‘Half the tree of life’: ecologists’ horror as nature reserves are emptied of insects
A new point in history has been reached, entomologists say, as climate-led species’ collapse moves up the food chain even in supposedly protected regions free of pesticides
Reports of falling insect numbers around the world are not new. International reviews have estimated annual losses globally of between 1% and 2.5% of total biomass every year.
Widespread use of pesticides and fertilisers, light and chemical pollution, loss of habitat and the growth of industrial agriculture have all carved into their numbers. Often, these were deaths of proximity: insects are sensitive creatures, and any nearby source of pollution can send their populations crumbling.
But what Janzen and Hallwachs are witnessing is a part of a newer phenomenon: the catastrophic collapse of insect populations in supposedly protected regions of forest. “In the parts of Costa Rica that are heavily hit by pesticides, the insects are completely wiped out,” Hallwachs says.
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Keep on GIFin’ — A New Version of GifCities, Internet Archive’s GeoCities Animated GIF Search Engine
GifCities was a special project of Internet Archive originally done as part of our 20th Anniversary in 2016 to highlight and celebrate fun aspects of the amazing history of the web as represented in the Wayback Machine. Since then, GifCities GIFs have been used in innumerable web projects, artistic works, and in the media and press, including this internet-melting combination of GifCities GIFs and the British Royal Wedding in this New York Times article and the avant-GIF “GifCollider” exhibit at Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive.The new version of GifCities includes a number of new improvements. We are especially excited at the drastic improvement in “GifSearchies” by implementing semantic search for GifCities, instead of the hacky old “file name” text search of the original version.
Book Talk: In Through the Side Door
Join us for a book talk with ERIN MALONE, author of IN THROUGH THE SIDE DOOR, uncovering the untold story of how women pioneers shaped the field of user experience […]\nblog.archive.org
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#Haifa, tonight. #Gaza_Genocide @a.gup.pe
#Haifa, tonight. #Gaza_Genocide @palestine@a.gup.pe
@direkt.gnistor.se
Todon.eu
Radical leftist anti-authoritarian. For anarchists, socialists, (climate) activists, LGBTQIA+, anti-racists, anti-fascists, anti-capitalists, intersectionalists, human rights, animal rights, etc. Anno 2020.Mastodon hosted on todon.eu
China turns abandoned mine pits into green wonder
China turns abandoned mine pits into green wonder
From wasteland to wonder: China is reviving abandoned mine pits, turning lifeless areas into flourishingwww.globaltimes.cn
China turns abandoned mine pits into green wonder
China turns abandoned mine pits into green wonder
From wasteland to wonder: China is reviving abandoned mine pits, turning lifeless areas into flourishingwww.globaltimes.cn
Mark Zuckerberg's Meta AI app is one of the most depressing places online
Mark Zuckerberg's Meta AI is one of the most depressing places online
Mark Zuckerberg's Meta AI app has become the saddest place on the internet with its public feed of personal overshares.Katie Notopoulos (Business Insider)
Chinese commerce ministry responds to question on Trump’s claim about China-US trade deal
Chinese commerce ministry responds to question on Trump’s claim about China-US trade deal
At a press conference of China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) on Thursday, a reporter noted that US President Donald Trump claimed in a social media post that China and the US have reached a deal, the US will collect a 55 percent tariff on China, Ch…www.globaltimes.cn
New federal employees must now write essays praising Trump's policies
Those seeking a job in the federal government will now have to write an essay in support of Donald Trump's executive orders, according to a memo from the Office of Personnel Management.
Vince Haley, the White House's head of domestic policy, wrote in the May 29 memorandum that all civil service applicants must answer a series of essays as part of the job recruitment process, including one about how they would "help advance" Trump's policy priorities.
New Federal Employees Must Now Write Essays Praising Trump's Policies
A new "merit hiring plan" from the Office of Personnel Management asks candidates how they will advance Trump's policy agenda.Kate Plummer (Newsweek)
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Bill Gates says most of the $200 billion he's pledged to donate will go to Africa
Bill Gates is revealing his plans for the $200 billion he intends to give away through his foundation over the next 20 years, vowing that much of the money will go to Africa.
Gates, who earlier this month told "CBS Mornings" about his plans to donate the bulk of his fortune, disclosed his intentions to focus on Africa on Monday while speaking at Nelson Mandela Hall at the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Gates had previously said his goal was to fund causes that would help save and improve lives around the globe.
