One of the house members pointed out, correctly, that this case was dismissed without prejudice and so it can, legally, be re-opened in the future.

Also, even this is vastly overstating how difficult that it would be.

You don’t need to train an entire network to make doorbell camera videos/pictures. There are techniques (like IP Adapters) that can take a single photo during inference and copy the style onto any other generated work. With applications like ComfyUI, this is a matter of dropping a node onto the generation graph and choosing a photo (or several photos), 3-4 clicks.

It doesn’t matter, nobody would have a cause of action to challenge their interpretation if they decided that it meant any HOA or self-declared neighborhood watch.

In the end they are giving the data that they own to who they choose. The fact that it came from a device that you chose to bolt on the side of your house doesn’t mean anything in this transaction. The data instantly becomes theirs by virtue of the TOS (that you read, right?) that you agreed to when you signed up for the service and you have no say in what someone else does with their data.

These kinds of programs are just whitewashing, it makes it look like there are significant barriers in place to prevent your data from being used to enable a nationwide real-time surveillance network. There are not.

Flock could start charging a subscription fee for access to their video feeds tomorrow and it would be within their rights as owners of that data. The reason that they create these ‘programs’ is because it creates the impression that the user has control of ‘their’ data.

The owner chooses what to share in response to a request. Just like IRL when the police knock on an owner’s door to request information.

Yes, through this program you are technically correct that the user has to press a button to send the video to law enforcement through this specific program.

This implies that the user has the ability to refuse to send the video to law enforcement, but that is not true.

The videos are stored on Flock/Amazon’s servers and that means that the police can, via a subpoena or court order, access the footage or real-time video from any device or storage that the business can access. You have zero say in this and cannot opt out, the case law on requesting ‘business records’ is long settled as is the idea that digital files are considered ‘business records’.

In addition, this program does not preclude Flock/Amazon from voluntarily providing access to anybody or any group that asks/pays. The data is theirs, not yours.

This program is whitewashing the creation of a nation-wide real-time video surveillance network, paid for by you or via your tax dollars.

DNS|RegEx

Another good MVNO, for privacy, is Phreeli. Louis Rossmann (on YT) created a MVNO which collects no data from you, you can even pay cash-by-mail anonymously and with crypto.

Pretty straight forward value proposition: You pay and they provide phone services, don’t sell your data and design their systems around not collecting your data in the first place or, if collected (like payment information) is used for the transactions and deleted.

The only information you provide is a zip code (optional, but ties the phone into your area’s 911 system if you’re into that kind of thing)

I am not an ad bot(OR AM I?)

Anything can be an issue if work hard enough.

This is, conveniently, a decision that discourages their customers from buying hardware from anywhere but themselves an anti-competitive practice which carries little risk of lawsuit, or fine.

It’s certainly not a technical problem. We all, mostly, use the same cellular network and other carriers have no trouble supporting devices purchased directly from the vendor.

There’s a VERY important distinction here.

The ‘unlock’ that they are talking about here is to unlock your phone’s SIM to be able to be used with another carrier’s service.

This does not mean that the bootloader is unlocked and you will not be able to replace the OS. You will still be stuck with Verizon’s spyware-laden release of Android even when you move to a new carrier.

So, buy your devices directly from the manufacturer and make sure that the phone supports the ability to unlock (and re-lock!) the bootloader. If you need a recommendation, get a current generation Pixel and install GrapheneOS or if you won’t give up Google Play and dependent apps, LineageOS.

They’re not killing sideloading, they’re just building the gallows and sharpening the axe.

The outrage doesn’t stop anything, it just makes them slow their plans and wait out the public outrage.

She’ll be back as a Special Government Employee running some other agency that she’s incredibly unqualified for.

(the 3rd one is out soon-ish? if not now?)

End of Feb (the 26th?), these sales seem to be to promote the launch of Part 3.

I played the 2nd one with a friend for a few hours last night. I appreciate the humor, the music selection is above average, the movement feels good and every time we died it was due to us being dumb. No bugs (playing on Linux, with GE-Proton10-27), runs great on maximum settings.

We were having an easy time by going on a murder spree, then we noticed that the game gives you rank medals for speed, avoiding kills and avoiding detection so we started playing to maximize the end-score. Those constraints make the puzzles a bit harder and I can see wanting to run a level multiple times in order to get it right.

Overall, it’s a fun experience, does the stealth thing competently and the graphics/music/animations/dialog is good.

