In an attempt to add context to what appears to be an inflammatory comment, here's some background:

Some time ago the US Department of Defense asked Musk to turn off starlink access in the Crimean peninsula. Although officially a Ukranian territory and not recognized as part of Russia, it made sense to do this due to the Russian occupation. Some Ukranian drones stopped working, and Musk steadfastly refused to allow his civilian system to be used to kill people.

Due to fallout from that incident, starlink satellite access was divided into two parts: Starlink and Starshield, both using Musk's satellites.

The explicit intent behind Starshield was to separate civilian and military uses of the satellite constellation. Under this framework:

"Starlink" is the regular user system, and it's TOS require that it not be used for military purposes. Basically, it's an ISP saying that you cannot use their system to kill people. Elon Musk is responsible for overseeing how Starlink is run and managed.

"Starshield" is the military version, and this is OK to use this as a weapon. The US Department of War (used to be "defense") controls who uses this and how it is used, they allow Ukraine to use it for battle, and they disallow Russia to use it for any purpose.

It was noticed that the Russians were stealing starlink endpoints and using them to attack Ukraine, so a "fast moving" detection was implemented to put a stop to this. As a byproduct, some Ukraine drones stopped working as well.

The Ukranians have access to starshield, the military version, and should have been using this instead of starlink.

Yes, he made the civilian version of starlink not work for drones, but this same change protected Ukraine from Russian drones using starlink.

Some people like to find reasons to criticize Musk.

I can't either.

Which is why the parent wants an unbiased source, and I'm with him.

News has become an unregulated sewer of rage bait propaganda.

Well, I should say.

Now friend, let me tell you what I mean...

We live in a capitalistic society that builds wealth.

Historically, hand-loom weavers complained when automatic looms were first introduced in the late 1700's, and ultimately they all lost their jobs.

...but at the same time, the cost of clothing and cloth in general came way down, making high quality clothing affordable to many, many more people. And the relative low cost of cloth gave rise to new uses, such as tarps and tents.

That's what building wealth is about: putting something in place that can reduce the cost and/or effort for future generations.

The fact that some people were put out of a job isn't a flaw, it's a feature. Making things more affordable and available raises the standard of living for everyone.

If you want to help the poor, if you want to solve some of society's problems, then that's a fine conversation to have. And I'm on board with it, I'll happily support your efforts... so long as your proposed solution doesn't involve changing capitalism.

If you want to help society, it has to come from a different place. UBI might work, government assistance is well intentioned but inefficient, communism is a complete disaster. An indexed wealth fund of $2 million would give out a dividend of $50,000 each year in perpetuity by gaining more value than inflation plus the disbursements, so maybe we should start setting up individual wealth funds for selected people, single mothers and doctorate students, perhaps. Start small and start taking people out of the workforce, and salaries should rise.

Other ideas are also welcome.

The idea that "workers and communities become afterthoughts" was well explored and described by Karl Marx himself in the middle of the 1800s, we don't need a Harvard Professor to remind us. Marx's mistake was to blame capitalism for the problem, we know that doesn't work.

We need new ideas and new institutions, but don't change capitalism.

Capitalism didn't cause any of it.

I dunno...

You have a point about parental control, but the reality is that most of a child's waking time is away from the parents in state-mandated schooling. And I strongly suspect that the supervision schools use on their students is much less strict than the direct supervision that parents would use on their own kids.

For example, should we keep guns, alcohol, and tobacco out of the hands of children, or should we rely on the parents to impose rules?

We teach children to swim, but we also make people put fences around their swimming pools.

It makes sense to put restrictions on some of the obvious dangers kids might find in their environment.

I suppose your question is rhetorical, but the answer is...

Congress tells the White House what to do, but almost never says *how* to do it. For example, congress told the White House to start protecting food safety, under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic (FDC) Act of 1938, with a mandate to "protect and promote public health by ensuring the safety, efficacy, and security of human and veterinary drugs, biological products, medical devices, the nation's food supply, cosmetics, and products that emit radiation".

Thus, the FDA has a specified mandate, but the White House has considerable leeway in how to implement that mandate. There have been amendments to the instructions over the years, but it's basically "keep the people safe" from perceived risks.

The FDA mandate applies when an AI is acting in anything related to a medical capacity, and the FTC can step in when "unfair or deceptive acts or practices" happen in the AI sphere, and the "Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act" covers various misuse of the computers of other people.

That last bit, CFAA, sounds like it might apply in this case.

