Most of the risk of de-anonymization comes from "enrichment" - you may not have a name in this dataset, but say you have birthdate, gender and zipcode. In that dataset you have names, and you match them up based on the other attributes.

If you read claims about anonymized data closely, you'll notice the providers are well aware of this in how they phrase things.

Of course plain old incompetence also does the trick.

Micopilot Copilot.

One name, every product.

You realize this is Telecom, not FAANGXia? (is there an acronym for the current stock hotness?)

These are the oligarchs that came out of the post-WWII gravy train. The ones that partnered with NSA while building a middle class.

Not the new ones you're thinking of, who are building their own intelligence agencies and attempting to destroy the middle class.

It just raises the cost. I'll get a separate phone for the car that holds only my ID plus numerous videos of the 4th Amendment recited by furry cops in helium voices.

I already limit what is on/available from my "walking around" phone. Now we're just specializing for particular audiences.

Your car phone will have no need of a SIM, at least, so an old one will do.

That is a recipe for throwing a bunch of cable guys in prison.

I guarantee you if that happens once, nobody with a title above manager will ever have heard of it. "Nine one what?"

This is what inflation looks like in a single product category.

Something happens to break the former equilibrium; in this case, a few things happened - Covid, then LLMs, and now rapid changes in international commerce stability. This causes uncertainty, disruption and shortages, all of which spikes prices.

Then the opportunists see an opportunity. (And to be fair, prices are going up on everyone, even opportunists.) Prices are already going up and the bulk of buyers have no good reason to be knowledgeable or engaged enough to understand component-level price pressures. And even if they did, what are they going to do about it?

Then everyone else in the supply chain realizes not raising prices is a missed opportunity and they're the suckers if they don't.

Buckle up, this is going to be "normal" for a long time.

Zuckerbook's extruded wheeze was predictable based on the existence of the others - the cool kids down the hall were getting attention for doing it.

It won't matter. We're destroying our universities anyway.

In a decade folks will get their pass/fail participation trophy by correctly answering questions like, "Should Americans be more thankful to Jesus or Don Trump for their record breaking average salaries of $16000/year for only 72 hours labor per week?"

It will qualify them to whip productivity out of their inferiors so long as the report enough subversives each week.

Give give your comment its due, we agree there are powers no state should ever have.

And, if one isn't careful, it isn't hard to creep up on a mode where it seems like giving the state this little bit more power is no biggie. My guy is running the show, it fixes a real problem and it isn't a big deal, right? And at some point you've crossed a line.

However.

Here we are. The barbarians are not at the gate; they are literally redecorating the White House. And you're worried about fantasy commies.

Perhaps we can compromise. "No ubiquitous surveillance for anyone, inclusive of fascists, commies, AND Unitarians."

And you remain free to test your water for fluoride before drinking it (at your own expense).

How's that?

Yep. Municipal power is a natural thing to do - it is a situation where the locals are about as close to fully aligned with one another as they get - everyone wants reliable, cheap power and responsive service when you need it. So you make a captive company with a charter that keeps it aligned with its customers instead of Wall St. You don't take silly risks because you're not chasing infinite growth, customers gets decent rates, the area gets some decent local jobs out of it. Everyone except the predators are happy. If only other all local problems had such great solutions.

But, ohhh, booga-booga, that's communism. (Please just ignore Trump seizing the means of production.)

Learn to read.

There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in public. Cell phones are different because they're considered private communications despite using public airwaves.

There have been attempts to get precedent that automated, continuous monitoring is qualitatively different than a cop standing outside watching you, with unfortunately mixed results.

Mostly correct. I'd just add the average LEO doesn't care about catching criminals, either, if it takes too much effort.

Going beyond today, this is a long-running theme in US constitutional law. Before the colonial rebellion, King George was a big fan of "writs of assistance". These were effectively licenses for thugs to search or interrogate anyone at any time in pursuit of a crime (or "crime"), and of course anyone subject to such abuse hated it. So that's where the 4th Amendment came from - we do warrants, but you have to name with specificity what/who you want to investigate as well as why and under what authority, and get a judge to agree.

Authoritarians, thugs and control freaks have been trying to reinvent them ever since.

One famous case from before the digital era was Stanford v. Texas (1965). Texas, being extremely Texan, passed the Suppression Act, which made writings, photos, etc. "concerned with" the Texas Communist Party contraband subject to 20 year prison terms. The Supreme Court unanimously held the warrant was an unconstitutional general warrant.

Opposing general warrants is as American as apple pie, opposing kings and displaying amazing senses of entitlement.

The democrats crying is pure bullshit here. They wanted this to

A. This is nonsense on stilts. Name one elected Dem who promoted this.

B. Even shitbags like Cruz are saying this is illegal.

This benefits everyone's donors.

C. You seem to believe only elected politicians matter. What about the actual, you know, citizens who pay these government workers?

where they'll defend all the anti-human rights shit that happened to no end

Weird how selective you are about which humans and which rights.

I completely agree. Waymo has a lot of work to do.

And it isn't just passenger safety - those things are a menace during civil emergencies. There needs to be both a lot of work put in to contextually proper response to exceptional circumstances - from what should be easy stuff like "don't block fire trucks or drive over fire hoses" on through figuring out how to safely get out of the way when power goes out. For reference, right now we're at the point where they still confuse themselves.

Of course if you also intentionally cripple them by omitting multiple available, useful sensory modalities, climbing that capability hill will be that much harder, and you'll obviously never get the same safety in some high-salience situations like a kid running out from behind a parked car if you aren't running something that can "see" behind it.