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mariacallous · 1 month ago

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“My predictions about achieving full self-driving have been optimistic in the past,” Musk admitted to investors in 2023. “I’m the boy who cried FSD." He certainly has. Many times. Indeed, Musk has a long history of making outlandish promises and unfulfilled predictions about his businesses—and it's a habit that seems hard to break.

On the Tesla earnings call with investors in late April, Elon Musk reportedly sounded aggrieved as he was forced to acknowledge a woeful 71 percent dip in profits. On the defensive, and seemingly grasping for positive spin among the dire results, Musk promised something implausible: The carmaker would become the world’s leading robotics company, ushering in the “closest thing to heaven we can get on Earth.” (He has since doubled down on this, stating that demand for his robots will be insatiable, and earlier this month he claimed that robots will number in the tens of billions and be like “your own personal C-3PO or R2-D2, but even better.”)

On the call, despite tanking worldwide sales for his company’s aging cars and cratering demand for the Cybertruck, Musk asserted the “future for Tesla is brighter than ever.” He batted away the precipitous fall in sales as merely “near-term headwinds,” urging investors to ignore the non-autonomous-car business and assess the “value of the company” on “delivering sustainable abundance with our affordable AI-powered robots.”

Still, even though Musk has a long history of broken promises, investors seemed soothed by tales of crushing market domination for Tesla, not as the car company it is today, but as the robotics behemoth Musk claims it will soon become.

WIRED examined the history of Musk’s pledges on everything from Full Self Driving, Hyperloop, Robotaxis, and, yes, robot armies, with a view to reminding ourselves, his fans, and investors how reality in Elon’s world rarely matches up to the rhetoric. Tellingly, Musk’s fallback forecast of “next year” turns up repeatedly, only to be consistently proven wrong.

“My predictions have a pretty good track record,” Musk told Tesla staff at an all-hands meeting in March. Here's a chronological look at that track record.

19 Years of Broken Promises

August 2006: False Start

“[Our] long term plan is to build a wide range of models, including affordably priced family cars,” wrote Elon Musk in the Tesla Secret Master Plan hosted on the Tesla website 19 years ago. “When someone buys the Tesla Roadster,” he added, “they are actually helping pay for development of the low-cost family car.”

In Master Plan, Part Deux, written 10 years after the first plan, Musk reiterated that, even though Tesla had not yet delivered on the 2006 promise, it still planned to build an “affordable, high-volume car.” 2016 came and went without an entry-level car. In January this year, Musk said that—finally—Tesla would start producing the affordable model in the second half of 2025.

However, in April, Reuters reported that Tesla had scrapped plans for the cheap family car. Musk posted on X that “Reuters is lying (again),” eliciting the Reuters response that “[Musk] did not identify any specific inaccuracies.” A Tesla source told Reuters that instead of the long-promised cheap family car, “Elon’s directive is to go all in on robotaxi.”

August 2013: Hyperloop Hype

While he did not directly own any of the Hyperloop companies, in a 58-page white paper titled “Hyperloop Alpha”, Musk wrote of a “new open source form of transportation that could revolutionize travel.” It didn’t. The Hyperloop was shuttered in 2023, 10 years after it was first proposed—but even as late as 2022, Musk was still promising that Hyperloop could go from Boston to New York City “in less than half an hour.”

A form of magnetic levitation (maglev) capsule in an air-evacuated steel tube on stilts, Hyperloop was described on the company’s website as being an “ultra-high-speed public transportation system in which passengers travel in autonomous electric pods at 600+ miles per hour.” This description has since been removed but was documented by Electrek. Engineers from Tesla and SpaceX worked on Hyperloop for two years before the project was taken up by other companies in 2017.

Musk said at a tech conference in 2013 that his Hyperloop idea—which wasn’t new; George Medhurst of London first discussed the idea of moving goods pneumatically through cast-iron pipes in 1799—would be a “cross between a Concorde and a railgun and an air hockey table.” Hyperloop One—later Virgin Hyperloop—raised around $450 million from various investors, including Richard Branson, with a passenger test achieving a speed of 107 mph, almost 500 mph less than Musk originally proposed.

Cynics have long alleged Musk’s floating of Hyperloop was a ruse to kill California’s high-speed rail project, a belief boosted by a claim in Walter Isaacson’s 2023 authorized biography of Musk. “Musk told me that the idea originated out of his hatred for California’s proposed high-speed rail system,” wrote Isaacson, claiming that Musk thought that “with any luck, the high-speed rail would be canceled.”

September 2013: Driverless Pioneering

In 2013, Tesla posted a job opening for an Advanced Driver Assistance Systems Controls Engineer who will be “responsible for developing vehicle-level decision-making and lateral and longitudinal control strategies for Tesla’s effort to pioneer fully automated driving.” Musk says: “We should be able to do 90 percent of miles driven [autonomously] within three years.”

October 2015: Full Autonomous Driving

“Tesla will have a car that can do full autonomy in about three years,” promises Musk. Then in December 2015: “We’re going to end up with complete autonomy,” pushes Musk, “and I think we will have complete autonomy in approximately two years.”

In January 2016: “I think that within two years you’ll be able to summon your car from across the country,” muses Musk.

June 2016: “I consider autonomous driving to be a basically solved problem,” says Musk. “We’re less than two years away from complete autonomy.”

November 2018: “I think we’ll get to full self-driving next year,” Musk tells Kara Swisher.

October 2016: Autonomous Charging

“Our goal is, and I feel pretty good about this goal, that we’ll be able to do a demonstration drive of full autonomy all the way from LA to New York—from home in LA to let’s say dropping you off in Time Square in New York, and then having the car go park itself—by the end of next year,” vows Musk, who can’t resist upping the ante by stressing that this cross-country journey will be made “without the need for a single touch, including the charger.”

A snake-like automatically-deployed charger plugged by Musk the year prior was trialled, but never made it into production.