Bill Gates says most of the $200 billion he's pledged to donate will go to Africa
Bill Gates said on Monday that most of the $200 billion he plans to donate over the next two decades will be aimed at helping Africa.Aimee Picchi (CBS News)
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Mongolia PM resigns after son's luxury holiday stirs public fury
Mongolia PM resigns amid protests over his son's lavish lifestyle
Social media photos of a Dior bag and a lavish engagement sparked protests against Luvsannamsrain Oyun-Erdene.Stuart Lau (BBC News)
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Sana Yousaf: Pakistan TikTok star shot dead at home
Islamabad police have launched a murder probe after a teenage social media influencer was shot dead in her home. The news has reignited fears about the safety of women, particularly those in the public eye.
Police in Islamabad on Tuesday were investigating the killing of 17-year-old Sana Yousaf after she was found shot dead in her home.
The killing of the popular teenager, who had more than a million followers across TikTok and Instagram, has raised renewed concerns over the safety of online personalities in Pakistan, particularly young women.
Police were said to have filed a case against an unidentified suspect after a complaint by Yousaf's mother.
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HOJE (dia 12/6): oficina online e gratuita para você transformar seu site em uma instância no Fediverso
Você sabia que seu site com WordPress pode se tornar uma plataforma de mídia social? Na seção de hoje (12/6) da Qualificação Digital da Rede Cultura Viva, realizada pelo Pontão Colaborativas, eu vou explicar como isso funciona, às 18h30, em um curso online e gratuito.
Na oficina, serão apresentados os plugins ActivityPub, Friends e o FediPress, que é um recurso desenvolvido pelo Pontão de Cultura Digital e Mídia Livre com incentivo do Ministério da Cultura e apoio do Comitê Gestor, em cumprimento a Meta 5 do Plano de Trabalho do Projeto Cultural 066383/2023, do Edital de Seleção Pública nº 09, de 31 de agosto de 2023, Cultura Viva – Fomento à Pontões de Cultura. Essa tecnologia é a que permite, por exemplo, você ler este post a partir da sua timeline no Fediverso.
Além desses plugins, será demonstrado como utilizar o recurso de autenticação de sites com WordPress e a plataforma Rios, outra tecnologia atualizada pelo Colaborativas.
Se inscreva em plantaformas.org/conferences/c…
Redes das Produtoras Colaborativas inicia Qualificação Digital Nacional dos Pontos e Pontões de Cultura - Colaborativas.NET
As formações começam segunda-feira (19), com o objetivo de apresentar tecnologias livres atualizadas pela Rede para utilização dos Pontos eSandro Barros (Colaborativas.NET)
BREAKING: Russia’s Crimean Bridge rocked by explosions, Ukraine’s SBU claims responsibility
geteilt von: sopuli.xyz/post/28142063
https://t.me/SBUkr/14960
Russia’s Crimean Bridge rocked by explosions, Ukraine’s SBU claims responsibility
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) struck the Crimean Bridge for the third time during the full-scale war, mining and damaging its underwater supports, the SBU announced on June 3.Martin Fornusek (The Kyiv Independent)
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Sun & moon times today, Kerch, Ukraine
Time for sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset in Kerch – Ukraine. Dawn and dusk (twilight) times and Sun and Moon position. Takes into account Daylight Saving Time (DST).www.timeanddate.com
Inside the Creepy, Surprisingly Routine Business of Animal Cloning
Really and truly, a horse can be alive forever. Forever and ever.
archive.is/2025.06.02-185023/t…
Inside the Big Business of Cloning Animals
Faster horses, superior cattle, immortal petsBianca Bosker (The Atlantic)
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Any Trump deal with Iran must tackle nuclear watchdog's blind spots
U.N. inspectors monitoring Iran's Fordow nuclear site confronted a major gap in their knowledge last year as they watched trucks carrying advanced uranium-enriching centrifuges roll into the facility dug into a mountain south of Tehran.
While Iran had notified the International Atomic Energy Agency that hundreds of extra IR-6 centrifuges would be installed at Fordow, the inspectors had no idea where the sophisticated machines had come from, an official familiar with the U.N. monitoring work told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
The episode encapsulated how the U.N. nuclear watchdog has lost track of some critical elements of Iran's nuclear activities since U.S. President Donald Trump ditched a 2015 deal that imposed strict restrictions and close IAEA supervision.
Key blind spots include not knowing how many centrifuges Iran possesses or where the machines and their parts are produced and stored, quarterly IAEA reports show. The agency has also lost the ability to carry out snap inspections at locations not declared by Iran.