The executive branch also has sweeping "emergency" powers if it believes something is or might be an immediate threat. It can also create new powers "by default" when they believe there is sufficient danger - such as when the EPA was created by Richard Nixon because Congress did not pass a resolution of disapproval within 60 days. (It was later given funding by congress, which effectively validated its existence.)

Congress is notoriously slow to act, and hesitant to act until a real threat is demonstrated. In the meantime, the executive branch can respond quickly to individual events with individual actions (which is what this sounds like), giving Congress time to consider the issue.

All of this is as it should be.

You may not like the current administration, but responding to potential threats is one of its functions.

Quick question: Is she wrong?

The previous post made a point, which you totally sidestepped.

I have no opinion on Sabing Hossenfelder either way, but I get the impression that physics has largely stalled over the last few decades.

So... I'm just wondering, Is she wrong?

Teslas, BMW's, Rivian, and Mercedes have cameras all around the vehicle that are always on, and if a security incident is detected they will save the video from a few minutes before the incident to right after the incident.

A quick search shows that Tesla theft (by example) is 90% to 99% lower than the national average, and I assume the other types are similar.

People do not steal cars because of *flock* cameras, they are always on, and the data is available to law enforcement with no oversight.

Personal vehicles save video locally, and it's only used when an actual crime is committed.

I'm in favor of public surveillance that's kept local to whichever user, in the manner of a ring doorbell video (if that were kept local, which it is not). It prevents crime without violating rights - the burglar shouldn't have been on the property to begin with.

This leads to an interesting thought. Flock is a company that keeps videos across the country and tracks vehicles, and soon to include facial recognition. Flock cameras would be entirely acceptable if the video were "owned" by someone local to the actual camera, so that police would have to query the owner to get a video.

I'm not sure who the "owner" would be in this case, but hypothetically if the camera were on the telephone pole outside of a house, if we consider the video owned by the property owner then the possibility of a rights violation would go down precipitously.

Just a thought, and an under-developed one.

We need new ideas to help solve new problems, here is one to chew on.

A couple of things about the issue.

Firstly, it's usually explained using insult and hyperbole. That's not a way to get others on your side. There's an old saying "it's not enough to be correct, you also have to be effective". It's usually used on... wait for it... nerds, who are typically very smart but cannot communicate well, and who fall back on insults when they cannot communicate well.

Secondly, for some reason no one wants to debate the issue. The mantra is "the science is settled", which isn't really how science works, but there are STILL gaping logical holes in the entire edifice that no one wants to clear up. Such as: other than rising global temperatures, the theory hasn't made testable predictions of any consequence that have actually come true. For example, in 2005 after Katrina, someone noted that "due to climate change, hurricanes will become stronger and more frequent", and then we had about a decade of no major hurricanes.

Thirdly, and this is the one that really bothers me: even if the science is settled, even if the conclusions are correct, climate change does not indicate what should be done. I've reviewed probably two or three dozen experiments aiming to mitigate the effects over the years, they ALL had the best of intentions, and they've ALL failed, sometimes spectacularly, and always adding more CO2 to the atmosphere than if we had done nothing.

In the meantime, since 2000 when Al Gore brought the issue into the public eye, I've seen the rise of solar panel farms, windmills are everywhere in the midwest, and we've gone from about 2% renewable (year 2000, mostly hydropower, and discounting wood) to about 30% today (also discounting wood). New technology is taken up at an exponential rate, so expect those numbers to rise faster in the near future.

Several technologies have been developed that we're right on the edge of deploying (carbon capture by electrolysis, fusion energy generation, robotic labor (various companies)) or in the middle of deploying (EVs, various companies) that should help enormously.

And finally, the issue has become political. The premier maker of EVs, the one who made EVs that people want to buy, is vilified by the political side that wants you to believe in climate change. A sect of that side wants to replace capitalism with communism, even though the resource utilization of that model is one third to one half of what we have today, and would slow down the innovation and advancement that might help us solve the issue.

But if you're not on board, you're a science denier.

It took 40 years to convince everyone that smoking was bad for us, now we have to endure the people who think they're right and have to insult us because we don't believe them.

Stop badgering us about it, it's not about science it's about economics, and it won't be a problem in a decade or two.

(Note for the observant: This post is rife with observable trends and verifiable facts, so expect the other side to downvote it into oblivion, because that's the way to convince people.)

The more fundamental problem is distributed responsibility and lack of transparency.