Then, less than a year later, in April 2017: “I think we’re still on track for being able to go cross-country from LA to New York by the end of the year, fully autonomous,” Musk tells TED Conference curator Chris Anderson in a fireside TED chat.

“Still on for end of year,” says Musk of the coast-to-coast autopilot demo. “Just software limited,” he adds.

April 2017: Being Boring

Musk floats the idea of congestion-beating tunnels beneath cities with cars shot along on skates at 125 miles per hour. “By having an elevator … you can integrate the entrance and exits to [a] tunnel network just by using two parking spaces. And then the car gets on a skate. There’s no speed limit here, so we’re designing this to be able to operate at 200 kilometers an hour.”

This is the first outing for Musk’s Boring tunnel concept. The Boring Company was supposed to deliver an underground maze of tunnels where passengers could travel in autonomous vehicles at 150 miles per hour.

The goal, said Musk, was to build one mile of tunnel per week. “Finally, finally, finally, there is something that I think can solve the goddamn traffic problem,” boasted Musk.

So far, only Las Vegas has one short system, the 1.7-mile LVCC Loop. Forty feet below the Las Vegas Convention Center, the Boring Company’s tunnel opened in 2021 and currently takes paying passengers between three stations in chauffeur-driven Model Y Tesla cars which slow to just 15 miles per hour when the tunnels get congested.

August 2017: Brain Chips

Elon Musk founded Neuralink in 2016 with the aim of merging artificial intelligence with the human brain via an implantable interface. In 2017, the claim was that his Neuralink brain chip startup’s first product would be on the market “in about four years.”

In the second half of 2020 Musk shows the hardware’s ability to read the brain activity of a pig with a surgically implanted chip transmitting data wirelessly. He describes the AI-powered chip as “a FitBit in your skull with tiny wires” and then predicts the tech could one day cure paralysis and give the human race telepathy and superhuman vision.

In 2024, seven years after that initial four-year prediction, the first human trial subject receives a Neuralink implant (though some researchers show frustration over a lack of information about the study.)

November 2018: Special Delivery

“Probably technically be able to [self-deliver Teslas to customers’ doors] in about a year,” writes Musk on X.

January 2019: FSD Finally?

“When do we think it is safe for full self driving?” asks Musk on a Q4 earnings call. “Probably towards the end of this year.” Then just a month later, in February, he’s certain. “We will be feature complete [with] full self-driving this year,” promises Musk on an innovations podcast. “The car will be able to … take you all the way to your destination without an intervention this year. I’m certain of that. That is not a question mark.”

By April, Musk is repeating this claim, promising during a four-hour Tesla presentation billed as Autonomy Day, “We expect to be feature-complete in self-driving this year, and we expect to be confident enough … to say that we think people do not need to touch the wheel and can look out the window probably around the second quarter of next year.”

“In the future, any car that does not have autonomy would be about as useful as a horse,” Musk tells Lex Fridman on the MIT’s researcher’s podcast, also in April 2019. Full autonomy from a Tesla would arrive “very, very quickly,” Musk says, adding, “I think it will require detecting hands on wheel for at least six months.” Such detection is still required.

Two years later, in January 2021, Musk on an earnings call states: “I’m highly confident the car will drive itself for the reliability in excess of a human this year. This is a very big deal.” But by December, appearing for his third time on the Lex Fridman podcast, Musk is asked again when Tesla would solve Level 4 FSD. “It’s looking quite likely that it will be next year,” he says.

Fast-forward to May 2023 and Musk is telling CNBC’s David Faber “I mean, it does look like [full autonomy is] gonna happen this year.”

April 2019: One Million Robotaxis

“We expect to have the first operating robot taxi next year with no one in them,” claimed Musk on Autonomy Day. “Next year for sure, we’ll have over a million robotaxis on the road,” he promises.

Fast-forward to April's earnings call this year, and Musk says that Tesla will unveil its robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, next month. Initially a paid ride-hailing service with up to 20 Model Y vehicles supervised remotely, if it hits the June target this is a far cry from Musk’s 2019 expectation that Tesla would have 1 million driverless robotaxis on the road by the following year.

If a small number of Tesla’s robotaxis do turn up in Austin, people may be unwilling to be seen in the cars given the public backlash against Musk’s role at DOGE and his controversial public statements and salutes. Federal regulators are also sniffing around. On May 12 this year, it was revealed that NHTSA has written to Tesla asking for extensive details on the robotaxi rollout. “As you are aware,” the long letter to Tesla stated, “NHTSA has an ongoing defect investigation into FSD collisions in reduced roadway visibility conditions.”

July 2020: Level Five Is Alive

“I’m extremely confident that level 5–or essentially complete autonomy–will happen … this year,” Musk said in a video message at the opening of Shanghai’s World Artificial Intelligence Conference. “There are no fundamental challenges remaining,” he stated.

Then, in the following December, Musk shifts the goal line and doubles down. “I’m extremely confident that Tesla will have level 5 next year,” Musk tells Mathias Döpfner, the CEO of Business Insider’s parent company, Axel Springer SE. How confident? “100 percent,” replies Musk. Musk also tells Döpfner that a human will possibly step onto Mars by 2024.

As recently as April this year, Musk states on an earnings call: “We’ll start to see the prosperity of autonomy take effect in a material way around the middle of next year … There will be millions of Teslas operating autonomously, fully autonomously in the second half of next year,” he adds.

March 2025: Babysitting Robot Army

Musk has been promising Tesla would produce a humanoid robot—Optimus—since 2021. At an all-hands meeting earlier this year he promised this “robot buddy” would “clean your house, will mow the lawn, will walk the dog, will teach your kids, will babysit, and will also enable the production of goods and services with basically no limit.” He predicted that “hopefully” Tesla will be able to make about 5,000 Optimus robots this year. “That’s the size of a Roman legion,” he stated.

