Raphael Wimmer

Raphael Wimmer

@raphaelwimmer.bsky.social

Tinkering with atoms, bits, and pixels at the University of Regensburg, Germany. Yak shaver and award-winning procrastinator. Also on https://hci.social/@RaphaelWimmer and Twitter

786 followers518 following824 posts

Raphael Wimmer reposted

For more than a decade, it has felt to defenders of free society that we are peddling fruitlessly against the powerful current of authoritarianism. That current grew firmer, more dominant, as it swept in new nations from the shores of democracy and carried the world further toward illiberal abyss.

Yashar Ali 🐘@yasharali.bsky.social

1. BREAKING: Flávio Bolsonaro is refusing to concede Brazil's presidential election and says he will seek to have the election annulled after losing to President Lula.

Raphael Wimmer reposted

I do not do much on social media right now. Making an exception. I talked to a lot of reporters during the pandemic. I don't think any of them would be surprised or offended if I say Helen was the best 1/n

Currently, a diagram is making the rounds that is claimed to show a significant reduction in Russian disinformation bot activity after Ukrainian drones hit Yandex data centers. There is no evidence that this plot shows real data. I suspect that this image is AI-generated.

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Some objective evidence that at least MAGA engagement on Facebook did not change after Yandex' data centers were damaged. bsky.app/profile/jooh...

Joohn Choe@joohnchoe.bsky.social

It occurs to me that since I have unique data on the right-wing ecosystem on Facebook, I can actually tell you with data, not vibes, if there actually has been a 50% decrease (the original claim) in bot activity on here supporting MAGA, or even any kind of substantial effect at all. There isn't.

Currently, a diagram is making the rounds that is claimed to show a significant reduction in Russian disinformation bot activity after Ukrainian drones hit Yandex data centers. There is no evidence that this plot shows real data. I suspect that this image is AI-generated.

View full thread

Currently, a diagram is making the rounds that is claimed to show a significant reduction in Russian disinformation bot activity after Ukrainian drones hit Yandex data centers. There is no evidence that this plot shows real data. I suspect that this image is AI-generated.

View full thread

Also, lots of people are pointing to their anecdotal experience that "Russian troll" posts have declined. So far, I have seen no quantitative evidence anywhere yet. (My personal view is that there are far fewer "Russian troll bots" than people claim - most are just real people or spam bots.)

Currently, a diagram is making the rounds that is claimed to show a significant reduction in Russian disinformation bot activity after Ukrainian drones hit Yandex data centers. There is no evidence that this plot shows real data. I suspect that this image is AI-generated.

View full thread

Some evidence supporting the assumption that an image generation tool was used (or someone drew the graph 'by hand'): the vertical lines are not evenly spaced - 15 days in October seem to last longer than 15 days in September. Also, the y-axis range for 2500 - 3000 is smaller than the others.

Raphael Wimmer reposted

Outside of the #Antarctic, temperatures have been above average for nearly all areas of our planet in the last three months. This is clear when looking at each latitude band. [Plot shows zonal-mean surface air temperature anomalies, where latitude = y-axis (not scaled by distance). Data: GISTEMPv4]

Currently, a diagram is making the rounds that is claimed to show a significant reduction in Russian disinformation bot activity after Ukrainian drones hit Yandex data centers. There is no evidence that this plot shows real data. I suspect that this image is AI-generated.

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Yandex - the Russian search engine - operated programs called "web crawlers" that visited websites and added them to Yandex' search index. Google, Bing, ChatGPT, Amazon, etc. do the same. Cloudflare counts these crawlers as bots. No datacenter, no web crawlers, no bots.

In summary: - the graph that is circulating looks fishy - it is not clear what the source data for this graph is - the person who posted it first (?) is evasive. Could we (and especially politicians, journalists and scientists who should know better) please stop sharing unverified images?

Currently, a diagram is making the rounds that is claimed to show a significant reduction in Russian disinformation bot activity after Ukrainian drones hit Yandex data centers. There is no evidence that this plot shows real data. I suspect that this image is AI-generated.

View full thread

The vague title and axis label are compatible with someone prompting an LLM "generate a graph that shows that Russian troll activity has decreased recently" (or similar). I think that a human creator would have at least added "bot" or "Russian" to the plot. (I might be wrong here, however)

Currently, a diagram is making the rounds that is claimed to show a significant reduction in Russian disinformation bot activity after Ukrainian drones hit Yandex data centers. There is no evidence that this plot shows real data. I suspect that this image is AI-generated.

View full thread

The poster, Robin Schlingheider is a little bit evasive when asked about the origin of the image. He points to another graph with source (see below), claiming it shows the same information. It doesn't. When I mentioned that I really wanted to know the source, he blocked me on Threads.

There is no indication that the graph has been created by an image generator - there is no SynthID in the imagem, which more or less rules out ChatGPT and Gemini. Maybe the graph was generated by an LLM using a plotting library or by a human using a plotting app?