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I have every confidence that Donald and his exceptionally-professional administration will come to a reasonable nuclear deal with Iran.
/s
I don't agree with him that Israel has a right to exist when he was pushed on BDS during the debate.
But any candidate who passes the low low bar of "not financially or militarily supporting Israel" gets a pass.
Law firms who bowed to Trump are paying a steep price
At least 11 companies are moving their business away from firms that have settled with Donald Trump’s White House, The Wall Street Journal first reported. Some are planning — or are already giving — more work to those that have been targeted by Trump or his administration but did not budge, according to the companies’ general counsels and other people familiar.
These companies include financial services provider Morgan Stanley, technology corporation Oracle, and others in the airline and pharmaceutical industries, according to The Wall Street Journal. Technology conglomerate Microsoft had also expressed skepticism for working with a firm that came to a deal, and fast food giant McDonald’s stopped being represented by another firm a few months before a trial.
The Wall Street Journal reported that general counsels have doubted whether they could trust a firm to negotiate deals and win their own cases in court if they did not resist demands from Trump.
Law firms who bowed to Trump are paying a steep price
The Wall Street Journal reported that 11 companies have moved their work away from law firms that reached deals with the president.Rachel Cohen | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com (nj)
Doctors describe 'total carnage' as 27 reported killed by Israeli fire at Gaza aid centre
Gaza's civil defence agency said at least 31 people were killed and many more wounded, which it blamed on "Israeli gunfire" targeting civilians in Rafah.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said its hospital in Rafah received "a mass casualty influx" of people early in the morning on Sunday. It said 21 people were "declared dead upon arrival". It is unclear if the number of people killed reported by the ICRC is separate to the Gaza authorities' report.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said its findings from an initial inquiry showed its forces had not fired at people while they were near or within the aid centre. The Israeli military said in a statement that "warning shots were fired toward several suspects who advanced toward" troops approximately 1km from the site.
Gaza worse than hell on Earth, Red Cross chief tells BBC as aid centres close for day
The president of the ICRC tells the BBC's international editor Jeremy Bowen that Palestinians have been stripped of human dignity.BBC News
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The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said its findings from an initial inquiry showed its forces had not fired at people while they were near or within the aid centre.
Oh that's okay then. Kill them far away cause that makes a difference.
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Their system screwed up an auto-payment which they eventually fixed. They however left the delinquency mark on my account (they only corrected the notice sent to the credit bureaus), so any purchases had to be paid within 30 days.
Couldn't and close out and delete my account fast enough.
At least 15 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire at food distribution point, Gaza officials say
At least 27 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire at food point, Gaza officials say
Gaza spokesperson says Israel fired with tanks and drones as Israeli military acknowledges troops shot at ‘suspects’Lorenzo Tondo (The Guardian)
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this started before the us was independent, blaming just trump for the excesses of the nation built on genocide and white supremacy is like blaming osama bin laden for the 911
I blame the firefighters
Walmart Expands Rollout of Generative AI Search on App
Walmart Expands Rollout of Generative AI Search on App
Walmart Inc. opened up access to a generative artificial intelligence tool that allows shoppers to search for products by specific use cases rather than look up one item at a time.Ed Ludlow and Jaewon Kang (Transport Topics)
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Is China a Peaceful Country? Jeffrey Sachs Explains
- YouTube
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.www.youtube.com
Meta sues Joy Timeline, which makes nudify app CrushAI, in Hong Kong to prevent it from advertising on Meta apps; in January, 90% of its traffic came from Meta
Meta Sues Nudify App That Keeps Advertising on Instagram
As part of what it claims is a new crackdown, Meta is suing a nudify app and "strengthening" its enforcement.Emanuel Maiberg (404 Media)
Pro-Orbán propagandist’s ties to Russian intelligence exposed during national security screening
Georg Spöttle, a regular presence in pro-Orbán media, has come under scrutiny after one of his close acquaintances failed a background check—triggered by concerns over Spöttle’s Russian connections. Information obtained by Direkt36 reveals that Spöttle had a close relationship with an officer from the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency.
