The Death of the Mind

As businesses and governments in the U.S. and across the globe implement facial recognition surveillance in public spaces, privacy advocates are pushing back.
32 civil rights groups call on New York City Council to ban public FRT
Thirty-two civil rights groups, led by the New York City-based privacy and civil rights group Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.) submitted a memo of support to city council members advocating to pass two pending bills banning the use of biometric surveillance in residential buildings and public spaces like stores and arenas. While the memo, which references 2019 NIST FRVT results, claims that facial recognition discriminates against Black, Latinx, and non-binary or transgender New Yorkers, more current assessments by NIST show…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.biometricupdate.com/202309/the-multi-national-push-to-ban-facial-recognition-in-public-spaces

BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA — Wednesday, September 27, 2023 —
Today, the GNU Project turned forty years old. To celebrate this,
the Free Software Foundation (FSF) is hosting a hack day for
families, students, and anyone interested in hacking.

External feed Read More at the Source: http://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-celebrates-forty-years-of-gnu-with-a-hackday-for-families-hackers-and-hackers-to-be

External feed Read More at the Source: https://catandgirl.com/early-birds/

This blog post is about how the Logical Replication has evolved over the years in PostgreSQL, what’s in the latest release-16, and what’s being worked upon for future releases. Logical replication is a method of replicating data objects and their changes, based upon their replication identity (usually a primary key). We use the term logical in contrast to physical replication, which uses exact block addresses and byte-by-byte replication. To know more about Logical Replication in PostgreSQL, read pgsql-docs.The foundation of Logical Replication has been laid in PostgreSQL-9.4 where we introduced Logical Decoding (that allows database changes to be streamed out in a customizable format), Replication Slots (that allow preservation of resources like WAL files on the…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://postgr.es/p/69U

This September 20, 2023 press release from New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s office touting her signature on several bills regarding the people’s voting rights certainly is rich.
In 2020, the New York legislature and Governor passed legislation that tripled the number of signatures (15,000 to 45,000) for minor party statewide candidates to qualify for the General Election ballot without increasing the six week period allowed for gathering the signatures. Additionally, if candidates can actually now make the ballot, the legislation more than doubled the number of votes necessary to remain on the ballot and changed that vote test so that it applied to Governor and President every two years, instead of only Governor every four years.
If the…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://ballot-access.org/2023/09/21/new-york-governor-press-release-somehow-fails-to-mention-states-horrible-ballot-access-laws/

Using bullshit generators to generate letters of recommendation,
letters of complaint, or letters of pressure, paradoxically makes
them count for less.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://stallman.org/archives/2023-jul-oct.html#19_September_2023_(Bullshit_generators)

Eighty years ago today, Richard Winger was born. He is the foremost expert on ballot access in the United States today–and probably ever. He is a national treasure. A person who is irreplaceable by any measure. Please join me in … Continue reading →

External feed Read More at the Source: https://ballot-access.org/2023/08/27/happy-birthday-richard-winger/

On August 14th, DNA biometrics testing identified a body that was found on pilings in a Washington river a year ago, according to a release from the Cowlitz County Sheriff’s Office. It was too decomposed to conduct facial recognition or take fingerprints, the Tri-City Herald reports. Investigators partnered with Othram, a forensic genetic genealogy lab in Texas, which was able to identify the brother of the unidentified body. The brother confirmed the deceased man was 55-year old Bryan M. Heinrich Sr. based on a tattoo. While there was no foul play in this instance, the case raises questions about privacy concerns with the use of DNA databases in criminal investigations. By using a privacy loophole…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.biometricupdate.com/202308/gedmatch-loophole-allows-the-police-to-access-user-dna-without-their-consent

Readers have been pointing us to HashiCorp’s announcement
that it is moving to its own “Business Source License” for some of its
(formerly) open-source products. Like other companies (example) that have taken this path, HashiCorp
is removing the freedom to use its products commercially in ways that it
sees as competitive. This is, in a real sense, an old and tiresome story.

The lessons to be drawn from this change are old as well. One is to beware
of depending on any platform, free or proprietary, that is controlled by a
single company. It is a rare company that will not try to take advantage
of that control at some point.

The other is to beware of contributor license agreements. HashiCorp’s
agreement used
to read that it…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://lwn.net/Articles/941799/