara had smeared around your eyes and your lipstick had smudged around your mouth. Grumbling to yourself, you hopped into the shower, hoping to wash away all traces of the trash panda that had taken you over down the drain. 

When you finished, you decided you had earned yourself a rest break, so you dressed in your comfiest of loungewear and flopped yourself back down on your bed. Picking  your phone, you checked to see if Bucky had texted you to let you know the raid had been successful, and he was safe once again.

Before you could check your messages, however, you were bombarded by a barrage of Google alerts for your name. When you’d taken on the position of Stark Industries CTO, you’d set up the alert for yourself, wanting to keep an eye on any and all news items that might pertain to you, just in case some nosey reporter decided to go digging for information about your past you’d rather have stayed buried. Thus far, you’d managed to keep yourself out of the spotlight.

All that seemed to have changed overnight. You were met with headline after ridiculous headline, each accompanied by photos of you and Steve, taken without your knowledge, from the night before:

“Love in the Lab? Captain America Spotted Getting Cozy with Stark Industries CTO!”

“Sizzling Speculation: Is Captain America Courting Stark Industries' Chief Techie?”

“Behind the Shield: Captain America's Covert Romance with Stark Industries' Techno Prodigy!”

“Avengers Assemble... for Love? Captain America Linked to Stark Industries' Brainiac!”

The photos themselves were ridiculous; carefully selected snapshots of innocuous moments cropped to look far more scandalous without proper context than they really were. Steve leaning in to speak in your ear with his hand on your elbow; you and Steve dancing; Steve holding you up when you almost fell, which looked a lot like he was about to lean in to kiss you; you and Steve looking cozy in conversation on the sofa; Steve’s hand at the small of your back as he led you out of the banquet room.  Fortunately, because of the full face of makeup you were wearing, you didn’t feel like you looked much like your everyday self, but it was still unmistakably you.

You scanned some of the articles, looking to see what sort of bullshit they’d come up with to sell this absolute garbage.

“‘I can’t say for sure that they were together,’ said one male guest at the gala, who asked to have his name withheld, ‘but there were many, many men who approached her throughout the evening, and she rebuffed every single one of them, except for the Captain!’”

“One of our sources reported that ‘100% without a doubt, Captain Rogers and Ms. (Y/L/N) left the gala together, and Captain Rogers couldn’t seem to keep his hands off of her! Let’s just say they left fairly early, and neither one seemed to find their way back to the party.’ Is it possible the two were engaging in a private celebration all their own?”

“An anonymous source inside Avengers’ Tower told our reporter that ‘Ms. (Y/L/N) has been involved with a certain super soldier for quite some time now. They tried to keep it secret for awhile, but everyone here knows they’re an item, and they are very much in love.’”

“Captain Rogers and Ms. (Y/L/N) were unavailable for comment. Perhaps they’ve yet to emerge from last night’s love nest.”

You tossed your phone onto your bed and let out an annoyed groan. Wonderful. Now you’d have to get a hold of the company’s PR team and spend the rest of the day coming up with a statement refuting the reports to give to the press. Oh well. At least you and Bucky could have a good laugh about it when he got home.

Oh shit– Bucky. There was a small chance he might come across one of these articles, and you wanted to give him a heads up before he had an opportunity to let his insecurities get the better of him and spiral. He had to know how ridiculous the entire situation was.

You picked your phone back up and hit the button to call him, but it went straight to voicemail. Odd, but not completely out of nowhere; he was probably somewhere with shitty service. You began speaking at the beep.

“Hey, baby. I just wanted to give you a heads up– I woke up to a string of garbage headlines implying that Steve and I are together, but I just want to assure you that is absolutely not the case. The entire thing is a fucking nightmare. We were both at the gala, and he kept me company for a little while. We just talked and danced a little bit, and he helped me out when I was feeling dizzy. Still sick, by the way. Threw up again this morning and I— sorry, off topic. Anyway, I did talk to him about his feelings for me, and reminded him that I only see him as a friend, like family. I think he took it well. No tears, at least, and he wasn’t mad. He said he just wants us both to be happy.” You paused for a minute as you considered Steve’s words from the night before. 

“I want us to be happy, too, Buck. I think I’m ready to try again when you get home, if you want. I miss you. Not just because you’re not here right now, but I miss us. I love you too much to waste any more time not being with you.  So, let’s do that, okay? Let’s start over. Stay safe and come back to me, Barnes. I love you.”

You ended the call and decided to text him, too, just to be on the safe side. A call might not be able to go through, but a text might.

>> Hey– just left you a voicemail. There’s a bunch of stories about me and Steve going around the internet that are all complete and total bullshit.

>> Gotta meet with PR to put out a statement. Wanted you to hear it from me before you saw it online or something.

>> I’m so sorry if it stresses you out– it’s stressing *me* out.

>> I hope you know that I would *never* betray you like that. 

>> Be safe, my love. I can’t wait for you to get home. I think I’m ready to try us again if you are.

You sat there, staring at your phone for several long minutes, as though you could will him to respond to you, but the text thread remained dormant. You tried calling him a few more times, but each call went straight to voicemail.

Meanwhile, it seemed like everyone you knew who wasn’t Bucky was trying to get in touch with you to ask you what the fuck was going on– and even more people you didn’t know; reception had left you several harried messages asking how you wanted to field requests for comment from at least two dozen reporters. Wanda was lamenting that she and Vision were away at the shore for the weekend and couldn’t be part of the excitement, and Nat swore that if she wasn’t horrifically hungover, she’d be in your room grilling you for information as you spoke. 

“There’s no information to grill for, Natty,” you assured her. You rubbed your forehead– now, in addition to your nausea and persistent fatigue, you had the pleasure of a pounding headache, as well. “We danced, like, three quarters of a song, I almost passed out, he helped me stay upright, and we talked. I told him there was never going to be anything more between us than friendship, and he walked me to my room so I wouldn’t faint on the way. He left me at my door.”

“What does Barnes think about all of this?” she asked you, and you could hear the smirk in her voice, hangover or not.

“I don’t know,” you admitted. “I tried calling him a hundred times to talk to him about it, but I keep getting sent straight to voicemail.”

“Well, I wouldn’t get too riled up about it,” Nat said. “There’s swaths of areas of Russia that don’t have cell service. Besides,” she added, “you’re not the one that can’t be trusted. If he doesn’t believe you, he’s got a lot of fucking nerve.”

You couldn’t disagree with that. “Yeah,” you sighed, “you’re right. I just wish I could reach him, at least to know he’s safe.”

“Eh, don’t worry about Barnes,” Nat said. “His head’s almost as hard as his arm. He’ll be fine.”

You had to begrudgingly agree to that, though his silence continued to unnerve you. You said your goodbyes to Nat and checked the time on your phone screen. Your meeting with the head of PR was in about fifteen minutes; might as well start heading down now. The sooner you could find a way out of this mess, the better.

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