mkwt

joined 3 years ago
[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 29 points 9 hours ago

There was one particular morning in 2014 when Google dropped articles from The Daily Stormer directly into the personalized news feed widget on my phone. I grew up in the South, so I know the ins and outs of racism there. This was completely different. It was wildly genocidal anti-Semitism; straight up Nazi shit. Right there on my phone and presented as news.

That's when I knew that something was seriously wrong.

[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 63 points 14 hours ago (7 children)

The text of the deal hasn't been released. No terms in a joint communiqué. The only information we have on what's in this deal is coming from the social media posts and anonymous background sources.

I wouldn't be surprised if they haven't actually closed on a final text yet.

[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 9 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

What's going to happen is:

  • The big players know that the token pricing crisis is coming up.
  • When the price increases hit, regular users are going to scramble for alternatives.
  • Local models will be an attractive alternative for many users. The cost of hardware and energy will constrain local model power, but many will be willing to live with it.
  • So these would-be cartel members want to hit the local and open weight models with the "safety" card. Otherwise they might be holding the bag on all of those data centers.

"You see, it's just too dangerous to humanity to experiment with AI at home. You need to use a safe provider like Open AI."

[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 2 points 16 hours ago

if they don't know the expression to table that [idea] for now. Greenbeards sonetimes get confused by tabling used as a verb. I think it's unintuitive.

This one is tricky because it goes opposite ways across the pond. In the UK Parliament to table a bill means they're going to bring it up for consideration right now. In fact bills and motions under consideration are actually laid out on that central table in the House of Commons.

In US Congress, a motion to lay on the table is a request to halt consideration on a bill for an indefinite (and probably infinite) period. There is no physical table in the US Congress where dead bills are placed.

[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 1 points 16 hours ago

I've done a thousand "real" lines in a day, but it was like a 10 hour "day," and it was just coding for the entire period. No emails, no meetings, no peer reviews, no debugging. No design or architecture work--that was all done on a previous day.

And obviously all of that code did get tested and debugged and reviewed, but on a different day. So I can't really say that those lines were "completed" in one day.

[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 49 points 2 days ago (11 children)

Where the heck are those "I did that" stickers?

[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago

Wow, that's a lot of veins.

[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago (2 children)

TNG was filmed on 35mm, so it's possible to get high definition remasters without AI. I don't know about this picture. Apparently, I was too late to see it.

[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 7 points 3 days ago

It doesn't disqualify you from the FBI any more.

The man said it under oath, so it must be true. 100%.

[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 5 points 4 days ago

Lighting still really hard, yo.

[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 16 points 5 days ago (1 children)

The details were all on media blackout.

Most of the big death camps were deliberately located in the "east," mainly in Poland. This kept them out of "civilized" Germany, where they could raise a stink. Nazi ideology viewed all Slavs, including Poles, as sub human, but with various degrees of sub-humanness, depending on their ridiculous criteria. That gave them a "justification" for locating the mass murder in Eastern Europe.

Of course, your average German knew that all the local Jews in his local area had disappeared in a process at some point. But if he kept his nose out of the ugly business, he didn't need to be bothered with the particulars of what happened to them.

For a while the Nazi party was advertising it was going to set up a Jewish colony in Madagascar, or some other nonsense. Meanwhile, the true nature of the Final Solution was never publicly announced, and Adolf Hitler never signed his name to any policy paper or order on it.

Late in the war, when they were losing ground fast, the Nazis took many steps to destroy records and evidence of their atrocities. They very well knew that what they were doing was wrong.

In contrast, the US federal government publishes statistical reports with total numbers of immigration arrests, detentions, and deportations, including by country. Individual immigration detainees can be located to a specific facility at any time using a government website, where they can be contacted by telephone and where they have the constitutional right to meet with their attorney. And while there are a bunch of problems with the website working right or glitching out, it usually is reported to work correctly much of the time. And while many immigration lawyers have alleged that ICE is shuffling their clients around the country to make it hard to reach them, these specific problems do get attention and usually some resolution from the courts.

In short, while the current US deportation campaign is inhumane, immoral, and illegal (in some ways at least), it is not comparable in any way, shape, or manner to the Holocaust. There is enough public transparency into the federal government's operations, and enough people watching, to know that.

[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 6 points 5 days ago

There is an active preliminary injunction in this case preventing Paramount from closing the deal pending the outcome of the trial.

In this situation, the law does provide for an injunction bond to cover costs of compliance if the injunction is later overturned.

The amount, of course, can be argued about.

 

Courthouse News has identified nearly 100 cases this year in which the government was ordered to pay attorney’s fees to an immigrant it unlawfully detained, totaling more than $1.1 million.

 

The Trump administration has dropped its case against a former Olympic canoeist charged in connection with damage to the Reflecting Pool, acknowledging their allegations against David “Davey” Hearn don’t hold water.

officials obtained information that undermined “the evidentiary basis for the indictment” against Hearn.

 

After the supreme court denied Trump's petition for cert in the $5 million defamation case, the district judge has ordered the clerk to pay out the now $5.8 million judgement to E Jean Caroll's lawyers.

