I took a running leap in a wide open living room, realized I was going to fall, stuck out my hand, and that’s why I’m ‘double-jointed’ in my right thumb. (That and being hyper mobile. But it didn’t pop out of joint before that.)
So - I don’t know if every state handles it this way, but my state has a public service commission that has the authority to approve the big projects that utility companies engage in. In my state, my PSC makes their meetings available to watch online, and the public can show up in person, or call in to offer comments about utility matters.
I guess a utility here has an agreement with a farmer to build solar panels and a few wind turbines on their property, but to connect it to the grid, they had to run lines over other farmers lands.
These people were complaining that the power lines would cause cancer, that the solar panels would ‘leak’ and poison the land. That the concrete used in the construction footings would leech chemicals into the groundwater (these are farmers that use pesticides and fertilizers, as well as ranchers that have all manner of chemical and biological effluent running off their livestock).
Which is all to say. I agree completely. I think they are poor stewards of the land and let their political beliefs get in the way of using the land well. Being sold power by people who do use the land to generate power in environmentally friendly ways is just desserts.
I was in Iceland a few months ago, and in some areas the rocks are only tens of years old. There are entire plains of lava flows that are only a few thousand years old. (Same for Hawaii, too.)
I just saw a headline that he’s going to work for Microsoft now.
My employer heavily uses Microsoft, and I’m in IT.
Since June, Microsoft eliminated all their training staff - the folks who show others how to use their software, reclassified their customer experience staff to eliminate the role - these folks met with customers to solicit product feedback and find out what people actually want, made unilateral and poorly communicated changes to security policies that impact hundreds of our users, turned on beta (preview) features for end users without testing - in some cases rendering software inoperable in our environment, and is disabling or limiting features that work(ed) in software covered under our enterprise license end is encouraging people to purchase entirely new software systems from Microsoft to regain the lost functionality.
Honestly, if he was fired for pursuing profits over quality, then he’ll fit right in.
So a conservative blog outs him, even though he asked them to please respect his private life.
The church he cares enough about to deliver sermons at sees fit to release a public statement about it - amplifying the reach of the blog and drawing attention to it in the local community.
And then the local cops just happen to pull him over while he’s driving for a ‘wellness check’?
I’ve never, in my life, heard of a traffic stop wellness check. We know what they were doing. We know what that church was doing. And we know what that blog was doing.
What a tragedy. I hope everyone involved knows the stain they bear.
Depends, I guess. I feel that our capacity to be horrible outweighs our ability to handle it well.
The movie’s AI is a fully present consciousness that exerts its own willpower. The movie also doesn’t have microtransactions, subscriptions, or as far as I can tell, even a cost to buy the AI.
That seems fine. Sweet, even.
But I think the first hurdle is whether or not an AI is more a partner than base sexual entertainment. And next (especially under capitalism), are those capable of harnessing the resources to create a general AI also willing to release it for free, or would interaction be transactional?
If it’s transactional, then there’s intent - was it built for love, or was that part an accident? If it was built for love and there’s transactions, there’s easy potential for abuse. (Although abusive to which party, I couldn’t say.)
And if, say, the AI springs forth from a FOSS project, who makes sure things stay “on the level” when folks tweak the dataset?
A personalized set of training data from a now-deceased spouse is very different than hacked social media data, or other types of tweaks bad actors could make.
I’m not trying to reveal too much about myself here, but the mechanism in my area is the same as the mechanism for any government-owned devices.
The device is copied by a digital forensics expert. If the device is also the subject of a discovery request, it is retained until two years after litigation has completed.
The copied data is analyzed by a FOIA coordinator that gives all the relevant information to the person who initiated the FOIA request.
I advise people to never conduct work on personal devices because the policy we work under explicitly states that personal devices will be subject to legal holds and FOIA if used for official business.
A long while ago, my first foray into smart home stuff was a Phillips Hue system. I used to use it exclusively offline, but I got deeper into smart home stuff and wanted to add some integration into my system. I don’t remember what anymore, but it meant setting up a Hue developer account, so I signed up. Gave them my email address. Stopped using the integration, moved, reset the hub, used it offline for years.
This February I logged into the hub for some reason. I think an accessory wasn’t working and Hue user docs said to log in or some such nonsense.
Five days ago, I got an email from Amazon. They told me that one of the batteries in a Hue switch was running low, and they helpfully provided me with a link to buy new ones. Their page for the device indicated that they were being updated with its battery percentage every 4-8 hours - and that I had authorized Alexa access to my Hue system in February.
I checked the Hue app, and it indicated no apps or services connected to my account.
Logged into the Hue website, dug into my settings, and there were a dozen app’s and services that had been “authorized” to access my account - none that showed up in the app.
Every smart device that has been on my network - devices that I never integrated with Hue (on purpose!) were all happily showing very recent access times to my data. Systems I don’t have accounts to anymore. I revoked access, of course.
Three days ago Amazon emailed me to let me know a different device needed a battery, and showed that Hue had shared the battery level of the device with them that day - 2 days after I revoked access.
Yeah… all their products are getting trashed, reflashed, or used with zigbee hubs I’ve built.
I mean, it sucks for everyone that can’t or don’t want to run homebrew OS’s.
The “One” link I shared above indicates the behavior became standard in Android 8 and iOS 11. They were released in August and September 2017, respectively.
I commented elsewhere with an explanation and a bit of speculation. I did later confirm that even ‘disabling’ Bluetooth doesn’t stop the attack.
The attack method works even when Bluetooth has been disabled using airplane mode from the control panel, which may surprise you. In which case, you’ll be shocked to discover that disabling Bluetooth this way, erm, doesn’t. Instead, you’d need to disable it directly from your device settings or run your iPhone in Lockdown Mode to prevent these advertising pop-ups from being received. Source
Assuming similar on Android, it’s possible, but not that easy toggle everyone knows about.
I don’t know if turning off Bluetooth protects against flipper attacks (Edit: Nah.), but unless something has changed, it (sadly) doesn’t preserve your privacy.
It’s not really documented, as far as I can tell, but Bluetooth low energy stays on, even when you toggle Bluetooth off for both iOS and Android. As of iOS 15, even turning off iPhones means the phone is still trackable. (Unsure about Android on that front.) Apple’s ‘Find my’ network uses Bluetooth low energy, same as Bluetooth beacons.