Because it costs so much money to create and run AI models, tech companies will inevitably try to pay for them by selling our personal information, says Signal’s CEO #signal#ai#privacy
Tomorrow I'll be participating in a webinar on #privacy and the #fediverse organized by Privacy Laws and Business. I think it's an important issue -- I hope we spend more time talking about this topic.
"Despite being a raving commie loon, Smith's observation was so undeniably true that regulators, policymakers, and economists couldn't help but acknowledge that it was true. The trustbusting era was defined by this idea: if we let the number of companies in a sector get too small, or if we let one or a few companies get too big, they'll eventually start to rig prices."
Noted anti-capitalist agitator Adam Smith had it right: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
One of these companies is Plexure, partly owned by McDonald's, which provides the surveillance-pricing back-ends for McD's, Ikea, 7-Eleven, White Castle and others - basically, any time a company gives you a hard-sell to order via its apps rather than its storefronts or its website, you should assume you're getting twiddled, hard.
For example, Plexure boasts that it can predict what day a given customer is getting paid on and use that information to raise prices on all the goods the customer shops for on that day, on the assumption that you're willing to pay more when you've got a healthy bank balance.
"Aanleiding is een onderzoek van een Duitse journalist die kon inloggen in duizenden vergaderingen van Europese overheden. Nederland bleek in haar onderzoek het kwetsbaarst."
Haha, nog es naar het programma kijken van dit kabinet. Op naar een politiestaat, maar nog steeds geen aandacht voor eigen beveiliging en digitale soevereiniteit. Pfff #Security#Privacy#Democratie
#FBI#Surveillance#Privacy#Encryption: "As a privacy and encryption advocate, there were moments in this story that made me a little uncomfortable. There are places where the FBI is chafing at the constitutional limits on its surveillance powers where we can't help but sympathize with these "good guys" going after "bad guys." But this is the FBI, a lawless, unaccountable secret police who routinely bypass those limits by secretly buying data from sleazy data-brokers, or illegally sharing data with the NSA.
The conclusion really hammers home the point that the FBI's problem isn't constitutional niceties. Despite seizing hundreds of tons of illegal drugs and arresting thousands of high-ranking criminal syndicate bosses, Anom made no difference in the drug trade. Prohibition, after all, just makes criminals more wealthy and powerful. The Anom raids were, at worst, the cost of doing business – and at best, they were a global reset that cleared the board of established actors so that other criminals could seize their turf.
But even though Anom didn't triumph over crime, Dark Wire is a triumph. The book's out today, and there will shortly be a Netflix adaptation based on it, directed by Jason Bateman:"
30—70% of fertilized eggs NEVER IMPLANT SUCCESSFULLY, EVEN WITHOUT #BirthControl, acc/to Michael Belmonte, an #OBGYN in DC & a #FamilyPlanning expert w/the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists (ACOG). #Laws restricting #abortion#access in some states, including Idaho, have defined life as beginning at fertilization.
Since Microsoft seems to not care about the #Privacy impact that the #Copilot+ #Recall feature has, I am going back to #Linux as my daily driver. All my #Homelab servers run on Debian or its derivatives, work servers run RedHat or Windows, but I have not used a Desktop Linux for quite a while as a daily driver. I've been playing with Debian 12 with Gnome for the past few days, and next I'll be playing with Fedora, which I have not used since the early 2000's. We'll see how fast I can catch up.
BTW, since I work mostly in #VR using #Immersed, that is one of the first things I tested, and I got to say, their work to support multiple virtual monitors with #Wayland+#Gnome has really paid off, it works flawlessly in Debian! I need to test it in Fedora in the next few days. Can't wait for my #Visor to arrive. #WorkInVR#Immersenary
I'm still switching to #Debian as my primary OS and keep #Windows as a VM for some work applications, but it's good to see that MS is trying to make this controversial feature a bit more secure.