Notices by Lauren Weinstein (lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org), page 3

Deep sense of outrage and betrayal': House Democrats react to Schumer announcement

MAGA Schumer.

https://www.npr.org/2025/03/13/nx-s1-5327600/house-democrats-outrage-spending

BREAKING: Bluesky apparently planning to provide user data for AI training.

@hedders Point is, this is just fascist retaliation against Canada, which has always had a special relationship with the U.S., different from the U.S.' former oppressive British masters.

BREAKING: Trump to require Canadians visiting U.S. for 30 days or more to be fingerprinted like criminals.

The way I usually find out that Googlers I know have been fired is when their @google.com addresses suddenly start bouncing. #Google is VERY efficient at shutting those down within milliseconds of flushing loyal employees down the john.

Likely discussion at #Google:

"Gemini has ordered us to provide it with more money to burn. We need to cut out customer support teams by 75% immediately."

"Our ... what?"

Report shows AI search and AI chatbots are destroying the sites they feed on, with abysmal click-through rates (91% to 96% fewer than
traditional search)

As AI scraping surges, AI search traffic fails to follow: Report

https://searchengineland.com/ai-scraping-ai-search-traffic-report-453160

@mark As we know, the G search ranking algorithms are ... complex. However, my sense is that it would be a mistake at this time to overthink what's going on. It's obvious that AI results (whether "Overviews" or in some other form, and largely irrespective of how inaccurate they are in full or part) are disincentivizing users en masse from clicking beyond the AI answer. This is reality, not merely perception, and this reality is going to affect the regulatory view of Google and other firms in major ways going forward, since Google et al. are increasingly being viewed as essentially website vampires.

The tariffs per se would be awful and globally damaging, but what's so much worse is the utter incompetency, sudden changes, and obvious lack of planning in this administration. Markets and the broader economies can't handle this kind of jerking around without collapsing into recession, one way or another.

The Tesla situation is really fascinating from both a microeconomic and macroeconomic standpoint. Generally, the assumption in most economic analysis is that purchase/sales decisions are based on factors mostly intrinsic to the brand and item. Celebrity endorsements can change those curves somewhat -- sometimes significantly improving them. But it is rare (in my experience, anyway) to see a precipitous decline in a major item (like a car or truck) that is almost entirely tied to the perceived personality and personal actions of a CEO. I can't offhand think of any other examples that approximate this situation.

No reports so far of significant damage from the new quake. Another "reminder" quake. Sort of like what Pompeii used to get.

Years ago, I publicly stated that I would not drive a Tesla even if one was offered to me for free. Though I do not claim to have predicted the transition of Musk from techo-hypster to fascist, this does remain one of my more prescient statements.

Report: Federal agencies may be preparing to using blockchain and cryptocurrencies to pay grants and more, putting billions of dollars
at potential risk

U.S. Housing Agency Considers Launching Crypto Experiment

https://gizmodo.com/u-s-housing-agency-considers-launching-crypto-experiment-2000573596

#Google and #Amazon #AI Say Hitler's Mein Kampf Is 'a True Work of Art'

Fascist is as fascist does. -L

https://www.404media.co/google-amazon-ai-search-mein-kampf-reviews/

@dalias Yeah, the thought of all the old firmware that would be screwed up by this makes me very unenthusiastic about changes at this point.

Trump signs executive order establishing cryptocurrency reserve, but for now apparently only using coins currently held by the government

As I understand it, this "reserve" is composed of cryptocurrency seized by the government, and while it establishes a study regarding future purchases that "do not cost taxpayers", it does not immediately mandate that these take place. So this could be a lot worse.

Trump unenthusiastic about changes to daylight savings time right now

Asked about ending daylight savings time (or making it permanent) Trump acknowledged the differences in opinion on which way to go, and suggests this isn't on the top of his list for now. I endorse this position.

The day #Google defaults to its crap-laden, misinformation-pushing, utterly untrustworthy, error enveloped AI Overviews rather than links to actual sites, is the day I stop using Google Search entirely.

Trump has now spent more than half the weekends since his inauguration back at Mar-a-Lago, at immense expense to U.S. taxpayers and Florida law enforcement.

The fastest way to get me to thumbs-down and abort a #YouTube video is to use a synthesized/AI voice. I probably am not detecting them at 100% accuracy now -- obviously there's a sampling bias issue in play -- but my sense is that the vast majority of them are still detectable within a few seconds, at least for now. Some others take a little longer, but eventually screw up with some bizarre pacing or pronunciation that exposes them as a dirt stupid AI piece of crap.