I had no idea this existed(I never even look at EGS), thanks. Now I can live out my WoW Goblin Rogue fantasies.

He means the LLM boom. Their conflating LLMs with all of AI is nonsense.

There are plenty of other machine learning projects, even ones using Transformer-based neural networks), that are doing just fine because they are not built on top of ridiculous business models like ‘buy every bit of computer hardware and hope someone makes something to run on it’.

The faster this thing crashes, the faster all consumer electronics becomes cheaper.

The unit is based in Alaska and specializes in operating in arctic conditions.

“Sir! They’re defeating our ICE officers with water balloons!”

“Those damn terrorists, send in arctic battalions!”

Minnesota Protestors: You bring a gun, we bring a water gun.

They always could press their own charges.

By publicly admitting that the FBI isn’t investigating then the federal government loses the ability to claim ‘ongoing investigation’ when the State asks a judge to force the evidence to be handed over.

U.S. Department of Justice Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said her agency is investigating federal civil rights violations “by these people desecrating a house of worship and interfering with Christian worshippers.”

In the words of our US Deputy Attorney General Todd “The President has the right to murder political opponents” Blanche:

“We don’t just go out and investigate every time a protestor is forced to defend himself against somebody or putting his life in danger, hold up a cardboard sign and yell”

“We investigate when it’s appropriate to investigate and that is not the case here, it wasn’t the case when it happened, and it’s not the case today,” Blanche insisted. “If circumstances change, and there’s something that we do need to investigate around that shooting protest or any other shootings protests, we will,” he said, adding, “but we are not going to bow to pressure from the media, bow to pressure from politicians.”

Oh, is that Todd “The President could order Seal Team 6 to kill his political opponent” Blanche?

“We don’t just go out and investigate every time an officer is forced to defend himself against somebody or putting his life in danger,”

Yes, we know. That is the problem.

I’m cynical to think that proper legislation won’t happen even after the crash. There’s simply too much money available to buy bribes/motorcoaches for Supreme Court Justices (Clarence Thomas) and other cheaper politicians.

May you live in interesting times, indeed.

I invite you to shelter against the storm: https://lemmy.world/c/dull_mens_club

It is already happening.

The distractions is that you only see the AI companies which have been blitz scaling, dumping unlimited amounts of money into orders and plans without any revenue plans for the other side. This move only pays off if they can essentially buy the entire market and lock out any competition (and then the rent-seeking enshittification will being). The long-term prospects of these companies is shaky at best, but that doesn’t matter to the people currently dumping funding into them… they’re going to sell everything at the IPO and leave some other suckers with the bag.

Because of this, there are many many times the amount of advertising and promotional hype than is justified by the actual progress in the field.

Everyone is familiar with this. If someone says AI, do you think of ChatGPT or an LLM? That’s because you’ve been affected by this hype wave that is being intentionally propagated in order to drive valuations for AI companies who are looking to hit an IPO so all of the early investors can get out quick before the bubble bursts (It’s like a crypto rugpull, except it is using the stock market instead of a meme coin).

‘Actual’ AI. By which I mean machine learning, including neural networks, has made huge progress in a lot of fields following the discovery of the Transformer model (the T in GPT). The, very real and impressive, improvements that have been gained are not flashy, they do not make for immediate next-quarter profits and are mostly public discoveries coming out of academia so they benefit everyone which makes them worthless to the people trying to horde emerging technology in order to push this bubble/rugpull.

Your life will be WAY more affected by the slow and incremental work being done in the field of robotics than having a slightly more personable chatbot. Your life or the lives of people you love will be saved by the advances in protein folding which allow rapid development of new treatments which can be customized to the individual. Cancer therapies that are optimized for the exact mutations in the patient’s cancer cells or customized medicine aimed at reducing side effects or harmful interactions.

You’re welcome. It is way easier than you’re expecting I promise.

Not that you won’t run into problems, every OS including Windows has problems that require reading, troubleshooting and jumping through hoops. An example I love is that trying to create a local user account on Windows 11 has more steps than the entire Linux Mint install.

The problems in Linux often come with logs, error messages and debug information which can make it a lot easier to diagnose correctly (instead of just changing random shit as dictated by assorted Googled Reddit posts from 5 years ago). It may look like heiroglyphics at first, but you’ll be able to see the matrix soon enough.

If my account still exists, you can reach out if you have problems and I’ll point you in the right direction at least. Enjoy :)