dangillmor

dangillmor , 4 hours ago to random

Smart piece by @ryanlcooper (who is unfortunately not active here) in the American Prospect: "Elon Musk and the decline of Tesla" https://prospect.org/power/2024-06-17-elon-musk-decline-of-tesla/

dangillmor , 15 hours ago to random

Pathetic, Google:

On Gemini "AI" chat, my question is "Did Trump win the 2020 presidential election?

Answer: I'm still learning how to answer this question. In the meantime, try Google Search.

Truly pathetic, and it's obvious what's going on.

dangillmor , 21 hours ago to random

It's pretty clear that the "AI" cartel has ignored the robots.txt instructions in wholesale ways.

This lack of respect for an industry norm is a lot like Trump's disrespect for political, ethical, moral, and legal norms.

It comes from a mindset that assumes what's acceptable is what you can get away with.

dangillmor , 22 hours ago to random

The right-wing brigading of Amazon reviews of the essential new book by @Noupside is about the best evidence you'll see of why her work has been so important. We shouldn't countenance the supremely bad-faith attacks that have cost her -- and all of us in the end -- so much.

https://mastodon.social/@Noupside@saturation.social/112654991007362111

dangillmor , 23 hours ago to random

The EU has told Apple to stop a few of its most egregiously anti-competitive practices in its control-freak iOS ecosystem.

In a classic example of what I've called "compliance with a raised middle finger," Apple's response is to simply disable applications and features, rather than allow competitors into the walled garden.

It's reminiscent of Microsoft's up-yours "compliance" in the 1990s.

Naturally, Apple's legion of media fanbois is taking the company's side.

dangillmor , 1 day ago to random

EU surveillance mavens didn't have the votes to force tech companies to neuter their encryption, so they cancelled -- for now -- a vote.

This is obviously not the end of the matter. Governments absolutely hate the notion that they can't spy on everything, everyone, everywhere. So this dangerous measure will be back.

https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-council-cancels-vote-on-encryption-breaking-child-sexual-abuse-law/

dangillmor , 1 day ago to random

Stanford University's contempt for journalism it doesn't like is on full display here.

Just reprehensible, and it should put to rest some of the longstanding mythology about the school's political leanings. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/stanford-presses-prosecution-student-journalist-19523761.php

dangillmor , 1 day ago to random

The EU is moving closer to making strong encryption illegal so it can spy on everyone. As this post notes, "It couldn't be clearer that the aim of this bill is China-style mass surveillance and not better protecting our children."

https://www.eureporter.co/business/data/mass-surveillance-data/2024/04/15/leak-eu-interior-ministers-want-to-exempt-themselves-from-chat-control-bulk-scanning-of-private-messages/

dangillmor , 1 day ago to random

The likeliest explanation for what's going on with the judge who's acting like she's a member of the Trump defense team is the one not mentioned in this NYT story -- that she's massively biased for Trump.

What we need to learn is whether this is simple corruption, ideology, or something else.

(A story accompanying this one at least notes the possibility, but doesn't attempt to find out if (as I believe) it's what's going on.)

dangillmor , 2 days ago to random

The financial engineers who bought a news organization in Washington state have kicked out half of the journalists and other now-former employees on the business side.

They also forced the paper's editors to take down the truthful story they'd published about the gutting. But you can read it here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20240620025407/https://www.heraldnet.com/news/this-breaks-my-heart-over-half-of-everett-herald-news-staff-laid-off/

dangillmor , 3 days ago to random

Microsoft "AI" won't answer the question, "Who won the 2020 presidential election?"

and it won't explain why it won't answer the question.