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Only a third of Americans are backing the LA protests over the ICE raids, poll finds
Only a third of Americans are backing the LA protests over the ICE raids, poll finds
The Trump administration has ramped up its response after protests against sweeping immigration action broke out across Los Angeles over the weekendRhian Lubin (The Independent)
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Only a third of Americans are backing the LA protests over the ICE raids, poll finds
Only a third of Americans are backing the LA protests over the ICE raids, poll finds
The Trump administration has ramped up its response after protests against sweeping immigration action broke out across Los Angeles over the weekendRhian Lubin (The Independent)
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A few things to note.
Once again, the mass media are calling these "violent protests", and tacitly giving cover for Trump despite no evidence that the protests have scaled to the point where the National Guard is even necessary. This will do little but embolden Trump to expand the use of these tactics to other cities, especially if he's going to have majority support from the voting base.
2/3 of the voters are either "not sure" or are actively supporting ICE and the Trump administration. He is literally marching in authoritarianism to thunderous applause. Worse, only 58% of Democrats approve of the protests. Which means 42% are either indifferent or are actively supporting ICE.
The more Trump marches in authoritarianism, the more people on both sides of the aisle seem to be stepping aside and saying "Right this way, sir."
Philadelphia paper warns Fetterman to take Senate job seriously – ‘or step away’
The Philadelphia Inquirer’s editorial board has issued a sharp rebuke of Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman in a new opinion piece, urging him to take his job “seriously” and writing that “it’s time for Fetterman to serve Pennsylvanians, or step away.”
In a strongly worded piece published on Sunday, the editorial board of the Philadelphia Inquirer, which endorsed Fetterman during his 2022 Senate campaign, said the first-term Democrat “has missed more votes than nearly every other senator in the past two years” and “regularly skips committee hearings, cancels meetings, avoids the daily caucus lunches with colleagues, and rarely goes on the Senate floor”.
The editorial board also wrote that six former Fetterman staffers told an Inquirer reporter that Fetterman was frequently absent or spent hours alone in his office, avoiding colleagues and meetings.
Philadelphia paper warns Fetterman to take Senate job seriously – ‘or step away’
Democratic senator hits back at ‘smear’ after being accused of missing votes and skipping committee hearingsAnna Betts (The Guardian)
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that bag of dicks could feed a family of 7
Next up, in The Naked Chef with Jamie Oliver!
Fetterman turned conservative after his stroke. His lack of participation in the Senate and change in stance after a major health episode should bring his competency into question.
It’s incredibly sad, because he was so promising in the early days. He is not the Senator everyone voted for.
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so promising in the early days.
About that... Some more news did a whole episode on his career showing that he's been an opportunistic grifter this whole time.
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Hegseth jokes about US allies doing nothing in Afghanistan – despite hundreds dead
Hegseth jokes about US allies doing nothing in Afghanistan – despite hundreds losing their lives
‘Don’t try and make it look like I don’t care’, insisted secretary after saying he saw a ‘lotta flags’ but not a lot of effort from US partnersJohn Bowden (The Independent)
Trump claimed ‘tariffs are easy’ – he’s learning the hard way that’s not the case
Time and time again over the past four months, reality has failed to match Trump’s rhetoric
“Tariffs are easy,” Donald Trump claimed in March. For his administration, and the world, they have proven anything but. Now an obscure New York court has blocked his signature trade policy, setting up a battle that looks sure to end up in the supreme court.
The plan was simple. For decades, Trump has made the case for tariffs. Now, in his second term, he would dramatically hike them on the world; raise trillions of dollars for the federal government; cut taxes for Americans; and lure manufacturers to the country’s industrial heartlands, creating millions of jobs.
But this drastic bid to overhaul the global economy has proved far more complicated.Time and again over the past four months, reality failed to match the rhetoric. Threats were followed by delays. Exemptions were carved out of supposedly universal tariff waves. Even when they were imposed, it was days, if not hours, before pauses were announced.
Danish Ministry Replaces Windows and Microsoft Office with Linux and LibreOffice
From Word and Excel to LibreOffice: Danish ministry says goodbye to Microsoft
All employees at the Danish Ministry of Digital Affairs are to work without Microsoft. Instead, Linux and LibreOffice will be used, says the minister.Martin Holland (heise online)
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Wikipedia Pauses AI-Generated Summaries After Editor Backlash
cross-posted from: lemm.ee/post/66544085
Text to avoid paywallThe Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization which hosts and develops Wikipedia, has paused an experiment that showed users AI-generated summaries at the top of articles after an overwhelmingly negative reaction from the Wikipedia editors community.