Currently, a diagram is making the rounds that is claimed to show a significant reduction in Russian disinformation bot activity after Ukrainian drones hit Yandex data centers. There is no evidence that this plot shows real data. I suspect that this image is AI-generated.

View full thread

Currently, a diagram is making the rounds that is claimed to show a significant reduction in Russian disinformation bot activity after Ukrainian drones hit Yandex data centers. There is no evidence that this plot shows real data. I suspect that this image is AI-generated.

The image seems to have gone viral first on X, then elsewhere, after Czech MEP Tomáš Zdechovský posted it with the comment "If confirmed , this is telling" at 17:02 UTC today: x.com/TomasZdechov... He has provided no source. The title of the plot and the axis labels are in German.

Raphael Wimmer reposted

Tomorrow I’ve got another round of discussions on how crew will respond to a loss of cabin pressure on Moon Base. First time around, we walked through all the steps that we know crew will need to perform.

Raphael Wimmer reposted

Several weeks ago, Phil Tippett's legendary animation studio in Berkeley, CA closed. An anonymous hero noticed a folder of CDs. This turned out to be hundreds of unseen hi-res images and videos from Star Wars, Robocop, Jurassic Park, etc. ~90 isos for you to browse: archive.org/details/tipp...

Raphael Wimmer reposted

with more than 50,000 abstracts submitted to ICLR last week, can’t decide if that’s evidence ML research is stronger than ever or evidence that it’s dead

Raphael Wimmer reposted

Ein Beschlusspapier mit sehr unterschiedlichen Verbindlichkeiten: - Neuer „Tankrabatt“ (Kosten: 2,5 Mrd. Euro) kommt sofort und definitiv. -Spritpreisdeckel kommt vielleicht irgendwie im nächsten Jahr. - Zur Übergewinnsteuer gibt weiter nur „Gespräche“ auf EU-Ebene, Ergebnis vollkommen offen.

Raphael Wimmer reposted

„Wenn ich mir eine Maßnahme wünschen würde zur psychischen Gesundheit und wie man Kinder und Jugendliche unterstützt, dann wäre es Armutsbekämpfung.“ – Hörenswertes Gespräch mit @jschmitzleipzig.bsky.social (55min) #kindergrundsicherung

Julian Schmitz@jschmitzleipzig.bsky.social

Social Media, Armut, Schule. Wie es Kindern und Jugendlichen aktuell in Deutschland psychisch geht und welche Hausaufgaben Politik und Gesellschaft haben - darüber habe ich mit NDR Synapsen im neuen Wissenschafts-Podcast gesprochen. www.ndr.de/nachrichten/...

Hab ja als Hochschullehrer inzwischen schon einiges gesehen, aber das ist eine Premiere: Student gibt Powerpoint-Präsentation für seinen Bachelorarbeits-Antrittsvortrag ab. In den Foliennotizen: präzise Anweisungen von ChatGPT, was er erzählen soll, wie er es betonen soll, wo er hinzeigen soll...

Raphael Wimmer reposted

July 2026 was the warmest month for average temperatures on record across the contiguous U.S., even surpassing the Dust Bowl. This was especially due to an increase in those dangerously high overnight temps. 📣 REGISTER for our next briefing to learn more: climatecentral-org.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Raphael Wimmer reposted

So, seit Jahren erzählen Meteorologen und Klimaforscher, dass eine Anpassung nur vorübergehend funktioniert. Und jetzt habt Ihr es, es funktioniert jetzt schon nicht, was glaubt Ihr wohl wie in den nächsten Jahren wird? s u r p r i se ! #Klimaignoranz ist dumm www.spiegel.de/politik/deut...

spiegel.de(S+) Extremwetter in Deutschland: Die Politik versagt im Kampf gegen den HitzeschockFehlende Kühltechnik in Kliniken, Probleme beim Gütertransport auf dem Rhein: Die Regierungen von Bund und Ländern suchen schnelle Antworten auf die Hitzewelle. Wie können die Versäumnisse aus der Ver...

Raphael Wimmer reposted

Lust auf ein kleines Quiz? Dieses Semester habe ich u.a. einen Kurs zum wissenschaftlichen Arbeiten gehalten, der eng mit unserem Bachelor-Forschungsseminar verzahnt ist. In der ersten Sitzung geht es darum, zu definieren, was gute Wissenschaft auszeichnet, und woran man schlechte erkennt. → <🧵>

Moin. Es ist mir eine Ehre, diese Woche auf @realscientists.de ein bisschen über Forschung und Lehre (und alles, was sonst noch dranhängt) schreiben zu dürfen. Schaut gerne vorbei :) bsky.app/profile/did:...

Raphael Wimmer reposted

Amusing observation: Many of us devs are becoming as opinionated and knowledgeable about SOTA models (and their coding performance) like we used to be about programming languages and the tips-and-tricks to be more productive with them + now we don't really talk about prog languages all that much..