KelsonV @KelsonV@wandering.shop

Link: UCI team uses machine learning to help tell which wildfires will burn out of control
https://news.uci.edu/2019/09/17/uci-team-uses-machine-learning-to-help-tell-which-wildfires-will-burn-out-of-control/

Today's weather: clear blue skies, and the smell of the mountains burning.

@Satsuma The bigger question, IMO, is whether the *subjects* of the photos would have agreed to this use. Not an issue when you're training computers to identify trees, buildings, cars, sheep, birds, etc. but definitely an issue with face recognition - both ethically and legally.

That's also part of the article, but the discussion I've seen so far seems to be focused on "you used my photos!"

@OldBrushNewPaper Yeah, probably true

@Satsuma NYTimes article on how Yahoo used the Flickr Commons collection - which is made up of photos that people CC-licensed - to train machine learning algorithms. And some discussion on Flickr about it.

Yeah, the use that the tech has been put to is in many cases creepy and unethical. But the source data was made up of images that people specifically said, "do whatever you want with this."

Are there people out there using creative commons licenses who don't know what they mean?

I mean, I really don't get this. If someone violated the terms of the CC license you picked, then yeah, that's a problem. If you didn't license it at all, then again, yeah, that's misappropriation of your work, because you haven't given permission.

But if you make the effort to choose a license that preemptively gives people permission?

OMG people used creative commons-licenced works without asking first!!!!

(Um, isn't that the point of licensing something through Creative Commons? So that people won't have to ask you?)

@hafnia I have two relatives who had names like this. They both just kind of stuck it out.

But I have another who went by her middle name and took the opportunity to make that her official first name when she got married.

I have co-workers working remotely today because they live on the other side of an active wildfire. So there's that for perspective.

On the plus side, I have power, and neither my home nor workplace is on fire.

Ugh. "It's not the heat, it's the humidity" still applies when the humidity is so low it might as well be negative. I've been drinking water all morning & I feel dehydrated after 10 minutes walking outside.