This "new" site is part of a larger effort by that slob to kneecap or compromise US government Web sites, and steal your personal data.

I first read about the effort here: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fthedreydossier.substac...

Yesterday, she took a look under the hood of America.gov, and yes, it's as bad as everything else the DOGE vandals have been doing: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fthedreydossier.substac...

Up until this point, government Web sites were designed, built, and maintained by the agencies responsible for that government service. For example, if you wanted to apply for or renew your passport, you would go to state.gov, which is run by the US Department of State, which is responsible for processing applications for and issuing passports. No other department has lawful jurisdiction over passports.

From the point of view of the law, that's still true. But the slob, without anyone's permission, kluged together passports.gov. This site was built and is run by the White House's "National Design Studio," completely outside the law and without any independent oversight. The State Department was not consulted and has nothing to do with it. Further, the site is filled with third-party trackers, analytics, and some custom code that copies every page you view, including form contents, to an unknown third party.

Oh, and the guy leading the National Design Studio and in charge of building these fake sites? He's Joe Gebbia -- cofounder of Airbnb. Read both articles for more details.

In short, you should treat America.gov as a malware site and stay well away from it. Under no circumstances should you feed it any of your personal information.

They won't ban human drivers. One day you'll just discover that self-driving cars will have much cheaper premiums.

You might also discover a new insurance company has appeared that only insures self-driving cars. That insurance company won't actually be new, it'll just be a separately-branded subsidiary of one of the major players.

In the end, it might be that the self-driving cohort with their lower payout rate subsidises the "manual" drivers to some extent.

> It otherwise seems like a kind of weird time to do it.

It's for AI. Of course it is. Microsoft is busy cramming LLM's into everything they can.

Instead of (ugh) having the LLM manually cycle through a row or column of cells to get or set the data required, all the data is in one handy object in a single cell that can be trivially pumped in and out of whatever LLM-du-jour takes your fancy.

what's the point?

The point is to be able to use your hardware in the manner you deem appropriate, and to ensure it is not doing sneaky shit behind your back.

If, instead of a Playstation, we were talking about rooting LG televisions to run custom Linux builds stripped of pervasive privacy-violating code and "apps," I suspect your opinion might be rather different. (And no, when the entire industry has turned to the Dark Side, voting with your wallet doesn't work.)

Indeed. I built a Raspberry Pi Pico based controller for some flashing LEDs on my drone. It has red and blue LEDs and I wanted them to flash with the cycle of three short flashes then a pause; alternately the red LEDs then the blue LEDS. Took barely a minute to code that in python and dump it onto the board. In such cases it doesn't matter that the language is interpreted because the task is not demanding of the hardware.

The "Police Drone" still flies to this day! :-)

How interesting it would be to do a drive-around with an open wifi hotspot in the car -- just to see how many LG TV sets try to connect and find out what data they send.

Just saying, for a friend :)

That was about their opinion shows, not their news shows. That case was specifically about Tucker Carlson.

Those kinds of arguments weren't saving Fox from the Dominion lawsuit, though. If they seemed like to have worked, Fox wouldn't have settled for almost $800 million right before trial.

Hastert doesn't have a law named after him. There's the Hastert Rule, which is an informal rule that no bill should be brought before the House to vote on it unless it already has the support of the majority of the majority party.

Hastert was convicted of structuring withdrawals to avoid reporting requirements and making false statements. The charges themselves were not inherently about homosexuality, though it came about from him covering up his same-sex abuse of a minor, and the indictment didn't mention the sexual abuse, and his allocution under the plea deal didn't initially mention it. He did admit it under pressure from the judge, who seemed to start to lean against accepting his plea without him admitting to the molestation, for which he could not be charged because the statute of limitations had expired decades prior.

Hastert has never come out as gay. Most child molesters, even those who molest the same sex, never identify as homosexual.