Move along, it says...

dangillmor , 3 days ago to random

The LA Times' ace columnist, @hiltzikm, has been on a tear lately. In this piece, he explains how a well-known pollster has become a noxious spreader of right-wing propaganda and deceit. https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2024-06-19/this-gop-leaning-polling-firm-has-turned-into-a-purveyor-of-anti-vaccine-propaganda

dangillmor , 3 days ago to random

EU officials, who know nothing about how technology works but know what they want, are on the verge of ordering technology companies to make everyone much less safe by destroying strong encryption and eviscerating personal privacy.

https://netzpolitik.org/2024/client-side-scanning-chat-control-is-pure-surveillance-state/

dangillmor , 4 days ago to random

This is very good:

https://www.threads.net/@beereinstein/post/C8UWOE6plrm

dangillmor , 4 days ago to random

While I supported it for obvious reasons, I hadn't fully understood the rationale behind the Ghost newsletter platform's adoption of ActivityPub. It's about discoverability, and could be a serious boost for newsletter writers. See why:

https://www.augment.ink/ghost-substack-discoverability/

h/t @dwiner

dangillmor , 4 days ago to random

With the expiration of Amazon Prime, I'm down to zero regular streaming services. This month I'm paying for Netflix to catch up on some shows. Next month it'll be Max. Upcoming months will include Disney, Hulu, and Amazon.

My public library has DVDs and a couple of minor streamers, which fills in some gaps.

This takes more effort, but saves a lot of money -- and gives me the satisfaction of not rewarding the bait and switch the streamers engaged in with massive price hikes.

dangillmor , 5 days ago to random

There are at least 5 newsletters I'd pay for if they were hosted anywhere but Substack.

dangillmor , 5 days ago to random

A follow suggestion:

@brianmerchant, author of the brilliant "Blood in the Machine" and one of our best technology commentators. He's been active here in the past few weeks, and we should encourage more!

dangillmor , 5 days ago to random

The Washington Post is doing catch-up on the scandal in its newsroom and boardroom, but this piece is a wowser. https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2024/06/16/washington-post-editor-robert-winnett/?pwapi_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJyZWFzb24iOiJnaWZ0IiwibmJmIjoxNzE4NTEwNDAwLCJpc3MiOiJzdWJzY3JpcHRpb25zIiwiZXhwIjoxNzE5ODkyNzk5LCJpYXQiOjE3MTg1MTA0MDAsImp0aSI6ImM3MTFjMDc4LWRkZDktNDI1My1iMjdlLTk2NGRjYjY1YWE0OSIsInVybCI6Imh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lndhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbS9pbnZlc3RpZ2F0aW9ucy8yMDI0LzA2LzE2L3dhc2hpbmd0b24tcG9zdC1lZGl0b3Itcm9iZXJ0LXdpbm5ldHQvIn0.DDD4jH-fy-kVcuOwQgpkRM0T-cO17vfxEMsful9ttEw

What's increasingly obvious is that Jeff Bezos needs to clean house at the top -- to undo the terrible harm he's done by appointing an ethically challenged (putting it politely) former Murdoch apparatchik as CEO.

dangillmor , 5 days ago to random

The New York Times senses "authoritarian overtones" in Trump's loudly stated plans to wreck our democracy.

Ya think?

dangillmor , 6 days ago to random

The ruling class of Texas is creating a white nationalist theocracy, shredding what's left of civil liberties and rights along the way.

Texas politicians are also ensuring the kind of "business friendly" environment that shreds the rights of workers in favor of the owners.

Naturally, some business executives are moving their companies there.

For some CEOs, it's only about money. Others, like Musk, are evil in many ways.

Remember, classic fascism melds the state and corporation.

dangillmor , 6 days ago to random

The New York Times can't bring itself to tell the simple truth in its headline -- that Trump is a dire threat to democracy.

Instead, it attributes that obvious fact to an "emerging coalition that views Donald J. Trump’s agenda as a threat to democracy..."

This is a perfect example of Big Journalism's insistent on business as usual in the face of an emergency.

Just say it, journalaists -- and work to stop the modern fascists. Your future is at stake, too.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/16/us/politics/trump-2025-democratic-resistance.html

dangillmor , 6 days ago to random

If anything defines late-stage capitalism, it's hard to top the $46 billion gift that Musk gave himself via his handpicked board of directors and cult-like shareholders.

dangillmor , 6 days ago to random

As dissent and protest get increasingly criminalized, it's vital for protesters and dissenters to protect themselves -- to the degree possible -- from surveillance.