“Just because Google has rolled out its AI summaries doesn't mean we need to one-up them, I sincerely beg you not to test this, on mobile or anywhere else,” one editor said in response to Wikimedia Foundation’s announcement that it will launch a two-week trial of the summaries on the mobile version of Wikipedia. “This would do immediate and irreversible harm to our readers and to our reputation as a decently trustworthy and serious source. Wikipedia has in some ways become a byword for sober boringness, which is excellent. Let's not insult our readers' intelligence and join the stampede to roll out flashy AI summaries. Which is what these are, although here the word ‘machine-generated’ is used instead.”
Two other editors simply commented, “Yuck.”
For years, Wikipedia has been one of the most valuable repositories of information in the world, and a laudable model for community-based, democratic internet platform governance. Its importance has only grown in the last couple of years during the generative AI boom as it’s one of the only internet platforms that has not been significantly degraded by the flood of AI-generated slop and misinformation. As opposed to Google, which since embracing generative AI has instructed its users to eat glue, Wikipedia’s community has kept its articles relatively high quality. As I recently reported last year, editors are actively working to filter out bad, AI-generated content from Wikipedia.
A page detailing the the AI-generated summaries project, called “Simple Article Summaries,” explains that it was proposed after a discussion at Wikimedia’s 2024 conference, Wikimania, where “Wikimedians discussed ways that AI/machine-generated remixing of the already created content can be used to make Wikipedia more accessible and easier to learn from.” Editors who participated in the discussion thought that these summaries could improve the learning experience on Wikipedia, where some article summaries can be quite dense and filled with technical jargon, but that AI features needed to be cleared labeled as such and that users needed an easy to way to flag issues with “machine-generated/remixed content once it was published or generated automatically.”
In one experiment where summaries were enabled for users who have the Wikipedia browser extension installed, the generated summary showed up at the top of the article, which users had to click to expand and read. That summary was also flagged with a yellow “unverified” label.
An example of what the AI-generated summary looked like.
Wikimedia announced that it was going to run the generated summaries experiment on June 2, and was immediately met with dozens of replies from editors who said “very bad idea,” “strongest possible oppose,” Absolutely not,” etc.
“Yes, human editors can introduce reliability and NPOV [neutral point-of-view] issues. But as a collective mass, it evens out into a beautiful corpus,” one editor said. “With Simple Article Summaries, you propose giving one singular editor with known reliability and NPOV issues a platform at the very top of any given article, whilst giving zero editorial control to others. It reinforces the idea that Wikipedia cannot be relied on, destroying a decade of policy work. It reinforces the belief that unsourced, charged content can be added, because this platforms it. I don't think I would feel comfortable contributing to an encyclopedia like this. No other community has mastered collaboration to such a wondrous extent, and this would throw that away.”
A day later, Wikimedia announced that it would pause the launch of the experiment, but indicated that it’s still interested in AI-generated summaries.
“The Wikimedia Foundation has been exploring ways to make Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects more accessible to readers globally,” a Wikimedia Foundation spokesperson told me in an email. “This two-week, opt-in experiment was focused on making complex Wikipedia articles more accessible to people with different reading levels. For the purposes of this experiment, the summaries were generated by an open-weight Aya model by Cohere. It was meant to gauge interest in a feature like this, and to help us think about the right kind of community moderation systems to ensure humans remain central to deciding what information is shown on Wikipedia.”
“It is common to receive a variety of feedback from volunteers, and we incorporate it in our decisions, and sometimes change course,” the Wikimedia Foundation spokesperson added. “We welcome such thoughtful feedback — this is what continues to make Wikipedia a truly collaborative platform of human knowledge.”
“Reading through the comments, it’s clear we could have done a better job introducing this idea and opening up the conversation here on VPT back in March,” a Wikimedia Foundation project manager said. VPT, or “village pump technical,” is where The Wikimedia Foundation and the community discuss technical aspects of the platform. “As internet usage changes over time, we are trying to discover new ways to help new generations learn from Wikipedia to sustain our movement into the future. In consequence, we need to figure out how we can experiment in safe ways that are appropriate for readers and the Wikimedia community. Looking back, we realize the next step with this message should have been to provide more of that context for you all and to make the space for folks to engage further.”
The project manager also said that “Bringing generative AI into the Wikipedia reading experience is a serious set of decisions, with important implications, and we intend to treat it as such, and that “We do not have any plans for bringing a summary feature to the wikis without editor involvement. An editor moderation workflow is required under any circumstances, both for this idea, as well as any future idea around AI summarized or adapted content.”
