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13 Jun 20:57

An anti-porn app put him in jail and his family under surveillance

by WIRED
Illustration showing a courthouse and surveillance icons

Enlarge (credit: Anjali Nair; Getty Images)

On a Wednesday morning in May, Hannah got a call from her lawyer—there was a warrant out for her husband’s arrest. Her thoughts went straight to her kids. They were going to come home from school and their father would be gone. “It burned me,” Hannah says, her voice breaking. “He hasn’t done anything to get his bond revoked, and they couldn’t prove he had.”

Hannah’s husband is now awaiting trial in jail, in part because of an anti-pornography app called Covenant Eyes. The company explicitly says the app is not meant for use in criminal proceedings, but the probation department in Indiana’s Monroe County has been using it for the past month to surveil not only Hannah’s husband but also the devices of everyone in their family. To protect their privacy, WIRED is not disclosing their surname or the names of individual family members. Hannah agreed to use her nickname.

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13 Jun 20:54

IMPRESSIVE: SpaceX Hires 14-Year-Old Prodigy Who Dismisses Notion Of ‘Missing Out On Childhood.’ “I

by Stephen Green
Gpscruise

he makes an AI social media fraud detector. Then Space? No way he will be happy.

IMPRESSIVE: SpaceX Hires 14-Year-Old Prodigy Who Dismisses Notion Of ‘Missing Out On Childhood.’ “I will be joining the coolest company on the planet as a software engineer on the Starlink engineering team. One of the rare companies that did not use my age as an arbitrary and outdated proxy for maturity and ability.”

13 Jun 19:35

INNOVATION: Russia Taps Power Of Tech Startups For New Kamikaze Drones, Aiming For ‘Cruise Missile

by Stephen Green
Gpscruise

next wave: drones which zig zag all over the sky to avoid being shot down.

13 Jun 14:28

MEGACHURCH PASTOR RICK WARREN GOES SCORCHED EARTH IN EFFORT TO PUSH SOUTHERN BAPTISTS DOWN THE SLIPP

by Ed Driscoll
Gpscruise

in counseling, there is a term called, "step up, step back", meaning: left to nature, women will step up and men will step back, not wanting to compete with women. I have a friend-girl who is a boy scout leader. I wish she would find a man to do the job, but alas she won't. Everyone in her troop gets Eagle....

MEGACHURCH PASTOR RICK WARREN GOES SCORCHED EARTH IN EFFORT TO PUSH SOUTHERN BAPTISTS DOWN THE SLIPPERY WOKE SLOPE:

Southern Baptists are meeting in New Orleans for their annual convention this week. Megachurch Pastor Rick Warren, author of the bestselling book The Purpose-Driven Life, is waging war with the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), hoping to push the denomination to the left on the issue of female pastors.

Warren, now “retired” but still listed as the Founding Pastor on Saddleback Church’s website, is pressuring the SBC to allow female pastors, contrary to clear biblical teaching that pastoral roles are reserved for men.

Warren has been all over Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube this past week, viciously attacking his opponents (while calling for love and reconciliation). He’s become increasingly combative, calling his opponents “angry fundamentalists,” “angry fighters,” and “legalist showmen.” (I’ll leave it up to readers to determine who’s playing the role of “showman” in this debate.)

Warren also issued a veiled threat to leaders who oppose him. During a recent podcast with Christianity Today Editor-in-Chief Russell Moore, he warned, “We [Saddleback churches] don’t need the Southern Baptist Convention. They need the 6,000 purpose-driven churches that are in the Southern Baptist Convention in our fellowship, but we don’t need the Convention. It would be for the benefit of others, not for us.” In other words, if he doesn’t get his way on liberalizing the doctrine of the SBC, he’ll take his churches and go home.

Going woke is simply exchanging one religion for another.

13 Jun 13:19

Tony Awards Audience Applauds After Presenter Calls DeSantis a KKK ‘Grand Wizard’

by Mary Chastain

"...while I am certain that the current grand wizard -- I'm sorry, excuse me -- governor of my home state of Florida will be changing..."

The post Tony Awards Audience Applauds After Presenter Calls DeSantis a KKK ‘Grand Wizard’ first appeared on Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion.
12 Jun 13:35

Musk on path to turn Twitter into the next MySpace or Yahoo, co-founder suggests

by Ashley Belanger
Gpscruise

Don't you love that Musk started as a Car visionary, just like Henry Ford...

Ev Williams, Twitter co-founder, delivers remarks at Web Summit in Altice Arena on November 8, 2018, in Lisbon, Portugal.

Enlarge / Ev Williams, Twitter co-founder, delivers remarks at Web Summit in Altice Arena on November 8, 2018, in Lisbon, Portugal. (credit: Horacio Villalobos / Contributor | Corbis News)

Twitter co-founder Evan "Ev" Williams has broken his silence and joined other co-founders in expressing his dismay at how Elon Musk is running the platform.

