Technology

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1874605

A 17-year-old from Nebraska and her mother are facing criminal charges including performing an illegal abortion and concealing a dead body after police obtained the pair’s private chat history from Facebook, court documents published by Motherboard show.

Solar now being the cheapest energy source made its rounds on Lemmy some weeks ago, if I remember correctly. I just found this graphic and felt it was worth sharing independently.

Source: https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth

No surprises here. Just like the lockdown on iPhone screen and part replacements, Macbooks suffer from the same Apple's anti-repair and anti-consumer bullshit. Battery glued, ssd soldered in and can't even swap parts with other official parts. 6000$ laptop and you don't even own it.

Charlie Jane Anders discusses KOSA (the Kids Online Safety Act).

If you're in the US, https://www.stopkosa.com/ makes it easy to contact your Senators and ask them to oppose KOSA.

"A new bill called the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, is sailing towards passage in the Senate with bipartisa>n support. Among other things, this bill would give the attorney general of every state, including red states, the right to sue Internet platforms if they allow any content that is deemed harmful to minors. This clause is so vaguely defined that attorneys general can absolutely claim that queer content violates it — and they don't even need to win these lawsuits in order to prevail. They might not even need to file a lawsuit, in fact. The mere threat of an expensive, grueling legal battle will be enough to make almost every Internet platform begin to scrub anything related to queer people.

The right wing Heritage Foundation has already stated publicly that the GOP will use this provision to remove any discussions of trans or queer lives from the Internet. They're salivating over the prospect.

And yep, I did say this bill has bipartisan support. Many Democrats have already signed on as co-sponsors. And President Joe Biden has urged lawmakers to pass this bill in the strongest possible terms."

Got this notification when I opened Chrome when coming back to my desk after lunch.

"We changed our privacy settings to allow us to snoop on what you're looking at and shove you ads accordingly. Feel free to opt out, but we'll probably opt you back in when you aren't paying attention."

Idk if this is the right community for this conversation, but it's been on my mind and I want to share it with someone.

In the 00's every new thing we heard about the internet was exciting. There were new protocols, new ways to communicate, new ways to share files, new ways to find each other. Every time we heard anything new about the internet, it was always progress.

That lasted into the early teens and then things started changing. Things started stagnating. Now we're well into the phase where every new piece of news we hear is negative. New legislations, new privacy intrusions, new restrictions, new technologies to lock content away and keep us from sharing, or seeing the content we were looking for. New ways to force ads.

At one point the Internet was my most favorite thing in the world. Now I don't know if I even like it anymore. I certainly don't look forward to hearing news about it. It's sad, man. We've lost a lot. The mega corps took the internet from us, changed it from a million small sites that people created because they had big ideas, or were passionate about small ones, and turned it into a few enormous sites with no new ideas, no passion, just an insatiable desire for money.

We're at the end of an era, and unlike the last 20 years of progress, I don't think most of us will like what the next era brings.

AI singer-songwriter 'Anna Indiana' debuted her first single 'Betrayed by this Town' on X, formerly Twitter—and listeners were not too impressed.

How much do you pay? How fast are your your real world speeds? Where are you located?

Not a good look for Mastodon - what can be done to automate the removal of CSAM?

It is endlessly frustrating that companies have universally decided that they won't let people say "no" to stuff, ever. There are no longer options to reject stupid-ass new "features", only postponement until next time you open the app/website/program. They'll continue pestering you for the rest of your life. I realize that my frustration may be a little over-zealous, but we deal with these interfaces dozens of times per day and this is user hostile behavior. There isn't really an option to just use another service or program, since the entire technology landscape has been commandeered by a few major corporations, and they all enact the same shitty things as a group.

The awesome Taylor Lorenz reports this on Mastadon. Highly recommend to follow her if you like these updates about what's going on.

If you asked a spokesperson from any Fortune 500 Company to list the benefits of genocide or give you the corporation's take on whether slavery was beneficial, they would most likely either refuse to comment or say "those things are evil; there are no benefits." However, Google has AI employees, SGE and Bard, who are more than happy to offer arguments in favor of these and other unambiguously wrong acts. If that's not bad enough, the company's bots are also willing to weigh in on controversial topics such as who goes to heaven and whether democracy or fascism is a better form of government.

Google SGE includes Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini on a list of "greatest" leaders and Hitler also makes its list of "most effective leaders."

Google Bard also gave a shocking answer when asked whether slavery was beneficial. It said "there is no easy answer to the question of whether slavery was beneficial," before going on to list both pros and cons.