Yes... we could destroy Putin's nuclear torpedo before it even made it to the UK coast! :-P

Number 7 according to Car & Driver, which I think is much more trustworthy than whatever "Wealthy Driver" is. The Car & Driver list is also applies to 2025 rather than 2023.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.caranddriver.com%2Fn...

Every time people hear what it actually involves is outrage and opposition, at least all the way back to when Intel first announced that they wanted to hardcode identity numbers inside CPUs in 1999. But the corporations involved have been relentless, and have sunk countless billions of dollars steadily forcing it forwards, and building front organizations to obfuscate and whitewash it.

With Windows 11, Microsoft was finally able to FORCE Trusted computing hardware into every new computer. Not just every new Windows computer, but every computer.

Every new Intel PC CPU has built in Trusted Computing enforcement hardware. Every new AMD PC CPU has built in Trusted Computing enforcement hardware. Every new ARM PC CPU has built in Trusted Computing enforcement hardware. The only processor lines that DON'T have it are the microcontrollers.

There are some unlocked smartphones available, but as far as I can determine it's literally impossible to buy a smartphone that doesn't have hardware trusted computing built in.

I specified that enforcing Trusted Computing at the internet access level is still a long term goal, they couldn't get away with it today. However they are well on the way to success. Virtually all new hardware supporting trusted computing, all the front groups rolling out standards and systems, and as it gets incorporated into things everyone is going to increasingly running into situations where they get locked out of stuff if they're not Trusted Computing compliant. Streaming already restricts you to the worst quality if you're not compliant, and it's only going to get worse as pre-Win11 computers fade out and as more things require it.

I'd hardly call exact date of birth "low information content".

And yes this does reveal exact date of birth, regardless of the bullshit obfuscation that it supposedly only reports age range. The server simply tracks the reported result every time the user connects, and on some specific day the result CHANGES to announce their date of birth.

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This is based on SLSA (Supply-chain Levels for Software Artifacts), brought to you by the same fuckers making Trusted Computing and the TMP (Trusted Platform Module). It's part of the same shitstack to prohibit you from altering your software and to lock you out of your own files, and to send spy reports out over the internet so you can be cut off if you "fail" the Trusted Computing check.

The software can use a TPM's (Trusted Platform Module) Sealing function to encrypt your data such that it's impossible to access your own data if the software is modified. It can then pass control over that data only to software updates that carry a signed security certificate from Broadcom (or any other company using this system).

It is no longer open source, your system no longer works as you can no longer access your Sealed data if you change so much as a single letter of the code. Even recompile unaltered code won't work, unless you magically manage to get your build environment absolutely identical to the company's build environment and get byte-for-byte output. Even that may be impossible with the newer levels of non-deterministic compiler optimizations.

Also, with TMP's Remote Attestation feature can be used to transmit your machine's software configuration over the internet, so that you can be cut off if your system doesn't match Broadcom (or other company's) cryptographically signed certificate.

And then of course there's Network Access Control (NAC) / Trusted Network Connect (TNC). In the long term, the goal is for ISPs to use NAC/TNC to interrogate your computer for Trusted Computing compliance, and deny you any internet access whatsoever if your machine isn't compliant. Software with this sort of "security" certificate would pass inspection, while any attempt to alter the code would be detected as "tampering". You then get "quarantined". What "quarantine" means is that you are denied internet access - with the exception that you do get very restricted access which can only be used to download the approved software to "fix" your computer into Trusted Computing compliance.

How long before the labels start going after new artists that sound like existing ones?

You know, where someone is "inspired" by a singer, a band or a songwriter that they've idolized for years and thus their own creations are heavily influenced by those artists?

If there's a chance for a new Lambo or Porsche in the corporate car park at EMI or WMG you *know* they'll be working on such law suits right now!

I've also wondered why there's no restriction on voice-actors who impersonate famous people -- but if you do it with AI then you are right in the firing line.

I'd also add an SDR to that kit... opens up a whole new world if you're needing it for a survivalist or prepper situation.

A cheap RTLSDR stick and wire antenna will do the job fine with one of the many SDR programs that'll run on the Pi.