In his first public remarks on Musk's leadership since Musk's Twitter takeover, Williams told Bloomberg's "The Circuit" yesterday that after Musk's purchase went through, he felt "sad."

Ever since, he hasn't been encouraged by developments at Twitter. The company's ongoing financial struggles include most recently recording a five-week period from April to May, where its advertising revenue dropped by 59 percent, compared to ad revenue at the same time last year.

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09 Jun 14:35

Do self-driving cars have a future?

by Jeremy Lott
Gpscruise

these cars should add an infrared beacon out the back bumper to allow compliant following-cars to hone in on and tailgate safely. The leading car could signal out 1. when he lets off the gas pedal, 2) braking strength. Essentially promoting self-driving-auto-trains.

Waymo Robotaxi Expansion
FILE - A Waymo driverless taxi drives on the street during a test ride in San Francisco, on Feb. 15, 2023. Self-driving car pioneer Waymo announced Thursday, May 4, that its robotaxis will start to pick up more volunteers for testing the autonomous vehicles traversing the more challenging conditions in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Terry Chea, File) Terry Chea/AP

Do self-driving cars have a future?

Jeremy Lott
Video Embed

The death of self-driving vehicles has been greatly exaggerated. That was the message of two experts, on the subjects of artificial intelligence and transportation, who recently weighed in on the matter.

“I think the pendulum of public opinion has now swung too far in the pessimistic direction,” said Timothy Lee, author of the newsletter Understanding AI. “Self-driving technology has steadily improved over the last few years, and there’s every reason to expect that progress to continue.”

SENATE AIMS TO NAVIGATE CONFLICT BETWEEN COPYRIGHT AND TRAINING AI 

Lee pointed out that companies Waymo, created by Google, and startup Cruise, principally owned by General Motors, “have continued to plug away at the problem.” These two firms presumably “don’t believe self-driving technology is ‘decades away’ because they’re already testing it in Phoenix and San Francisco,” Lee wrote. He was countering recent news reports that would suggest otherwise.

Money is one problem. After many confident predictions in the last decade that such vehicles would be the wave of the future, most of the investment that has gone into self-driving, or autonomous, vehicles has not seen good returns. Uber and Lyft both abandoned their AV projects. Ford and Volkswagen closed a joint venture.

Another unanticipated problem may be congestion, which AVs had been predicted to make better. A study released in May by the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Computer Science determined that the few driverless cars currently on the road could be making congestion slightly worse, not better, because computers don’t pick up on the social cues that drivers do to determine when to yield.

Public opinion is another hurdle. A survey released in March by AAA found that things are seemingly only getting worse. “This year, there was a major increase in drivers who are afraid, rising to 68% as compared to 55% in 2022,” the news release accompanying the survey said. “This is a 13% jump from last year’s survey and the biggest increase since 2020.”

There is also added press scrutiny when things go wrong with AVs. For instance, a Waymo taxi hit and killed a dog in San Francisco in May. “We send our sincere condolences to the dog’s owner,” a Waymo spokesperson told the Guardian, one of the many news outlets around the world that covered an occurrence that is commonplace, though awful, among the world’s 1.4 billion licensed drivers of nonautonomous vehicles.

Federal and local red tape can be another problem. For instance, Fairfax County, Virginia, recently conducted a two-year experiment with a self-driving “Relay” electric shuttle in the Mosaic shopping district. It performed as hoped for over 350 trips but was recently taken off the route.

Virginia officials say the AV “Relay” shuttle was a success but have not committed to going wider with the program. Why not? Transportation analyst Marc Scribner sketched out the bureaucratic hurdles to self-driving transit in a recent issue of the Reason Foundation’s Surface Transportation newsletter.

“Section 13(c) of the Urban Mass Transportation Act requires that local agencies accepting federal transit grants,” the vast majority of them, “must implement protections for existing employees,” Scribner explained.

True, the UMT Act “allows the elimination of jobs, but only as workers presently holding those jobs retire or vacate the positions for other reasons,” a 1976 report from the Office of Technology Assessment said. “Thus, the economic benefits of workforce reduction through automation of an existing transit system may be deferred for a number of years until retraining, transfer, or attrition can account for the displaced workers. Alternatively, direct compensation can be paid to affected workers, eliminating the jobs earlier but at an earlier cost.”

Scribner gave an example of how this law has greatly slowed down the automation of America’s transit systems and could make transit AVs a harder sell. “Automation of subway systems has been possible since the early 1960s,” he said, and yet most transit agencies haven’t been willing to pay those short-term costs for longer-term savings.

Still, Scribner does see some promising AV projects on the horizon.