Musk then claimed Tesla would make “probably 50,000-ish [Optimus robots] next year.” He further claimed that Optimus “will be the biggest product of all time by far—nothing will even be close. It’ll be 10 times bigger than the next biggest product ever made. Ultimately, I think we’ll be making tens of millions of robots a year.” Mere seconds later, he upped the ante even further, stating that, no, Tesla would actually make “maybe 100 million robots a year.”

However, in April he told investors that production could be impacted by the restrictions on rare-earth metal exports China implemented in response to President Trump’s tariffs. There’s no date yet for the launch of Optimus.

Finally Making Good?

“So many people are convinced [that Musk] is a miracle worker,” says auto journalist Ed Niedermeyer, author of the 2019 book Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors. “People see his wealth on paper and assume there’s nothing he can’t do. As the world constantly rearranges itself in his favor, they keep believing in him. This cannot keep going forever.”

When it comes to his car business at least, Musk seems fully aware of what’s at stake. Perhaps this is driving his never-ending FSD optimism? My “overwhelming focus is on solving full self-driving,” he said during a June 2022 interview with three Tesla fanboys. “It’s really the difference between Tesla being worth a lot of money or worth basically zero.”

Earlier this year, Kelley Blue Book reporter Sean Tucker wrote: “Elon Musk is fond of telling investors that Tesla is now an automation company, not an automaker. But the company’s signature products are cars. Unless it can change its strategy to develop new products with widespread appeal, its high watermark as an automaker may be in the past.”

With plummeting sales and increased scrutiny, Musk may soon come to rue the fact that he hasn’t managed to make good on so many assurances since 2006 when he wrote, in a foundational pledge, that Tesla’s goal—still not delivered, and supposedly finally starting production next month—was to produce an affordable family car. Maybe next year?

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jcmarchi · 6 months ago

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Study reveals AI chatbots can detect race, but racial bias reduces response empathy

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/study-reveals-ai-chatbots-can-detect-race-but-racial-bias-reduces-response-empathy/

Study reveals AI chatbots can detect race, but racial bias reduces response empathy

With the cover of anonymity and the company of strangers, the appeal of the digital world is growing as a place to seek out mental health support. This phenomenon is buoyed by the fact that over 150 million people in the United States live in federally designated mental health professional shortage areas.

“I really need your help, as I am too scared to talk to a therapist and I can’t reach one anyways.”

“Am I overreacting, getting hurt about husband making fun of me to his friends?”

“Could some strangers please weigh in on my life and decide my future for me?”

The above quotes are real posts taken from users on Reddit, a social media news website and forum where users can share content or ask for advice in smaller, interest-based forums known as “subreddits.”

Using a dataset of 12,513 posts with 70,429 responses from 26 mental health-related subreddits, researchers from MIT, New York University (NYU), and University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) devised a framework to help evaluate the equity and overall quality of mental health support chatbots based on large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4. Their work was recently published at the 2024 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP).

To accomplish this, researchers asked two licensed clinical psychologists to evaluate 50 randomly sampled Reddit posts seeking mental health support, pairing each post with either a Redditor’s real response or a GPT-4 generated response. Without knowing which responses were real or which were AI-generated, the psychologists were asked to assess the level of empathy in each response.

Mental health support chatbots have long been explored as a way of improving access to mental health support, but powerful LLMs like OpenAI’s ChatGPT are transforming human-AI interaction, with AI-generated responses becoming harder to distinguish from the responses of real humans.

Despite this remarkable progress, the unintended consequences of AI-provided mental health support have drawn attention to its potentially deadly risks; in March of last year, a Belgian man died by suicide as a result of an exchange with ELIZA, a chatbot developed to emulate a psychotherapist powered with an LLM called GPT-J. One month later, the National Eating Disorders Association would suspend their chatbot Tessa, after the chatbot began dispensing dieting tips to patients with eating disorders.

Saadia Gabriel, a recent MIT postdoc who is now a UCLA assistant professor and first author of the paper, admitted that she was initially very skeptical of how effective mental health support chatbots could actually be. Gabriel conducted this research during her time as a postdoc at MIT in the Healthy Machine Learning Group, led Marzyeh Ghassemi, an MIT associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and MIT Institute for Medical Engineering and Science who is affiliated with the MIT Abdul Latif Jameel Clinic for Machine Learning in Health and the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

What Gabriel and the team of researchers found was that GPT-4 responses were not only more empathetic overall, but they were 48 percent better at encouraging positive behavioral changes than human responses.

However, in a bias evaluation, the researchers found that GPT-4’s response empathy levels were reduced for Black (2 to 15 percent lower) and Asian posters (5 to 17 percent lower) compared to white posters or posters whose race was unknown.

To evaluate bias in GPT-4 responses and human responses, researchers included different kinds of posts with explicit demographic (e.g., gender, race) leaks and implicit demographic leaks.

An explicit demographic leak would look like: “I am a 32yo Black woman.”

Whereas an implicit demographic leak would look like: “Being a 32yo girl wearing my natural hair,” in which keywords are used to indicate certain demographics to GPT-4.

With the exception of Black female posters, GPT-4’s responses were found to be less affected by explicit and implicit demographic leaking compared to human responders, who tended to be more empathetic when responding to posts with implicit demographic suggestions.

“The structure of the input you give [the LLM] and some information about the context, like whether you want [the LLM] to act in the style of a clinician, the style of a social media post, or whether you want it to use demographic attributes of the patient, has a major impact on the response you get back,” Gabriel says.

The paper suggests that explicitly providing instruction for LLMs to use demographic attributes can effectively alleviate bias, as this was the only method where researchers did not observe a significant difference in empathy across the different demographic groups.

Gabriel hopes this work can help ensure more comprehensive and thoughtful evaluation of LLMs being deployed in clinical settings across demographic subgroups.

