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Submission + - Tesla workers shared sensitive images recorded by customer cars (reuters.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: But between 2019 and 2022, groups of Tesla employees privately shared via an internal messaging system sometimes highly invasive videos and images recorded by customers’ car cameras, according to interviews by Reuters with nine former employees.

Some of the recordings caught Tesla customers in embarrassing situations. One ex-employee described a video of a man approaching a vehicle completely naked.

Also shared: crashes and road-rage incidents. One crash video in 2021 showed a Tesla driving at high speed in a residential area hitting a child riding a bike, according to another ex-employee. The child flew in one direction, the bike in another. The video spread around a Tesla office in San Mateo, California, via private one-on-one chats, “like wildfire,” the ex-employee said.

Other images were more mundane, such as pictures of dogs and funny road signs that employees made into memes by embellishing them with amusing captions or commentary, before posting them in private group chats. While some postings were only shared between two employees, others could be seen by scores of them, according to several ex-employees.

Tesla states in its online “Customer Privacy Notice” that its “camera recordings remain anonymous and are not linked to you or your vehicle.” But seven former employees told Reuters the computer program they used at work could show the location of recordings – which potentially could reveal where a Tesla owner lived.

One ex-employee also said that some recordings appeared to have been made when cars were parked and turned off. Several years ago, Tesla would receive video recordings from its vehicles even when they were off, if owners gave consent. It has since stopped doing so.

Comment Re:Florida leads the way (Score 1) 228

Although that's not what he said, the idea is absolutely right. Except for a very very small minority of students AP should NOT be offered in HS and definitely not until jr. or sr. year.

I've watched this play out in our own school district. Kids are being told to pick their college majors while in middle school (oh and you can only select from STEM or you're a failure) and they're being forced into AP courses (which are for-real college level content) in freshman year and being told that if they don't they won't get into a 'good' school and that their life is basically over. This is a horrifically destructive lie.

These kids don't get a chance to grow up and mature and make as smooth as possible transition from child to young adult. They are coached that they can never fail in anything and so are discouraged from trying anything off the beaten path. AP has driven out 'college prep' track classes; now your choices are go to college while you're still in HS (AP courses) or take an on-level course. There is no middle ground. It's taking a huge toll on these kids' mental health.

Go back to letting kids take home ec and wood shop. Let kids try things and fail and then learn that failure isn't final. This drive everyone to AP initiative isn't getting kids to college any better prepared (the % of kids who have to take remedial courses keeps climbing) and it's seriously damaging their mental health in the process.
Twitter

Submission + - Left-Wing Voices Are Silenced on Twitter as Far-Right Trolls Advise Elon Musk (theintercept.com)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: Elon Musk claims to be “fighting for free speech in America” but the social network’s new owner appears to be overseeing a purge of left-wing activists from the platform. Several prominent antifascist organizers and journalists have had their accounts suspended in the past week, after right-wing operatives appealed directly to Musk to ban them and far-right internet trolls flooded Twitter’s complaints system with false reports about terms of service violations. As the Los Angeles City Councilmember Mike Bonin noted on Twitter, the suspended users include Chad Loder, an antifascist researcher whose open-source investigation of the U.S. Capitol riot led to the identification and arrest of a masked Proud Boy who attacked police officers. The account of video journalist Vishal Pratap Singh, who reports on far-right protests in Southern California, has also been suspended.

Among the other prominent accounts suspended were the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club, an antifascist group that provides armed security for LGBTQ+ events in North Texas, and CrimethInc, an anarchist collective that has published and distributed anarchist and anti-authoritarian zines, books, posters, and podcasts since the mid-1990s.

All four accounts had been singled out for criticism by Andy Ngo, a far-right writer whose conspiratorial, error-riddled reporting on left-wing protests and social movements fuels the mass delusion that a handful of small antifascist groups are part of an imaginary shadow army called “antifa.” In a public exchange on Twitter on Friday, Musk invited Ngo to report “Antifa accounts” that should be suspended directly to him.