“In April, the San Jose City Council voted to authorize a predevelopment agreement (PDA) for a proposed 3.5-mile airport connector project between Mineta International Airport and the Diridon Station rail hub in downtown San Jose,” he reported about the Silicon Valley city in northern California. “What makes this project unique is its planned use of automated shuttles developed by Glydways, which would operate on elevated guideways with a footprint width of a bicycle lane. The pairing of novel automated vehicle (AV) technology from Glydways with established infrastructure developer Plenary Americas suggests a path forward for public transportation applications of AVs.”

The savings could be substantial at a time when transit agencies are trying to figure out how to cut costs once federal stimulus dollars dry up.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER 

It’s also possible that this project would not run afoul of the federal statute, given the unique nature of these self-driving transit vehicles, or Glydcars. The vehicles hold only four sit-down passengers, so the argument could be made that they are not, individually, displacing bus or other transit drivers. Self-driving Glydcars are also being pitched as easy on rider wallets.

“One of Glydways’ principal selling points is that it claims the system can be built and operated profitably by charging passengers no more than prevailing transit fares,” Scribner said.

© 2023 Washington Examiner
08 Jun 16:27

Majority of Princeton Students in Survey Say it’s Sometimes ‘Acceptable to Shout Down a Speaker’

by Mike LaChance
Gpscruise

i say SHOUT all you want. When you are done ranting and tired, have a conversation.

"The survey was conducted by College Pulse, a pollster, and sponsored by the Princetonians for Free Speech."

The post Majority of Princeton Students in Survey Say it’s Sometimes ‘Acceptable to Shout Down a Speaker’ first appeared on Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion.
08 Jun 16:16

Amazon’s Duggar Docuseries Exploits One Family’s Drama To Vilify All Christians And Homeschooling  

by Evita Duffy-Alfonso
Gpscruise

thought. Raising this many, you really need to separate sleeping areas to Boys separate from Girls.

Duggar family docuseriesAmazon's docuseries 'Shiny Happy People' uses the Duggar family as clickbait to vilify long-held Christian practices and values. 
08 Jun 13:23

PEOPLE ARE STILL WAITING FOR THE TRANS SHOOTER’S MANIFESTO TO BE RELEASED: Tennessee Governor Conti

by Glenn Reynolds
Gpscruise

cops need to learn how to use wikileaks. You know several of them read it.

PEOPLE ARE STILL WAITING FOR THE TRANS SHOOTER’S MANIFESTO TO BE RELEASED: Tennessee Governor Continues Push for Due Process-Free Red Flag Laws After School Shooting.

07 Jun 21:06

Chris Licht’s Biggest Mistake At CNN Was Being Hopelessly Naive About CNN

by Eddie Scarry
Gpscruise

if you haven't watched this vid, you have to watch it. The ladies eyes tall it all. "there are 3 types of secretaries of state, some are truely naive, some evil, some stupid".

Start at Minute 24!!!
https://rumble.com/v2joveo-fox-news-settles-now-what.html

The former chairman didn't know that CNN isn't and doesn't want to be a news organization. He was fired for trying to force it to be one.
07 Jun 20:33

Reddit insists on being “fairly paid” amid API price protest plans, layoffs

by Scharon Harding
Gpscruise

stackoverflow and reddit. The only two things not owned by the big guys..... (at least I think not??)

The Reddit app icon on an iPhone screen.

Enlarge / The Reddit logo on a mobile device. (credit: Getty Images)

As thousands of subreddits prepare to go dark in five days to protest Reddit's jacked-up API fees, Reddit claims it's only asking for what's fair. At the same time, the company is reportedly enacting layoffs and slowing hiring.

Reddit used to provide free access to its API, enabling various developers to build and create apps aimed at improving the Reddit experience. But similar to Twitter, Reddit last month announced that it would start charging apps to access its API.

From a financial perspective, it's sensible for Reddit to try to make money off third-party apps, considering how popular they are and that most don't show Reddit's ads, which is how Reddit makes most of its revenue. In fact, a 2019 CNBC report found that Reddit makes less average revenue per user than Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, or Snap.

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07 Jun 20:18

DO TELL: You May Not Need an Electric Vehicle After All. Toyota just released a study showing tha

by Stephen Green
Gpscruise

right before i die, me wants a tesla autodrive driving any way it wants

DO TELL: You May Not Need an Electric Vehicle After All.

Toyota just released a study showing that we don’t need EVs to dramatically lower carbon emissions. According to the study, all that is really needed is a fuel economy (eco) mode component in cars.

By covering 400,000 miles in eco mode, Toyota was able to demonstrate a savings of 5,091 gallons of gasoline and $18,304 in fuel costs when matched against the national average. Tailpipe emissions of carbon dioxide reduced by 26%. Studies have shown that if continuously in eco mode a vehicle can save at least 2-3 mpg, which amounts to five or ten percent.

This could be a game changer.

Of course, there are drawbacks or modest inconveniences of employing the eco mode function. In order to use less fuel, eco mode requires the car adjust its throttle response, shift earlier than usual, and keep the engine running at lower RPMs. The car is less responsive with this reduction in power output.