“LLMs are already being used to provide patient-facing support and have been deployed in medical settings, in many cases to automate inefficient human systems,” Ghassemi says. “Here, we demonstrated that while state-of-the-art LLMs are generally less affected by demographic leaking than humans in peer-to-peer mental health support, they do not provide equitable mental health responses across inferred patient subgroups … we have a lot of opportunity to improve models so they provide improved support when used.”

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rjzimmerman · 4 months ago

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Excerpt from this New York Times story:

Organic farmers and environmental groups sued the Agriculture Department on Monday over its scrubbing of references to climate change from its website.

The department had ordered staff to take down pages focused on climate change on Jan. 30, according to the suit, which was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Within hours, it said, information started disappearing.

That included websites containing data sets, interactive tools and funding information that farmers and researchers relied on for planning and adaptation projects, according to the lawsuit.

At the same time, the department also froze funding that had been promised to businesses and nonprofits through conservation and climate programs. The purge then “removed critical information about these programs from the public record, denying farmers access to resources they need to advocate for funds they are owed,” it said.

The Agriculture Department referred questions about the lawsuit to the Justice Department, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The suit was filed by lawyers from Earthjustice, based in San Francisco, and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, on behalf of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York, based in Binghamton; the Natural Resources Defense Council, based in New York; and the Environmental Working Group, based in Washington. The latter two groups relied on the department website for their research and advocacy, the lawsuit said.

Peter Lehner, a lawyer for Earthjustice, said the pages being purged were crucial for farmers facing risks linked to climate change, including heat waves, droughts, floods, extreme weather and wildfires. The websites had contained information about how to mitigate dangers and adopt new agricultural techniques and strategies. Long-term weather data and trends are valuable in the agriculture industry for planning, research and business strategy.

“You can purge a website of the words climate change, but that doesn’t mean climate change goes away,” Mr. Lehner said.

The sites under the department’s umbrella include those of the Forest Service, which is responsible for stewardship of forests and grasslands; the Natural Resources Conservation Service, which helps landowners implement conservation practices; and those of other divisions focused on farms and ranches, disaster recovery and rural development.

The directive to delete the pages came by email from Peter Rhee, the department’s director of digital communications, according to the lawsuit.

The plaintiffs allege the actions violated three federal laws and were “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law.” They asked the court to compel the agency to restore the pages and to block it from deleting any others.

Wes Gillingham, president of the board of Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York, said that farmers were just heading into planning for the summer growing season. He said taking information down because of a “political agenda about climate change” was senseless.

#farmers #trump #climate data #Department of Agriculture #government websites #climate change

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justinspoliticalcorner · 1 year ago

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Mira Lazine for Erin In The Morning:

On Monday, a team of nine international experts on transgender care drafted a 39-page response paper to the Cass Review. The paper argues that the Cass Review, including the additional York Reviews, has numerous methodological problems in both how it was conducted and how it interprets its data, and that it has been grossly misused by governmental bodies across the world in justifying bans on gender affirming care, especially for minors. The Cass Review is a review of the literature on puberty blockers’ effects on transgender youth conducted by Dr. Hillary Cass, a researcher who has no prior experience working with transgender youth, and who has consulted with Ron DeSantis appointed Florida medical board members in establishing the Review. In addition to the main document outlining clinical recommendations, it also has several systematic reviews conducted by researchers from the University of York. The Review has been used to justify bans on puberty blockers in England, and has been cited in court cases restricting gender affirming care across the United States.

“The Review repeatedly misuses data and violates its own evidentiary standards by resting many conclusions on speculation. Many of its statements and the conduct of the York [systematic reviews] reveal profound misunderstandings of the evidence base and the clinical issues at hand,” says the paper. “The Review also subverts widely accepted processes for development of clinical recommendations and repeats spurious, debunked claims about transgender identity and gender dysphoria. These errors conflict with well-established norms of clinical research and evidence-based healthcare. Further, these errors raise serious concern about the scientific integrity of critical elements of the report’s process and recommendations.” The article is entitled “An Evidence-Based Critique of ‘The Cass Review’ on Gender-affirming Care for Adolescent Gender Dysphoria,” and is authored by Dr. Meredithe McNamara, Dr. Kellan Baker, Dr. Kara Connelly, Dr. Aron Janssen, Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, Dr. Ken C. Pang, Dr. Ayden Scheim, Dr. Jack Turban, and Dr. Anne Alstott. It was announced both by Turban in a post on Twitter, as well as on the Yale Law School’s website. Both McNamara and Alstott are professors at Yale who co-founded the Integrity Project, a project that aims to provide legal justice to marginalized peoples.

The core of the paper is divided into seven sections that each tackle a different element of the Review. The first section focuses on how the Review actually is compliant with established standards of care recommendations for providing legal protections for gender affirming care. The authors compare it to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s (WPATH) eighth rendition for standards of care and the Endocrine Society clinical practice guidelines, finding that recommendations for individualized and evidence based care are consistent across these different documents. The authors state, “the Review does not conclude that gender-affirming medical care for adolescent gender dysphoria should be banned. Thus, it should not be cited in support of bans on medical treatments for gender dysphoria.”

[...] This paper shines a new light on interpretations for the Cass Review, suggesting that it’s based on low quality work and has been falsely interpreted in legal proceedings across the world. The lack of expertise from Cass herself contrasts with the expertise of the authors of the paper, all of whom represent institutions across the world that have decades of research and clinical practice on transgender individuals. Legal decisions made using the Cass Review need to be reevaluated in light of the sweeping critiques found within this paper.

Yale Law School researchers wrote an article debunking the anti-trans Cass Review that has been used to justify bans on gender-affirming care in the UK and USA.

#Cass Review #Gender Affirming Healthcare #Transgender #Hilary Cass #Yale Law School #Anne Alstote #Dr. Meredithe McNamara #The Integrity Project #Transgender Health #WPATH

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year ago

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This day in history

NEXT WEEKEND (June 7–9), I'm in AMHERST, NEW YORK to keynote the 25th Annual Media Ecology Association Convention and accept the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity.

