Lou Katz @lou@entropyservice.com

Trump is unfit.
Trump is unwell.
Trump is unstable.
Trump is unhinged.
Trump is unethical.
Trump is unqualified.
Trump is unaccountable.

Trump is UNWORTHY of ANY office — let alone the presidency.

We Put 7 Uber Drivers in One Room. What We Found Will Shock You.

We put 7 Uber & Lyft drivers in one room and had them open their apps.

We found Uber paying different drivers different amounts for the same ride. Lyft too.

It’s proof corporations are using secret algorithms to pay workers less. And all of our jobs could be next.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEXJmNj6SPk

I know I need to ignore the polls and pundits, but that fact that this race is even marginally close highlights that there is a cancer eating away at the heart of America.

The latest Peter Baker “news analysis” brings into sharp focus how little the Times cares anymore whether Trump lies. They mention the propensity for “falsehoods” (of course the word “lies” is off limits), but the lying is just considered a foible, on a par with mixing up names.

There was a time when the press would be OUTRAGED by a politician caught lying. They destroyed Al Gore for exaggerating his role in the internet. Trump has brought that time to an end. https://press.coop/@nytimes/113109369523641147

"By introducing chatbots that are known to hallucinate, confuse jokes for facts, or randomly add incorrect information, police tech like #DraftOne could be used to legitimize wrongful arrests, reinforce police suspicions, mislead courts, or even cover up police abuse". https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/08/chatbots-offer-cops-the-ultimate-out-to-spin-police-reports-expert-says/

Broadly speaking, the role of an establishment economist is to come up with new ways of saying, "actually, your boss is right." In other words, the world we're living in is the best possible world, and the fact that you got contact burns from collapsing on the scorching sidewalk outside of the grocery store where you couldn't afford your weekly shopping is unfortunate, but unavoidable.

1/

This year IETF appointed a "Security Area Director" whose August 2024 conflict-of-interest filing lists NSA as a source of income: https://www.ietf.org/about/groups/iesg/iesg-coi-policy/ Profile says retired from NSA "with 37+ years of service in Dec 2023", still "working as a Stand-by Active Reservist at NSA".

Forget Hollywood drama. Henry and Minh Chen are business owners in real life. They own a jewelry store. They made a legitimate purchase via cash. They mailed the cash to the seller via FedEx, because they could insure the package.

The money never arrived at the seller.🤔

Because police in Indiana trained dogs to sniff for money instead of drugs. They then have the dogs sniff all the packages that go through the FedEx depot, and just... steal any cash that the dogs find🤡

https://www.indystar.com/story/opinion/2024/08/13/marion-county-asset-forfeiture-treats-cash-transfers-as-crimes/74777122007/

Remember that time when Roosevelt told Churchill, he was going to send weapons, so the UK could beat the Nazis, but he just could not allow the use of the long range weapons inside Germany?

Neither do I.

#WakeUpBiden

Twice in the past month I've purchased Samsung 500GB Evo 870 SATA SSDs at Best Buy for $54 to upgrade old computers. I bought another one there today, and didn't realize until payment that the price at Best Buy is now $85. Not such a great deal. I swapped for a 1TB for $99.
The 500GB can still be found from other online stores for $54.

An interstitial page popped up upon login to https://microcenter.com/, demanding that I provide my mobile phone number. Skipping this step was not an option. I don't give my phone number to sites that demand it, so I contacted their customer service via chat and asked them to delete my account. They asked for the email address associated with the account and then deleted the account without first sending me email to confirm that I'm the legitimate owner of the address. #smdh
#ChangeOfAddress
🧵

Reposting a link to my blog about role models from a few years ago. It is as relevant as ever. Things aren't improving, and the tech bros (ever hear the term "tech sis"?) rise to ever greater, unstoppable power and influence.

https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-power-of-role-models.html

This is absolutely maddening to me!

So I have struggled to find USB-C to USB-C cables for some months now and I assumed, when I cleaned the office today, that the missing cables would reveal themselves, but this did not happen and so now I am developing a theory that the stronger cables have actually been eating the weaker ones, so as to absorb their powers

Seriously though: I want (okay, demand) a version of Firefox with the "AI chatbot" functionality removed. Not disabled. Removed. I want all code which is specifically designed to connect to OpenAI removed from my computer completely. I do not care if the vampires have promised not to suck my blood. I do not want the vampires in my house in the first place.

https://mk.nyaa.place/notes/9xvolkux40ok0n1m

#Harvard authorities earnestly speculating about whether a mezzuzah was torn from a dormitory doorpost or whether it fell or detached itself and walked three doors down before laying itself gently on the floor.

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/9/4/hupd-investigating-mezuzah-incident/

> #Microsoft confirms that #Windows 11 Recall #AI is not optional — a glitch made it appear so in the Windows 11 24H2 KB5041865 update
https://www.tomshardware.com/software/windows/microsoft-confirms-that-windows-11-recall-ai-is-not-optional-a-glitch-made-it-appear-so-in-the-windows-11-24h2-kb5041865-update

But don't worry, the company that is unable to correctly implement a toggle switch assures us that they definitely implemented this new immensely complex piece of technology nobody asked for directly in the operating system in a way that is secure and under no circumstances puts anyone in danger in ways security researchers said it will.

Also
- they get bonus points for the "Please enter your full name." when there's a é in your name. Stéphanie is my full (first) name.
2024, time to start accepting special characters in your forms?
- no field is marked as mandatory, but they all are, so you need to guess that you need to fill them all and that the save is disabled

Gosh, next person who tells me "UX is common sense" gets 2h of me ranting about forms in 2024.

As a teenager in Neustrelitz (East Germany), I painted small stones purple and left them all over town. Did it for years. It drove the police and Stasi nuts. It meant nothing. It just felt good to do something they couldn't control or understand.