onfocus

Most of the subreddits have pledged to go private — preventing outside access — for 48 hours, though some, like the 26 million-member community r/videos, have said they’ll remain private indefinitely.

Volunteer labor isn’t an infinite resource. Reddit needs to maintain that resource with an imminent IPO, but it sounds like the current CEO doesn’t think it’s necessary.

See also: this summary by Cyber Yuki (click Show More).

“Treasurer Read and I believe that Fox’s board of directors breached its fiduciary duties by allowing Fox News to broadcast false claims that Dominion and Smartmatic rigged the 2020 presidential election,” said Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum in a statement. “We hope to hold the board accountable and protect the long-term value of Oregon’s investment in Fox Corp.”

In related news, the State of Oregon is in hot water today for investing public servant pension money in known hucksters Fox Corp.

In a press release, the FTC said that "Ring deceived its customers by failing to restrict employees' and contractors' access to its customers' videos, using customer videos to train algorithms, among other purposes, without consent, and failing to implement security safeguards." In one case, an employee "viewed thousands of video recordings belonging to female users of Ring cameras that surveilled intimate spaces in their homes such as their bathrooms or bedrooms," the FTC said.

This is awful and why I try not to buy surveillance devices. It’s difficult not to send data out of your house but I hope not being connected to the Internet becomes a selling point for electronics eventually.

To Chung, the Republicans’ defiance is symptomatic not just of an aversion to reproductive and LGBTQ rights, but of a larger anti-democratic rot in our politics. “There’s no way that the Republican senators can win by actually engaging in our democratic processes, and so it very much appears they’re willing to, basically, burn everything down … I don’t know what winning is when you burn everything down.”

Best summary of the Republican "platform" I’ve seen. They win by threatening and ensuring the existing system fails.

Rather than needing tens of thousands of machines and millions of dollars to train a new model, an existing model can now be customized on a mid-priced laptop in a few hours. This fosters rapid innovation.

Nice summary of how innovation in AI might move out of the largest few companies.

Finally some decisive action you can take locally if you're uncomfortable.

In recent years, the state has witnessed some of the most destructive wildfire seasons in its history. In 2018, the Camp Fire destroyed 11,000 homes and at one point, displaced nearly 50,000 people. In its aftermath, insurance companies saw huge losses, causing premiums to go up and toughening eligibility requirements to get covered.

This seems like something that should be covered more. How can people live in California without insurance or extremely expensive insurance as their options decrease? Maybe California needs to be in the insurance business?

Update: And...CA already is in the insurance business via FAIR Plan.

Coupled with the Writers Guild strike and the arguably reckless pace at which companies are willing to adopt a mostly unproven, experimental, and demonstrably harmful technology, the world seems to be falling headfirst into a labor struggle the likes of which it hasn’t seen in quite a while.

The answers here are to vote for labor-friendly politicians and unionize. Good evergreen advice but also frustratingly vague for a specific looming threat.

1. Mastodon users verify themselves by adding a custom link to their personal site.
2. StreetPass lets you know when you've found one of these links, and adds them to your StreetPass list.

I've been using this browser plug-in for a while now and so far it has detected 16 Mastodon accounts. Today it let me know that Slashdot has an official Mastodon account. Who knew? Anyway, StreetPass is RIYLM.

Indeed, the article does not even bother to inform readers what the Republican demands are. The audience is left to assume that whatever it is Republicans want, Democrats should meet halfway or thereabouts.

This is a good explanation of the artificial debt ceiling media story that blames both sides for political dysfunction when it’s clear Republicans want a broken government.

First, and most importantly, it uses a delegated power from Congress in a way that is explicitly authorized, in contrast to using a Congressional power in a way that is explicitly unauthorized. That side-steps the separation-of-powers fight that the 14th Amendment plan would otherwise involve entirely.

Minting a coin the size of the debt is a clever hack that would stop the Republicans from taking the country hostage and keep the political fight out of the corrupt Supreme Court.

Twitter has long been described, even by its most ardent users, as a hellsite. But under Elon Musk, Twitter has evolved into a platform that is indistinguishable from the wastelands of alternative social-media sites such as Truth Social and Parler. It is now a right-wing social network.

I think it has been since 2016 when they chose not to enforce their terms of service for Trump. The billionaire buyout just brought it to this ultimate state faster.