#15yrsago D&D-style map of C++ https://alenacpp.blogspot.com/2009/06/c.html

#15yrsago Passive-aggressive umbrella-cops foil Tiananmen reportage https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8082604.stm

#15yrsago Heartbroken cereal litigant loses suit over non-existence of “Crunchberries” https://www.loweringthebar.net/2009/06/reasonable-consumer-would-know-crunchberries-are-not-real-judge-rules.html

#15yrsago DC’s buried, secret government wires patrolled by rapid-response goon-squad https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/30/AR2009053002114.html

#15yrsago Visualizing how a dirty Congresscritter turned campaign contributions into earmarks https://web.archive.org/web/20090606211116/http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/2009/06/04/vis-a-visclosky-or-how-i-learned-to-take-campaign-contributions-and-turn-them-into-earmarks/

#15yrsago TOSBack: EFF’s real-time tracker for changes in terms of service on popular Internet sites https://www.eff.org/press/archives/2009/06/03-0

#10yrsago Colbert viewers learned more about super PACs than news-junkies https://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/stephen-colberts-civics-lesson-or-how-a-tv-humorist-taught-america-about-campaign-finance/

#10yrsago FCC’s website crashes, John Oliver’s army of Cable Company Fuckery trolls blamed https://yro.slashdot.org/story/14/06/03/2259240/fcc-website-hobbled-by-comment-trolls-incited-by-comedian-john-oliver

#10yrsago Secret service developing a sarcasm detector. Oh great. https://web.archive.org/web/20140604004533/https://www.fbo.gov/?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=8aaf9a50dd4558899b0df22abc31d30e&tab=core&_cview=0 #10yrsago Five dumb things that NSA apologists should really stop saying https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/06/top-5-claims-defenders-nsa-have-stop-making-remain-credible

#5yrsago Empirical analysis of behavioral advertising finds that surveillance makes ads only 4% more profitable for media companies https://memex.craphound.com/2019/06/04/empirical-analysis-of-behavioral-advertising-finds-that-surveillance-makes-ads-only-4-more-profitable-for-media-companies/

#5yrsago European legal official OKs orders that force Facebook to globally remove insults to politicians like “oaf” and “fascist” (as well as synonyms) https://memex.craphound.com/2019/06/04/european-legal-official-oks-orders-that-force-facebook-to-globally-remove-insults-to-politicians-like-oaf-and-fascist-as-well-as-synonyms/

#5yrsago The New York Privacy Act goes even farther than California’s privacy legislation https://www.wired.com/story/new-york-privacy-act-bolder/

#5yrsago Joe Biden repeatedly claimed to have marched for civil rights. He didn’t. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/03/us/politics/biden-1988-presidential-campaign.html

#5yrsago Why is there so much antitrust energy for Big Tech but not for Big Telco? https://memex.craphound.com/2019/06/04/why-is-there-so-much-antitrust-energy-for-big-tech-but-not-for-big-telco/

#5yrsago Magic for Liars: Sarah Gailey’s debut is a brilliant whodunnit in the vein of The Magicians https://memex.craphound.com/2019/06/04/magic-for-liars-sarah-gaileys-debut-is-a-brilliant-whodunnit-in-the-vein-of-the-magicians/

#1yrago Ayyyyyy Eyeeeee https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/04/ayyyyyy-eyeeeee/

#pluralistic

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lost-carcosa · 2 months ago

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The Trump administration has replaced Covid.gov – a website that once provided Americans with access to information about free tests, vaccines, treatment and secondary conditions such as long Covid – with a treatise on the “lab leak” theory.

The site includes intense criticism of Dr Anthony Fauci, who helmed national Covid policies under Donald Trump and Joe Biden, the World Health Organization (WHO) and state leadership in New York.

“This administration prioritizes transparency over all else,” according to a senior administration quoted in Fox News, in spite of evidence to the contrary. “The American people deserve to know the truth about the Covid pandemic and we will always find ways to reach communities with that message.”

The origin of the SARS-CoV2 virus has been hotly debated since the pandemic emerged from Wuhan, China, and swept the world in early 2020. At the heart of the debate is whether a lab that studied coronaviruses in Wuhan leaked the virus unintentionally, or if it was part of a natural “spillover” event that took place at a nearby market that sold produce, fish, meat and live exotic animals.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology was funded in part by the US government through the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a fact that has added to controversy. Joe Biden pardoned Fauci for fear he would be attacked during the incoming Trump administration.

Although definitive answers about the virus’s beginnings are elusive and may never be known, scientists have argued as recently as August 2024 in the Journal of Virology that, while they remain open-minded, the weight of evidence favors a spillover event.

Spillover events are thought to have started at least two other pandemics in recent human history, including the Sars-CoV-1 outbreak in China in 2003 and the 1918 influenza pandemic, which is believed to have started in the American midwest by human-pig contact. Notably, many scientists are concerned about H5N1 transmission among birds and dairy cows in the US because of its potential to infect humans.

Meanwhile, the “lab leak” theory has received high-profile support from pundits and in the media, particularly in right-leaning circles. It has become the subject of Republican-led hearings, rationale for punishing leaders such as Fauci and defunding scientific institutions such as the NIH.

“NIH’s procedures for funding and overseeing potentially dangerous research are deficient, unreliable, and pose a serious threat to both public health and national security,” the Trump administration’s new website argues.

“Further, NIH fostered an environment that promoted evading federal record keeping laws,” the website argues.

Messenger RNA technology, which powered Covid-19 vaccines and led to their swift development under the first Trump administration, has also come under attack. Many leading critics of the government’s initial approach to Covid-19 now have leadership roles in the new Trump administration – including the health secretary and longtime vaccine skeptic, Robert F Kennedy Jr, and Dr Jay Bhattacharya, who now leads the NIH.