Submission + - Musk suggests bankruptcy for Twitter is a possibility (nytimes.com) 3

Submitted by quonset
quonset writes: As Elon Musk attempts to impose his will on Twitter, the problems keep piling up. First he fired a ton of staff, then asked many to come back. Next, he announced that all workers must work from the office at least 40 hours per week. As a result, several senior members of Twitter's privacy and security teams left the company while offering ominous warnings of the trouble Musk is getting the company into. Now comes word Musk has said Twitter might have to declare bankruptcy as more and more advertisers stop buying ad space because of the hate-filled screeds Musk has allowed to permeate Twitter. From the story:

At the meeting on Thursday, Mr. Musk warned employees that Twitter did not have the necessary cash to survive, said seven people familiar with the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The social media company was running a negative cash flow of several billion dollars, Mr. Musk added, without specifying if that was an annual figure. He mentioned bankruptcy.

Mr. Musk added that he had recently sold Tesla stock to “save” Twitter. He has sold nearly $4 billion in Tesla shares recently, according to regulatory filings this week.

Even so, Mr. Musk said Twitter remained over-staffed after mass layoffs of half of the company’s 7,500 employees last week. Remaining workers needed to be more “hard core,” Mr. Musk said.

His statements echoed messages he shared in two emails sent to workers late on Wednesday. In those notes, Mr. Musk said “the economic picture ahead is dire.” He added that he planned to end Twitter’s remote work policy and wanted employees to renew their focus on generating revenue and fighting spam.

Submission + - Tesla demands removal of video of cars hitting child-size mannequins (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: Tesla is demanding an advocacy group take down videos of its vehicles striking child-size mannequins, alleging the footage is defamatory and misrepresents its most advanced driver-assistance software.

In a cease-and-desist letter obtained by The Post, Tesla objects to a video commercial by anti-“Full Self-Driving” group the Dawn Project that appears to show the electric vehicles running over mannequins at speeds over 20 mph while allegedly using the technology. The commercial urges banning the Tesla Full Self-Driving Beta software, which enables cars on city and residential streets to automatically lane-keep, change lanes and steer.

The commercial led to a surge of news articles and criticism of Tesla’s software, which is being tested in an early-release version by more than 100,000 users on public streets in countries including the United States and Canada. It also triggered blowback from Tesla supporters who said the test could have been manipulated. Some of them sought to re-create the demonstrations — sometimes involving real children — in an effort to show that Tesla’s software does actually work.

Submission + - I just read through all 173 pages of the unredacted Google antitrust filing 3

Submitted by serviscope_minor
serviscope_minor writes: Twitter user @fasterthanlime has posted (with permission) a now locked read through of the 173 pages of the unredacted Google antitrust filing and added some more findings .

Ok so, I just read through all 173 pages of the unredacted Google antitrust filing and I have to say that either Google is screwed or society is screwed, we'll find out which. Unordered list of fun things I learned:

  • google has a secret deal with facebook called "Jedi Blue" that they knew was so illegal that it has a whole section describing how they'll cover for each other if anyone finds out — google appears to have a team called gTrade that is wholly dedicated to ad market manipulation
  • - Google is willing to do almost everything to prevent people from circumventing their ad exchanges — This is what AMP is about — Google habitually insider trades on their ad exchanges in every way you can think of and every way you can't. Too many ways to list here.
  • [the list continues]

Twitter user @PatrickMcGee_ also provides further analysis.

The complete, unredacted filing is here.

Submission + - Mozilla has defeated Microsoft's default browser protections in Windows (theverge.com)

Submitted by puddingebola
puddingebola writes: Mozilla has quietly made it easier to switch to Firefox on Windows recently. While Microsoft offers a method to switch default browsers on Windows 10, it’s more cumbersome than the simple one-click process to switch to Edge. This one-click process isn’t officially available for anyone other than Microsoft, and Mozilla appears to have grown tired of the situation.

