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Submission + - Elon Musk Admits He Made a Huge Mistake With DOGE (futurism.com)

Submitted by fjo3
fjo3 writes: While the almost-trillionaire has promised that SpaceX will one day be worth “more than the rest of the Earth,” its prolonged decline on the stock market suggests otherwise. Instead of joining the AI race, SpaceX has resorted to selling compute to its competitors.

His EV maker Tesla, an early pioneer in the adoption of electric vehicles, has also been flailing. Vehicle sales have been plunging as customers are driven away by the richest man in the world’s tasteless behavior and erratic commentary. Even recent jumps in revenue were thwarted by major AI-related spending, causing Tesla’s share price to tank this week.

As a result of it all, Musk’s empire feels more like it’s coming down around him — making it a perfectly convenient moment for him to sit down with The Economist for an attempt at a clean slate. (Whether it landed we’ll leave to you to decide.)

In the interview, published Thursday, Musk lamented that he “got a little too involved in politics” and “got carried away, frankly,” by his efforts to systematically gut the government with the help of his so-called Department of Government Efficiency during the early days of the second Trump administration.

Submission + - US police now armed with Israeli spy vans simulating mobile phone towers (cybernews.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: If you thought Flock was bad check out Falconet.

Falconet from Israeli company Cognyte serves as a cell tower simulator that intercepts cell phone data from all devices within range. Police mount these systems in Tahoes so the vehicles can collect information while driving through areas without any direct interaction with targets.

This mobile approach generates ongoing records of phone locations and communications for everyone nearby rather than only suspects, which creates comprehensive movement profiles and bypasses traditional warrant requirements under the Fourth Amendment.

Cognyte sells the technology directly to U.S. agencies, as shown by the Texas Department of Public Safety purchase of four Tahoes where over three point eight million dollars went to the interception equipment. Adoption spreads through routine vehicle procurement with little external review of how the collected data is stored or shared.

Once active the systems permit warrantless collection of private cell phone data across entire communities during normal patrols, which enables potential misuse and leaves individuals with no effective way to discover or contest the surveillance.

https://x.com/JoshWalkos/statu...

Submission + - FCC Officials Took Pricey Gifts From Paramount as the Company Needed Approval fo (propublica.org)

Submitted by joshuark
joshuark writes: ProPublica reports that disclosures show FCC Chair Brendan Carr and Federal Communications Commissioner Olivia Trusty are among seven FCC commissioners who have accepted Kennedy gala tickets from CBS or its parent company over the last decade. Ethics experts told ProPublica this poses a blatant conflict of interest since the commission regulates the network. Carr’s previous financial statements show he has accepted tickets at least seven times since his 2017 appointment, totaling over $63,000 in gifts. It’s unclear if Paramount gifted Carr the premium seats because the FCC has yet to make public his financial disclosure for last year.

Federal ethics rules ban employees from taking gifts from any entity that does business with, is regulated by or seeks official action from their agency.

Four ethics experts told ProPublica that by accepting the premium tickets Trusty and Carr compromised the FCC’s impartiality and should not take part in any upcoming decision on the merger.

“There’s no way that any top federal regulator should ever, ever accept a gift from a regulated company with interests their work will foreseeably affect,” said Walter Shaub, who led the federal Office of Government Ethics from 2013 to 2017. “The appearance of taking gifts like that is terrible. What’s at stake is nothing less than the public’s trust in government.”

The FCC’s review of the merger is one of the final hurdles facing a historic $110 billion consolidation of two of the five largest film studios in Hollywood. The deal would unite Paramount Skydance with Warner Bros., bringing under the control of one company Paramount+ and HBO Max streaming services; CBS and CNN; and scores of other major broadcast channels, cable networks, and digital platforms.

American and international regulators are evaluating the deal for its potential national security implications and impacts to consumers worldwide. Last week, the British government signaled it planned to investigate whether the new entertainment titan that would emerge from the union would unfairly stifle competition. The FCC’s ongoing review includes examining the Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds backing the deal, including from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

The FCC usually has five commissioners — all appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate to serve five-year terms — but the agency currently has only three. Any vote by the full commission would likely be decided by Republicans Carr and Trusty over Democrat Anna Gomez.

The experts warned the commissioners’ gifts might become central in legal challenges and said the Justice Department should investigate potential violations of federal rules or laws.

Neither Carr nor Trusty responded to ProPublica’s requests for comment. Gomez said in a statement that she followed agency advice when she attended the event in 2023 and 2024. Her statement did not elaborate or otherwise address why taking gifts from Paramount did not pose a conflict of interest.