But this is much less invasive than forcing the auto industry to manufacture electric vehicles by demonizing the fossil fuel industry and compelling the EV market to be heavily dependent on subsidies and tax credits. Such a combination is hardly a recipe for success. We are not ready to go fully electric, and may never be.

I leave my car in Eco most of the time, except when I’m off-road or want to put it in Sport to have a little fun on twisties — not that a Jeep is ever all that sporty. Milage is noticeably better and driving with Eco’s limits probably sets a good example for my 17-year-old with his still-fresh license.

07 Jun 18:31

How Elon Musk plans to make Twitter profitable after the company's recent tumult

by Jessica Melugin
Gpscruise

if you compete with facebook-marketplace i might return

WB.tech.jpg

How Elon Musk plans to make Twitter profitable after the company's recent tumult

Jessica Melugin
Video Embed

Elon Musk’s pick of Linda Yaccarino to take over as CEO of Twitter and recently departed Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s plan to move to the platform highlight the world’s wealthiest man’s twin goals of both expanding the breadth of opinion on the platform and making Twitter profitable.

Twitter was only sporadically profitable before Musk took the company private, but it lost roughly 70% of its top 100 advertisers in the months after the acquisition. An update late last year to investors indicated a 40% loss of adjusted earnings. Musk is under pressure to repay the $13 billion of debt he incurred with his $44 billion purchase, which created $1.5 billion in yearly interest payments. After slashing staff and trimming contractors, Musk says the platform is on track to break even soon.

HOW BIDEN HAS STRUGGLED TO KEEP DEMOCRATS TOGETHER ON ENVIRONMENTAL PUSH

But hiring a veteran advertising executive like Yaccarino may result in the biggest boon to Twitter’s bottom line yet.

Characteristically, Musk made the announcement on the platform, tweeting, “I am excited to welcome Linda Yaccarino as the new CEO of Twitter!” Musk will shift to serving as executive chairman and chief technology officer of the social media company.

Yaccarino leaves her post as chairwoman of global advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal after more than a decade in that role. She currently chairs the Advertising Council’s board of directors, a World Economic Forum task force, and a British talent management group. She has 30 years of advertising experience and is credited with integrating and digitizing ads across multiple platforms while at NBCUniversal.

Yaccarino tweeted in response to Musk, “I’ve long been inspired by your vision to create a brighter future. I’m excited to help bring this vision to Twitter and transform this business together!”

Yaccarino interviewed Musk onstage at a marketing convention just last month, where they discussed many of the issues she’ll now be tasked with navigating in her new CEO role at Twitter. She asked Musk about the inherent tension between allowing more controversial content on the platform and attracting more revenue from advertisers, who are concerned about their ads appearing next to potentially off-putting user-generated posts.

Musk responded by describing Twitter’s content moderation policy as “freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.” In practice, that means Twitter aims to keep more content up but might choose not to promote or otherwise amplify posts that likely offend most users. When Yaccarino pressed Musk on “de-risking” the platform for advertisers, he pointed to new “adjacency controls” that prevent the ad engine from placing ads next to user content to which advertisers might object.

Another example of Musk’s competing commitment to expanding the diversity of viewpoints on the platform and making it profitable is highly rated and recently ousted Tucker Carlson’s plan to use Twitter to distribute a “new version of his show.” The details of what a television show translated onto a microblogging social media site would look like remain unknown. But the cable host embodies the promise of big audiences to lure advertising dollars and the risks of driving advertisers away for fear of his often-provocative commentary.

Carlson was abruptly dismissed from his top-rated opinion show on Fox News for reasons still somewhat unclear. Up until then, he drew an average of 3.25 million nightly viewers and was the network’s prime-time ratings leader. Accordingly, Carlson’s show generated $77.5 million in advertising revenue in 2022, according to advertising services company Vivvix.

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How and if those audiences and those advertising revenues might follow Carlson from cable’s Fox News to Twitter remains a question for Yaccarino to answer in her new role.

But Musk might have already given his new CEO a clue onstage last month. When she asked him about being open to feedback from potential advertisers, he responded pointedly, “It’s totally cool to say that you want to have your advertising appear in certain places in Twitter and not in other places, but it is not cool to try to say what Twitter will do.” He continued pointedly, “And if that means losing advertising dollars, we lose it. But freedom of speech is paramount.”

© 2023 Washington Examiner
07 Jun 18:30

Netflix set to charge subscribers who share streaming services an extra $8

by Heather Hamilton
Gpscruise

i will pay anything for my crackflix.

America Protests Brands React
This file photo shows the company logo and view of Netflix headquarters in Los Gatos, California. Netflix announced on Tuesday, May 23, 2023, that it would begin assessing a password-sharing fee to limit viewers to the same household. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

Netflix set to charge subscribers who share streaming services an extra $8

Heather Hamilton
Video Embed

Netflix will try to limit password sharing by billing subscribers an additional $8 per month if viewers outside their household use their account.

