technology

Our reporting shows that cops are paying a company to help them deploy AI-powered bots across social media and the internet to talk to people they suspect are anything from violent sex criminals all the way to vaguely defined “protestors” with the hopes of generating evidence that can be used against them.

Jorge Brignoni took notes for the Cochise County, Arizona, Sheriff’s Office at a meeting with Massive Blue in August 2023, which 404 Media obtained. In the notes, he wrote that Overwatch does “passive engagement, then active engagement, towards commitment” with a “Bad Actor, Predator, DTO,” or drug trafficking organization. These targets are then “HAND[ed] OFF to L.E. [law enforcement] to arrest, indict, convict.”

On June 5, a Pinal County Board of Supervisors meeting was asked to approve a $500,000 contract between the county and Massive Blue in order to license Overwatch.

“I was looking at the website for Massive Blue, and it’s a one-pager with no additional information and no links,” Kevin Cavanaugh, the then-supervisor for District 1, said to Pinal County’s Chief Deputy at the Sheriff’s Office, Matthew Thomas. “They produce software that we buy, and it does what? Can you explain that to us?”

just grifts on top of grifts

“Supervisor [Cavanaugh] ultimately voted for the agreement because Massive Blue is alleged to be in pursuit of human trafficking, a noble goal,” a representative from Cavanaugh’s office told 404 Media in an email. “A major concern regarding the use of the application, is that the government should not be monitoring each and every citizen. To his knowledge, no arrests have been made to date as a result of the use of the application. If Overwatch is used to bring about arrests of human traffickers, then the program should continue. However, if it is just being used to collect surveillance on law-abiding citizens and is not leading to any arrests, then the program needs to be discontinued.”

In an August 7, 2024, Board of Supervisors meeting, Cavanaugh asked then-Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb for an update on Massive Blue. “So they have not produced any results? They’ve produced no leads? No evidence that is actionable?” Cavanaugh asked. “That would be public knowledge, that would be public information.”

I've enrolled in Varmints University to learn compute.

I haven't used Windows as my primary OS in ten years. My professor wants to expose us to Linux. Cool.

The class is to submit assignments to the department's Linux server, and remotely run a few commands on it.

Cool. I use rsync and ssh every day (the instructions involve Windows utilities like PuTTY and FileZilla, but whatever).

A VPN connection is required to connect to the department's Linux server.

Cool. I use OpenVPN every day. Just give me the config details, chief!

Not so fast. A proprietary 2FA utility is required to connect to the uni VPN, and the IT department informed me by email that it runs on Windows and Mac only.

So now, what would be the simplest part of this class is the most fucking complicated. Instead of just using my terminal, I ~~have to~~ have had to:

1. Install VirtualBox
2. Create a Windoze 11 VM
3. Create a Microsoft account
4. Install the 2FA utility on VM
5. Install cygwin Linux utilities on VM
6. Install rsync and ssh modules on Cygwin

Just to have a Linux terminal that does what this class requires!

https://www.aisnakeoil.com/p/ai-as-normal-technology

Overly academic, but a good article on how to think about AI risks vs the usual media hype bullshit.

tl:dr; authors predict slow adoption, risks are the usual capitalist crises being exacerbated and defence against these are the usual ones (collective action, regulation etc). We can just pull the plug out of the superintelligent skynet.

https://archive.ph/2nQSh

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/36614306

Are your files going to be safer with Synology hard drives?

This is rarely mentioned. Because of its design, Starship can't just go to the Moon, it first requires orbital refueling (from other Starships). NASA estimates they would need at least 15, but that was before the Starship payload capacity was downgraded.

if you don't know what happened: people who were annoying enough to be banned from 4chan destroyed the site for good and leaked hundred of emails and data of moderators and owners and also the entire source code and the owners literally pulled the plug because it was unrecoverable

a lot of people are saying this will be like the Tumblr exodus all over again but, I don't think that it will happen or be on the same scale as the Tumblr exodus for 1 reason:

the Tumblr exodus happened because Tumblr took away what majority of Tumblr users were there for (porn) while Reddit and Twitter allowed it, I don't think that Twitter or Reddit will allow what 4Channers will be looking for in 4chan replacement ie. an ability to say or post practically anything they want.

I was hooked from the moment she began with an Ursula Le Guin quote.

I gotta say, 15+ years of having tabs and now we get vertical ones as a default option. And I'm not loving it. The habit to look for my next tab is so ingrained, I look at the horizontal axis and nothing's there.