Did you know that there are many types of curiosity, and that the quick answers that 'AI' and the internet provide can be antithetical to deeper exploration, the exploration encouraged by Epistemic and Empathic curiosity.

Someone recently reached out to let me know they really enjoyed one of my 10-year old blog posts, about curiosity.

I love when this happens because it encourages me to revisit my thinking at the time and reflect on why I may or may not be living and acting in accordance with that mindset in the present moment.

Re-reading this reminded me to spend more time being curious. Really curious.

https://axbom.com/curiosity/

Some reading this appear to think it's a post about the business case for accessibility. It's truly not. It's a post about a logical fallacy.

https://axbom.me/notice/As2j5afKHYztgqW8m0

@alavi

I’m not necessarily marketing it as good ROI, but making the point that the argument being used ("it only affects 1% of users") is invalid as it assumes that a statistic that is the effect of past decisions gives any indication of what that number would be after the work is done. The effort you put in, regardless of your ROI calculations and how large of an effort you decide on, will change the percentage.

Never mind that the statistic is often just completely made up and most organisations just don’t know, adding the risk of making things worse and essentially kicking people out.

You can’t say ”it’s not worth making it accessible for only 1% of our users”. That’s a logical fallacy. And reveals a lot about your understanding of the subject area, and your value system.

If you had made it accessible to begin with, people with disabilities could’ve been 20% of your user base.

And it would have been better for 100% of your users.

#a11y #accessibility

I wasn’t a fan of Iron Fist, so I’ve started putting together my own Marvel tv-series viewing order list. I found it hard not to include the movie Black Widow in there for context prior to Hawkeye. Though to be fair there should perhaps be more of that.

Not sure yet where to place She-Hulk and Ms Marvel, amongst Daredevil, Jessica Jones and Echo.

https://lab.axbom.com/s/d033677b-c816-41ad-9462-ba896d33e6e7

”And so you appoint, dismiss, judge and evaluate a data shadow, but the one who has to bear the consequences is a human being of flesh and blood."
– Kerstin Anér, in 1972

https://axbom.com/data-shadows/

Alaqua Cox as Echo (Maya Lopez) is stunningly good. And it’s her first acting gig!

Very impressive casting.

You should watch it before the new Daredevil if you haven’t already. And Hawkeye before that of course…

#marvel

https://people.com/alaqua-cox-reflects-on-career-success-marvel-echo-after-being-bullied-deaf-and-amputee-exclusive-8424431

@steveportigal @metafilter I love watching these but damn it’s also nerve-racking.

@FeralRobots This made Toto’s Hold the Line play in my head… haha.

@jamesravey Ha, excellent. Love those bots. Reminded me of one I followed which looked at the profiles of people who tagged themselves with MAGA and pointed out when they had used the flag of Liberia rather than the United States.

(Especially dear to me as I was born in Liberia)

@EndlessMason Not far off, but my understanding is that a government backdoor generally insists on not letting you know who is entering or what they are taking part of.

I know you know this, but it’s "sneak peek", not "sneak peak".

Unless you’re suddenly discovering a new summit on a mountain, that deviously was hidden behind a cloud.

Or, you know, if a climax takes you by surprise.

Gotta love that this is the second paragraph in the Wikipedia entry for Backdoor:

"In the United States, the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act forces internet providers to provide backdoors for government authorities. In 2024, the U.S. government realized that China had been tapping communications in the U.S. using that infrastructure for months, or perhaps longer; China recorded presidential candidate campaign office phone calls —including employees of the then-vice president of the nation– and of the candidates themselves."

More on this story:

https://reason.com/2024/10/11/chinese-hackers-used-u-s-government-mandated-wiretap-systems/

« "The problem with backdoors is known—any alternate channel devoted to access by one party will undoubtedly be discovered, accessed, and abused by another," David Ruiz of the internet security firm Malwarebytes Labs wrote in 2019. He noted that cybersecurity researchers had been making that argument for years. They've been repeating themselves for years because their warnings appear to fall on deaf ears. »

På förekommen anledning publicerar jag den här teckningen igen.