The streaming platform announced the decision on Tuesday after months of seeking to control password sharing and limit viewers to the same household.

MAKE OR BREAK: THIS WEEK INTO NEXT IS CRITICAL WINDOW FOR DEBT CEILING NEGOTIATIONS

"Everyone living in that household can use Netflix wherever they are — at home, on the go, on holiday," the streaming platform said, warning that “a Netflix account is for use by one household.”

Netflix has said the paid password-sharing program would apply to users across the world.

“Paid sharing is another important initiative as widespread account sharing (100M+ households) undermines our ability to invest in and improve Netflix for our paying members, as well as build our business,” Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters told investors during its quarterly earnings call in April, noting subscriber engagement over time is expected to grow as viewers sign-up for their own accounts.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Subscribers will pay between $15.50 and $20 for standard or premium plans, depending on selected features.

While it remains unclear exactly how the streaming service plans to validate locations and viewer identities, it said an additional $7.99 per month would be assessed under the “buy an extra member” feature should an account’s password be shared.

© 2023 Washington Examiner
07 Jun 18:27

Becoming ungovernable: Is AI regulation even feasible?

by Bronwyn Howell
Gpscruise

I want an encrypted camera to my decrypted LCD screen. I have also toyed with the concept of an USB necklace. I insert it in my keyboard and it relays MY-encrypted data to approved endpoints, never showing my raw data. Anyone with any unencrypted data is jailed.

Connecting human data to mindset of Artificial intelligence AI, Digital data and machine learning technology and computer brain. Robot technology development for futuristic.
Connecting human data to mindset of Artificial intelligence AI, Digital data and machine learning technology and computer brain. Robot technology development for futuristic. ipopba/Getty Images/iStockphoto

Becoming ungovernable: Is AI regulation even feasible?

Bronwyn Howell

The heat is coming on policymakers, as yet another plea is made by AI developers to regulate the technology. Last week, Sam Altman, Geoffrey Hinton, and a cast of thousands have issued yet another open letter, interpreted in the mainstream media as AI posing a “risk of extinction” to humanity on the scale of nuclear war or pandemics. Mitigating that risk should be a “global priority,” in their view.

This view supposes that the human species currently dominates other species because the human brain has some distinctive capabilities that other animals lack. If AI surpasses humanity in general intelligence and becomes “superintelligent”, then it could become difficult or impossible for humans to control. Just as the fate of many endangered species depends on human goodwill, so might the fate of humanity depend on the actions of a future machine superintelligence.

Yet is it feasible for regulations to be created and adopted to mitigate these risks? And what may be their consequences? Regulation in and of itself is far from a risk-free process. After all, it isn’t clear that regulations adopted to mitigate the risks associated with a coronavirus-based epidemic have not been equally, if not more harmful overall to society than the risks they sought to address. While lockdowns may have pushed back the time at which individuals contracted COVID-19 to reduce the spread of infection, the economic consequences of high inflation, educational consequences of lost schooling, and social (even neural) consequences of disrupted face-to-face human engagement pose “existential threats” to a significant subset of humanity, and impose lifelong limitations on many, many more.

The problem is that the human beings who will design and impose AI regulations are boundedly rational. This plays out in two ways. First, the regulations must necessarily address a wide array of possible outcomes which at the current point in time cannot be known by anyone simply because we just cannot anticipate (even with the best possible state of current knowledge or computing power) just what will occur in the future. Second, even if we do have some ideas about what may occur, mitigating every single anticipated risk is prohibitively expensive. So necessarily some choices must be made about how those risks will be prioritized. Asking (or expecting) these priorities to be chosen by political agents facing a wide array of conflicting objectives invokes the risk that they will prioritize interventions that protect their own ongoing existence and that of the stakeholders (voters and funders) who benefit from their ongoing control over decision-making.

The latter point speaks to the question raised in my last blog as to why it is only now that AI developers are calling for regulatory intervention when its possible impacts have long been debated amongst academic and industry participants. The former raises the question of whether effective AI regulation is even feasible in the first place—and who should take the lead?

Acknowledging my own possible biases, I posed the questions “Can AI regulation be effective”, and “Who should regulate AI” to ChatGPT, to see what the cumulative body of human knowledge embedded in that tool could offer. The output, unsurprisingly, reflected the current boundedly-rational human position on the subject.

The first prompt raised a laundry list of “reasons why AI regulation can be effective” which were so generic that they could apply to practically any regulatory question (addressing societal concerns; promoting trust and transparency; mitigating risk and harm; encouraging ethical practices; balancing innovation and protection; providing legal clarity; harmonizing international efforts; evolving with technology). It concluded “While AI regulation can be effective, it is important to strike the right balance to avoid overly burdensome or stifling regulations that may hinder innovation and growth. Ongoing collaboration between policymakers, experts, industry stakeholders, and civil society is crucial to developing and implementing regulations that are well-informed, practical, and responsive to the evolving nature of AI.”

