Lou Katz @lou@entropyservice.com

When the company calls their home appliances "smart", what I hear is:

- they spent money on features I don't care about
- those features will be worse than standalone devices but will drive them out of market (looking at you TVs)
- the appliance is more likely to break
- my data is likely being sold to advertisers
- when the company loses interest in it and cut support, I will need to buy a new device

So no, I don't want "smart" home appliances.

When CHP was originally confronted about their lack of compliance with #AB481, the state's #military equipment transparency law, they initially said they aren't subject to state law. Now they say they are "working on it". https://lapublicpress.org/2024/08/chp-violating-state-law-equipment-ab481/

The trend of building surveillance into all new smart TVs is "incredibly invasive and little understood,” EFF’s Jacob Hoffman-Andrews told @arstechnica. "Nobody wants a snooping and snitching television, but lately that's all you can buy.” https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/08/tv-industrys-ads-tracking-obsession-is-turning-your-living-room-into-a-store/

Expecting data brokers to care about securing the data they so casually collect, buy, collate and otherwise acquire is pointless. None of them really do, and almost every breach involving a data broker shows this. By definition, their businesses largely rely on collecting records that they already view as public and that this entitles them to collect, resell, etc said data. If that is the fundamental organizing idea of your business model, how much are you going to care about protecting it from mass theft?

Fantastic! Now “putsch" will enter the far right lexicon and join other words they don't actually know the meaning of -- right along with "Marxist" and "commie.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/17/opinion/election-dnc-convention.html

Immigrants take the jobs Americans don't want, like being married to Trump and Vance.

(Edit: Usha Vance was born in San Diego. Sorry.)

I'm just a girl, standing in front of Mastodon, begging its users to stop giving me advice I have not explicitly asked for.

@teajaygrey @brouhaha If the battery loses power the smog sensors lose state. The process for re-generating it is somewhat complex for our Ford F250, you drive 50 miles at highway speed, 50 miles doing stop and go, and I think another 50 miles accelerating to highway speed and then slowing down. The manual describes it, and it is a PITA. But until you do the ECU will say "INCOMPLETE". We've got a bluetooth attached OBDII device so we can read the sensors on our phone but sheesh.

It occurs to me that in my entire life I don't think I've ever heard an adult male publicly claim that he was a better looking person than a particular adult female. Until Trump yesterday. But of course, he isn't actually an adult male by any reasonable standards.

“When you mention Jeffrey Epstein, sir, are you referring to the friend of Donald Trump who entertained him at parties, flew him on his jet, and procured young girls for him?” https://www.threads.net/@aaron.rupar/post/C-0EKzwgbDN

After hearing about Eric Schmidt's guest lecture in an AI class, I looked up the transcript, and yes he really did say that if a Silicon Valley entrepreneur were to "illegally steal everybody's music" they would just "hire a whole bunch of lawyers to go clean the mess up." Then I was curious and looked up the syllabus for the course and based on the topic schedule, the most explicit ethics topic seemed to be "opportunities and risks" for which the guest speaker was... Eric Schmidt. 😕

Advertising should be viewed through the same lens as code injection is in computer security (when an attacker gets a computer system to run a program that it actually shouldn’t and that usually benefits the attacker).

The point of an advertisement is literally to inject the idea of a need into your mind, a need that you didn’t already have before (“You do actually need a new car.”), or a more specific version of an existing need (“You’re need food? You should really eat this!”).

It’s an attack on the integrity of your very being and it should be defended against.

'You declared bankruptcy repeatedly': Experts rip Trump’s 'excellent plan to ruin our economy' https://www.alternet.org/trump-pennsylvania-rally/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

@pluralistic
Some explanations in an article published yesterday:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/17/hack-the-planet/#how-about-a-nice-game-of-chess

Basically, YT twiddles the algorithm to only show what is useful to their business. They can lower your rating. "You work for weeks or months, spend thousands of dollars to make a video, then the algorithm decides that no one – not your own subscribers, not searchers who type in the exact name of your video – will see it."

2/3

Roughly 2/3 of the clean energy projects from the Inflation Reduction Act have gone to GOP congressional districts.

Even though every Republican in Congress opposed the legislation, that hasn't stopped many from celebrating its impact in their districts.

Let that sink in.

Trump today declared that he's "a better looking person than Kamala." Does he mean in a dress? Better check with JD!

@pluralistic

And even if you buy the name brand ink cartridges, if you don't buy them often enough, they lock you out of your printer.

My Epson printer claims that it can't recognize the EPSON cyan, magenta & yellow ink cartridges that are in it. They're the same cartridges that have always been in it. I just don't replace them very often, because we rarely print in color.

So... I have to replace them, even though they're not empty, because the printer won't work until I do.

This week convicted felon Donald Trump moved to delay his sentencing until after the election. Remember, he's not running for president as much as he's running from the law.