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Comment Article is badly wrong on stuff (Score 1) 64

That Politico article talks about how many people get around their drone's NFZ/Geofencing features, and then demonstrate how easy it is by linking to a walk-through of using DJI's native waiver process to allow their drones to operate in restricted areas. But: DJI's process will NOT let you work around the restrictions on the very air space the article is about (the DC NFZ). Go ahead, article author, give it a try (which they obviously didn't do, and didn't actually ask anybody to try to do in support of their point on this).

If you're going to fly any relatively recent DJI drone in the DC FRZ, you need to do a pretty profound hardware hack, or have well out of date firmware which has been hacked. None of the user-accessible features in an off the shelf DJI drone nor in either their self-service or manual contact waiver-generating mechanisms allow this to happen, despite what the article hand-wavingly asserts. Those casual tourist types aren't buying a Mavic 3 and flying it over the Pentagon or the Capital or anywhere in a 15-mile radius around it.

Comment Moar Regulayshuns! (Score 1, Troll) 128

I keep seeing people trying to make the case that this is an example of why regulations are good. In this case, the fact that a lot of financial activity IS regulated served to lull witless investors/users into a stupor of zero curiosity and diligence. Followed by, "Hey, isn't somebody else supposed to make everything I do perfectly safe for me, especially when it comes to me getting lots of money?" New laws/regs passed in the wake of this won't stop scammers any more than new gun laws aimed at law-abiding people ever stop criminals who simply ignore those laws and hold up a liquor store anyway.

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

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.

Comment Re:Has censorship ever been right? (Score 0) 455

The Biden Laptop censorship debacle wasn't the political hit job you think it was.

Yeah, it was WORSE.

It was a mistake, and it was rolled back as soon as it was realized that it was.

No, it was entirely deliberate, and every party involved knew exactly how much of a lie the "this is Russian disinformation" narrative was, but carefully kept the NY Post's well documented article from being seen (or even searchable!) until after the election. The FBI went to FB and TOLD them to suppress it - you couldn't even link to it in a private message. Twitter knew perfectly well that preventing people from seeing it by shutting down NYP's account was in keeping with the Biden campaign's desperate need to keep the information out of circulation in the weeks before the election.

Social Media companies saw the story as fitting well with the pattern of disinformation injected into their streams during the 2016 election to polarize the country, and responded accordingly.

No, they didn't. They saw a well-written article about material that had been confirmed as legitimate by multiple sources - including people corresponded with in material found on the laptop. The salacious crap highlighting Hunter Biden's idiotic lifestyle wasn't germane (other than we all pay the Secret Service to chase around and clean up after his messes), but the ample documentation of Joe Biden's direct involvement in influence peddling and the movement of millions of dollars of Chinese money into shared Biden accounts, that was (and very much still is) the real issue. And of course Joe Biden had just stood there in a debate and repeated his lie that he had absolutely no knowledge of his son's international entanglements, while his son's own words showed that Joe Biden was knowingly, deliberately lying - he was WELL aware of his son's dealings, personally enjoyed lots of cash from it, helped facilitate it while he was VP, and is very likely in criminal jeopardy from all of that.

All of that was plain from an even casual review of the material on the laptop that third parties (involved in their activities!) confirmed, with documentation. The FBI/DoJ knew that when they sent agents to Facebook to tell them to clamp down on it. Every other media outlet knew about it and - with only a few exceptions - acted in lock step to prevent the Biden family's substantial corruption from being know to voters when it mattered to know it. Multiple polls of people who voted for Biden NOT knowing this now 100% confirmed information show that over 15% of them would have reconsidered and likely changed their votes if they'd know he was looking them in the eye at that debate and lying about it. That would have completely changed the outcome of the election, every other factor not withstanding.

Comment Did she do the crime, or not? (Score 2) 188

How is this different than what would come from interviewing a witness about her having been raped, who - in the course of talking about THAT case - says, "Yeah, I know her. I met her when she robbed that store liquor store down on Main Street." Why wouldn't the police follow such a lead?

Comment Re:Interesting - but obviously biased (Score 3, Informative) 55

Half of twitter's staff have access to that information so that they can potentially use it. Security dude was security dude and tried to restrict access to that information. Company said no.

There's more to it than that. Engineers can romp around in the production system - generally without leaving a trail that could get them in trouble - while doing a LOT more than just looking at web server log files. For example, he pointed out that half the company (some 4000 people) could send tweets from user accounts AS that user, and leave no trail. Multiply egregious stuff like that times dozens of other examples (like .. high level system engineers allowed to work remotely, directly in the production systems, without having to use devices/computers that are patched and up to date, security-wise).

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

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.

Comment Re:Yays 50 and Nays 50... (Score 2) 401

Sigh, this country needs to abolish political parties and career politicians. And lobbyists. and...

Which means abolishing the First Amendment. It guarantees that people can assemble into groups as they see fit (like, say, political parties). It guarantees that you can pay someone to speak on your behalf if they're better at it than you, or can do so on behalf of a larger group in order to be more effective (like, say, lobbyists).

If you think freedom of speech and assembly is no good, all you have to do is get a federal supermajority in the legislature to see your point and kill the entire Bill of Rights (it can't be picked apart on amendment at a time), and then get 37 states to ratify that alteration to the Constitution. Should be no problem.

Or ... you could explore how to get kids a decent education featuring things like critical thinking skills so they aren't as vulnerable to getting their entire world view and their eventual voting patterns set by under- and mal-informed people throughout the media/entertainment complex, to say nothing of higher education's toxicity on this topic.

Comment Highly cited BY PEOPLE GOOGLE LIKES (Score 1) 61

Something tells me that being "highly cited" isn't the only criteria for this. More like "highly cited in a way that aligns with the ideological preferences of the people at Google who tell that how to happen." Which is fine. It's their thing. But they should have the intellectual honesty to proclaim that, proudly.

Comment Re:Google is fickle (Score 1) 31

Just make up you're damned mind already and stick with one thing!

Seriously. My all-remote company has historically used Hangouts for meetings but they keep moving everything around. We can't constantly be taking time to keep up with it, we have actual work to do over here. Google keeps proving itself undependable, and that's a great way to lose at B2B.

Comment Re:Get rid of first past the post! (Score 0, Troll) 141

No, we don't need the entire country run by California and New York. Look what they're doing to themselves, for a notion of why mob rule democracy is a terrible idea. We're a republic of fifty states. For a reason. We use variations on democratic procedures to handle what goes on in each state, and then each state operates within the bounds of the constitution's checks and balances to send people to the federal government to do the things that were set aside for the federal government to do (leaving everything else up to the states, and to the people individually). If you think we need to change it to nation-wide mob rule like an overgrown home owners association, you're going to need to persuade 37 of the states that it's in there interests to be run by the same people that are running places like Los Angeles. Good luck with that.

Comment NOT "begging the question" (Score 1) 33

No, it doesn't "beg the question" of who's responsible when something goes wrong.

It RAISES that obvious question. "Begging the question" is a rhetorical fallacy used by lazy people trying to win an argument by using premises that presume the truth of their conclusion, rather than supporting that conclusion.

Junior high school level writing stuff.

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