The second prompt yielded “regulating AI is a complex task that requires the involvement of various stakeholders, including governments, industry experts, researchers, ethicists, legal professionals, and civil society representatives.” Also, “collaboration and coordination among these stakeholders are crucial to develop comprehensive, effective, and well-balanced AI regulations that protect individuals’ rights, promote innovation, and address societal concerns.”

So is the most recent call to regulate AI not a specific call for restraints on the technology itself but rather a plea to protect a specific set of human positions (or privileges) that we observe today? If that is the case, then Christina Montgomery’s proposal to regulate “to govern the deployment of AI in specific use-cases, not regulating the technology itself” appears both a pragmatic and honest way forward in our messy human reality. ChatGPT apparently concurs.

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This article originally appeared in the AEIdeas blog and is reprinted with kind permission from the American Enterprise Institute.

© 2023 Washington Examiner
07 Jun 14:36

Inside 4chan’s top-secret moderation machine

by WIRED
Gpscruise

i watched a netflix show where they arrested a canada man for eating people. It was all fantasy fiction done by the man in perfect execution, including a shack where it didn't happen!

Inside 4chan’s top-secret moderation machine

Enlarge (credit: Anjali Nair/Getty Images)

On May 14, 2022, 18-year-old Payton Gendron sent out a link to a select group of online friends. It was an invite to a private Twitch stream, access to his running online diary, and an upload of his 180-page manifesto.

Those who clicked the link saw Gendron sitting in his car, in the parking lot of the Tops supermarket in Buffalo, New York. They watched as he lifted his AR-15-style rifle, equipped with a high-capacity magazine, and opened fire. He killed 10 people in just six minutes.

Even before police stopped the massacre and arrested Gendron, the link was being posted to the anonymous imageboard 4chan. On /pol/, the site’s “politically incorrect” board, people commented in real time on the mass shooting. “Why not shoot up the abortion rallys? What a faggot,” one user wrote. Another chimed in: “The kids manifesto is actually pretty good.” Dozens of people who missed the livestream demanded a recording. Others declared it a deep-state false flag operation.

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06 Jun 16:25

Scientists Beam Solar Power From Space to Earth in World First

by Matt Williams, Universe Today
A zoomed in image of a brightly lit area with transmitters visible across the walls

A higher power exists.

05 Jun 18:36

Twitter US ad sales plunged 59%, and internal forecasts are grim, NYT reports

by Jon Brodkin
Gpscruise

when musk admits 2020 was stolen, I will return.

Twitter logo is seen on a laptop screen and a smartphone screen.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Christopher Furlong )

Twitter's US advertising revenue plunged 59 percent year over year during a recent five-week period, The New York Times reported today. The firm's US ad "revenue for the five weeks from April 1 to the first week of May was $88 million, down 59 percent from a year earlier, according to an internal presentation obtained by The New York Times."

Owner Elon Musk said in an April BBC interview: "I think almost all advertisers have come back or said they are going to come back." But internal projections are grim, according to the NYT report. One internal forecast cited by the NYT predicted that Twitter's US ad revenue in June "will be down at least 56 percent each week compared with a year ago."

Twitter "has regularly fallen short of its US weekly sales projections, sometimes by as much as 30 percent," and that "performance is unlikely to improve anytime soon, according to the documents and seven current and former Twitter employees," the NYT reported. "Twitter's ad sales staff is concerned that advertisers may be spooked by a rise in hate speech and pornography on the social network, as well as more ads featuring online gambling and marijuana products, the people said."

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05 Jun 15:07

IT’S COME TO THIS: Nearly 30% of people under 30 support government surveillance cameras in every h

by Glenn Reynolds
Gpscruise

CBDC should be a movie before I would be able to predict its success....

IT’S COME TO THIS: Nearly 30% of people under 30 support government surveillance cameras in every home: poll. “While the younger generation tends to favor the idea, support declines with age, ‘dropping to 20 percent among 30–44 year olds and dropping considerably to 6 percent among those over the age of 45,’ Cato reported.”

03 Jun 13:42

We Should Stop Believing Elon Musk Is Committed To Free Speech At Twitter

by Jack Weir
Gpscruise

damn advertisers. Capitalism really is bad sometimes. Let me rant for a second. Its all IRA based problems. Our life is based on making stocks go up for our own greed/IRA's. There must be another way...

Elon Musk arriving at TwitterDespite Elon Musk's promises, Twitter is still censoring people.
02 Jun 14:12

AND WE USED TO MAKE FUN OF PALLYWOOD:  J6 Footage Shows Camera Rolling as Pelosi Made Her ‘Insurr

by Sarah Hoyt
Gpscruise

True story, in Memphis, we have an Affidavit of a mail truck with two duffle bags in back, One with T and one with B written on it. White van comes up and gets B bag. Witness hasn't been killed yet.....