An FCC spokesperson said agency ethics officers have for years cleared commissioner appearances, finding it consistent with ethics law.

“FCC Chairs and officials have attended the same event, in the same ways, consistently from the Trump Administration to the Biden Administration to the Obama Administration,” the FCC said in a statement. “There has been no change in recent years.”

Shaub called the justification outrageous.

“It’s no excuse to say that you took the gift because everyone else was doing it or that your agency has had a bad habit of indulging in gift taking for a long time,” Shaub said. “That kind of explanation doesn’t work for school children, and it sure as hell doesn’t work for government officials who are supposed to have better judgment than a fifth grader.”

Richard Painter, a former White House ethics attorney in the administration of George W. Bush, said while courts often defer to the government’s judgment, they also can become skeptical if a regulatory agency is shown to have violated ethics rules.

“A judge may very well say that the merger decision of the FCC isn’t worth jack because the process was corrupted,” he said.

Comment Re: Not very "Innovative" (Score 1) 106

They neutered the old Google. It was faster, but it kept screwing up to the point that (just a few weeks ago) I was forced to update to Gemini, even after holding out for awhile.

TLDR; Google screws you either way, so you didn't really lose anything ... and now if you ask it for the Rotten Tomatoes score of something, it answers correctly most of the time.

Comment Re: Not very "Innovative" (Score 1) 106

They neutered the old Google. It was faster, but it kept screwing up to the point that (just a few weeks ago) I was forced to update to Gemini, even after holding out for so long.

TLDR; Google screws you either way, so you didn't really lose anything ... and now if you ask it for the Rotten Tomatoes score of something, at least it answers correctly most of the time.

Comment Re:Translation (Score 4, Insightful) 77

by machineghost (#66237042) Attached to: States Sue to Block Paramount-Warner Bros Merger, Defying DOJ

Do you have any non-propaganda, unbiased evidence whatsoever that consolidating into fewer companies will in any way result in greater production of creative works?

Because if not, perhaps you should consider the possibility that the statement you quoted isn't actually propaganda (it's just a statement of fact).

Comment The RIch are Just People ... (Score 3, Interesting) 176

by machineghost (#66230386) Attached to: San Francisco Moves To Build Private Luxury Airport Terminal

America is a democratic society, and its rich are just ordinary citizens. They may have more $$$, but they are otherwise equal to others, not a separate noble caste.

In other words, they're "just like us" ... but they should never have to mingle with the peasant caste when they travel! That would be un-American!

Comment Re:Naked Graft (Score 1) 114

by machineghost (#66220498) Attached to: OpenAI 'In Early Talks To Give 5% Stake To US Government'

I feel like people who make comments like this have no concept of American history. Naked graft like this has happened, just as bad if not worse, many times in US history!

Now, should we be concerned that we're moving backwards instead of forwards on corruption? Absolutely!

But it's just flat out ignorant and counterproductive to pretend this level of government corruption has never occurred ... when US history is full of it. Please people, read some history, or else we really all are doomed to repeat it.

Comment Re:Everyone Saw This Coming (Score 1) 56

There's a fundamental difference you're missing: all the businesses you listed want to keep you as a customer. Broadcom *does not*.

For their model to work, customers just have to pay their (wildly) increased rates long enough for Broadcom to make back the $$$ they spent to acquire VMWare (they'd like to make a tidy profit too, but with all the VMWare assets they acquire that's guaranteed ... as long as they cover the acquisition cost).

Google, Amazon and Microsoft may all be shitty companies with shitty plans to keep their customers while doing a shitty job of serving them ... but their business model still fundamentally revolves around keeping customers, not screwing them over so badly they leave.

Comment Everyone Saw This Coming (Score 4, Informative) 56

Broardcom's entire business model with these acquisitions (they did the same thing with others before VMWare) is to acquire something everyone depends on AND can't easily switch off ... and then jack up the prices by an insane amount.

It doesn't matter if most customers eventually leave: they will stick with what they have, no matter the cost, long enough for Broadcom to cover the entire cost of acquisition. At the end of the day they have more money than they started with, a small fraction of customers still paying, and some significant IP.

They win all around, and everyone else (including the acquired company and its now-fired employees) loses.

Comment Re:Questions (Score 1) 90

/plan is not how you loop in Claude: you use /loop or /goal.

goal solves your concern: the model doesn't stop when the code compiles, it stops when a second (independent) Claude evaluates a condition you setup to be true.

e.g. /goal Ensure all unit tests in /tests pass, then verify the build exits with code 0. Stop only when there are zero failing tests.

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