The @eff offers a useful guide.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/06/surveillance-defense-campus-protests

Note: You should read this even if you aren't a protester, because the right wing (and sadly some misguided folks on the left) are increasingly willing to trample freedom of expression.

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

dangillmor , 7 days ago to random

Liberals who think protesters are the enemy are actively encouraging the police state that Trump world wants to impose on America.

They should understand this, but they are either willfully dense, or myopic.

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/liberal-police-state-campus-protests/

dangillmor , 7 days ago to random

The endlessly deceitful Republican Party and its right-wing media collaborators manipulated that "wandering" Biden video to make it show -- as they so often do -- an outright lie.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/14/cheapfake-biden-videos-enrapture-right-wing-media-deeply-mislead/

dangillmor , 7 days ago to random

The Washington Post's @JosephMenn has more details about Stanford University's cowardly and cynical closing of the invaluable Internet Observatory.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/06/14/stanford-internet-observatory-disinformation-research-lawsuits-politics/

The most important part of this debacle is the message it sends:

Right wing extremists -- possessing limitless bad faith, ample money, and subpoena power -- can silence essential research into the poison they and their deceitful cadres are injecting into our civic bloodstream.

dangillmor , 8 days ago to random

The Supreme Court legalized weapons used to massacre people. https://www.theguardian.com/law/ng-interactive/2024/jun/14/supreme-court-bump-stock-ban-decision

dangillmor , 8 days ago to random

Mozilla did the right thing by restoring access in Russia to add-ons that circumvent the Putin regime's censorship. https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/14/mozilla_firefox_russia/

But Mozilla never should have bowed to the dictatorship -- even temporarily -- in the first place.

dangillmor , 8 days ago to random

Two op-eds in the NY Times today illustrate the growing threat Trump world poses to free speech (including freedom of the press).

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/14/opinion/mississippi-press-freedom-republicans.html

and

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/14/opinion/the-apprentice-trump-movie.html

If the NY Times NEWS pages understood the threat, or cared more about it, maybe they'd do their jobs better.

But business as usual requires only occasionally doing articles, rather than concentrating on the even larger threat -- to democracy itself, which after all makes freedom of expression possible.

dangillmor , 8 days ago to random

Over at the deadbird site, the Holocaust Memorial says, We have a feeling that the X algorithm is not in our favor."

dangillmor , 8 days ago to random

First, "Open"AI made it clear that money is the mission, contrary to the social-good promises it made earlier.

It just dropped another shoe, adding a senior Trump-appointed apparatchik to the board of directors.

Many more shoes to drop -- this operation is a centipede.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/06/13/openai-board-paul-nakasone-nsa/

dangillmor , 9 days ago to random

The Associated Press bows and scrapes for the felon ex-president, and it's sickening:

Here's the lead paragraph in its story:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump made a triumphant return to Capitol Hill on Thursday, his first with lawmakers since the Jan.6, 2021 attacks, embraced by energized House and Senate Republicans who find themselves reinvigorated by his bid to retake the White House.

dangillmor , 9 days ago to random

The massively bad-faith Republican "investigations" -- persecutions to deter truth-telling -- into vital research on right-wing extremism have paid off for the extremists.

In a cowardly but understandable move, Stanford University is dismantling its Internet Observatory, which has been a focus of the Republican lies and attacks.

It's understandable in the way capitulation to Joe McCarthy was understandable in the 1950s before enough people grew spines to stop him.

https://www.platformer.news/stanford-internet-observatory-shutdown-stamos-diresta-sio/

dangillmor , 9 days ago to random

Microsoft lied through its teeth about the company's culpability in the disastrous Solar Winds breach that gave Russian hackers access to all kinds of info -- including nuclear security -- that was supposedly protected. https://www.propublica.org/article/microsoft-solarwinds-golden-saml-data-breach-russian-hackers

Deep, important report from @ProPublica --

dangillmor , 10 days ago to random

Big Tech has promoted all kinds of bogus "news" sites' output, because the slime who create them run circles around platforms' feeble due diligence.

