An Experiment

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Oct 262018
 

To all zero of my readers,

Actually writing things seems to be something I can’t muster up the will to do.

So I hacked up an rss plugin for wordpress last year to repost excepts from my tt-rss shared feed, but have left the posts it generates private. Since it’s OK if not ideal, I’m just gonna set the plugin to post publicly for now to see if it works out, and maybe as motivation to hurry up and finish tweaking the format, or writing a fresh plugin from scratch that only does what I need.

For now it will post every time I update my shared feed from tt-rss; I am leaning toward modifying it so that it collects all posts and makes a single daily entry, but I’ll see how this works first.

Deeplinks – Police Use of Face Recognition Continues to Wrack Up Real-World Harms

Jan 162025
 

Police have shown, time and time again, that they cannot be trusted with face recognition technology (FRT). It is too dangerous, invasive, and in the hands of law enforcement, a perpetual liability. EFF has long argued that face recognition, whether it is fully accurate or not, is too dangerous for police use,  and such use ought to be banned.
Now, The Washington Post has proved one more reason for this ban: police claim to use FRT just as an investigatory lead, but in practice officers routinely ignore protocol and immediately arrest the most likely match spit out by the computer without first doing their own investigation.
Cities across the United States have decided to join the…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/01/police-use-face-recognition-continues-wrack-real-world-harms

 2025-01-16  No Responses »

The Intercept – SCOTUS Won’t Hear the Real Reason Porn Age-Verification Laws Are Spreading

Jan 152025
 

When the U.S. Supreme Court considers the constitutionality of a Texas law requiring porn websites to verify visitors’ ages on Wednesday, the justices will likely ignore some crucial context about such laws, which have been passed by more than a dozen states since 2022: In the words of one of their chief proponents, these age-verification laws are a “back door” to a full ban on explicit material, “starting with the kids.” Even taking legislators’ stated aim of protecting minors from “harmful” material at face value, there is little dispute most of these laws are unconstitutional, as free speech advocates have argued successfully to lower courts around the country. “This case is not close,” wrote a federal…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://theintercept.com/2025/01/15/supreme-court-porn-age-verification/

 2025-01-15  No Responses »

Techdirt. – 41 Percent of Americans Live Under Age Verification Laws Targeting Porn

Dec 302024
 

Age verification laws saw an unfathomable renaissance in 2024. It’s quite frightening to see a political class of predominately far-right Christian nationalists implement the anti-porn vision of Project 2025 without President-elect Donald Trump yet entering the White House.
These laws coming out of state legislatures are scripted like how Russell Vought, a controversial architect of Project 2025 and one of Trump’s closest Christian nationalist allies, described in a viral undercover video revealing how age verification laws serve as a “back door” ban on porn. 
As of this writing, nearly 139 million U.S. residents live in states with age verification laws on the books that specifically target adult entertainment platforms like Pornhub.com or xHamster.com.
That is slightly over 41 percent of the…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/2024/12/30/41-percent-of-americans-live-under-age-verification-laws-targeting-porn/

 2024-12-30  No Responses »

Biometric Update – ROC deploys Vision AI tech for smart city initiative in West Virginia

Dec 302024
 

Colorado’s ROC has announced a new public security deployment in Marion County, West Virginia, marking the launch of its Smart Cities offering to support law enforcement and first responders. A release says the firm is leveraging its Vision AI product, smart sensors and other edge devices to enable real-time security monitoring that will “enhance public safety, provide critical situational awareness and actionable intelligence, and improve emergency response times” in Marion County. ROC’s multimodal vehicle recognition, facial recognition, gun detection and other real-time data analysis capabilities will be integrated into existing security infrastructure, including license plate readers and bodycams. Applications include road safety enforcement, accident detection, parking and toll road monitoring, as well as crime prevention…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.biometricupdate.com/202412/roc-deploys-vision-ai-tech-for-smart-city-initiative-in-west-virginia

 2024-12-30  No Responses »

Techdirt. – Copyright Industry Wants To Apply Automated Blocking To The Internet’s Core Routers

Dec 282024
 

A central theme of Walled Culture the book (free digital versions available) and this blog is that the copyright industry is never satisfied. Now matter how long the term of copyright, publishers and recording companies want more. No matter how harsh the punishments for infringement, the copyright intermediaries want them to be even more severe.
Another manifestation of this insatiability is seen in the ever-widening use of Internet site blocking. What began as a highly-targeted one-off in the UK, when a court ordered the Newzbin2 site to be blocked, has become a favored method of the copyright industry for cutting off access to thousands of sites around the world, including many blocked by mistake. Even more worryingly, the…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/2024/12/27/copyright-industry-wants-to-apply-automated-blocking-to-the-internets-core-routers/

 2024-12-28  No Responses »

jwz – Exterminate All Rational Graphic Design

Dec 282024
 

I love that all of the billboards around town for “AI” companies have converged on an identical design aesthetic: sparse san-serif text on a solid-colored background, usually black, sometimes white, maybe a solid pastel if they’re feeling saucy.