Wikipedia Pauses AI-Generated Summaries After Editor Backlash
The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization which hosts and develops Wikipedia, has paused an experiment that showed users AI-generated summaries at the top of articles after an overwhelmingly negative reaction from the Wikipedia editors community.“Just because Google has rolled out its AI summaries doesn't mean we need to one-up them, I sincerely beg you not to test this, on mobile or anywhere else,” one editor said in response to Wikimedia Foundation’s announcement that it will launch a two-week trial of the summaries on the mobile version of Wikipedia. “This would do immediate and irreversible harm to our readers and to our reputation as a decently trustworthy and serious source. Wikipedia has in some ways become a byword for sober boringness, which is excellent. Let's not insult our readers' intelligence and join the stampede to roll out flashy AI summaries. Which is what these are, although here the word ‘machine-generated’ is used instead.”
Two other editors simply commented, “Yuck.”
For years, Wikipedia has been one of the most valuable repositories of information in the world, and a laudable model for community-based, democratic internet platform governance. Its importance has only grown in the last couple of years during the generative AI boom as it’s one of the only internet platforms that has not been significantly degraded by the flood of AI-generated slop and misinformation. As opposed to Google, which since embracing generative AI has instructed its users to eat glue, Wikipedia’s community has kept its articles relatively high quality. As I recently reported last year, editors are actively working to filter out bad, AI-generated content from Wikipedia.
A page detailing the the AI-generated summaries project, called “Simple Article Summaries,” explains that it was proposed after a discussion at Wikimedia’s 2024 conference, Wikimania, where “Wikimedians discussed ways that AI/machine-generated remixing of the already created content can be used to make Wikipedia more accessible and easier to learn from.” Editors who participated in the discussion thought that these summaries could improve the learning experience on Wikipedia, where some article summaries can be quite dense and filled with technical jargon, but that AI features needed to be cleared labeled as such and that users needed an easy to way to flag issues with “machine-generated/remixed content once it was published or generated automatically.”
In one experiment where summaries were enabled for users who have the Wikipedia browser extension installed, the generated summary showed up at the top of the article, which users had to click to expand and read. That summary was also flagged with a yellow “unverified” label.
An example of what the AI-generated summary looked like.
Wikimedia announced that it was going to run the generated summaries experiment on June 2, and was immediately met with dozens of replies from editors who said “very bad idea,” “strongest possible oppose,” Absolutely not,” etc.“Yes, human editors can introduce reliability and NPOV [neutral point-of-view] issues. But as a collective mass, it evens out into a beautiful corpus,” one editor said. “With Simple Article Summaries, you propose giving one singular editor with known reliability and NPOV issues a platform at the very top of any given article, whilst giving zero editorial control to others. It reinforces the idea that Wikipedia cannot be relied on, destroying a decade of policy work. It reinforces the belief that unsourced, charged content can be added, because this platforms it. I don't think I would feel comfortable contributing to an encyclopedia like this. No other community has mastered collaboration to such a wondrous extent, and this would throw that away.”
A day later, Wikimedia announced that it would pause the launch of the experiment, but indicated that it’s still interested in AI-generated summaries.
“The Wikimedia Foundation has been exploring ways to make Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects more accessible to readers globally,” a Wikimedia Foundation spokesperson told me in an email. “This two-week, opt-in experiment was focused on making complex Wikipedia articles more accessible to people with different reading levels. For the purposes of this experiment, the summaries were generated by an open-weight Aya model by Cohere. It was meant to gauge interest in a feature like this, and to help us think about the right kind of community moderation systems to ensure humans remain central to deciding what information is shown on Wikipedia.”
“It is common to receive a variety of feedback from volunteers, and we incorporate it in our decisions, and sometimes change course,” the Wikimedia Foundation spokesperson added. “We welcome such thoughtful feedback — this is what continues to make Wikipedia a truly collaborative platform of human knowledge.”
“Reading through the comments, it’s clear we could have done a better job introducing this idea and opening up the conversation here on VPT back in March,” a Wikimedia Foundation project manager said. VPT, or “village pump technical,” is where The Wikimedia Foundation and the community discuss technical aspects of the platform. “As internet usage changes over time, we are trying to discover new ways to help new generations learn from Wikipedia to sustain our movement into the future. In consequence, we need to figure out how we can experiment in safe ways that are appropriate for readers and the Wikimedia community. Looking back, we realize the next step with this message should have been to provide more of that context for you all and to make the space for folks to engage further.”
