Lou Katz @lou@entropyservice.com

I'll wait for the experts to weigh in on this, but it's hard to keep trusting Mozilla when it buys an advertising company that claims -- contrary to essentially all available history of the genre -- to protect user privacy.

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-anonym-raising-the-bar-for-privacy-preserving-digital-advertising/

I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm saying that I have reason to doubt this promise.

I would hate to abandon Firefox, and would hope that Ublock Origin and other plugins will keep working.

But this is, at best, a worrisome development.

The artist Edward Hopper lived and had his studio on Washington Square in an NYU-owned apartment, from which, despite his considerable fame, the university persistently tried to evict him.

Once he died, the University preserved the apartment as "The Edward Hopper Studio".

This story encapsulates most of what you need to know about university politics, NYC real estate, and the regard society has for actual working artists.

The user experience of the modern web is just so wonderful.

I mean, I'm so glad these ads are targeted, because I've never had a drink in my life and the guys in these photos have me seriously considering stopping drinking.

@rbreich The embarrassing thing about this is how cheap it is. For billionaires this is shake out the couch money.

Note: the debate isn't just over "merit and luck." The third possibility is crime: the share of the propertied classes' wealth that results either from outright expropriation and enclosure, or from unearned economic rents on artificial property rights and artificial scarcities enforceable only by state violence. @pluralistic
https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/17/lovilee-jubilee/

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

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