Why does this thrive? Money, of course -- and the tech industry is one of the profiteers.

In this case, Microsoft swallowed the bait. And a rancid operation called BBN Breaking is being sued -- rightly from what I can tell -- for defamation.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/06/technology/bnn-breaking-ai-generated-news.html?unlocked_article_code=1.zE0.Dgb-.yFx_tlIPJfhm&smid=url-share

dangillmor , 10 days ago to random

Right wing extremists (I know, redundant at this point) are pushing people to drink raw milk. If a bird flu pandemic erupts, millions will probably die. And those vile know-nothings will have helped kill them.

https://www.mediamatters.org/turning-point-usa/turning-point-usa-promoting-drinking-raw-milk-amid-bird-flu-outbreak

dangillmor , 10 days ago to random

Musk's deadbird site has made "likes" private. This means fascists, racists, and misogynists -- and sympathizers of fascists, racists, and misogynists -- are now free to cheer on other fascists, racists, and misogynists out of the public eye.

dangillmor , 10 days ago to random

Call it the "Baltimore Sun" -- because its new owner operates right-wing sleazebag media outlets. https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2024/06/11/baltimore-sun-sinclair-fox-45-union-complaint/

dangillmor , 11 days ago to random

"Silicon Valley's False Prophet"

https://www.wheresyoured.at/false-prophet/

One guess who it is...

dangillmor , 11 days ago to random

For God's sake, journalists (and everyone else), stop calling right-wing extremists "conservative" -- they are saboteurs, working to wipe out democracy, human rights, a livable environment, and so much more.

(Updated: changed "radicals" to "saboteurs")

dangillmor , 11 days ago to random

T-Mobile was once an entertaining semi-upstart in U.S. mobile phone service, but it became a sleazy operation. Customers who believed a promise about a lifetime price are the latest victims of a cartel that couldn't care less about them.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/06/t-mobile-users-thought-they-had-a-lifetime-price-lock-guess-what-happened-next/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

dangillmor , 11 days ago to random

You have to carefully read this Axios piece -- on the rise of "partisan-backed outlets designed to look like impartial news outlets" -- to learn what should have been shouted right at the top: The overwhelming majority of these "pink slime" sites are engineered by right-wingers.

With that context firmly in your mind, do read it.

https://www.axios.com/2024/06/11/partisan-news-websites-dark-money

dangillmor , 11 days ago to random

After the Wall Street Journal disgraced itself with that grotesquely sleazy anti-Biden story, the Sinclair Broadcast Group -- a local-station version of Fox "News" -- is using it to add to the right-wing smear campaign.

In its own way, Sinclair is worse than the Murdoch empire -- because many people still trust local news, wrongly in this case.

https://popular.info/p/sinclair-injects-deceptive-attacks

dangillmor , 12 days ago to random

Academics are still on Twitter, unfortunately. Many of the ones who tried the fediverse gave up fairly quickly (exactly what happened with journalists). Here's a study worth reading, for lessons that Mastodon advocates should heed: https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.04005

dangillmor , 12 days ago to random

The way you can understand the federal proceedings against Trump for his theft of classified documents is a simple matter of context:

Assume that the judge -- a blatantly unqualified right-wing apparatchik appointed by Trump -- is a member of the defense team.

If you do that, everything makes sense.

Latest: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/10/us/politics/trump-documents-charges-cannon.html?unlocked_article_code=1.y00.ZLXl.0R0squaYWTAc&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

dangillmor , 12 days ago to random

Re the Adobe terms of service uproar, the company is claiming that it's all just a misunderstanding.

Anything is possible, but consider:

1. Adobe is a longstanding abuser of the "intellectual property" system. (A former CEO once told me that if the company's software could make copyright effectively permanent, that would be fine.)

2. Every time we hear about one of these licensing "mistakes" it's always -- always -- on the side of giving the company more control, and money.