02 Jun 13:36

A bigger battery and three rows of seats for US-market VW ID Buzz

by Jonathan M. Gitlin
Gpscruise

do you think this will work? https://aptera.us/ I put money on one...

A blue VW ID Buzz and an orange VW T2 with some wildflowers in the foreground

Enlarge / The Buzz is an electric interpretation of the classic T2 from 1950. (credit: Volkswagen)

Good news, everyone—it's almost Volkswagen ID Buzz time. The electric minivan loved even by people who hate cars went into production in Europe last year, but only the short-wheelbase, five-seat version. Ars spent some time driving one in Denmark, where we discovered it to be quite charming but needed a few tweaks for its voyage to America. Today, VW has finally unveiled the ID Buzz that will go on sale here next year. The wheelbase is longer, and there's that important third row of seats. But it also has a bigger battery and a bit more power than the Euro-spec Buzz.

The Buzz's layout remains unchanged. There's a battery pack between the axles, but those axles are about 10 inches farther apart, and the pack now has a gross capacity of 91 kWh, an increase of 8 kWh compared to the two-row Buzz.

The Buzz can be specified either with a single-motor, rear-wheel drive powertrain or with a dual-motor, all-wheel drive setup. There's a new, larger rear motor than the unit we've seen in other VW BEVs that use the same modular platform (called MEB). It's still a permanent magnet synchronous motor, but it generates 282 hp (210 kW) and 406 lb-ft (550 Nm). The total power output for the AWD Buzz is 330 hp (246 kW).

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02 Jun 13:12

U.S. Department of Energy Directs $46 million in Funds to 8 Nuclear Fusion Companies

by Leslie Eastman
Gpscruise

yawn

Meanwhile, Microsoft is betting one startup can deliver on nuclear fusion by 2028.

The post U.S. Department of Energy Directs $46 million in Funds to 8 Nuclear Fusion Companies first appeared on Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion.
01 Jun 15:52

How To Parent Through Pride Month

by Elise Temme
Gpscruise

easy fix: Modify the Bible to list homosexuality practice as a SIN. Totally serious. Then deal with all SINS as one does. Republicans can't single-issue my/their party on Gay Gay Gay all the time. One out of 40 men are gay. It has been that way since Jesus.

Large crowd of pride activists, including child in foreground. Hoisted pride flag above them.Families need a plan of action during pride month. My husband and I outlined how to encourage our children in the truth this June.
01 Jun 15:20

HMM: Fentanyl can be weaponized, but preparation could minimize the damage. “The widely-available

by Glenn Reynolds
Gpscruise

i just now tried to buy narcan.. prescription. ugh

HMM: Fentanyl can be weaponized, but preparation could minimize the damage. “The widely-available drug fentanyl, already the number one killer of Americans under 50, could be weaponized and used for terroristic mass poisoning, according to health experts at Rutgers and other institutions. ‘Before fentanyl, the only viable mass poisons were rare and difficult-to-access agents such as cyanide or nerve agents,’ said Lewis Nelson, chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and senior author of the new Frontiers in Public Health paper. ‘Fentanyl can be just as deadly if properly disseminated, and it’s ubiquitous. A motivated person could readily obtain enough to potentially poison hundreds of people—which, uncut, would fit easily onto a teaspoon.'”

Don’t forget to add Narcan to your trouble kit.

01 Jun 13:24

Weak Sauce McCarthy — Obama agreed to $2.4 trillion in cuts for his 2011 debt deal…

by Kane
Gpscruise

fix elections. #1

01 Jun 13:22

Bill Gates plots to control Nuclear Energy…

by Kane
Gpscruise

free speech. Solely missed. Along with debate.

31 May 20:25

The Only Way To Avoid Illegal Discrimination Is To Illegally Discriminate

by Briggs
Gpscruise

test

There is nothing holier than a Victim. No person holds a more exalted place in our culture than the Victim. Rules which must be followed by the ordinary are allowed to be broken by Victims. Indeed, we insist on this. There is no other way to remain on the right side of the law than being on the wrong side.

The woke mayor of New York City Eric Adams, who replaced the self-avowed communist mayor of NYC, recently signed a law that bans discrimination “based on someone’s weight or height in employment, housing and public accommodations.”

Similar laws banning “discrimination” based on sex, race, favorite masturbatory position (a.k.a. sexual orientation), age, veteran status, and a long, a very long, list of other items, already exist. I don’t know how long the inventory is, which varies by municipality, but I do know it only ever grows: no trait is ever removed.

Yet being accused of illegally “discriminating” becomes more difficult the longer these lists are, as we’ll see.