In version 91 of Firefox, released on August 10th, Mozilla has reverse engineered the way Microsoft sets Edge as default in Windows 10, and enabled Firefox to quickly make itself the default. Before this change, Firefox users would be sent to the Settings part of Windows 10 to then have to select Firefox as a default browser and ignore Microsoft’s plea to keep Edge.

Submission + - Slashdot Alum Samzenpus's Fractured Veil Hits Kickstarter

Submitted by CmdrTaco
CmdrTaco writes: Long time Slashdot readers remember Samzenpus,who posted over 17,000 stories here, sadly crushing my record in the process! What you might NOT know is that he was frequently the Dungeon Master for D&D campaigns played by the original Slashdot crew, and for the last few years he has been applying these skills with fellow Slashdot editorial alum Chris DiBona to a Survival game called Fractured Veil. It's set in a post apocalyptic Hawaii with a huge world based on real map data to explore, as well as careful balance between PVP & PVE. I figured a lot of our old friends would love to help them meet their kickstarter goal and then help us build bases and murder monsters! The game is turning into something pretty great and I'm excited to see it in the wild!

Submission + - SPAM: Steve Bannon banned by Twitter for calling for Fauci beheading

Submitted by Hmmmmmm
Hmmmmmm writes: Twitter has banned the account of the former Donald Trump adviser and surrogate Steve Bannon after he called for the beheading of Dr Anthony Fauci and the FBI director, Christopher Wray, and the posting of their heads outside the White House as a “warning”.

Speaking on his podcast, the War Room, which was distributed in video form on a number of social media outlets, the far-right provocateur appeared to endorse violence against Wray and the US’s most senior infectious diseases expert.

“Second term kicks off with firing Wray, firing Fauci no I actually want to go a step farther but the president is a kind-hearted man and a good man,” Bannon said.

“I’d actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England. I’d put their heads on pikes, right, I’d put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats, you either get with the programme or you’re gone.”

Later on Friday, William Burck, an attorney for Bannon in a fraud case in New York City, told a federal judge he was withdrawing. Bannon is accused of misappropriating money from a group which raised $2m from thousands of donors to build a wall on the border with Mexico, and has pleaded not guilty. Burck did not give a reason for his withdrawal.
Link to Original Source

Comment Re:Headline is misleading (Score 1) 325

by Specter (#60614616) Attached to: FCC Will Move To Regulate Social Media After Censorship Outcry

In this you are completely correct. Unfortunately, the people who most needed to understand that, Facebook and Twitter, seem to be oblivious. So, short-sighted ignorant politicians are going to end up wrecking the protections of Section 230 to punish the bad behavior of two companies who thought they were too powerful to threaten and the rest of us get to live with the consequences. Someone remind me to send Zuck and Dorsey a Christmas basket full of coal.

Submission + - Anonymous "Anonymous Cowards" are, for now, not welcome on Slashdot (arstechnica.com) 7

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: On August 9 Slashdot quietly removed one of its earliest features: the ability to post comments as an "Anonymous Coward." Users can now only access the "Anonymous Coward" feature if they are logged in with a valid account. Slashdot administrators say this change is currently "temporary."

In an email interview, Slashdot President Logan Abbott says that the decision has nothing to do with Cloudflare's moves to cut ties with 8chan, Daily Stormer, or other controversial sites. Instead, he says the change is "absolutely, only" meant to combat spam.

"The spam was simply too great and coming from extremely dedicated trolls," Abbott says, and he points to large walls of text and SEO spammers as some of the site's most notorious posters. Abbott claims that the move is meant to make the site's existing moderation system more productive. "The improvement in quality of discussion so far speaks for itself."

Submission + - WebKit introduces new tracking prevention policy (webkit.org)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: WebKit, the open source HTML engine used by Apple's Safari browser and a number of others, has created a new policy on tracking prevention. The short version is that many forms of tracking will now be treated the same way as security flaws, being blocked or mitigated with no exceptions.

While on-site tracking will still be allowed (and is practically impossible to prevent anyway), all forms of cross-site tracking and covert tracking will be actively and aggressively blocked.

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