Lou Katz @lou@entropyservice.com

Senate Democrats launch investigation into Jared Kushner's business
https://www.axios.com/2024/06/20/jared-kushner-senate-democrats-investigation?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

Posted into Axios @axios-AxiosNews

Commercial EV chargers are a great example of how capitalism won't get us there..

If a gas car costs ~$0.17/mile, (CA, including gas taxes).

Generally in California a "retail" kWh costs around $0.44, much cheaper for solar during the day.

For a current Nissan Leaf, any charger's kWh price above $0.60 makes it _more_ expensive than gasoline.

I have seen some chargers pushing $1.50-$3.00 per kWh which is, in rural areas literally highway robbery.

Capitalism will not get us there.

In 2001 a fool tried to blow up a jet with a shoe bomb so we've had to take off our shoes at the airport for the last 23 years. In 2006 morons tried to blow up a jet with liquids, so for 18 years we can't bring liquids onto a plane.

But in 2017 a lunatic murdered 60 people in Las Vegas, and that got the bump-stock firearm he used banned for seven whole years until yesterday. #Ammosexuals #guncontrol #Scotus

On Juneteenth remember that human trafficking was legal. Slavery was legal. Jim Crow was legal. US Govt paying reparations to white enslavers who lost their “property” but not to the enslaved who lost their lives, was legal.

Do not let legality be a measure of morality or justice.

And if you need another example, consider that prison slavery still IS legal and the private prison industry is a multi billion dollar industry on the backs of imprisoned enslaved people.

Each day, someone is born that didn’t know the internet classic™ way to keep your hotel room’s blackout curtains together using the pants holder thingy on a hotel clothes hanger

Here's your #juneteenth reminder that slavery is still legal in the United States and codified in the 13th, and while all y'all white people are up in your happy neoliberal vacation feels, the vast majority of people incarcerated in a for-profit system of so-called justice are Black and brown not only due to continued institutional racism but also an FBI documented infiltration of police forces by white suprematists and a GOP goal of running the courts but y'all have a nice day off taking a hike and drinking a latte.

Tom Claburn in El Reg calling #ChatControl what it is: an "attempt to protect children online by disallowing confidential communication." 🔥

https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/18/signal_eu_upload_moderation/

"We need to be very firm with our messaging that there's no such thing as a mild SARS-COV-2 infection. There's no such thing as a SARS-COV-2 infection that does not have prolonged consequences. Until we can fully understand the long-term effects of COVID, the only thing that we can do to protect ourselves, our families and our immune systems in the long-term is to avoid infection."

- Dr. David Putrino, director of rehabilitation innovation at Mount Sinai Health System

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heT5myyBkNA

I would like to point out that *there is no way to fix this*.

I don’t mean it’s difficult, or expensive, or we just haven’t scienced hard enough yet. I mean there is literally no way to make an LLM not do this, or an infinite number of similar mistakes, in the same way that no improvement in ladder technology can help you reach the moon.

You’re asking a slot machine what your most likely bank balance is.
https://circumstances.run/@davidgerard/112639084548848466

Who among us hasn’t blocked our own programs with overzealous firewall protections?

🥸

https://abcnews.go.com/US/statewide-911-outage-reported-massachusetts/story?id=111225490

Nothing more speaks of "safety" than a former CTO of OpenAI founding an "AI safety" company headquartered in Palo Alto and Tel Aviv.

Folks, people are very afraid of "existential risks of AI," you need to give them billions to save us.

No, genocide isn't an "existential risk."

The question isn’t whether Trump or Biden is declining faster: it’s why the US is faced with this choice | Emma Brockes https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/19/donald-trump-joe-biden-us-choice?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

Trump isn’t staying in Milwaukee for the RNC — he’s going to stay in Chicago instead.

Why? Because Trump has a hotel in Chicago.

So when the Secret Service and his political entourage all need hotel rooms, Trump gets the money.

THE ENTIRE THING IS A GRIFT.

Reports of Noam Chomsky's death were, evidently, greatly exaggerated. I assume when it does happen, that Chomsky will want to go wherever Kissinger went, just to give him a piece of his mind.

Once again, automated license plate readers are found to have major cybersecurity flaws that can put people at risk. Law enforcement needs to stop collecting data that it is incapable of protecting. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/06/new-alpr-vulnerabilities-prove-mass-surveillance-public-safety-threat

oh, good, SPD is planning to expand their license plate reader program and contract out the data storage to Axon, who can be subpoena'd by states which have passed anti-trans laws.

you can let the city council know what you think about this decision: https://action.aclu.org/send-message/tell-seattle-not-rush-license-plate-scanners-our-streets-without-protections

You open up a Commodore 64, and the box says "welcome to the world of friendly computing."

You turn on a modern PC, and it immediately threatens your data unless you agree to save your data to *their* cloud service.

That right there is why we talk about vintage computers. Folks need to be reminded of what's possible.

#Commodore64 #VintageComputing

I still can't upload large images to Flickr.

So I opened a support ticket this morning. I got a reply from a human in 15 minutes acknowledging that others have reported similar problems and promising to keep me updated. At no point was I asked to restart my browser, reboot my computer, or turn anything off and on again, nor did they try to gaslight me by claiming no one else has complained. They just acknowledged the problem and promised to fix it.

Remarkable enough to be notable these days.

Everyone makes a big deal about the people who designed and built Voyager 1 because it was supposed to last 4 years and it’s lasted for 47, but all that means is they spent money on reliability that could have been returned to shareholders in a stock buyback.

How did we not recognize “Don’t Be Evil” as the gun on the mantelpiece in Act I?