“If you kill a cockroach you are a hero, if you kill a butterfly you are bad. Morality has aesthetic standards.” — Nietzsche
Two men who roped relatives, friends and backpackers into their $40 million gold-selling fraud scheme will be jailed.
Jonatan Kelu and Cedric Adrian Millner were found guilty of two counts each of conspiring to cause loss to the Commonwealth on Tuesday after police uncovered an intricate tax evasion scheme set up by the pair
Multimillion-dollar gold fraudsters set to be jailed
Tax prep companies let Google and Facebook sell ads off your data Vox
Is What We Have “Crony Capitalism”? People’s Democracy
Senior public servant’s side-hustle as pole dancing instructor
FBI worked with Ukraine intelligence agency to remove social media accounts: House Judiciary report FOX
Highlights on cyber security issues, July 8, 2023 – Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness.
Four highlights from this week: Google Says It’ll Scrape Everything You Post Online for AI; How secure are voice authentication systems really?; Scammers using AI voice technology to commit crimes; and privacy alert – disable third party cookies in Chrome as companies continue to track you online.
Venomous fire ants could spread nationwide as eradication funding stalls
ROGER KIMBALL: Poetic Justice for the Biden ‘Ministry of Truth.’
The injunction is against the FBI, the DOJ, the CDC and five other federal agencies, as well as against such officials as the Surgeon General and various White House staffers. It prohibits them from “threatening, pressuring, or coercing social-media companies in any manner to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce posted content of postings containing protected free speech.”
Everyone expects the Biden administration to appeal the judgment. After all, having been in the censorship business so long and so successfully, the administration will be loath to open the window on free expression and opinions critical of their performance.
We don’t yet know how this case will turn out. Perhaps Judge Doughty will be overturned and the censorship and suppression industry will go on its merry way making the world safe for Democrats. But I suspect that the genie has been let out of the bottle. The Deep state will howl. The forces of freedom will howl louder, and now they have the House and, most likely, the courts on their side.
Whatever happens, the Wall Street Journal’s Jacob Gershman is right: “The case is among the most potentially consequential First Amendment battles pending in the courts, testing the limits on government scrutiny of social-media content on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other major platforms. Never before has a federal judge set such sweeping limits on how the federal government may communicate with online platforms.”
Killing Twitter Eschaton
Meta’s New Threads App Is Terrible. It Just Might Bury Twitter. Slate
A warning to anyone jumping over to ThreadsBen Cohen on Substack. The irony of liberal Democrats and pundits jumping onto a Meta platform — even though Meta gutted their newsrooms and wrecked the news business — because they can’t endure contact with The Othered* is a bit much, even for the stupidest timeline. NOTE * Or curate their timelines properly.
Sarah Silverman Sues OpenAI And Meta For Copyright Infringement; Lawsuits Challenge Use Of Works For Artificial Intelligence Datasets Deadline
Experts warn of rise in scammers using AI to mimic voices of loved ones in distress ABC
Parrots Are Taking Over the World Scientific American
How the Octopus Evolved To Taste by Touch The Wire
Elephants’ Giant Hot Testicles Might Be the Reason They Get Less Cancer Scientific American