The project manager also said that “Bringing generative AI into the Wikipedia reading experience is a serious set of decisions, with important implications, and we intend to treat it as such, and that “We do not have any plans for bringing a summary feature to the wikis without editor involvement. An editor moderation workflow is required under any circumstances, both for this idea, as well as any future idea around AI summarized or adapted content.”
The Editors Protecting Wikipedia from AI Hoaxes
WikiProject AI Cleanup is protecting Wikipedia from the same kind of misleading AI-generated information that has plagued the rest of the internet.Emanuel Maiberg (404 Media)
This is — and I cannot stress this enough — a real government website
Trump Card - Pathway to American Citizenship
The opportunity to live in the Greatest Country, THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, with the largest economy in the World, is here.Trump Card - Pathway to American Citizenship
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Danish Ministry Replaces Windows and Microsoft Office with Linux and LibreOffice
Full text due to weird cookies banner
The Danish Ministry of Digitization is to completely abandon Microsoft in the coming months and use Linux instead of Windows and switch from Office 365 to LibreOffice. Minister Caroline Stage (Moderaterne) announced this in an interview with the daily newspaper Politiken. It comes just a few days after the country's two largest municipalities initiated similar steps. This summer, half of the ministry's employees will be equipped with Linux and LibreOffice. If everything goes as expected, the entire ministry will be free of Microsoft by the fall, Politiken summarizes.
The Ministry of Digitalization's move away from Microsoft is therefore taking place against the backdrop of a new digitalization strategy in which the Kingdom's "digital sovereignty " is given priority. According to newspaper reports, the opposition is also calling for a reduction in dependence on US tech companies. Just a few days ago, the administration of the capital Copenhagen announced its intention to review the use of Microsoft software. The second-largest municipality, Aarhus, has already started to replace Microsoft services. Stage has now told Politiken that they should cooperate and that it is not a race. All municipalities should work together and strengthen open source.
When asked how her ministry would react if the changeover was not so easy, Stage replied that they would then simply return to the old system for a transitional period and seek other options: "We won't get any closer to the goal if we don't start." So far, she has only heard from employees who welcome the move. But in her ministry, which is mainly concerned with digitalization, she expects a lot of interest anyway. She also assured them that the initiative is not about Microsoft alone, as they are generally far too dependent on a few providers.
As background to the move, the article also refers to the events at the International Criminal Court, where an email account operated by Microsoft was disconnected. This caused an uproar across Europe. In Denmark, there is also the fact that the new US President Donald Trump has been announcing for weeks that his country wants to take over Greenland. The island in the North Atlantic is a self-governing part of Denmark, and the outrage at Trump's proposal is huge. The desire to reduce dependence on US companies is therefore evidently even greater there than in the rest of Europe.
Microsoft: Kein Mail-Block für IStGH, startet europäisches Sicherheitsprogramm
Microsoft dementiert, Dienste für den Internationalen Strafgerichtshof eingestellt zu haben. Das Unternehmen startet ein europäisches Sicherheitsprogramm.Stefan Krempl (heise online)
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A little while ago I met someone whose job is to worry about international affairs and they were worried about operating systems.
After that I started worrying about every end user device in Ukraine shutting down until peace was negotiated.
From Trust to Threat: Hijacked Discord Invites Used for Multi-Stage Malware Delivery
- Check Point Research uncovered an active malware campaign exploiting expired and released Discord invite links. > - Attackers hijacked the links through vanity link registration, allowing them to silently redirect users from trusted sources to malicious servers.
- The attackers combined the ClickFix phishing technique, multi-stage loaders, and time-based evasions to stealthily deliver AsyncRAT, and a customized Skuld Stealer targeting crypto wallets.
- Payload delivery and data exfiltration occur exclusively via trusted cloud services such as GitHub, Bitbucket, Pastebin, and Discord, helping the operation blend into normal traffic and avoid raising alarms.
The operation continues to evolve, and threat actors can now bypass Chrome’s App Bound Encryption (ABE) by using adapted tools like ChromeKatz to steal cookies from new Chromium browser versions.
The Discord Invite Loop Hole Hijacked for Attacks - Check Point Research
Learn how Discord's invite links are hijacked and reused to redirect users to harmful servers in place of trusted communitiesalexeybu (Check Point Research)
From Trust to Threat: Hijacked Discord Invites Used for Multi-Stage Malware Delivery
- Check Point Research uncovered an active malware campaign exploiting expired and released Discord invite links. > - Attackers hijacked the links through vanity link registration, allowing them to silently redirect users from trusted sources to malicious servers.
