The Death of the Mind

Dystopian robot dogs are the latest in a long history of US-Mexico border surveillance:Each is embedded with different types of cameras (thermal, night vision, long-range) and sensors (chemical, weapons detection). DHS praised the device’s ability to cross multiple terrains — including sand, rocks and hills — and its durability in high heat and cramped spaces.DHS’ choice of vendor sparked additional concern. While most police departments leased their pups from Boston Dynamics, which forbids customers weaponizing any of their tech, DHS chose Philadelphia-based Ghost Robotics. Late last year, the company debuted a version of its robot dogs equipped with long-range guns capable of hitting targets at a reported 1,200 meters.DHS’s oddly cheery blogpost also implied the robots…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2022/02/robot-war-dogs-hunting-migrants-now/

Lately there have been couple of discussions on IRC, Slack, and Reddit that showed that people assume that by using int4/integer they use 4 bytes less than they would in case of int8/bigint. This is not really the case. Let me explain why. First quick test. On my computer, which is running some Ryzen processor, … Continue reading “How much disk space you can save by using INT4/INT instead of INT8/BIGINT?”

External feed Read More at the Source: https://postgr.es/p/5fT

I guess this is nearly an annual thing now. In 2019, we talked about how one YouTuber, GilvaSunner, had over one hundred YouTube videos blocked by Nintendo over copyright claims. GilvaSunner’s channel is dedicated to video game music, mostly from Nintendo games. Those videos consist of nothing but that music, as in no footage of video game gameplay. Nintendo, which certainly can take this sort of action from an IP standpoint, also doesn’t offer any legit alternative for fans to enjoy this music on any streaming service or the like. Then, in 2020, GilvaSunner had another whole swath of videos consisting of game music blocked by Nintendo over copyright claims. Still no legit alternative for those…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20220201/09563748398/nintendo-hates-you-more-dmca-takedowns-youtube-videos-game-music-despite-no-legit-alternative.shtml

Legislation to punish online services for users’ illegal content would damage speech and encryption, it’s claimed

The EARN IT Act, a legislative bill intended “to encourage the tech industry to take online child sexual exploitation seriously” has been revived in the US Senate after it died in committee back in 2020.…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2022/02/02/earnit_act_section230/

As already noted, last year the Ninth Circuit struck down the Montana distribution requirement for petitions to create a qualified party. The Montana legislature is not scheduled to meet during calendar year 2022, so there is no likelihood that the legislature can restore the distribution requirement until 2023 at the earliest. Presumably if the legislature restores it, it will require an equal number of signatures from legislative districts, avoiding the constitutional problem.
Therefore, for 2022, the petition to qualify a new party will be easier than it has been since 1969. The petition still needs 5,000 signatures, but signatures can be gathered anywhere in the state. However, the petition deadline is in late February.
Before 1969, Montana allowed…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://ballot-access.org/2022/01/22/during-2022-montana-party-petition-will-not-require-any-distribution-requirement/

Ranked choice voting (RCV) improves representation, increases participation, and improves our democracy. Some may have you believe that RCV is a tool for helping one party over another; however, recent legislation and elections prove that ranked choice voting is a cross-partisan reform with support on both sides of the aisle.
In 2019, New York City voted to amend their charter to implement RCV in primaries and special elections. FairVote Action Board Member Andrew Yang, a long-time supporter of RCV and founder of the Forward Party, tweeted, “Ranked choice voting would let us express our true preferences and make our politics more dynamic and responsive. We should make it the norm throughout the country.” Fast forward to 2021,…

External feed Read More at the Source: http://www.fairvote.org/americans_of_all_parties_love_rcv

Vice News has some really great reporters on tech issues who work for its Motherboard publication. For reasons that don’t make sense, last week they had some other reporter write an absolutely ridiculously bad story trying to argue that the “stop the steal” idiots were helped along by the amazingly important work done by folks in the famed “Voting Village” at the DEFCON conference. The full article is long and bad and has the ridiculous and misleading title: How an “Ethical” Hacker Convention Is Fueling Trump’s Big Lie. But the very premise of this story is not just wrong, but dangerously stupid. It’s shameful that anyone at Vice thought this was an appropriate story to publish.

The…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20220115/01065948289/vice-publishes-bullshit-nonsense-article-blaming-defcon-voting-village-stop-steal-idiots.shtml