Days after FTX collapsed, Kelsey Piper published an article containing DMs with Bankman-Fried where he discussed how his "ethics stuff" was mostly a front, and denigrated regulators.
We now know he tried to get her to take down the article shortly after it published. He wrote: "didn't mean those to all be on the record. any chance you could take it down?"
It is tempting to dismiss that manifesto as incoherent and self-serving, but it is important to remember that this it is also a list of beliefs the founders of tech companies will need to recite if they want investment money from that guy and his friends.
@evacide I know Marc isn't stupid, but I can't tell how willful his ignorance is.
People aren't afraid of technology, they're afraid of power, and that technology has always been wielded by the powerful to further secure their power.
Silicon Valley brought power to some people who didn't have it previously, but they wield it in the same ways; entrenching their own control and wealth while offering back the bare minimum they're forced to to those whom they took from to secure their power.
@luis_in_brief@cstross FWIW, the Mona Lisa wasn't really that famous a painting before the Media, in real time, sensationalized the story of three guys randomly stealing it in 1911.
The latest step in the “VC Qanon” radicalization process, for those who haven’t been following along, is adding their allegiance to the extremist “e/acc” religion to their names on social media, just as they did with “.ETH” when that was in vogue — except this one’s an explicitly eugenicist agenda.
@anildash You know a "movement" like this is a mess when the Effective Altruists over at LessWrong have a blog post where they basically just say "we have no idea what the fuck these e/acc people are talking about."
I appreciate that infosec Twitter moved pretty effectively over to Mastodon, but woo boy is this not the place to go when I want useful updates when a war breaks out.
From the "I'd like to go back to bed now please" dept:
An arrest on gun possession charges in Queens, New York, in November 2021 has led the Federal Bureau of Investigation to a pedophilic, Satanist extortion cult that has victimized dozens if not hundreds of minors, according to law enforcement documents, court records and sources with knowledge of the investigation.
@briankrebs I mean, I'm extremely glad these people have been stopped, but I also extremely don't need an actual Cult of Satanist Pedophiles to be a real thing that Alex Jones is definitely going to be talking about for the next several years now, given that his previously fictional boogeyman is now real.
@RickiTarr The original Korean version of Old Boy.
It is a deeply intense movie, incredible cinematography, and I suspect it had a lot to say about Korean culture, though I wasn't as up on Korean media when I watched it, and I really have no desire to watch it again (the denouement is really, really rough), so I don't know if I'll ever fully appreciate everything it was doing.
These absurd "abortion trafficking" laws are not meant to be 100% enforceable. They are meant to create fear and confusion around aiding abortion-seekers, leaving them isolated and alone.
@evacide I suspect they're also intended to make people of color nervous, since they're always subject to deeper scrutiny by the sorts of Whites who go in for this shit.
Good morning to NO ONE except MY GODDAMNED MAN Joseph Robinette Biden who successfully took on the thieves at big pharma and FORCED THEM to negotiate the prices of 10 drugs through Medicare.
The media doesn’t care but I do. You’re like Robocop but much slower.
@briannawu I don't think I'll ever not be frustrated that Joe was the nominee in 2020, but I'll be damned if the man hasn't managed to deliver in ways I didn't think he could.
It’s fucking wild how much more attention a person of South Asian descent gets in politics for being part of the tiny anti-Black group that embraces Republican fascism instead of, say, being the actual serving Vice President of the United States. (Or any of the millions of others who don’t buy into the farce of respectability and the model minority myth.) For anyone asking, I’m the official spokesperson for South Asian people in America, and we don’t fuck with Vivek or “Nikki”.
@anildash Having moved to Louisiana when "Bobby" Jindal was still Governor, this is just the same thing Louisiana saw with him, just turned up further as the general racialized hate has become more acceptable in the GOP.
White Supremacists love Brown People who agree with them and will use them to 'demonstrate' how right their views are because look, even this Brown Person agrees.
They don't actually love this person, of course, and will absolutely eventually throw them into the grinder.
PSA for American SFF fans wondering what the fuss is about over The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction publishing a story by David A. Riley just because he's a member of an obscure British political group called the National Front:
The NF in the 1970s was the British Nazi Party. This guy was a parliamentary candidate for the NF. Your reaction to F&SF's decision should be the same as if they platformed the leaders of Atomwaffen or the Proud Boys.
@aral@TomSwirly@johnbierce@cstross Not saying it isn't. My work deals primarily with Privacy and Security and enabling users to protect their data from Google. The GDPR, in particular, is generally good law.
The Right to be Forgotten is a much more complex issue, especially to the extent to which it allows some people to suppress information about themselves that may be in the Public Interest.
@aral@TomSwirly@johnbierce@cstross That is the rub. If it's viewed as more expensive to defend the public interest than to comply with whatever takedown, companies will choose compliance almost all the time.
And people with resources will get more compliance because they can make more trouble than normal people.