This just in: Author/professor/CEO whose books/classes/company are about manipulative technologies… voluntarily installs manipulative technologies.

We’re gonna need something like C2PA before the next election.

Not sure anyone actually read the article, cuz yall are talkin about apps vs. web sites, and data collection. Two points which are briefly covered, but ultimately shrugged off in favor of the larger thesis:

Smartphones … meant [companies] could use their apps to off-load effort. … In other words, apps became bureaucratized. What started as a source of fun, efficiency, and convenience became enmeshed in daily life. Now it seems like every ordinary activity has been turned into an app, while the benefit of those apps has diminished.

I’d like to think that this hellscape is a temporary one. As the number of apps multiplies beyond all logic or utility, won’t people start resisting them? And if platform owners such as Apple ratchet up their privacy restrictions, won’t businesses adjust? Don’t count on it. Our app-ocalypse is much too far along already. Every crevice of contemporary life has been colonized. At every branch in your life, and with each new responsibility, apps will keep sprouting from your phone. You can’t escape them. You won’t escape them, not even as you die, because—of course—there’s an app for that too.

It’s not simply the code delivery mechanism, and it’s not whether the data exchange is safe from prying eyes… It’s the fact that a digital UX has invaded every aspect of human interaction, including mourning.

✅ Autonomous weaponry

✅ Autonomous biofuel harvesting

❓ Polyphasic Entangled Waveforms

Where’s Elisabet Sobeck when you need her?

https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/elections-verify/what-happens-if-someone-votes-early-but-dies-before-election-day/536-072041c7-5bb0-4e54-8418-5e98802c4dc1

Varies by state. Georgia is one of several states without a clear rule. At any rate, it seems to be constrained by practicality. If they already opened the envelope to count it, it’s hard to undo it.

Firearms play a critical role in suicide deaths, being used in over 50% of all suicides in 2022. The availability and lethality of firearms contribute significantly to the high suicide rates, particularly among men. Recent data shows that increases in firearm suicides are driving the overall rise in suicide deaths, with 2022 recording the highest number of gun-related suicides on record. This underscores the importance of addressing firearm access as part of suicide prevention strategies.

Reminder that most suicide attempts are in response to an acute crisis, like an argument with a loved one, and go from initial idea to action in less than 30 minutes.

Survivors report perceived lethality of firearms being a primary factor in their decision.

Access to lethal means can make all the difference between a bad day and a last day.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter

Daily reminder that copyright isn’t the only conceivable weapon we can wield against AI.

Anticompetitive business practices, labor law, privacy, likeness rights. There are plenty of angles to attack from.

Most importantly, we need strong unions. However we model AI regulation, we will still want some ability to grant training rights. But it can’t be a boilerplate part of an employment/contracting agreement. That’s the kind of thing unions are made to handle.

Fake lawyers, fake reviews, and several pyramid schemes. Solid takedowns, FTC!

That is fantastic! I feel like I’m there.

His would be gold though

I’ll believe it when GN says it.

Maybe the COPS theme song, cuz I think it did a lot to popularize the show and that was some mega-potent copaganda that did long-term damage.

Maybe Horst-Wessel-Lied, for similar reasons.

Got bills to pay and mouths to feed, there ain’t no

thin in this world for free. No I can’t slow down, I can’t hold back, though you know I wish I could. There ain’t no rest for the wicked… til we close our eyes for good.

It’s Cory Doctorow’s pet name for it. Like most terms he comes up with, it’s almost too brutally honest to say in polite company.

Whatever the hell candy corn is.

(Everyone seems to be taking the opposite message from my original post, so I guess I’ll just replace it.)

Here is a pretty good video about the original incident when it happened, responding to some of the criticism of the soup-throwers by comparing their demonstration to the self-immolation of Wynn Bruce, in terms of media attention, cost, and damage:

https://youtu.be/5COJyheLHSE

(I had not heard of Wynn Bruce before the video, so I assumed nobody else had either. Wrong assumption on Lemmy, I guess.)

CNN has the youngest audience among cable news networks. Median age of 67.

He’s talking about being able to continue the genocide.

“3rd-party servers”

Okay, but what 3rd party? Pretendo Online, I hope. That project deserves some love.

There’s this podcast I used to enjoy (I still enjoy it, but they stopped making new episodes) called Build For Tomorrow (previously known as The Pessimists Archive).

It’s all about times in the past where people have freaked out about stuff changing but it all turned out okay.

After having listened to every single episode — some multiple times — I’ve got this sinking feeling that just mocking the worries of the past misses a few important things.

1. The paradox of risk management. If you have a valid concern, and we collectively do something to respond to it and prevent the damage, it ends up looking as if you were worried over nothing.
2. Even for inventions that are, overall, beneficial, they can still bring new bad things with them. You can acknowledge both parts at once. When you invent trains, you also invent train crashes. When you invent electricity, you also invent electrocution. That doesn’t mean you need to reject the whole idea, but you need to respond to the new problems.
3. There are plenty of cases where we have unleashed horrors onto the world while mocking the objections of the pessimists. Lead, PFAS, CFCs, radium paint, etc.

I’m not so sure that the concerns about AI “killing culture” actually are as overblown as the worry about cursive, or record players, or whatever. The closest comparison we have is probably the printing press. And things got so weird with that so quickly that the government claimed a monopoly on it. This could actually be a problem.