This is - unfortunately - not surprising. Niantic has always been in the business of selling/using user data for profit, they were a spin-off from Google after all. Their first big game, Ingress, was used to train Google Maps.

The official reason for me getting fired were budget cuts, but I knew that the new department head actually wanted to hand my responsibilities to a buddy of theirs they had brought on board. Despite being there longer at the department than the new head and their buddy, as well as excellent performance reviews I had no chance to keep that job.

I remember when Microsoft first attempted to prevent the standardisation of Open Document Format (used by LibreOffice and others) and then bullied its way into getting approval for own OOXML standard. Already back then, supporters of FOSS warned that Microsoft would use the overly complicated OOXML to maintain its stranglehold on users of Office-like software.:

Whenever applicable and possible, standards should build upon previous standardisation efforts and not depend on proprietary, vendor-specific technologies. Albeit, MS-OOXML neglects various standards and uses its own vendor-specific formats instead. This puts a substantial burden on all vendors to fully implement MS-OOXML. It seems questionable how any third party could ever implement them equally well, especially when a standard comes with 6000 pages of specifications without serving its minimalistic purpose.

No, he didn’t make a u-turn. Kid Starver - ever the opportunist - only uses the moment to reveal his complete lack of morals and convictions yet again.

I am not a liberal, so I can totally be outraged about what the article is describing and point out the Guardian’s contribution to that particular problem.

Here is some news coverage of what’s going on in the Guardian. Mind, some of the articles are a little older, but the overall situation hasn’t improved. The only thing that has changed is the normalization of the transphobic content the Guardian has put out over the years.

The articles below contain links to various Guardian articles

• Hundreds Of Staff At The Guardian Have Signed A Letter To The Editor Criticising Its “Transphobic Content”, March 20
• Protesters demand the Guardian ‘stop platforming transphobia’ outside newspaper’s HQ, October 21
• Trans Journalists Pull Out of Guardian Newspaper’s Pride Coverage, June 22
• Columnist James Wong leaves The Observer and claims ‘institutionalised transphobia’, February 23

And let’s not forget that the Guardian has had no qualms to participate in transphobic witchhunting for years. No matter what hand-wringing they now do, they share a part of the responsibility for it coming this far and probably won’t stop pushing transphobia either…

I can’t take articles such as this one seriously if they don’t mention right-wing terrorists recruiting through the same channels and means. That has been a known problem for more than a decade.

Treating online radicalisation solely as a problem of people with a migrant/non-European/Muslim/… background is very telling and borders on lying by omission.

The links to the registration do not work for me.

It’s a very strange coincidence that these are the subreddits that are suddenly experiencing a “bug”.

Chanel No.5 suffers from the problem that it was originally made over 100 years ago. While the scent of No.5 did not change much, lots and lots and lots of products that came later imitated the scent of the (at the time) prestigious No.5. So it’s not necessarily a case of “No.5 smells like soap”, rather than “soaps smell like No.5”. And No.5 can’t escape the position it founds itself in without becoming something else entirely.

Because this confuzzled me, note that the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) and the Digital Services Act (DSA) are two separate things.

The Digital Markets Act is the one which is meant to remove economic barriers by “gatekeepers”. For example the DMA is used to force Google and Apple to open their app stores.

The Digital Services Act is the one that regulates (among other things) moderation, political neutrality and removal of extremist content on social media platforms. That’s the one Thierry Breton oversaw and threatened Elon with.

So while exTwitter’s lawyers may sigh in relief, because they got out of the DMA; the DSA is still looming large.

Also interesting in that regard Androgen insensitivity syndrome: Despite different root causes, it is something of the opposite of Chapelle syndrome. People who possess XY chromosomes, but possess female genitalia.

AI execs: Our AIs are going to be so powerful. More powerful than anything. Soon they could be able to destroy humanity!

Governments: Well, then we better regulate that shit and make sure that doesn’t happen…

AI execs: Nooooo! We did not mean it that way!

No, you see it’s not like education makes you see past your own prejudices and that makes you more liberal. If you are liberal you get awarded an education by the shadowy cabal that controls the education system with DEI measures! This guy only wants a tRuE mERiToCrACy where disenfranchised, downtrodden bigots get a chance to attend university where they are taught about the superiority of their white Aryan race.

/s if it isn’t apparent.

Seems like Elon thinks he can use Teslas as compute resources without the cars being charged…

It’s a cult. Altman is one of the TESCREAL devotees. He truly believes that he can build the electronic messiah.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”

In that regard, you cannot make a manager understand a thing that may detrimental to the profits of the company. Because the profits decide upon the size of the manager’s bonus - even if the profits are entirely fictional, only exist as a plan, a power point presentation or are pure hype for investors. So managers have a vested interest in insisting that they can circumvent regulations/disregard laws/lobby for exemptions/… in order to make more money, no matter what reality looks like.

I am shocked to hear that the company which needlessly and cruelly killed animals with their experiments, did not bother to keep records of the cruelties they committed. SHOCKED!

The week after: Google introduces AI Mail that will receive and automatically respond to all mail. This will happen without the users’ consent or knowledge. In fact, users won’t be able to access their mail anymore at all “for security reasons”.