Notices by Mr Penguin (mr_penguin@social.freetalklive.com)

"California's Gig Drivers Just Secured Collective Bargaining Power with Newly Certified Union"

I don't understand people. You'd think if a company wasn't providing you a reasonable offer with reasonable conditions already you'd turn them down, not utilize violence and the state to force them to do what you wanted.

Fresh out of college I was offered a job from a company I wanted to work for at a reasonable pay (actually pretty decent at the time) and I still turned the offer down.

I decided it was in my interest to take a lower paying job and start a business because the company I had the job offer from was likely not going to be around in 6-8 months. I was right and I did make the right choice. I basically have a ~20 year old company today that's basically doing the thing that that other company failed at two decades ago. The difference? I'm the boss and I make the big money.

I know people who have or do 'gigs' for Uber and Lyft and they're not demanding state action (violence) be taken against either company.

If the cost of living is too high relative to the offer move. There is thousands of years of history of people migrating for this very reason. There was a solution to this problem long before the tyrannical state became a thing that invaded our daily lives. The main thing holding back migration today is the state so stop enabling it. Stop demanding it do stuff to 'protect you' and stop accepting BS excuses often to 'protect you' that literally do nothing other than help someone get rich at your expense.

Sam Bankman-Fried is appealing his conviction to the Supreme Court and it'll be interesting to see what happens. His argument sounds pretty strong whether or not he should be in a cage or committed fraud. However it's entertaining to see someone who actually committed fraud at some level be accepted by the supreme court when they denied far more worthy individuals.

However that said given changes in the law that I don't support the value in say determining whether or not bitcoin is even a currency (it's up for debate and economics expert disagree it is or otherwise disagree with one another whether it is) making the plain meaning of the law clearly not clear in the eyes of any party who understands the argument and hasn't got a predisposition against the accused (ie like former prosecutors who become judges) and is otherwise biased.

https://archive.ph/CVeXI

LG responded to Gamers Nexus examination and revelation of the fact LG claims and effectively does "own the glass" in your house and is spying on your TV watching EVEN IF you only use it as a dumb input to another device (like a DVD player, computer, or similar device) via Automatic Content Recognition. It's also listening to what others are saying without their permission who do not know violating laws in some states like New Hampshire (wiretapping law).

The LG TVs will scan for and will connect to open access points and potentially access points that are restricted where it may have access (such as cable companies providing third parties access in your neighborhood) to upload the spying apparatuses (ie the TV) info it's collected on you and those around you.

Effectively even if you remove the wifi card and never connect your TV to a network the TV contains potentially incriminating information about your usage because it's recording to storage tons of data on you. Given the massive storage capacities and conversion of voice and imagery on the screen it does not need to store images themselves, but fingerprints of those images, and voice itself takes up very little space. More than text, but far less than images/video.

There is NO solution to this problem for 'big screen' (I believe anything over 43") as all TV manufacturers incorporate at least ACR (Automatic Content Recognition) among other spying apparatuses into modern televisions on the market today. In fact some of these are built right into the TV standards (ASTC 3.0 I believe).

The US is banning foreign manufactured routers on 'national security' grounds over mere possibility of data ending up in China's hands, but it's nowhere near as dangerous as smart TVs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToP9xfLDSME

"US Legislators Complain About Secretive British Court and Apple Encryption"

Translation: A secretive UK court ordered Apple to backdoor their devices.

It's also worthy of pointing out that the US has a secretive surveillance court too and there is good reason to believe your computer has been backdoor'd since 2008 or 2013 respectively depending on which CPU your system has (Intel and AMD both). The evidence as in there is a literal demo of the backdoor for Intel (supposedly fixed), but also there is good reason to believe the US targeted one of the original developers who created a solution to plug the hole and Intel's been modifying things ever since to try and stop peoples ability to plug the hole.

It's kinda humorous that US legislators would complain about foreign governments (the UK here) ordering companies to do things that violate the US constitution when the US regularly orders companies and entire countries to do things and then puts sanctions on them when they don't despite operating holy outside US jurisdiction.

Now it may be the case here it makes a bit more sense in context like these particular legislators may not agree with the US has or is doing in this arena elsewhere so maybe they're not being hypocrites here, but it's certainly hypocritical for the US to make demands.

You mean like US military recruitment efforts, law enforcement propaganda [news media targeting arrested individuals that are one-sided, etc], right?

“Piracy platforms have created a new avenue for terrorist organizations and state adversaries to distribute recruitment messaging to U.S. audiences, including content intended to inspire acts of violence.”

