Davkaus Posted October 27, 2017 Share Posted October 27, 2017 It seems like they're doing everything possible to discourage tech companies from being based in the UK. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xann Posted October 27, 2017 Author Share Posted October 27, 2017 It's a bit rich considering the amount of porn they were downloading in Parliament, not to mention protected paedophile rings. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xann Posted October 31, 2017 Author Share Posted October 31, 2017 Quote Last Wednesday, 11 months into Donald Trump’s new world order, in the first year of normalisation, a sudden unblurring of lines took place. A shift. A door of perception swung open. Because that was the day that the dramatis personae of two separate Trump-Russia scandals smashed headlong into one another. A high-speed news car crash between Cambridge Analytica and WikiLeaks, the two organisations that arguably had the most impact on 2016, coming together last week in one head-spinning scoop. That day, we learned that Alexander Nix, the CEO of Cambridge Analytica, the controversial data firm that helped Trump to power, had contacted Julian Assange to ask him if he wanted “help” with WikiLeaks’s stash of stolen emails. That’s the stash of stolen emails that had such a devastating impact on Hillary Clinton in the last months of the campaign. And this story brought WikiLeaks, which the head of the CIA describes as a “hostile intelligence service”, directly together with the Trump campaign for which Cambridge Analytica worked. This is an amazing plot twist for the company owned by US billionaire Robert Mercer, which is already the subject of investigations by the House intelligence committee, the Senate intelligence committee, the FBI and, it was announced late on Friday night, the Senate judiciary committee. So far, so American. These are US scandals involving US politics and the news made the headlines in US bulletins across US networks. But it’s also Cambridge Analytica, the data analytics company that has its headquarters in central London and which, following a series of articles about its role in Brexit in the Guardian and the Observer, is also being investigated, by the Electoral Commission and the Information Commissioner’s Office. The company that was spun out of a British military contractor, is headed by an old Etonian and that responded to our stories earlier this year by threatening to sue us. It’s our Cambridge it’s named after, not the American one, and it was here that it processed the voter files of 240 million US citizens. It’s also here that this “hostile intelligence service” – WikiLeaks – is based. The Ecuadorian embassy is just a few miles, as the crow flies, from Cambridge Analytica’s head office. Because this is not just about America. It’s about Britain, too. This is transatlantic. It’s not possible to separate Britain and the US in this whole sorry mess – and I say this as someone who has spent months trying. Where we see this most clearly is in that other weird WikiLeaks connection: Nigel Farage. Because that moment in March when Farage was caught tripping down the steps of the Ecuadorian embassy was the last moment the lines suddenly became visible. That the ideological overlaps between WikiLeaks and Trump and Brexit were revealed to be not just lines, but a channel of communication. Because if there’s one person who’s in the middle of all of this, but who has escaped any proper scrutiny, it’s Nigel Farage. That’s Nigel Farage, who led the Leave.EU campaign, which is being investigated by the Electoral Commission alongside Cambridge Analytica, about whether the latter made an “impermissible donation” of services to the leave campaign. Nigel Farage who visited Donald Trump and then Julian Assange. Who is friends with Steve Bannon and Robert Mercer. Who headed an organisation – Ukip – which has multiple, public, visible but almost entirely unreported Russian connections. Who is paid by the Russian state via the broadcaster RT, which was banned last week from Twitter. And who appears like clockwork on British television without any word of this. This is a power network that involves WikiLeaks and Farage, and Cambridge Analytica and Farage, and Robert Mercer and Farage. Steve Bannon, former vice president of Cambridge Analytica, and Farage. It’s Nigel Farage and Brexit and Trump and Cambridge Analytica and WikiLeaks… and, if the Senate intelligence committee and the House intelligence committee and the FBI are on to anything at all, somewhere in the middle of all that, Russia. Guardian Farage? Treason? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xann Posted November 23, 2017 Author Share Posted November 23, 2017 Quote Something Horrifying Is About To Happen To The Internet - And You NEED To Pay Attention The Republican head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Ajit Pai, announced this week that the agency will seek to fully repeal Obama-era net neutrality rules. In a statement, he claimed that the Democrats imposed “heavy-handed, utility-style” regulations on the Internet, and they needed to be undone. “The FCC would simply require Internet service providers to be transparent about their practices so that consumers can buy the service plan that’s best for them and entrepreneurs and other small businesses can have the technical information they need to innovate,” Pai said in a statement, as per The Hill. The vote on the proposal will take place on December 14, but it’s widely expected to be in support of a full repeal as the FCC is Republican-dominated. The name of this initiative, by the way, is “Restoring Internet Freedom”. IFL Science Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tegis Posted November 23, 2017 VT Supporter Share Posted November 23, 2017 Brown envelopes all around Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xann Posted November 25, 2017 Author Share Posted November 25, 2017 Quote More than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments were Likely Faked I used natural language processing techniques to analyze net neutrality comments submitted to the FCC from April-October 2017, and the results were disturbing. NY Attorney General Schneiderman estimated that hundreds of thousands of Americans’ identities were stolen and used in spam campaigns that support repealing net neutrality. My research found at least 1.3 million fake pro-repeal comments, with suspicions about many more. In fact, the sum of fake pro-repeal comments in the proceeding may number in the millions. In this post, I will point out one particularly egregious spambot submission, make the case