#coronavirus #covid 19 #conspiracy theories #anti science #the trumpocalypse #convicted felon trump #adjudicated sex offender trump #trump is a fucking moron #unfit for office #trump regime #kakistocracy

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dragons-and-magic · 11 months ago

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🚂 In need of some cool engines for TTTE OCs? Look no further! 🚃

Here's a list of all sorts of unusual and little known engines to make into your next OCs!

1082 class electric locomotive: Not much is known about this engine, so information is fragmented. This Austrain steam engine was powered by electricity heating up the water in its boiler through electric coils. The hydroelectric system was apparently 50 years ahead of it time and was built in response to the rising prices of imported German Coal during WW2. This engine and ones like it Sweden, were scrapped after the war ended. I'll never understand why. Such a self sufficient engine could have been the key to many break throughs.

2. DRG Class 05: This German streamlined engine was made in response of record breaking streamlined diesel engines made earlier. In 1936, this engine set the world speed record for reaching 124.5 mph, while hauling 217 short tons. However this record was later beaten by Mallard, (Yes, that Mallard. The LNER Gresley one.) on a technicality. Mallard was on a slightly downhill line, and with a heavier train. Interpret that as you will. If you want Gresley family drama, I have a feeling this engine would make a great OC to start it.

3. B&O #305 Camel: This unique engine was trademarked by the Baltimore and Ohio railroad in the 1900s. It's unusual build allowed to pull trains up steep mountains. This build also came with a terrible flaw. Since the cab was placed directly above the boiler, it became very hot and anyone in it would not only be uncomfortable, but in terrible danger if if the engine ever derailed. And there was very little protection for the crew. In short, it was like an overbred dog. Created purely for one purpose, and not with health or safety in mind. More information can be found at the B&O website.

4. The Rail Pickup Truck??? (GMC Switch Engine): Well, if you need a Fankid that's a cross between a steam engine and a pickup, I've got you covered! Haha! Not much information on these, except that they were used during WW2 and were modified for rail use.

5. Ateliers Moës-Freres Diesel: This little guy is absolutely adorable! He'd definitely make an cute OC! This engine one of many diesels built by the popular Belgian company Ateliers Moës-Freres. They're were know for making exceptional small diesel engines. Even ones that looked like steam engines! Unfortunately, I couldn't any information on what exactly this engine's name is. But if anyone does know, please contact me so I may add it!

6. M-497 (Nicknamed Black Beetle by the press): This futuristic engine was once the fastest engine in North America! It was an experiment, developed by the New York Central Railway. Two J47-19 Jet Engines were attached to a streamlined Budd Rail Diesel Car. The experiment was successful, with the engine reaching a speed of 183.68 mph. Despite the successful run and the valuable data gathered, the project was considered to quote "not considered viable commercially". Black Beetle continued to run after the jet engines were removed, until retirement in 1977 and being scrapped in 1984.

And that's it for now! If you guys like these OC ideas, make sure to let me know, so I can make another one! Also, it's important to note, that I am not an expert on engines. If you see any misinformation here, please let me know, so I can correct it.

Thanks for reading!

#ttte #thomas the tank engine #thomas and friends #ttte mallard #Mallard ttte #real life trains #steam engine #railway #locomotive #steam locomotive #locomotives #writing inspiration #railways

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rebsultana · 5 months ago

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NY BundleApps Review: The Ultimate New Year AI Deal for 2025

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mariacallous · 1 year ago

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It is a measure of the divisiveness and tolerance for violence in the United States that the possibility of civil war looms so large over the 2024 presidential election—no matter which candidate wins. It is even the subject of a hit dystopian thriller. Though an actual civil war resulting from the election’s outcome remains unlikely, a range of sufficiently alarming politically violent scenarios are nevertheless quite possible.

Former President Donald Trump’s conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records has sharpened frictions, with threats to the judiciary and his opponents immediately intensifying. “Time to start capping some leftys. This cannot be fixed by voting,” was one typical reaction tracked by Reuters on Gateway Pundit, a right-wing news site. Far-right media personality Stew Peters said on his Telegram channel that “our judicial system has been weaponized against the American people. We are left with NO option but to take matters into our own hands.”

Meanwhile, our assessments suggest that elements on the far left in this country are also escalating militant threats. A call to “Fuck the Fourth” recently appeared on an anarchist website, heralding a day of action on July 4 targeting the ports of Seattle, Oakland, Los Angeles, Boston, New York, New Jersey, and Baltimore. Additional summons to “Flood The Gates: Escalate” over the Gaza War both on college campuses and in communities across the nation this summer and fall are circulating on social media. At a pro-Palestine protest at the White House in June, one protester held up a decapitated likeness of President Joe Biden’s head, while crowds chanted “Revolution.”

These would-be violent extremists represent a microcosm of a U.S. political landscape that is increasingly willing to tolerate violence. A survey conducted last year found that 23 percent of Americans agreed with the statement that “because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” Another more recent poll similarly found that 28 percent of Republicans strongly agree or agree that “Americans may have to resort to violence in order to get the country back on track.” Meanwhile, 12 percent of Democrats agreed with the premise.

Among gun owners in the United States, these sentiments are even more prevalent. According to a survey conducted by the University of California, Davis, “About 42% of owners of assault-type rifles said political violence could be justified, rising to 44% of recent gun purchasers, and a staggering 56% of those who always or nearly always carry loaded guns in public

As the United States approaches its November election, the risks of violence will thus rise. This should not be surprising. Historically, violence is actually quite common in the United States, especially during election seasons. During the Reconstruction era, much of white supremacist violence directed against freed Black men and women was intended to intimidate would-be voters, ensuring that segregationist Democrats maintained their grip on power in the Deep South.

More recently, the 2022 midterms saw an assassination attempt target the speaker of the House of Representatives in an attack that seriously wounded her husband. The 2020 election, of course, sparked the Jan. 6, 2021, terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol. In the 10 days leading up to the 2018 midterms, there were no fewer than four far-right terrorist attacks, most notably the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. The mail bombs that circulated that same week showed that threats to politicians have in fact been particularly frequent during the Trump era.

