How long until this "helpful" feature gets a "helpful" update allowing LEOs and national intelligence to bypass it?

YouTube set prices and their own policies on stolen and reuploaded content. Facebook just flat out declined to pay for content, even when it was posted in violation of copyright law. Why would anyone expect Meta to suddenly start respecting copyright?

This letter starts with the inaccurate assumption that the government cares about people's privacy. They already require public disclosure of your private details to file own real property and pay the associated taxes, and to vote, operate a ham radio, and plenty of other things... unless of course you're a part of the Special Class (e.g. police officers, politicians, and wealthy) and fall under a specific exemption they created for themselves to limit the mandate for sharing this information.

Not just under investigation, but already ruled (In Aug 2024) to be in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act by illegally monopolizing the search engine and search advertising markets, most notably on Android devices, as well as with Apple and mobile carriers in United States v. Google LLC (2020).

And further active court cases (final arguments were in Nov 2024) for illegally monopolizing the advertising technology market in violation of sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 in United States v. Google LLC (2023).

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F...

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F...

âoeGoogle is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,â - Judge Amit P. Mehta of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said in a 277-page ruling in August 2024.

United States v. Google LLC (2020) - https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F...

And then there was United States v. Google LLC (2023), with closing arguments in late Nov 2024. https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F....

Let's be honest, there will be no enforcement in the US, and nothing will change, just as Microsoft still owns the desktop OS space, office, and more, and AT&T started re-merging the baby bells in the mid 2000s.

If the patent office is going to be self-funding (and it should), then filers should bear the actual costs of processing. If they want to set up some kind of court-style public defender system to pay for filing costs for those who are less able to cover the costs, I suppose that's fine, but there are enough problems with the patent system to consider subsidizing its fees.

But as others have said, there are already legal costs for writing patent descriptions and other expenses that dwarf the filing fees (plus enforcement after the patent is actually approved), and it's not really an effective place to focus if we're trying to address equitable access to government services.

They've had 50 years to make the joke.

Wikipedia says:
Dr. James Baker laid out the description of a speech understanding system called DRAGON in 1975. DragonDictate was first released for DOS, and Dragon Systems released NaturallySpeaking 1.0 as their first continuous dictation product in 1997.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F...

Without reading the (pre-peer review) article, why would it be strange that people without the education to know when a GPT article is factually incorrect would trust a tool that they don't know is wrong?

There's a reason for the old saying "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing".

The question is, what are people supposed to do with this supposed revelation?

As a former call center admin, ISPs like Comcast absolutely have the ability to include a check of when the CPE was last rebooted in their logic of what prerecorded announcements and troubleshooting steps to recommend, but they chose not to do so, because they can't be arsed to implement it. They also have the ability to put this logic in the knowledgebase tips displayed to call center support reps, or (gasp) train their people to check this. But again, their time costs you nothing, so they'll keep pushing useless suggestions at level 1 until you give up.

Former Teleperformance (and other BPO/call center) employee here: The title is racist flamebait. Localization isn't "whitening" anything, it's ensuring that employees can communicate clearly and effectively, without confusing customers who don't know the meaning of "doing the needful", and for whom "revert" means undo, not "reply". If a company decides to reduce operating costs by moving their call center to India because it thinks they can overcome the cultural barriers without localization training, it's not racist when customers push back on learning international idioms, or employees use them because they were never taught that what may be second nature to them isn't as universal as they thought.

A near-miss implies the accident was avoided. In this case it happened, after failing both human-based procedural controls, and basic technology controls like evaluating the size of the transfer, or comparing values of various fields to catch copy-paste... which was for some reason, even allowed when entering data into the field. But it's comforting to know that even though it takes weeks for Amazon and Walmart to process a refund, the banks can sweep their own mistakes under the rug faster than you can say Little Bobby Tables.

The Dishwasher Loading Principle strikes again-- if you do something you don't want to do badly enough, they might stop asking you to do it.

If this kills reddit, I'm all for it. The platform people moved to for free speech is long dead, and replaced by censorship and things like r/Xfinity that's obviously run by corporate employees doing PR damage control.

Nintendo just lost a trademark case in Costa Rica where they tried to block a supermarket owned by a man named Don José Mario Alfaro GonzÃlez from using name "Super Mario" - https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mandourlaw.com%2Fsup...

The real question is how long traditional brokerages and private equity will be the sole beneficiaries of these reduced overhead costs and improved results before some startup gets funds in place to the general public with reduced management fees. Given how heavily regulated the financial markets can be, it's hard to say.