Until recently, drone strikes required a long sequence of command decisions, starting with intel gathering, analysis, decision, orders, and remote command of the device. No one is directly responsible when something goes wrong, the failure is distributed among many players with the result that no one has to bear the consequences.

For example, the "collateral murder" incident, where apache helicopters gunned down civilians and journalists.

In normal situations, we have Derek Chauvin, who was an individual who caused the death of one man. He went to trial, the evidence was examined, and guilt was assigned. Trials are more-or-less held in the public light, and journalists and interested parties can examine court records and in some cases reanalyze evidence (not all physical evidence is kept or available, but for example, DNA evidence can sometimes be reexamined).

That's how it's supposed to happen.

Contrast that with erroneously ordered drone strikes that hit civilians instead of legitimate targets.

I suppose the biggest, most egregious example would be George Bush taking the country to war because Saddam Hussein had "weapons of mass destruction", and of course one were found, and the security services swore up and down that they told him there were none, but he stated "well, the message didn't get through".

And skated responsibility. Completely.

To bring this closer to home, software engineers implement all sorts of insecure, inconvenient, and privacy violating features with no moral pushback. Even if it's completely obvious that something is an anti-feature, people do it because a) their job depends on it, and b) it's someone else's decision. And if there's a breech and ten million social security numbers get made public, the company simply fixes the problem and continues. No responsibility is assigned.

I was satisfied to see videos of the "narco terrorist" boats get destroyed, and then the survivors killed. Not the actual killing, but just knowing that the event was recorded and analyzed in the public sphere, and there was a conversation about it, and it was investigated. That seems like it was handled the right way.

Death is permanent, it can't be undone. If we're going to kill people, regardless of whether it's AI or anything else, it should be transparent and put into the public discourse.

No one is assigned blame for screwing up, that's the more fundamental problem.

Red light is thought to activate a regeneration mechanism within the body.

It interacts with some of the compounds in mitochondria that promotes healing and cellular recovery. It also has a biphasic effect: too little does nothing, too much does nothing, but the right amount can have therapeutic value.

A quick fact check:

a) Kennedy center: "Following the hearing, the Justice Department informed the judge that no physical changes or name additions will happen before October 8, 2026, leaving the issue in a temporary holding pattern while the legal battle continues."

b) Google: "As of August 2026, the administration is not currently held in active criminal or civil contempt of court in these specific cases, though it has come incredibly close."

(Of Note: The New Jersey item was a threat, not a finding of contempt.)

While google may "work" as you suggest, a random article in "The New Jersey Monitor" from half a year ago is not evidence.

There's a lot of FUD surrounding this claim, but when you drill down to facts, the US does not ignore court orders.

Post verified evidence if you disagree.

So your thesis is that injunctions against the government are simply ignored?

That's a strong position, I think I would have heard about it. Can you cite some examples, Mr. Anonymous Coward?

(Overturn on appeal or vacated after final decision doesn't count.)

Probably not.

As you may have noticed, there are 3 levels of criminal in this country.

If the government is doing something illegal, they just stop.
If a company is doing something illegal, they stop and pay a fee without admitting guilt.
If a person is doing something illegal, they go to jail.

This is the "government doing something illegal" category, which means they simply stop doing it. Justice is served, the system works, yadda yadda.

I've often wondered if remote screening would put an end to this.

Imagine a paid service where the company serves as your window into the internet and composes your HTML and sends it to you as an image displayed by their app. You could magnify or smallify the image as needed, and the app would send mouse and keyboard events back to the company to be forwarded on your behalf.

It's not a fully formed idea, you would also need to package and send audio, deal with credit card payments, and so on, but for people with fast internet access this might be a doable solution.

(Of note: it's like a VPN, but the HTML compositing on the remote computer is an additional layer. A VPN service could randomize the output portal per session, but that's already a feature of VPNs.)

An advantage of this is that almost all the system configuration fingerprinting would be inaccessible to the wider world, if a breech happens none of your private files are available on the remote computer to be stolen, and a number of security guardrails could be implemented, such as ensuring that mouse events are short, keypress events contain only keypress information, only image information is displayed, and so on

A sophisticated client system might even incorporate multiple user identities per client user, keyed to a specific website. Your internet facing information could be different when visiting Amazon.com, as compared to WalMart.com.

VPNs aren't that expensive, and they're used by people who want the value of an extra level of security.

For most web browsing, this might be an extra level of anonymity for people who would value that extra level.