En bakdörr kan vara minutiöst dokumenterad, ha begränsad åtkomst, innefatta en rad säkerhetsmekanismer och vara utvecklad med den bästa av intentioner. men det är fortfarande…



…en bakdörr.

«Whittaker explained how AI agents are being marketed as a way to add value to your life by handling various online tasks for the user. For instance, AI agents would be able to take on tasks like looking up concerts, booking tickets, scheduling the event on your calendar, and messaging your friends that it’s booked.

“So we can just put our brain in a jar because the thing is doing that and we don’t have to touch it, right?,” Whittaker mused.

Then she explained the type of access the AI agent would need to perform these tasks, including access to our web browser and a way to drive it as well as access to our credit card information to pay for tickets, our calendar, and messaging app to send the text to your friends.

“It would need to be able to drive that [process] across our entire system with something that looks like root permission, accessing every single one of those databases — probably in the clear, because there’s no model to do that encrypted,” Whittaker warned.»

https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/07/signal-president-meredith-whittaker-calls-out-agentic-ai-as-having-profound-security-and-privacy-issues/

@Beantin @kolombiken

They’re off on mine now as well. Thanks for noticing this so quickly! I’ll likely never be in a hurry setting up a service again. 😅

I’m still evaluating alternatives though. Now looking at this for self-hosting, but of coure requires a server separate from the one where everything else is hosted.

https://statusnook.com

Gott och dåligt omdöme i statens tjänst.

Kan varmt rekommendera detta viktiga avsnitt som gick i repris på P1 i morse.

Kan bara hålla med om hur offentlig förvaltning går mer mot manual- och regelstyrt, att färre litar på sitt eget och andras omdöme. Vi får inte träna det. Tänk nu hur lite människor får träna sitt omdöme när de använder probabilistiska datamodeller för beslutsfattande (min reflektion, inget de kommer in på i programmet).

Gäster är Louise Bringselius, organisationsexpert och författare, och Christina Forsberg, generaldirektör för Centrala studiestödsnämnden.

Programledare är Louise Epstein.

https://www.sverigesradio.se/avsnitt/repris-sa-haller-du-ditt-omdome-i-form

@Beantin @kolombiken LOL! Found a German one. https://pingping.io 😁

@kolombiken @Beantin Found this alternative in France now. Not as sleek-looking but is likely better in many ways… (on my iPad so haven’t been able to look at it in detail):

https://updown.io/

Avsnittet om AI-bias, i podden AI för folket, finns ute nu.. 17 minuter långt.

"AI uppfattas ofta som objektiv, men i praktiken kan den förstärka och återskapa fördomar. I det här avsnittet pratar vi med Per Axbom, digital designer och expert på digital etik, om vad bias i generativ AI är, varför det uppstår och vilka konsekvenser det kan få.

Hur kan vi som användare upptäcka bias? Finns det sätt att göra AI mer rättvis? Och kan vi någonsin bygga en AI som är helt fri från snedvridningar?

Ett samtal om tekniska utmaningar, mänskliga perspektiv och hur vi kan förhålla oss kritiskt till den AI som allt oftare påverkar våra beslut."

https://pca.st/episode/922cfa22-e0ac-4d7d-a4b1-f5430380f167

@kolombiken Damn it's hard to do the right thing when these tools sneak stuff in. 🥴

@kolombiken In the status page? Weird I never added that. Let me check! 😅

Websites are up again but the server backup that they restored was from 2 days ago, as I suspected. It's missing some changes I had made to a few posts.

Hopefully I can find other backups for those changes.

In the grand scheme of things my server issues are miniscule and I shouldn't let them get to me.

For context: yesterday I was featured in an interview in Sweden’s largest daily newspaper. And today a prominent podcast on AI released an episode featuring me, on AI bias. Huge soar in people searching for me and my content. I put a huge amount of time and effort into both of those happening. And all my websites have today been down and still are. Worst. Possible. Time. 😥

Time to try and get some sleep…

While I’m waiting for this clusterf*ck to get sorted I built a status page for my websites –now allowing me to visit a web page to remind myself that all my websites are down. 😂

https://status.axbom.com/