It says, “We didn’t waste money by hiring a graphic designer, our CFO just knocked this out in Notepad! Good enough!”

This is morally consistent, as their business model is “Never pay an artist, or anyone else who does creative work.”

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/12/exterminate-all-rational-graphic-design/

 2024-12-28  No Responses »

World Socialist Web Site (en) – New York Times reveals Israeli extermination order authorizing killing 20 civilians for each “combatant”

Dec 272024
 

On Thursday, the New York Times published a detailed account reporting the existence of official Israeli military documents authorizing the killing of 20 non-combatants for every “pre-emptive” attack on a single presumed Hamas supporter, with the ratio in some cases reaching 100 to one.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/12/27/gdhz-d27.html

 2024-12-27  No Responses »

Hackaday – Stream Deck Plus Reverse Engineered

Dec 272024
 

[Den Delimarsky] had a Stream Deck and wanted to be free of the proprietary software, so he reverse-engineered it. Now, he has a Stream Deck Plus, and with the same desire, he reverse-engineered it as well.
The device has eight buttons, a narrow screen, and four encoder dials. The device looks like a generic HID device to the host machine, and once it has been configured, doesn’t need any special software to function. By configuring the device using the official software in a virtual machine under the watchful eye of Wireshark, it was possible to figure out how that initial setup worked and recreate it using a different software stack.
If you’ve never done this kind of thing…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://hackaday.com/2024/12/26/stream-deck-plus-reverse-engineered/

 2024-12-27  No Responses »

Deeplinks – The Atlas of Surveillance Expands Its Data on Police Surveillance Technology: 2024 in Review

Dec 262024
 

EFF’s Atlas of Surveillance is one of the most useful resources for those who want to understand the use of police surveillance by local law enforcement agencies across the United States. This year, as the police surveillance industry has shifted, expanded, and doubled down on its efforts to win new cop customers, our team has been busily adding new spyware and equipment to this database. We also saw many great uses of the Atlas from journalists, students, and researchers, as well as a growing number of contributors. The Atlas of Surveillance currently captures more than 11,700 deployments of surveillance tech and remains the most comprehensive database of its kind. To learn more about each of the…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/12/atlas-surveillance-expands-its-data-police-surveillance-technology-2024-year

 2024-12-26  No Responses »

see shy jo – aiming at December

Dec 252024
 

I have been working all year on a solar upgrade aimed at December. Now here
it is, midwinter, and my electric car is charging on a cloudy day from my
offgrid solar fence. I lived happily enough with 1 kilowatt of solar that I
installed in 2017.
Meanwhile, solar panel prices came down massively, incentives increased
and everything came together: This was the year. In the spring I started clearing forest trees that were leaning over the house,
making both a firebreak and a solar field. In June I picked up a pallet of panels in a box truck. a porch with a a bunch of solar panels, stacked on edge leaning up against the wall. A black and white cat is…

External feed Read More at the Source: http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/aiming_at_December/

 2024-12-25  No Responses »

TorrentFreak – ‘Destroyed’ Usenet Provider Sues Anti-Piracy Group for Millions in Damages

Dec 242024
 

The legal saga of News-Service Europe (NSE) and anti-piracy group BREIN has taken another dramatic turn.
Once a titan in the Usenet world, NSE was forced to shut down in 2011 after BREIN took legal action on behalf of the movie and music industries.
In its initial verdict, the Court of Amsterdam concluded that NSE willingly facilitated online piracy through its services. As a result, the company was ordered to remove all copyrighted content and filter future posts for possible copyright infringements.
According to the Usenet provider, this filtering requirement would’ve been too costly to implement so it shut down its service but appealed the case.
NSE Wins Appeal
After several more years of litigation, the Amsterdam appeals court ruled…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://torrentfreak.com/destroyed-usenet-provider-sues-anti-piracy-group-for-millions-in-damages-241223/

 2024-12-24  No Responses »

Deeplinks – The Atlas of Surveillance Expands Its Data on Police Surveillance Technology: 2024 Year in Review

Dec 242024
 

EFF’s Atlas of Surveillance is one of the most useful resources for those who want to understand the use of police surveillance by local law enforcement agencies across the United States. This year, as the police surveillance industry has shifted, expanded, and doubled down on its efforts to win new cop customers, our team has been busily adding new spyware and equipment to this database. We also saw many great uses of the Atlas from journalists, students, and researchers, as well as a growing number of contributors. The Atlas of Surveillance currently captures more than 11,700 deployments of surveillance tech and remains the most comprehensive database of its kind. To learn more about each of the…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/12/atlas-surveillance-expands-its-data-police-surveillance-technology-2024-year