First, it is almost impossible to prove that an employer has discriminated against a potential employee because, say, she was too fat. As long as the employer keeps his mouth shut, and says something vague like “I don’t think you’re the right fit for our company,” or the firm has some written policy like “More blubber, more flubber”, then proof cannot be had.

The Cult of Equality knows this, which is why they define proof as statistical. That move is why you must break the law and honor the Victim.

Discrimination does not have to be proved in individual cases. It need only be asserted that the designated Victim is “under-represented”. I won’t show the math, but it should be easy to see that as the number of Victim classifications grows, the chance of breaking the law must only increase. Even if no one is “discriminating”.

And that even assumes all peoples are equal, which is blatantly false.

It is easy to imagine situations that, as Victims proliferate, it will be impossible not to be guilty of “discrimination.” The smaller the Victim group is, as a percentage of the population, the more difficult it is for every employer or organization to have just that percentage (or more) of Victims as employees or members. There are so many black women “lesbian” migrant Victims to go around, for instance.

Therefore, there are only three ways to avoid being persecuted—or rather prosecuted—for discrimination: (1) claim Victim status for yourself, (2) eliminate all standards, or (2) discriminate.

The first choice works, and is so obvious no examples are needed. But it’s not a ploy available for large public companies and organizations.

My favorite sentence in the propaganda announcing Adam’s new law highlights choice (2): “Adams said in a release that the law will ‘level the playing field’ for residents and create more inclusive workplaces.”

He’s right. Removing standards absolutely flattens all heights. No non-Victim group can be allowed prominence, which hurtfully demonstrates superiority over Victims. Because, inevitably, that superiority is thought possible only because one is discriminating against Victims. Victims are famously inferior—else they would not be Victims—and so if you hired only the superior, you must discriminate to boost the inferior.

Removing standards is insufficient, as we will now see: (3) is the only option.

To staff your company, you might think a good non-discriminatory strategy is to take the first people who walk in the door. No standards are applied, except for showing up. No discrimination has taken place. “Look how pure my heart is,” says the employer, “I have taken everybody without regard to any status, except being alive.”

Alas, that will fail and the employer will find only heartbreak—because discrimination is defined statistically. If he takes the first people who show, then he will almost certainly run afoul of proportional representation.

To make the grade, he must therefore discriminate! The law says Thous Shalt Not Discriminate On Race. Yet to prove his innocence, he must discriminate on Victim race. The law says Thou Shalt Not Discriminate On Blubber. To prove his compliance, the employer must discriminate by weight. There is no other way to get to proportional representation. One must necessarily have quotas.

Adams himself discriminates, and boasts of it. He has hired mostly (only?) Victims to run his city government, and announced to all that he did so on purpose.

He may have used for his model the White House. They bragged of hiring a black woman “lesbian” Victim for a propaganda slot. They boasted of nominating a black woman Victim to SCOTUS. Even though discriminating along these categories is illegal.

All companies do this. I hear a radio commercial regularly for Comerica Bank, triumphantly announcing that women (whose sex makes them Victims) now outnumber men, and that “minority” (i.e. Victim) employees soon will outnumber non-Victims. This is illegal. Yet they must break the law or face prosecution for breaking the law.

To not break the law and be found to have discriminated, it is essential—there is no escaping it—that one break the law and discriminate. But only to award Victims. Especially those Victims most unable, because this group is least able to merit their positions and allow the company to reach sacred proportionality.

This is why we are doomed unless we repeal the Civil Rights Act. Which won’t happen. Thus…

Subscribe or donate to support this site and its wholly independent host using credit card click here. Cash App: $WilliamMBriggs. For Zelle, use my email: matt@wmbriggs.com, and please include yours so I know who to thank.

31 May 20:24

Twitter value keeps falling under Musk, now worth a third of what he paid

by Jon Brodkin
Gpscruise

He's training his AI on it, dummy.

Elon Musk's Twitter profile displayed on a phone screen in front of a Twitter logo and a fake stock graph with an arrow pointing down.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | NurPhoto )

Twitter's value has reportedly dropped to about $15 billion, slightly more than one-third of the $44 billion that Elon Musk paid for it in late October 2022. The $15 billion valuation is based on Fidelity's latest analysis of its stake in the company.

"Fidelity Blue Chip Growth Fund's stake in Twitter was valued at $6.6 million as of April 28, according to the fund's monthly disclosure released Sunday," The Wall Street Journal wrote today. "That is down from about $19.7 million at the end of October, shortly after Musk's takeover, and the third time Fidelity has marked down the value of its Twitter stake, public disclosures show."

Fidelity's new calculation "puts Twitter's overall valuation at about $15 billion, or roughly a third of the deal price," the WSJ wrote. Twitter is identified in the Fidelity filing as X Holdings, the Musk-owned holding company that owns X Corp., which merged with Twitter. Fidelity's new valuation of Twitter was previously reported by Bloomberg.

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