Comment Re: US bank account (Score 1) 46
I find it depressing that the US is so much behind
Submission + - Should AI Ban Users Without Human Review? (medium.com)
VTAndrew writes: Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming part of content moderation and account enforcement across major online platforms. While AI can help identify spam, scams, and harmful content at internet scale, what happens when the system gets it wrong?
A recently published Medium article examines this question through the experience of a Facebook account suspension that was reportedly initiated by an automated system, followed by an automated appeal denial and no meaningful path to human review.
The article argues that the issue isn't AI itself—it's allowing AI to become investigator, decision-maker, and appeals process without effective human oversight.
The broader concern is that platforms like Meta have evolved into critical pieces of modern infrastructure. They host community groups, school communications, local government announcements, business pages, political discussions, and years of personal history. Their ecosystems also span multiple interconnected services, meaning a single enforcement action can affect Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Threads, and Meta hardware tied to the same account.
This concern extends beyond a single user's experience. A growing advocacy effort at People Over Platforms documents thousands of reports from users who say they were wrongfully locked out of their accounts and calls for stronger transparency, meaningful appeals, and human oversight.
The movement originated with a Change.org petition that has gathered more than 63,000 supporters before transitioning to an independent nonprofit focused on digital rights and platform accountability.
Media outlets in multiple countries have also reported on users who say they were wrongly disabled by Meta's automated enforcement systems, with some accounts later restored after additional review.
Rather than asking whether AI should be used for moderation, the article asks a different question:
If AI is empowered to make decisions that can revoke a person's digital identity, communications, communities, and purchased ecosystem, should there always be a meaningful human appeal available?
Medium article:
https://medium.com/@vtadorsett...
People Over Platforms:
https://www.peopleoverplatform...
Original Change.org petition:
https://www.change.org/p/hold-...
A recently published Medium article examines this question through the experience of a Facebook account suspension that was reportedly initiated by an automated system, followed by an automated appeal denial and no meaningful path to human review.
The article argues that the issue isn't AI itself—it's allowing AI to become investigator, decision-maker, and appeals process without effective human oversight.
The broader concern is that platforms like Meta have evolved into critical pieces of modern infrastructure. They host community groups, school communications, local government announcements, business pages, political discussions, and years of personal history. Their ecosystems also span multiple interconnected services, meaning a single enforcement action can affect Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Threads, and Meta hardware tied to the same account.
This concern extends beyond a single user's experience. A growing advocacy effort at People Over Platforms documents thousands of reports from users who say they were wrongfully locked out of their accounts and calls for stronger transparency, meaningful appeals, and human oversight.
The movement originated with a Change.org petition that has gathered more than 63,000 supporters before transitioning to an independent nonprofit focused on digital rights and platform accountability.
Media outlets in multiple countries have also reported on users who say they were wrongly disabled by Meta's automated enforcement systems, with some accounts later restored after additional review.
Rather than asking whether AI should be used for moderation, the article asks a different question:
If AI is empowered to make decisions that can revoke a person's digital identity, communications, communities, and purchased ecosystem, should there always be a meaningful human appeal available?
Medium article:
https://medium.com/@vtadorsett...
People Over Platforms:
https://www.peopleoverplatform...
Original Change.org petition:
https://www.change.org/p/hold-...
Comment Re: Hope it succeeds (Score 1) 204
Not everyone needs a nav app and this is a budget alternative we are looking at.
Comment Re:Release something physical, at least (Score 1) 93
The problem is you've always owned a license to use a copy of the media. The same thing goes for music. You DO NOT OWN THE GAME OR MUSIC. You literally have a licese to use it. The whole reason you can make a backup of physical media legally is because you have the right to make a backup of licensed media you own. You can even sell the backup copy if the original media is destroyed. I was telling that to someone recently, where a jewel case for a CD and orignial liner had a CD-R copy of the disk they bought.
I've worked in both music and computer science. Both literally have the same model. If you want to own the actual media, write a book. You literally own the book. In fact, publishing encryption software code into a book and mailing it to England got around the US's 40 bit encryption munitions laws, lol. Peoplle published RSA onto T-Shirts and lauded it as munitions. Fun times.
Comment Re: Hope it succeeds (Score 1) 204
All you need is a radio with bluetooth to get a handsfree. A USB slot too just to play your own music would be nice.
Comment Re:We need them, but (Score 3, Interesting) 241
AP1000s run with a negative reactor coefficient. Translation, if they lose power they shut down, not melt down.
Not that I'm a fan, but they are still built on old (but proven) technology. The US was well on its way to a much better design in the Integral Fast Reactor, but killed it in 1994, mostly based on reasons the IFR designed to fix, like nuclear waste. The IFR was a fast reactor, meaning fast neutrons are used to breed fertile Uranium (U-238, aka nuclear waste) into fissile Plutonium-239 and then burning it in the reaction. With onsite reprocessing, (which is a proliferation risk, but let's be frank, all nuclear power is in some way) the remaining waste will decay to background in 100 years. Incidentally, that is about the same as fusion due to deuterium and tritium created by fusion.
Comment Re:Squid (Score 1) 19
Yes, and the bug is irrelevant. I use Squid to watch Netfix when I travel. No users that can sit on my network and intercept, password protected as well. I get close to 4000 Chinese hack attempts a day (usually Chinese, 1% North Korean, 1% American), none have gotten access. I give them fake access and troll them. which has gotten me in trouble with my ISP (DOS is kind of not allowed, lol).
Submission + - Europe: The World's Fastest-warming Continent (barrons.com)
fjo3 writes: The latest heatwave sweeping across Europe is a stark reminder that it is the world's fastest-warming continent, stretching into an Arctic that is heating at an even greater pace.
Britain, France, Italy and Spain have issued red alerts and health warnings for much of their territory this week as the region endures its second heat episode since May.