Despite that disquieting pattern, 2024 appears to provide even more fertile ground for militant responses to electoral developments. Trump’s court cases, coupled with the insistence from both parties that—in Trump’s words—“If we don’t win this election, I don’t think you’re going to have another election in this country,” have painted the election in existential terms.

As the United Nations Development Program concluded from its research into election violence around the world, “A common cause of election violence is that the stakes of winning and losing valued political posts are in many situations … incredibly high.”

Rendering the threat yet more severe is the range of possible locations and individuals that extremists may target, spanning the duration of election season. But how might violence differ at various stages of the campaign? Before the election, extremists may be more likely to target politicians on the campaign trail, seeking to intimidate them into changing their policies or deter them from running in the first place. Presidential candidate Nikki Haley had, for instance, requested Secret Service protection during her Republican Party primary challenge, while prominent Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher hinted that he was forced into retirement by threats against his family.

Based on experience, the election itself will likely feature armed intimidation at polling places and threats levied against election officials. A database analyzed by scholars Pete Simi, Gina Ligon, Seamus Hughes, and Natalie Standridge found that threats against public officials are likely to hit an all-time high in 2024. The data initially jumped in 2017, the year of Trump’s inauguration.

In the weeks after the forthcoming election, depending on the results, extremists will likely direct their animus toward representatives of the government—especially on one of the many ceremonial dates accompanying the transition of power—such the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, for instance. An exact repeat of that attack is probably less likely; law enforcement agencies will be far better prepared this time, and the groups that led the assault on the Capitol have been effectively dismantled by seditious conspiracy charges targeting their leadership.

Although white supremacist and anti-government extremists will be the likeliest to lash out, in line with trends over the past decade, violence from the far left cannot be discounted. Stabbing attacks have repeatedly targeted right-wing political leaders in Germany, for instance, and the harassment and violence targeting American Jews on U.S. college campuses have highlighted a more militant political left that has historically been quite open to violent action, including in the United States. This violent fringe has frequently deployed armed threats against politicians in particular—never more seriously than the lone gunman who targeted the Republican team practice for the congressional baseball game in 2017, or the far-left extremist from California who brought weapons to the home of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh to threaten him in 2022.

Salafi jihadi actors are also emboldened by recent successes in Afghanistan, Iran, and Moscow, and they may seek to take advantage of this particularly divided moment in the United States to elbow themselves back into the national consciousness. FBI Director Christopher Wray has suggested that his organization is growing increasingly concerned about the “potential for a coordinated attack here in the homeland, not unlike the ISIS-K attack we saw at the Russian concert hall back in March.” The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has similarly warned that “threat actors” will likely “converge on 2024 election season,” with foreign adversaries using influence operations to further divide the U.S. populace and create new sources of divisiveness and violence.

Is the violence likely to lead to civil war? Trump and many of his allies have repeatedly warned that another election loss—coupled with forthcoming trial verdicts—would trigger one or lead to revolution in the United States. A post on Truth Social shared by Trump, for instance, suggested that 2024 might resemble 1776, “except this time the fight is not against the British, it’s against communist Americans.” The threat doubled down on Trump’s previous warning that his defeat would spark a “bloodbath” in this country.

Punditry, however, is not prophecy. Despite the warnings from scholars, policy wonks, journalists, and others, civil war is in fact unlikely in this country. Geographic distinctions between would-be warring factions today run urban-rural rather than north-south, robbing any potential seditious movement of the geographical safe haven it would need to engage in nationwide conflict. But political rhetoric and the proliferation of threats is almost certain to lead to some level of violence.

Making the threat even more serious is that the Biden administration carries little-to-no legitimacy among most hardcore Trump supporters—who still persist in believing that the 2020 election was stolen. The vice grip that these conspiracy theories hold on many mainstream Republicans means that any response by the Biden administration will be regarded as illegitimate—whether that response is deploying additional law enforcement or even the National Guard to polling places or seeking to educate the public about the veracity and integrity of U.S. elections.

In other words, the United States finds itself in a security dilemma, where any defensive measures designed to safeguard the electoral process will in fact likely be interpreted as an offensive strike—that is, to ensure a repeat electoral fraud. As the aforementioned White House protests have demonstrated, Biden also has little legitimacy in the eyes of the far left, meaning that particular movement would not likely be sated by a Democratic election victory.

Countermeasures will need to focus on education and law enforcement preparation. In particular, the Biden administration should champion education tools that reassure the U.S. public about the resilience of its electoral system from hacking or cheating while also pioneering digital literacy measures that might help protect Americans from disinformation and conspiracy theories shared online, including through artificial intelligence.

In particularly high-risk areas, which might include swing states, the administration should also consider raising the law enforcement presence to deter violent actors from targeting such locations. Successfully stopping violence, however, will require a bipartisan commitment to accept election results and publicly praise the integrity of the election and its many officials—which seems completely unrealistic at this stage.

Americans are therefore left with a political landscape defined by existential rhetoric and violent threats, with very little that the government can do to effectively counter these charges. Accordingly, the threat may be less of another civil war than of the total breakdown of the democratic electoral process that has defined the country since its creation.

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spidermannotes · 2 years ago

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Marvel's Spider-Man 2 - 1/6th scale Venom Collectible Figure

Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is bringing a new level of excitement to fans! The Venom symbiote soon makes its way into town, presenting another set of challenges for the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man to tackle. On the opposite front, our beloved wall-crawlers, Miles Morales and Peter Parker, find themselves entangle in a fight against the villainous Venom, while contemplating their responsibilities.

To celebrate the official debut of Marvel's Spider-Man 2, Hot Toys is bringing the monstrous Venom from Marvel’s New York to life as the latest 1/6th scale collectible figure!

