Notices by Greg Wilson (gvwilson@mastodon.social)

I know it's only November, but I'd like to make a request: if you are buying toys for kids in the next couple of months, and think you might have old ones that you want to clear out, please consider donating them before the holidays rather than after. Shelters and charities always get a glut of donations in January, but they'd be more useful to the families who need them now rather than then. Thank you.

Docusign just admitted that they use customer data (i.e., all those contracts, affidavits, and other confidential documents we send them) to train AI:

https://support.docusign.com/s/document-item?language=en_US&bundleId=fzd1707173174972&topicId=uss1707173279973.html

They state that customers "contractually consent" to such use, but good luck finding it in their Terms of Service. There also doesn't appear to be a way to withdraw consent, but I may have missed that.

AI-generated papers aren't destroying scientific publishing and peer review. They're just showing how broken those things already were.

I finally got around to creating some lists here on Mastodon:
- Internet royalty
- Embalmed persons
- Those who are highly trained
- Those who use the word "octothorpe"
- Strays
- Members of the Antimemetics Division
- Those included in the present classification
- Those who shiver as if they are cold
- Those who are not countable
- Components of group minds
- Others
- Those who have just broken a cherished coffee mug
- Those who from a long way off look like punctuation