pluralistic

pluralistic, 9 months ago to random

It's a great time to be an #oligarch! If you have accumulated a great fortune and wish to put whatever great crime lies behind it behind you, there is an army of fixers, lickspittles, thugs, reputation-launderers, procurers, henchmen, and other enablers who have turnkey solutions for laundering your reputation and keeping the unwashed from building a guillotine outside the gates of your compound.

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pluralistic, 1 year ago to ai

#Google's #AIHype Circle: We have to do #Bard because everyone else is doing #AI; everyone else is doing AI because we're doing Bard.

https://doctorow.medium.com/googles-ai-hype-circle-6158804d1299

pluralistic, 8 months ago to random

Your Face Belongs To Us is #KashmirHill's new tell-all history of #ClearviewAI, the creepy facial recognition company whose origins are mired in far-right politics, off-the-books police misconduct, sales to authoritarian states and sleazy one-percenter one-upmanship:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/691288/your-face-belongs-to-us-by-kashmir-hill/

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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/20/steal-your-face/#hoan-ton-that

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pluralistic, 6 months ago to random

How could this happen? Owners of #Chamberlain #MyQ automatic garage door openers just woke up to discover that the company had confiscated valuable features overnight, and that there was nothing they could do about it.

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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain

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pluralistic, 6 months ago to random

Consenting adults

pluralistic, 11 months ago to ai

"Some people are users of #ai but the majority of the population is the subject of AI... This is not a matter of individual choice. Most of the ways that AI interpolates our life makes determinations that shape our access to resources to opportunity are made behind the scenes in ways we probably don’t even know."

• @Mer__edith

https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/22/get-a-clue-says-panel-about-generative-ai-its-being-deployed-as-surveillance-devices/

pluralistic, 5 months ago to OpenAI

Last week's spectacular #OpenAI soap-opera hijacked the attention of millions of normal, productive people and nonsensually crammed them full of the fine details of the debate between #EffectiveAltruism (#doomers) and #EffectiveAccelerationism (AKA e/acc), a genuinely absurd debate that was allegedly at the center of the drama.

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pluralistic, 7 months ago to random

If you own an Alexa, you might enjoy its integration with #IFTTT, an easy scripting environment that lets you create your own little voice-controlled apps, like "start my Roomba" or "close the garage door." If so, tough shit, Amazon just nuked IFTTT for Alexa:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/25/23931463/ifttt-amazon-alexa-applets-ending-support-integration-automation

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/26/hit-with-a-brick/#graceful-failure

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pluralistic, 3 months ago to random

Enshittification describes how platforms go bad, which is also how the internet goes bad, because the internet is made of platforms, which is weird, because platforms are intermediaries and we were promised that the internet would disintermediate the world:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle/#ich-bin-ein-bratapfel

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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/19/crad-kilodney-was-an-outlier/#intermediation

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pluralistic, 1 month ago to random

Corporate crime is notoriously underpoliced and underprosecuted. Mostly, that's because we just choose not to do anything about it. American corporations commit crimes at 20X the rate of real humans, and their crimes are far worse than any crime committed by a human, but they are almost never prosecuted:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/12/no-criminals-no-crimes/#get-out-of-jail-free-card

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pluralistic, 13 days ago (edited 12 days ago) to random

When it comes to AI art (or "art"), it's hard to find a nuanced position that respects creative workers' labor rights, free expression, copyright law's vital exceptions and limitations, and aesthetics.

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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/13/spooky-action-at-a-close-up/#invisible-hand

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pluralistic, 1 month ago to random

Today in "Capitalists Hate Capitalism" news: The Appeal has published the first-ever survey of national prison commissary prices, revealing just how badly the prison profiteer system gouges American's all-time, world-record-beating prison population:

https://theappeal.org/locked-in-priced-out-how-much-prison-commissary-prices/

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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/20/captive-market/#locked-in

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pluralistic, 1 month ago to random

Beware of geeks bearing gifts. When prison-tech companies started offering "free" tablets to America's vast army of prisoners, it set off alarm-bells for prison reform advocates - but not for the law-enforcement agencies that manage the great American carceral enterprise.

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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/02/captive-customers/#guillotine-watch

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pluralistic, 8 months ago to random

When Unity CEO John Riccitiello was CEO of EA in 2011, he proposed a monetization scheme for Battlefield where players would be charged $1 every time they reloaded their gun.

https://mcvuk.com/business-news/pc/when-riccitiello-said-battlefield-players-could-pay-1-per-reload/

h/t @beltsquid

pluralistic, 7 months ago to random

I wrote about the death of tech competition and its relationship to lax antitrust enforcement and regulatory capture for #TheAmericanSystem in #TheAmericanConservative Magazine.

A Murder Story: Whatever Happened to Interoperability?

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/a-murder-story-whatever-happened-to-interoperability/

pluralistic, 7 months ago to random

Being watched sucks. Of all the parenting mistakes I've made, none haunt me more than the times my daughter caught me watching her while she was learning to do something, discovered she was being observed in a vulnerable moment, and abandoned her attempt:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2014/may/09/cybersecurity-begins-with-integrity-not-surveillance

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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/29/ban-surveillance-ads/#sucker-funnel

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pluralistic, 7 months ago to random

"It is not because of the few thousand francs which would have to be spent to put a roof over the third-class carriages or to upholster the third-class seats that some company or other has open carriages with wooden benches. What the company is trying to do is to prevent the passengers who can pay the second class fare from traveling third class; it hits the poor, not because it wants to hurt them, but to frighten the rich.

pluralistic, 9 months ago to random

The crybabies who freak out about The Communist Manifesto appearing on university curriculum clearly never read it - chapter one is basically a long hymn to capitalism's flexibility and inventiveness, its ability to change form and adapt itself to everything the world throws at it and come out on top:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007

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pluralistic, 6 months ago to random

Consent theater

pluralistic, 1 month ago to random

This is huge: yesterday, the FTC finalized a rule banning noncompete agreements for every American worker. That means that the person working the register at a Wendy's can switch to the fry-trap at McD's for an extra $0.25/hour, without their boss suing them:

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/04/ftc-announces-rule-banning-noncompetes

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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/25/capri-v-tapestry/#aiming-at-dollars-not-men

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pluralistic, 6 months ago to random

The most consistent bright spot in the dark swirl of US politics is the competence of the Biden Administration's progressive enforcers: people like #RohitChopra, #JonathanKanter and #LinaKhan, who keep demonstrating just how far a good administrator can go. Anyone can have a vision, but knowing how to execute is the difference between hot air and real change:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/23/getting-stuff-done/#praxis

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pluralistic, 9 months ago to random

Burbank's Dark Delicacies bookstore are comrades #SAGAFTRAstrong #wgastrong

pluralistic, 6 months ago to random

There is only one planet in the known universe capable of sustaining human life, and it is rapidly becoming uninhabitable by humans. Clearly, this warrants bold action - but which bold action should we take?

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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/31/carbon-upsets/#big-tradeoff

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pluralistic, 6 months ago to random

Today's threads (a thread)

Inside: A media literacy handbook for Israel-Gaza; and more!

Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/28/fog-o-war/

#Pluralistic

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pluralistic, 9 months ago to random

Well this is fucking clever - hide a malicious powershell script inside a license file, assuming (correctly) that no one EVER looks inside a license file. #DEFCON31 (from Andrew Brandt' War Stories presentation)