The humorous and disturbing thing is the US charged a man for 'carrying' a TV channel put out by 'terrorists' at some point despite all of these 'terrorist' sites being readily available to anyone with an internet connection as if we needed to ban or even effectively did ban 'terrorist' content.

"Additionally, it is worth pointing out that many of these streams, including Hezbollah’s, are freely accessible through the broadcasters’ own websites. This includes Al-Manar. "

The reality is we don't need to ban speech even the most abhorrent of speech. Banning speech just undermines democracy and no amount of harm from speech can ever justify undermining fundamental democratic principles that for without you can't seriously argue we even have a democracy.

https://torrentfreak.com/report-links-pirate-iptv-to-hezbollah-tv-calls-for-u-s-site-blocking/

Is democracy so weak as to be unable to tolerate even the tiniest bit of free speech?

"A new report released by the Digital Citizens Alliance warns that pirate IPTV services are giving terrorist organizations a back door into American homes. By highlighting the availability of Hezbollah and Hamas channels via these services, the group reframes piracy as a national security threat, while offering U.S. site-blocking legislation as a potential solution"

This is basically a campaign to increase online censorship in the United States via an extensive site blocking apparatus.

You would think that Trump was bad enough and you'd be pushing back on this kind of authoritarian push, but no, someone's got economic interests that are more important than democracy and freedom.

https://torrentfreak.com/report-links-pirate-iptv-to-hezbollah-tv-calls-for-u-s-site-blocking/

Another crazy California law, but also demonstrating left and right are largely one and the same:

"California Governor Signs Laws Protecting Kids From Risks of Social Media, AI Chatbots"

The new law fines companies $1 million per child if they are found "negligent" of harming children.

Here is one of the crazy parts:

"Yet we've allowed technology to be handed to our children and never asked or expected it to be safe."

Whose doing that? That parents? Who are you to dictate what a parent hands to their child? The government schools? Then stop doing that!

You don't need to ban or put liabilities on companies. You just have to stop handing them money hand over fist every time they market some new fad.

I'm all in favor of teaching kids useful skills, including technical skills, but that doesn't mean you need to hand them a laptop or tablet for reading and arithmetic.

You provide them the technical tools to learn and develop and if the technical tool your handing them undermines the value (chat features, etc) you don't hand them that tool. You revise the tool or require revision before acquisition. You demand to be in control of the technology at one level or another.

I can envision a device for math, something more complex than a calculator, like a purpose designed tablet that isn't online with "worksheets" and detailed steps for solving each and every problem where it wouldn't provide the steps until a student clicked a button that said "I don't remember how to do this, can you help me understand this?" Then provide a new identical problems with different numbers.

I could see this being genuinely useful and speed up learning because students would get more individualized instruction at whatever pace they went.

https://archive.ph/POrkl

This sucks. Consolidated is down and AT&T's cellular network is degraded in at least Keene, New Hampshire, but it appears to be a more significant outage. Internet outage information is so hard to find when the internet is out. The sites that tell you it's out basically tell you what you already know. The ones that might provide slightly more info are down because the provider's infrastructure is down.

"The measures, set to be introduced to the Parliament of Australia this year, will also require AI chatbots, online games and other digital services to take action to protect under-18s from addictive design features.

'This is not about giving government control. It's about giving people control. It's about putting choice back into the hands of Australians online,' said Prime Minister Anthony at a press conference on Tuesday. "

Umm anything related to age that is mandated by law ultimately results in GOVERNMENT mandated IDs or other privacy invasive BULLSHIT.

The people already have control to whatever degree they desire it because there are already non-crappy or at least less crappy options when it comes to social media like Mastodon.

When there is a free market and government hasn't undermined it the people get to vote with their two feet by utilizing whatever provider, service, or home-grown solution/service/product they so choose.

When you add regulation it undermines the free market by putting hurdles in the way to smaller entities and those who IDK may not trust any of the option available in the market by making it difficult to start-up a home-grown solution oneself, like run a Mastodon instance.

Australian politicians don't understand how the free market works (at least when it's largely working as designed):

"Australia is proposing the 'My Feed, My Way' initiative that would force social media platforms to let users over 16 turn off algorithmic recommendations and instead see only posts from people and creators they follow. Platforms that fail to comply could face fines of up to $79 million. CNBC reports: "

Can't you just choose to utilize a different platform? I mean seriously. It's as if we don't have a free market in social media. I get it when we're talking about internet access and various other utilities and so on... but "social media?" ... come on.