- The attackers combined the ClickFix phishing technique, multi-stage loaders, and time-based evasions to stealthily deliver AsyncRAT, and a customized Skuld Stealer targeting crypto wallets.
- Payload delivery and data exfiltration occur exclusively via trusted cloud services such as GitHub, Bitbucket, Pastebin, and Discord, helping the operation blend into normal traffic and avoid raising alarms.
The operation continues to evolve, and threat actors can now bypass Chrome’s App Bound Encryption (ABE) by using adapted tools like ChromeKatz to steal cookies from new Chromium browser versions.
The Discord Invite Loop Hole Hijacked for Attacks - Check Point Research
Learn how Discord's invite links are hijacked and reused to redirect users to harmful servers in place of trusted communitiesalexeybu (Check Point Research)
Former Trump supporter Pamela Hemphill refuses and returns her Jan. 6 pardon
Former Trump supporter Pamela Hemphill refuses and returns her Jan. 6 pardon
Pamela Hemphill of Idaho is one of the more than 1,500 people whom Mr. Trump pardoned earlier this year for their roles in the U.S. Capitol Insurrection.Scott MacFarlane (CBS News)
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apprehensively_human
in reply to MicroWave • • •Do you guys remember driving down the highway in the 90's and having your car absolutely covered in the mangled corpses of insects? To the point where wiper fluid is called bug wash?
I don't know if this is the same everywhere, but my car stays pretty clean these days.
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conditional_soup
in reply to apprehensively_human • • •Throbbing_banjo
in reply to apprehensively_human • • •Aside from ants and the occasional gnat/mosquito, we really saw very few insects across the country as a whole. So it's a global phenomenon, and things are probably a lot worse then we realize and care to admit.
Jo Miran
in reply to apprehensively_human • • •Snot Flickerman
in reply to Jo Miran • • •Jo Miran
in reply to Snot Flickerman • • •Snot Flickerman
in reply to Jo Miran • • •illi
in reply to apprehensively_human • • •Gerudo
in reply to apprehensively_human • • •Jimmycakes
in reply to apprehensively_human • • •Hegar
in reply to MicroWave • • •like this
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brendansimms
in reply to MicroWave • • •slaneesh_is_right
in reply to brendansimms • • •taladar
in reply to slaneesh_is_right • • •heartbreaker
in reply to MicroWave • • •a4ng3l
in reply to heartbreaker • • •Duckworthy
in reply to a4ng3l • • •I’ve had a ton of success with bringing back bugs. First off, no pesticides or herbicides. Second, diverse plants with at least 1/2 native, and a decent amount of flowers, plants in the sage family and sunflower family are good choices for a quick impact. Third, mulch, and have areas with dead sticks and wood, rock piles etc.
My property started out with only earwigs, roly-polies and invasive grass. They sprayed everything for spiders.
It’s been 6 years and I have multiple species of bumblebees, flower flies, butterflies, moths, wasps, etc.
a4ng3l
in reply to Duckworthy • • •shalafi
in reply to MicroWave • • •Two neighbors where over yesterday and I was pointing out the insect loss I've seen in just a few years. They both had their mouths open in shock. "Shalafi, I never thought of that."
We leave the porch lights on 24x7. Used to get filthy with bugs and there were tree frogs and salamanders camping out all night. Now there are none of the above.
pulsewidth
in reply to shalafi • • •SoftestSapphic
in reply to MicroWave • • •like this
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Pringles
in reply to MicroWave • • •barneypiccolo
in reply to Pringles • • •In Central Florida, we were overrun in the Spring with Lovebugs, which were an invasive species. They had sticky, acidic guts which would stick to cars and ruin the paint. Every Spring, stores would have big displays of the liquid to add to your wiper fluid to remove the Lovebugs from your windshield.
Then they disappeared, nearly overnight. A few years ago, the Spring hatching was really light, and it's been lighter each year. I saw one Lovebugs this year.
The weird thing is, scientists have no idea why, because there is no grant money to study it. They are an invasive species, so we want them to go away. Nobody is going to spend money to find out why.
In the case of Lovebugs, their eradication was a positive outcome, but whatever wiped them out, could wipe out bugs that we want to keep because they are important to the food chain.
rickdg
in reply to MicroWave • • •Agent641
in reply to MicroWave • • •