My thoughts exactly. The idea is really bad on the engineering side and only a drug-addled mind with no understanding of Physics could come up with it (oh, and look: one did. And one that supposedly has a Bachelor in Physics, no less ...).

What I am wondering is whether these environmentalists do not understand that (greens can be just as clueless as everybody else) or whether they decided this was good PR for them and that it is not going to happen does not matter.

The splicing isn't the problem rather companies are letting people block ads if they put the work in.

Google could definitely win that arms race if they wanted to. They have vastly more resources after all. But at the same time I don't think they want to risk losing the users. Or worse have them go to a competitor.

That's probably the real issue. There is still the possibility of competition however remote.

A Dyson sphere would have significant environmental effects too, and it's equally likely to be built.

I think there are others doing it as well and there are filter add-ons. So who has "been waiting for this" ?

In this case Trump is more a symptom than a cause. Local policing is more of a state level, or even city level, affair. But, yeah, it's a related event.

And remember, you should expect people to act in ways that make their job easier. It doesn't always happen that way, but that's what you should expect, no matter what the rules say.

That's possible, but you didn't cite your source for the statistic. And I think it quite unlikely, so, for me, you really need decent evidence rather than just a claim.

The military implications are obvious. Think Ukraine. If you suspect the enemy is trying to infiltrate on a dark night along several kilometers of frontline, you light up the scene while launching a bunch of low-cost FPV drones, and those infiltrators are about to have a bad day.

You *can* spot infiltrators in the dark with IR cameras, but it requires much more expensive drones and isn't usually as effective, hence the preference for night operations. Plus, there's IR camouflage, with varying degrees of success. But it usually makes you stand out like a sore thumb under illumination (you're basically wearing a tent).

The Bonanza of free training data is over and done with. Sites are locking down and blocking scraping bots. They have to or they get overwhelmed by the cost of the traffic.

That means only the big platform holders are going to be able to keep their models fed and current.

So facebook, microsoft, maybe Apple and that's about it. In the past I would include Twitter but I think it's mostly politics bots and pussy pics in bio posts.

AI is a technology that by its very nature becomes a monopoly.

I had some interactions with EFF a few years ago that left me sad. They definitely do a lot of good work, but I had thought they would be pretty good at understanding complex technical issues and their nuanced interaction with social and political issues, but my experience was quite the opposite. They're a pretty blunt hammer, mostly focused on rejecting any technological change regardless of its benefits. Even that would be okay if they were at least able to articulate sound objections, but that also didn't seem to be the case.

I was working on Android and participating in the ISO 18013-5 mobile driving license standardization process. I thought it would be a good idea to consult with ACLU and EFF, partly to get their buy-in, but mostly to get their feedback. I thought they might have concerns that I could help to address either in the standard (though, honestly, the European members of the ISO committee were already going above and beyond with privacy protection and abuse protection -- the Germans in particular are incredibly paranoid about such things -- and that's good!) or in the Android infrastructure I was building.

ACLU was great, at least for a while. The reason it was great was because the ACLU representative I was working with was Jon Callas (former. CTO of Silent Circle and PGP Corp, Chief Scientist of PGP Inc.). Jon is brilliant, with a deep and abiding interest in privacy. He was generally impressed with the approach we were taking, and had some good insights for tweaks we could make to tighten it up. Unfortunately Jon only worked with the ACLU for a couple of years, and we struggled to find anyone to engage at all after his departure. I'm not sure he wants to share publicly his reasons for separating, so I won't go into that (though I will point out Jon's article, linked above, is not an official ACLU position).

EFF... not so much. The EFF folks seemed not even to be able to understand what we were building. They kept comparing it to e-Verify (which they think is unambiguously bad) but were unable to articulate precisely what the problems with e-Verify were, or how those might translate to mDLs. I was actively seeking feedback on concerns that I could try to mitigate through good design and implementation. Their response was just a blanket "no, this is all bad" with no thought behind it, and no consideration for the individual privacy improvements that electronic delivery with selective disclosure provide as compared to plastic cards that just lay all of your personal information out there.

My discussions with police were actually far more productive than my discussions with EFF. The cops recommended pro-privacy tweaks that I incorporated -- their concern wasn't actually privacy, mind you, but liability, both financial and legal. The chiefs I spoke with were very concerned that there not be any circumstance in which a police officer might need to touch your phone, because they didn't want to deal with the crap that would ensue when phones were broken, or illegally searched. They were significantly more tech savvy than you might expect, too, and of course they deeply understood highway stops and other police interactions.

But EFF was just frustrating and useless. Which is too bad because I had always had a lot of respect for them and the work they do. I still do, I guess... I just understand now that they have morphed into a typical lawyer-based civil rights organization. Which is good! We absolutely need those! But they lack the technical sophistication I understand they had when founded.

Everything is automated so we don't get any job creation and all the money just goes up to the top anyway. What the fuck do I care if it's a Chinese billionaire getting all the money or an American billionaire and getting all the money?

It's 2026 is there anyone naive enough to believe that there's some magical world where jobs come back? Half of people under 30 are living with their parents and no it's not because of cell phones and avocado toast...

Y'all need to read up on the Indian rubber company or any one of the thousands of companies involved in colonialism.

Or Jesus fucking Christ Coke has death squads. And the stuff that the del Monte fruit company did would give you nightmares.

I don't like Facebook because they are driving my country to fascism but they've got a long way to go.

On the other hand they did help Elon Musk kill 8 million kids so there is that.

It'll have pretty much the same outcome. 8^)

You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

The phrase you're looking for is "BAU, functioning as designed"

While taxpayers are distracted about the cost of the Flock network in both dollars and privacy, the ones really profiting from all this hope you don't notice the vicious money-burning process that involves this level of taxpayer-funded "just-in-case" police response.

Just wait until the city gets the bill for that fucking bullshit involving at least 17 corporations, LLCs, non-profits, and partnerships. You thought hospital bills were getting ridiculous, follow THAT money and see how it funds citizen safety. Thrice.

This is a small prototype, not a full-scale mirror.

Also, ignoring that, pretending light brighter than the full moon is useless is... silly? For generating power, sure, but for illumination, it absolutely is not.