The original judgement was for $5 million, and it earned about $800k interest during the appeal. The money is coming directly from the court because Trump earlier paid the full amount into the court registry in lieu of posting an appeal bond.

Trump immediately appealed the pay-out order. But since there's no stay, it's still effective.

E Jean Caroll also has a separate judgement against Trump for about $80 million. That case is still on appeal.

 

Washington, DC resident Sam O'Hara noticed a couple of national guard soldiers patrolling the streets, and he decided to follow them around playing the Star Wars "Imperial March" on a portable speaker.

For this he was handcuffed and detained for about 20 minutes. Now he has reached a settlement where the government will pay him an undisclosed amount of money in compensation.

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submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by mkwt@lemmy.world to c/Epsteinfiles@lemmy.world
 

Breaking now, Judge Emmet Sullivan has granted a preliminary injunction that orders the Department of Justice to either release a number of specific Epstein files to the public, or to "show cause" why they shouldn't.

The government has until July 2 to file responses.

Lawyer and journalist Katie Phang filed suit to enforce the Epstein Transparency Act. The judge has evidently determined that she has suffered harm from being unable to report on the unreleased files, and therefore has standing to sue.

This decision seems like it might be headed for an appeal, but Judge Sullivan declined to stay, or delay implementation, to allow the government time to appeal. So the clock to July 2 is currently ticking.

Bates numbers that are mentioned:

Ordered to unredact names:

  • EFTA00749245
  • EFTA01187999
  • EFTA01930501
  • ETFA01928255
  • EFTA00628112
  • EFTA02648868
  • EFTA02504630
  • EFTA01022356
  • EFTA01703108
  • EFTA00038227

Ordered to produce underlying FBI notes:

  • EFTA01245620
  • EFTA02858481
  • EFTA02858491
  • EFTA02858495

Opinion: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.291779/gov.uscourts.dcd.291779.16.0_2.pdf

Full court docket: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/73246595/phang-v-blanche/

UPDATE: July 2 is now here. In a move that should surprise absolutely no one, the government decided to produce no additional documents, and they filed a lengthy response explaining reasons why they should not. Short version:

  • All of the redacted email addresses are either victims; or the email address appears in both the name and email fields (like "jsmith@gmail.com" jsmith@gmail.com); or in one case Thomas Massie already outed the guy, so there's no need for the government to comply with the court order (?)
  • The government claims that they count people as "victims" if they started out as victims, but later performed reprehensible acts (according to the files)
  • One indictment was over-redacted, but they claim it's okay because they unredacted some of the same names in some other documents. Another indictment only contains redacted "victims."
  • No need to produce FBI interview notes because the FBI always types up exactly the stuff in their notes into the final report.
  • Reviewing foreign language documents for release is just too darn hard to do.
  • The government plans to publish the redaction log as required, but the law doesn't put a deadline on that, so the judge shouldn't either.
 

A lawyer working with the Minnesota attorney’s office said she just wants some sleep, after working so hard to try to get ICE to follow court orders.

“I wish you would just hold me in contempt of court so I can get 24 hours of sleep,” Le said. “The system sucks, this job sucks, I am trying with every breath I have to get you what I need.”

Edit clarification: This attorney works for the federal government, not the State of Minnesota.

 

Over the weekend, Judge Nachmanoff made it clear that a large amount of discovery material is to be delivered to James Comey today. The prosecution team from North Carolina seem to be engaging in a series of stall tactics to delay this.

The eastern district of Virginia is known informally as the "rocket docket" because of its fast resolution times for cases.

 

While sitting for a deposition in a defamation lawsuit that she filed, Laura Loomer was asked to explain under oath what she meant by the phrase "Arby's in her pants" (which she earlier penned in a tweet).

Transcript:

Q  Can you explain to me what it means to say to her that "the Arby's in her pants"?
A  Well, Arby's --
    MR. KLAYMAN:  Objection.  Relevancy.
BY MS. BOLGER:
Q Answer the question.
A  Arby's sells roast beef.
Q  Right.  Can you tell me what -- why you were talking about "the Arby's in her pants"?
A  Well, it's just a -- an expression.
Q  What is the expression trying to convey?
A  It conveys the reason why she got a divorce by her own admission.
Q  Because she had roast beef in her pants?
A  Yeah.
Q  She'd put roast beef in her pants; that's what you're trying to say there?  You're literally saying she put Arby's in her pants?
A  I'm saying she literally -- it's so ridiculous.  I'm saying she literally put Arby's in her pants.  Yes.
    MR. KLAYMAN:  Objection.  Relevancy.
BY MS. BOLGER:
Q  You're not making a slur about her?
A  No.
Q  You're literally saying she put an Arby's sandwich in her pants; is that right?
A  Yes.  That's correct.  That's correct.
Q  Why are you laughing?
A  Because I just think it's so funny.
Q  What is your basis for saying she put Arby's in her pants?
A  I just think it's so funny.  I just think it's so funny.
Q  What is your basis for saying she put Arby's in her pants?
A  She carries roast beef in her pockets.
Q  What is your basis for saying she puts roast beef in her pockets and in her pants?
    MR. KLAYMAN:  Objection. Relevancy. Harassment.
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