that there are likely many more pro-repeal spambots yet to be confirmed, and estimate the public position on net neutrality in the “organic” public submissions. Hackernoon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xann Posted January 10, 2018 Author Share Posted January 10, 2018 Quote Inside the Lab Where Amazon's Alexa Takes Over The World While Apple and Google offer access to their assistants slowly and methodically, Amazon has flung the doors off their hinges and let anyone in. The company knows the path to success is not just in Echo devices, and that Amazon can't possibly make every gadget anyone wants to use. So they've created a new division called Alexa Voice Services, which builds hardware and software with the aim of making it stupendously easy to add Alexa into whatever ceiling fan, lightbulb, refrigerator, or car someone might be working on. "You should be able to talk to Alexa no matter where you're located or what device you're talking to," says Priya Abani, Amazon's director of AVS enablement. "We basically envision a world where Alexa is everywhere." The word "everywhere" has taken on a whole new meaning in the last few years. Thanks to decades of improvements in processor efficiency, bandwidth accessibility, and the incredible availability of cheap electronics, almost anything can be connected to the internet. Cars and trucks and bicycles, sure; all your home appliances, switches, bulbs, and fixtures; even your clothes, shoes, and jewelry. They're all coming online, and Amazon wants Alexa in all of them. Wired Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
a m ole Posted January 10, 2018 Share Posted January 10, 2018 Am I the only one who doesn’t want to spend my days talking to objects? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjmooney Posted January 10, 2018 VT Supporter Share Posted January 10, 2018 Just now, a m ole said: Am I the only one who doesn’t want to spend my days talking to objects? No. For an old git, I'm fairly tech-savvy, but I've reached my 'Hell, no' moment with voice activated stuff. I refuse to use it. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tegis Posted January 10, 2018 VT Supporter Share Posted January 10, 2018 2 hours ago, a m ole said: Am I the only one who doesn’t want to spend my days talking to objects? This is more highlighted to the home assistants but, Hell no! Putting up with spy-objects (chrome,google,facebook, etc) in my computer and phone is one thing. I can semicontrol what goes into those. Having devices and cameras in my home listening and recording absolutely everything i do? No thanks. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisp65 Posted January 10, 2018 Share Posted January 10, 2018 I'm already restricted to finding spots in the house for a quick tug that can't be seen through the windows. If I've got to find a blindspot away from the fridge, the hair dryer and the xbox as well, I'm pretty much stuck half way up the stairs. Potentially dangerous. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amsterdam_Neil_D Posted January 10, 2018 Share Posted January 10, 2018 9 minutes ago, chrisp65 said: I'm already restricted to finding spots in the house for a quick tug that can't be seen through the windows. If I've got to find a blindspot away from the fridge, the hair dryer and the xbox as well, I'm pretty much stuck half way up the stairs. Potentially dangerous. It's a slippery slope once you start doing that. 1 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xann Posted January 10, 2018 Author Share Posted January 10, 2018 9 minutes ago, chrisp65 said: I'm already restricted to finding spots in the house for a quick tug that can't be seen through the windows. Never been happy about the porn machine having a camera. The lens is usually covered by a corner torn off an aftermath rag. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisp65 Posted January 10, 2018 Share Posted January 10, 2018 7 minutes ago, Xann said: Never been happy about the porn machine having a camera. The lens is usually covered by a corner torn off an aftermath rag. That is (really) the irony of a lot of it, that we'll worry about the TV looking back at us, or the fridge, or the toothbrush charger dock - but lots of people cannot be without their smartphone in their hand. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Davkaus Posted January 10, 2018 Share Posted January 10, 2018 (edited) Every few months I sway between "Look at this cool shit Google Assistant can do", and "those creepy really bad people are doing what?!". All in on smartthings, or smashing my phone with a rock and going back to a dumb phone, I can never decide. Edited January 10, 2018 by Davkaus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisp65 Posted January 10, 2018 Share Posted January 10, 2018 4 hours ago, Davkaus said: Every few months I sway between "Look at this cool shit Google Assistant can do", and "those creepy really bad people are doing what?!". All in on smartthings, or smashing my phone with a rock and going back to a dumb phone, I can never decide. I have a smartphone and i-pad and all that schizz. I make a point of leaving it home sometimes and having the occasional day out tech nude. --- On the creeping invasion of tech, my car now gives me a report at the end of each trip that splits my driving style as a per centage between 'eco', 'normal' and 'aggressive'. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
limpid Posted January 10, 2018 Administrator Share Posted January 10, 2018 7 hours ago, Tegis said: This is more highlighted to the home assistants but, Hell no! Putting up with spy-objects (chrome,google,facebook, etc) in my computer and phone is one thing. I can semicontrol what goes into those. Having devices and cameras in my home listening and recording absolutely everything i do? No thanks. I hope you aren't running Windows - your only control there is turning it off. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tegis Posted January 10, 2018 VT Supporter Share Posted January 10, 2018 1 hour ago, limpid said: I hope you aren't running Windows - your only control there is turning it off. I run both windows and linux. I use ShutUp10 on windows though so I consider semicontrol to still apply Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xann Posted March 8, 2018 Author Share Posted March 8, 2018 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheAuthority Posted March 8, 2018 VT Supporter Share Posted March 8, 2018 1 hour ago, Xann said: BBC Propaganda Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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