Britain, France, Italy and Spain have issued red alerts and health warnings for much of their territory this week as the region endures its second heat episode since May.
Comment Re: Microfots never grows up (Score 1) 12
And they still insists on hiding the filename extensions even though that is a great way to hide malicious code.
Comment Re: Industrial scale (Score 1) 74
As long as the daily fix of caffeine is there.
Submission + - Trump administration is U-turning on plan closing ocean monitoring system (cnn.com) 1
joshuark writes: The Trump administration is U-turning on its controversial decision to dismantle a critical ocean monitoring system that provides vital information on the health of the world’s oceans, after a bipartisan backlash in Congress.
The National Science Foundation, which funds the $386 million deep-ocean system, announced it would be pulling up buoys and other underwater equipment from arrays in late May. Thursday, NSF announced it will halt these plans and convene an expert panel to “identify a sustainable path” forward. The NSF’s about-face comes amid intense backlash to its original decision. Experts feared the US was taking eyes off the oceans as they endure a period of huge change, with off-the-chart temperatures fueling devastating storms and threatening fisheries.
Ocean scientists CNN previously spoke to said ditching the monitoring system was “foolish” and “counterintuitive.”
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle raised objections. “Dismantling the Ocean Observatories Initiative is supreme stupidity, costing taxpayers millions of dollars and destroying a vital source of climate data,” Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat, wrote in a statement.
House Science Committee Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California, said the NSF’s reversal was welcome but cautioned it was not yet clear “how much damage they have already done.”
“This should have never happened,” she told CNN in a statement. “This pathetic scheme was illegal. NSF is governing via chaos and reactionary nonsense. Scientists and coastal economies that depend on this data deserve better.”
The NSF said it “remains committed to ocean sciences, to responsible stewardship of its research infrastructure and to supporting the stakeholders that depend on it.”
The National Science Foundation, which funds the $386 million deep-ocean system, announced it would be pulling up buoys and other underwater equipment from arrays in late May. Thursday, NSF announced it will halt these plans and convene an expert panel to “identify a sustainable path” forward. The NSF’s about-face comes amid intense backlash to its original decision. Experts feared the US was taking eyes off the oceans as they endure a period of huge change, with off-the-chart temperatures fueling devastating storms and threatening fisheries.
Ocean scientists CNN previously spoke to said ditching the monitoring system was “foolish” and “counterintuitive.”
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle raised objections. “Dismantling the Ocean Observatories Initiative is supreme stupidity, costing taxpayers millions of dollars and destroying a vital source of climate data,” Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat, wrote in a statement.
House Science Committee Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California, said the NSF’s reversal was welcome but cautioned it was not yet clear “how much damage they have already done.”
“This should have never happened,” she told CNN in a statement. “This pathetic scheme was illegal. NSF is governing via chaos and reactionary nonsense. Scientists and coastal economies that depend on this data deserve better.”
The NSF said it “remains committed to ocean sciences, to responsible stewardship of its research infrastructure and to supporting the stakeholders that depend on it.”
Submission + - Meta lobbies Congress for protection from child-harm lawsuits (aol.com)
schwit1 writes: Meta Platforms has lobbied the U.S. Congress for legal immunity from child-harm claims tied to social media products such as Instagram, as it faces thousands of lawsuits from young users and their families, according to a source familiar with the matter and proposed legislative language reviewed by Reuters.
If adopted by lawmakers and passed into law as part of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) under consideration in the U.S. Senate, such a provision could undermine thousands of lawsuits against Meta and other online platforms over harms to children. Meta and Google's YouTube face a combined $6 million in damages after they lost the first case at trial early this year.
While legislators have given no indication of adopting the language, the lobbying effort shows the kind of legal protections Meta is seeking amid the biggest attempt to regulate online platforms in the U.S. since the 1990s.
If adopted by lawmakers and passed into law as part of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) under consideration in the U.S. Senate, such a provision could undermine thousands of lawsuits against Meta and other online platforms over harms to children. Meta and Google's YouTube face a combined $6 million in damages after they lost the first case at trial early this year.
While legislators have given no indication of adopting the language, the lobbying effort shows the kind of legal protections Meta is seeking amid the biggest attempt to regulate online platforms in the U.S. since the 1990s.
Comment Re:Well then (Score 1) 38
Sell it on the open market and you'll profit.
Submission + - CA faults stress at 1000 year maximum (wiley.com)
SlashTex writes: Study just released shows CA faults near 1000 year maximum — the study focused on faults in southern CA.
"Present-day modeled stress levels exceed historical maxima on multiple segments, particularly on segment SJB (3.6 MPa), suggesting that the system is critically stressed. Given the elapsed time since these faults have ruptured, the probability of an earthquake in the near future is high..."
Such a quake would likely be devastating, and less than 10% of individuals and companies in CA have earthquake insurance.
"Present-day modeled stress levels exceed historical maxima on multiple segments, particularly on segment SJB (3.6 MPa), suggesting that the system is critically stressed. Given the elapsed time since these faults have ruptured, the probability of an earthquake in the near future is high..."
Such a quake would likely be devastating, and less than 10% of individuals and companies in CA have earthquake insurance.
Comment Re:And? Thought there should be some "news". (Score 1) 153
Monster cables may have actually supplied audio fidelity during the analog days. Were they worth the 300% markup? Probably not. Keeping that 300% markup once fully digital? Total scam.
if Trump could've hawked them, you know he would. They're plated in gold, just like everything he likes! Gold plated cables, $4 million dollars each, best audio fidelity for a digital cable, guaranteed! Of course, a $1 digital cable has the exact same fidelity, lol. Remember the Energizer vs Duracell battery wars? No battery lasts longer because alkaline batteries all last the same.