Humorous bit of news, so as people are freaking out about job losses from AI the actual statistics are showing better than expected unemployment rate:

"The unemployment rate is just 4.1%, "

This is lower than 90% of the last half century apparently, but also a number for which if it gets much lower is economically harmful.

New Hampshire has had the opposite problem throughout much of the state. This is unemployment numbers below 4%. At any given time you need some amount of unemployment both for employers to find new talent, and employees to switch jobs.

If you ever thought the US had a 2-bit military, like maybe because of Afghanistan, or IDK being unable to take on Iran despite decades of sanctions and a crippled military this has to put the final nail in the coffin:

"Reuters reports that the US Military is disabling ad tracking on devices, to prevent adversaries from buying publicly-available tracking data to assist in targeting troops. Military officials say that they have disabled trackers on a variety of computers and mobile devices, according to letters released on Friday by Sen. Ron Wyden, and following reports that commercially-available tracking data has been used to target troops in the Middle East...."

Is anyone buying the anti-piracy propaganda?

Latest bit of anti-piracy propaganda in the headlines:

"Online Piracy Costs the UK 9,400 Nurses a Year, If Pirates Keep Their Word"

Really? Ya going to claim the UK is losing nurses because people pirate???? The story gets into more detail, but it's just as absurd.

https://torrentfreak.com/online-piracy-costs-the-uk-9400-nurses-a-year-if-pirates-keep-their-word/

@sister_sam Sure, but you have an equal opportunity situation here. Banning AI in your country presumably means you can't identify the vulnerabilities as quickly as an enemy can identify your vulnerabilities in another country that doesn't ban it. Best fix is not ban it and fix the bugs.

I can confirm this with first hand experience:

"The World Now Has More Seniors Than Young People - for the First Time In History"

I'm half joking here, but it does often feel like 90% of the folks who call my company for sales/support are over 70 and 95% are over 40. In practice I'm pretty confident it's more along the lines that the "younger generation" (under 40 crowd) is just way more likely to send an email than make a phone call as it's apparent from email/phone communications the more technically able and those that haven't quite entered the stages of life where you can tell there is a more noticeable steeper mental decline are using it.

Meta executive porn collection "Nearly 20,000 Files"

I'm a bit skeptical, I mean, whose porn collection is that small? Really?

:) lol - this is in relation to a lawsuit by copyright cartel pornographer against Meta for AI use and they are trying to connect an executive's home internet activity to the case.

What they're suggesting is a substantial number of files I'm pretty sure is actually not that "out there" for a lot of guys I bet.

While unrelated I actually am more suspect of cases where law enforcement finds a dozen illegal images. That comes off to me as someone probably having planted evidence. Anyone whose got a "porn collection" probably has far far far far far more than a handful of photographs. 20,000 sounds like a far more believable number for a sex-obsessed male.

@nanook Yea, not everything I say is bat shit crazy, but it often takes rubbing more than two brain cells together to comprehend that I'm putting forth an idea that is a better solution to the problem feared (often a problem that is fictional or almost fictional in nature compared to other more genuine problems or widespread problems).

This is the stupidest fucking thing ever:

"Casar emphasized AI's fast development, writing in a statement, 'In just four years, we have gone from the first version of ChatGPT to AI models so powerful they cannot be properly controlled.' "

You don't need to 'control' the models. It's deployment, or use by individuals that would have liability or consequences.

If one model produces "dangerous" results for a given use case don't use it. If a medical manufacturer produces a product to test for cancer and somehow the AI in it sometimes causes cancer and it does so at a higher rate than curing cancer you hold the manufacturer liable, not ban or regulate the model. That's just dumb.

@Humpleupagus I get the differences between Europe, US (generally speaking), and California distinctions, but I still stand by what I said prior.

I realize I should have VERY low expectations for our politicians and those seeking such positions, but I really wonder sometimes if our politicians are trying to suicide us all or have any grasp of their own lack of power. Yes, you have power WITHIN the United States, but NO, you don't have control of the rest of the world so your "save humanity" by making a law even if the concern is real utterly fails any sane reasonable logic. The negative consequences from doing it anyway for some moral high ground just makes us MORE vulnerable, not less. We should be promoting hackers (of all types, even the 'evil' ones), not discouraging it. A consequence of discouraging and outlawing it undermines the talent and puts your country or your people at a disadvantage relative to those who don't pass said laws.

"Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) are calling for a permanent ban on the development and deployment of artificial superintelligence, citing a series of recent hackings involving 'rogue' models. The bicameral duo announced Thursday they will introduce the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act, which would institute the permanent ban, along with temporarily pausing 'advanced AI development' until federal regulators establish safety standards."