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Secret Panel 💦

There's been a great deal of backlash against Flock cameras, with constant vandalism and numerous reports of crooked cops misusing them, leading to more and more communities to cancel their contracts. While Flock has received the most backlash, there are other ALPR companies out there. Rather than ending their use of technology that spies on you, and in a move that doesn't really solve the problems associated with mass surveillance, some departments that have dropped Flock have simply switched to other companies that do the same thing, reports NPR.

One of those competitors is Axon. If that name sounds familiar, it's probably because you've seen it displayed on body cam videos, since Axon is the leading supplier of body cams to law enforcement, according to The Intercept. After a bit of rebranding in 2017 (the same year Flock was founded), many people don't know that Axon is the company formerly known as Taser, the electrical stun gun — another technology that police never, ever misuse.

While Flock had to develop not only its technology, but also its law enforcement contacts and clients, Axon already had the clients in its Rolodex thanks to its other products. Law enforcement agencies may be fleeing from Flock contracts like rats from a sinking ship, but they still want ALPR technology. In places like Denver, Colorado, for example, switching ALPR providers is easy when you're getting your new camera tracking access through a supplier you likely already do business with.

Is it really necessary to send humans to those places just to get the knock-on benefits? Couldn't we do those things directly, without going there?

It seems to me that, today, those who have the money to spend on these endeavors would only do so if there were perceived short-term benefits to themselves. That means they plan to exploit the resources, or increase their own power somehow.

I know the good engineers that make this happen are doing it for the challenge and in the pursuit of knowledge, and I know that's why we poors support it, but that doesn't "pay the bills." What is the motivation behind the money? Why are they really doing this?

Trump tries to dominate at the UN as his approval ratings plummet and even some Republicans stray from the script

Donald Trump stood before the United Nations on Tuesday and threatened to “annihilate” Iran. Yet even as the most powerful man on the planet flexed his military muscles, he was powerless to keep the gravitational pull of domestic politics at bay.

Heading into the UN building in New York, the US president was questioned by Kaitlan Collins, an anchor at CNN, which he had banned from the White House before a judge ruled against him. “I’m surprised that CNN is here covering me,” the 80-year-old snapped. “You should not be here covering me.”

The lashing-out was a reminder that even Trump, who has expanded executive power and dominated the national consciousness, finds some things beyond his control. Indeed, 20 months into his second term, there is a widening gap between the president’s self-perceived invincibility and the reality of his waning influence.

Federal courts are reining him in. Congressional Republicans are straying from the script. Poll numbers are tumbling to historic depths, driven by persistent inflation, rising fuel costs and an increasingly unpopular war in Iran. For the first time since his improbable political resurrection, Trump’s aura of authority is fading.

US Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson said on Friday he would resist describing AI agents as ​autonomous actors that "break loose" with "wills and desires of their own," suggesting the developers who instruct agents would be the ones liable ‌for harm.

"I'm going to continue as long as I am chairman to resist this anthropomorphizing of these tools," Ferguson said at the Reuters Momentum AI Austin event. "If someone tells a tool to do something, and the tool does it, I don't think we would say, 'Oh, what do we do about the tool?'"

Ferguson's remarks illustrated potential avenues for the Trump administration to take ​as incidents rise in which agentic AI testing resulted in unauthorized access to corporate or government data.

I know a lot of us, myself included, like to believe that piracy allows us to consume problematic media without supporting artists we do not like. But piracy demand also indicates to companies an untapped market that they could tap if they create the right product. HBO is absolutely keeping tabs on piracy of their show now and seeing our traffic the same way Crunchyroll used to keep tabs on pirated fan-translated anime back when they cared.

Also, there is a similar ethical zero-sum game with all other Harry Potter media and products. Normally we can buy on the secondary market if we need a hard copy to scan and rip but don't want to support the creators. But almost every Harry Potter book in circulation is purchased by someone with intention to sell for a profit, and HBO is also likely keeping tabs on sales and resales of DVDs of the old movies. Every time money leaves your bank account for Harry Potter media, you are directly feeding the ecosystem which sustains the Queen of the TERFs.

It's honestly pretty incredible how morally radioactive this one human is. Orson Scott Card is equally repugnant, but the Ender's Game series doesn't even have a small fraction of the market share of Harry Potter (IMHO this is the fault of that movie being just okayish, not good or bad, but that's another topic.) Trump's MAGA movement is comparable in badness, but there really isn't much most of us can do other than voting and never shutting up about how unconstitutional the things he is doing is. Rowling really is comparable to Disney or Nestlé, and she's just one person, not a whole company.

Right now, the only ethical way to consume Harry Potter is watching or reading movies and books on your copies that either:

• you obtained before 2020
• were given to you for free in some non-trackable way, e.g. offline or sneakernet.

There is no ethical Harry Potter consumption within capitalism. We will have to see if this changes once she is dead.

The White House has launched another taxpayer-funded television ad before the midterms, this time featuring imagery of President Donald Trump walking down a hall as audio plays of him saying “this is the final battle.”

“We will cast out the communist, Marxists, and fascists. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country. We will rout the fake news media, and we will liberate America from these villains once and for all,” Trump says in the ad, echoing comments he made during a Veterans Day speech in 2023.

**assuming streaming. Satisfactory, my current obsession, runs okay in the Frame but it’s definitely pushing it.

I’ve never had any kind of VR so this is all new to me, but having my game window in a comfortable place with other windows or desktops floating around me is the peak futuristic experience to me.

To reference one of my favorite books, Snow Crash, this is a place I could imagine meeting the Librarian and playing with a model of earth.

I could genuinely imagine working in this thing with the right peripherals.

Edit: flat, not 2D.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/76040559