 2024-12-24  No Responses »

Articles and Investigations – ProPublica – A North Carolina Supreme Court Candidate’s Bid to Overturn His Loss Is Based on Theory Election Deniers Deemed Extreme

Dec 232024
 

by Doug Bock Clark ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week. Months before voters went to the polls in November, a group of election skeptics based in North Carolina gathered on a call and discussed what actions to take if they doubted any of the results. One of the ideas they floated: try to get the courts or state election board to throw out hundreds of thousands of ballots cast by voters whose registrations are missing a driver’s license number and the last four digits of a Social Security number….

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.propublica.org/article/jefferson-griffin-north-carolina-supreme-court-challenge-election-integrity-network

 2024-12-23  No Responses »

see shy jo – Joey Hess: aiming at December

Dec 232024
 

I have been working all year on a solar upgrade aimed at December. Now here
it is, midwinter, and my electric car is charging on a cloudy day from my
offgrid solar fence. I lived happily enough with 1 kilowatt of solar that I
installed in 2017.
Meanwhile, solar panel prices came down massively, incentives increased
and everything came together: This was the year. In the spring I started clearing forest trees that were leaning over the house,
making both a firebreak and a solar field. In June I picked up a pallet of panels in a box truck. a porch with a a bunch of solar panels, stacked on edge leaning up against the wall. A black and white cat…

External feed Read More at the Source: http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/aiming_at_December/

 2024-12-23  No Responses »

Planet Mozilla – What would it take to add refinement types to Rust?

Dec 222024
 

A few years ago, on a whim, I wrote YAIOUOM. YAOIOUM was a static analyzer for Rust that checked that the code
was using units of measures correctly, e.g. a distance in meters is not a distance in centimeters, dividing meters
by seconds gave you a value in m / s (aka m * s^-1).
YAIOUOM was an example of a refinement type system, i.e. a type system that does its work after another type
system has already done its work. It was purely static, users could add new units in about
one line of code, and it was actually surprisingly easy to write. It also couldn’t be written within the Rust
type system, in part because I wanted legible error messages,…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://yoric.github.io/post/rust-refinement-types/

 2024-12-22  No Responses »

Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow – Pluralistic: Happy Public Domain Day 2025 to all who celebrate (17 Dec 2024)

Dec 182024
 

Today’s links

Happy Public Domain Day 2025 to all who celebrate: A new bumper crop, with many more to come!

Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.

This day in history: 2004, 2009, 2014, 2019

Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.

Recent appearances: Where I’ve been.

Latest books: You keep readin’ em, I’ll keep writin’ ’em.

Upcoming books: Like I said, I’ll keep writin’ ’em.

Colophon: All the rest.

Happy Public Domain Day 2025 to all who celebrate (permalink)
In 1976, Congress set fire to the country’s libraries; in 1998, they did it again. Today, in 2024, the flames have died down, and out of the ashes a new public domain is growing. Happy Public Domain Day 2025 to all who celebrate!
For most of US history,…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/17/dastar-dly-deeds/

 2024-12-18  No Responses »

Hackaday – Robot Air Hockey Player Predicts Your Next Move

Dec 172024
 

Air hockey is a fun game, but it’s one you can’t play by yourself. That is, unless you have a smart robot hockey player to act as your rival. [Zeroshot] built exactly that.
The build is based around a small 27-inch air hockey table—not exactly arcade-spec, but big enough to demonstrate the concepts at play. The robot player moves its mallet in the X and Y axes using a pair of NEMA17 stepper motors and an H-belt configuration. To analyze the game state, there’s a Raspberry Pi 3B fitted with a camera, and it has a top-down view of the board. The Pi gives the stepper motors commands on how to move the mallet via an Arduino…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://hackaday.com/2024/12/16/robot-air-hockey-player-predicts-your-next-move/

 2024-12-17  No Responses »

PopularResistance.Org – These Artisans Built A Co-op Alternative To Etsy

Dec 132024
 

In 2022, Etsy’s earnings topped $109 million in consolidated net income. “Despite significant macroeconomic headwinds, we maintained the vast majority of our pandemic gains and delivered double digit revenue growth and excellent profitability for the year,” Etsy CEO Josh Silverman said in a press release.

Days later, Silverman announced that the marketplace platform would raise the transaction fee Etsy takes from each sale from 5% to 6.5%. In response, some 14,000 Etsy sellers closed their shops and went on strike for eight days.

The post These Artisans Built A Co-op Alternative To Etsy appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://popularresistance.org/these-artisans-built-a-co-op-alternative-to-etsy/

 2024-12-13  No Responses »
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