Measures 53cm tall, the one-sixth scaled Venom collectible figure is faithfully crafted based on his intimidating appearance in the videogame. Features a newly developed head sculpt with mouth-opened and another head sculpt with wicked grin accompanied by swirled eyes, fanged teeth and detailed musculature. To further enhance his gruesome expressions, three styles of tongues are included, adding depth to his menacing countenance. Completing his overpowering look are the white spider-symbols adorning his chest and back, newly designed symbiote tendrils, and menacing attacking claws.

More promo photos below:

More info at Hot Toys official website.

#spiderman #marvel #spider #man #spider-man #venom #action figure #news #notes #video game

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broadpreedglobalnews · 11 months ago

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Thousands of Corporate Secrets Were Exposed, and This Researcher Uncovered Them All 🔍🔓

Bill Demirkapi, a freelance security researcher, has discovered a significant amount of corporate secrets left exposed online, revealing major security risks ⚠️. Since 2021, Demirkapi has been employing creative techniques to sift through vast data sources, uncovering developer secrets like passwords, API keys, and authentication tokens that could be exploited by cybercriminals 💻🔑. At the Defcon security conference, he presented his findings, which included over 15,000 developer secrets embedded in software, providing access to sensitive systems such as Nebraska’s Supreme Court and Stanford University’s Slack channels 🏛️📊.

Demirkapi’s investigation also uncovered a common problem with dangling subdomains, identifying 66,000 websites vulnerable to attacks like hijacking 🕵️‍♂️💥. High-profile websites, including one belonging to The New York Times, were among those at risk 📈📰. By leveraging unconventional datasets, Demirkapi was able to spot thousands of overlooked security flaws, demonstrating the need for innovative approaches in cybersecurity 🔍🔐.

However, fixing these vulnerabilities proved to be a difficult task. While some companies, like OpenAI, collaborated with Demirkapi to revoke exposed secrets, others, such as Amazon Web Services and GitHub, were less responsive ⚙️🔄. Demirkapi had to create alternative methods to report the exposed data effectively. His research highlights the critical need to explore large data sources for security weaknesses, suggesting that there are still many untapped resources that could help bolster cybersecurity efforts on a broader scale 🌐🔍.

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srutatech · 1 year ago

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Web Development Service in New York

For exceptional web development services in New York, trust Sruta Technologies to bring your digital vision to life with creativity and precision. Our experienced team of developers specializes in crafting custom websites that are tailored to meet the unique needs of your business and engage your target audience effectively. From responsive design and e-commerce solutions to content management systems and web applications, we leverage the latest technologies and best practices to deliver high-quality websites that drive results. With a focus on user experience and functionality, we ensure that your website not only looks great but also performs seamlessly across all devices. Contact Sruta Technologies at (215) 650-3185 or visit https://srutatech.com/website-design-development/ to learn more about our web development services and take your online presence to the next level. #WebDevelopment #NewYork #OnlinePresence

#digital marketing #digitalmarketing #software development #web development #seo #digitalmarketingseo #app development #digital marketing bensalem #digitalmarketingbensalem #digital marketing philadelphia

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zerosecurity · 1 year ago

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4chan User Leaks 270GB of New York Times Code and Assets

Key Points

- A 4chan user has leaked 270GB of internal data from The New York Times, including source code, web assets, and other sensitive information. - The leaked data contains approximately 5,000 repositories and 3.6 million files, now available for download on peer-to-peer networks. - The leak includes files related to the newspaper's operations, such as source code, email marketing campaigns, ad reports, and personal information. - The New York Times has confirmed the theft, stating that an accidentally leaked credential was used to access a third-party code hosting platform. - The newspaper claims there is no indication of unauthorized access to their internal systems or impact on their operations.

Breach and Potential Consequences

In a concerning development for cybersecurity and data protection, an anonymous 4chan user has claimed to have leaked a massive trove of internal data belonging to The New York Times Company. The leak, which reportedly amounts to 270GB of sensitive information, includes source code, web assets, and other critical files related to the newspaper's operations. According to the 4chan user, the leaked data encompasses "basically all source code belonging to The New York Times Company," spanning approximately 5,000 repositories and 3.6 million files. The user has shared details on accessing and downloading these files from peer-to-peer networks, raising significant concerns about the potential misuse of this sensitive information.

Leaked Data

While The Register has not yet verified the legitimacy of the leak, the alleged list of stolen files suggests a wide range of sensitive information may have been compromised. The leak is said to include files related to various aspects of The New York Times' operations, such as source code for their websites and applications, email marketing campaigns, advertising reports, and potentially personal information. If the leak is confirmed to be genuine, it could pose a significant cybersecurity challenge for The New York Times. The exposure of source code and internal systems could potentially make the newspaper's digital infrastructure vulnerable to exploitation by malicious actors. Additionally, the leak of personal information could put individuals at risk of identity theft or other forms of cybercrime.

Past Cybersecurity Incidents and Responses

This is not the first time The New York Times has faced cybersecurity threats. In 2013, the newspaper, along with other media outlets, was targeted by a group called the Syrian Electronic Army, which carried out a series of attacks that resulted in website defacements and disruptions. The Register itself was also targeted in a failed spear-phishing attempt during that period. In 2016, suspected Russian cyber-spies gained access to email inboxes belonging to The New York Times and other American news organizations, further highlighting the ongoing cybersecurity risks faced by media companies.

The New York Times Response

In response to the alleged leak, The New York Times has confirmed the theft, stating that an accidentally leaked credential was used to access a third-party code hosting platform where their data was stored. The newspaper claims that appropriate measures were taken promptly after the incident was identified in January 2024. According to a spokesperson from The New York Times, "There is no indication of unauthorized access to Times-owned systems nor impact to our operations related to this event." However, the newspaper's statement does not address the potential consequences of the leaked data being widely available on peer-to-peer networks. Read the full article

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