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The Hallucinating ChatGPT Presidency

4 months ago
We generally understand how LLM hallucinations work. An AI model tries to generate what seems like a plausible response to whatever you ask it, drawing on its training data to construct something that sounds right. The actual truth of the response is, at best, a secondary consideration. It does not involve facts. It does not […]
Mike Masnick

FCC Commissioner Gomez Blasts Brendan Carr’s ‘Campaign Of Censorship’

4 months ago
When Biden FCC boss Jessica Rosenworcel stepped down, we noted how she couldn’t be bothered to even mention that terrible things were brewing at her agency. Same for Democratic FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks, who recently decided to sheepishly step down without, again, so much as acknowledging the dangerous and radical zealotry Brendan Carr has been […]
Karl Bode

One Of RFK Jr.’s ‘Extraordinary Healers’ Caught Measles, Kept Treating Patients In Facilities

4 months ago
You know, there’s stupid, and then there’s stupid on a level that is unbelievably dangerous. While RFK Jr. is very busy attempting to ensure that America loses its measles elimination status through a combination of vaccine skepticism, pushing alternative treatments, and generally being unable to present a solid message around the current outbreak, you will […]
Dark Helmet

The Untold Story Of How Ed Martin Ghostwrote Online Attacks Against A Judge — And Still Became A Top Trump Prosecutor

4 months ago
This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. The attacks on Judge John Barberis in the fall of 2016 appeared on his personal Facebook page. They impugned his ethics, criticized a recent ruling and branded him as a “politician” with the “LOWEST rating for a judge in Illinois.” Barberis, […]
Mike Masnick

FBI Arrests Wisconsin Judge For Allegedly Obstructing The Arrest Of An Undocumented Immigrant

4 months ago
Oh hooray. Another part of our new normal under Trump 2.0. Here’s the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel with the gory details: Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan was charged April 25 with two felonies on allegations of trying to help an undocumented immigrant avoid arrest after he appeared in her courtroom. According to a 13-page complaint, Dugan, 65, is accused […]
Tim Cushing

Congress Moving Forward On Unconstitutional Take It Down Act

4 months ago
Here’s a puzzle: How do you write a law that’s so badly designed that (1) the people it’s meant to help oppose it, (2) the people who hate regulation support it, and (3) everyone involved admits it will be abused? The answer, it turns out, is the Take It Down Act. The bill started with […]
Mike Masnick

Government Actually Threatens Wikipedia’s Editorial Freedom; Self-Proclaimed Free Speech Warriors Suddenly Have Other Plans

4 months ago
When Trump officials want to censor speech, they don’t quite say “we want to censor speech” (after all, they pretend to be the party that “brought free speech back.”) Instead, they find ways to threaten organizations by pretending it’s got nothing to do with the content, even as they can’t hide their true intentions and […]
Mike Masnick

Daily Deal: Curiosity Stream Standard Plan

4 months ago
Whether you’re a science enthusiast, history buff, or technology geek, Curiosity Stream has something for everyone. Unleash the power of on-demand streaming that allows you to choose what you want to watch, when you want to watch it, and where you want to watch it. From the comfort of your living room to the remote […]
Daily Deal

Ohio Could Be The Latest State To Pass ‘Right To Repair’ Law, Showcasing Broad, Bipartisan Support

4 months ago
State laws attempting to make it cheaper and easier to repair your own technology continue to gain steam. With the recent introduction of a new “right to repair” law in Wisconsin, groups like U.S. PIRG note that all 50 U.S. states have now at least introduced such bills. But so far only Massachusetts, New York, Minnesota, Colorado, California, and Oregon have actually […]
Karl Bode

Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

4 months ago
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Mamba with a response to a failed “fact check” by another commenter: Hey twinkle farts, President Roosevelt invoked the Alien Enemies Act immediately after the bombing of Pearl Harbor to authorize the government to detain enemy aliens. Further, the executive order didn’t need to […]
Leigh Beadon

Game Jam Winner Spotlight: A Warning

4 months ago
It’s time for the third in our series of posts about the winners of this year’s public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1929! We’ve already covered the Best Remix and Best Deep Cut, and today we’re looking at the winner of the Best Visuals category: A Warning by DigNZ. One of the requirements for […]
Leigh Beadon

Microsoft Allows Bethesda To Continue To Be Cool Regarding Fan-Made Remake Projects

4 months ago
Bethesda has something of a history of embracing its modding communities. This has historically included not being aggressive on matters of IP against modders, attempting to build an economy around the modding community itself, and even being quite tolerant of fan-made expansions and the like of the publisher’s titles. This was all well and good […]
Dark Helmet

Gavin Newsom Has Lost The Plot

4 months ago
Gavin Newsom’s characterization of the Abrego García deportation as a “distraction” represents a catastrophic failure of moral clarity and constitutional understanding. This isn’t a distraction. This is the constitutional foundation of our Republic hinging on a single case. Let’s be absolutely clear about what’s at stake: The Supreme Court has issued a unanimous 9-0 order demanding that […]
Mike Masnick

In DOGE’s Hunt For Imaginary Censors, It Kills Actual Anti-Censorship Research

4 months ago
The people most loudly (misleadingly) complaining about censorship just… helped enable actual censorship. Not metaphorical censorship, not “they won’t let me tweet slurs” censorship, but literal “we’re going to stop research into fighting actual government censorship” censorship. It’s painfully stupid, but that’s just what we get with the folks running the government these days. This […]
Mike Masnick

Daily Deal: The Ultimate Software Testing Bundle

4 months ago
Get the skills you need to become a software tester with the Ultimate Software Testing Bundle. Software testing is performed to identify differences between given input and expected output and to verify that software products function according to pre-defined requirements. Courses cover the basics, Bugzilla, JIRA, testing techniques, Java TestNG, and more. It’s on sale […]
Daily Deal

Trump Admin, DOGE Are Turning Multiple Gov’t Components Into A Giant Racist Database

4 months ago
What could possibly go wrong? Operatives from Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are building a master database at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that could track and surveil undocumented immigrants, two sources with direct knowledge tell WIRED. DOGE is knitting together immigration databases from across DHS and uploading data from outside agencies including the Social […]
Tim Cushing

FTC, Hoping To Prop Up Admin Myth They Still Care About Consumer Protection, Sues Uber For Making It Hard To Cancel

4 months ago
A few days ago I talked about how the Trump administration is desperate to present the illusion it still cares about consumer protection and “antitrust reform.” Via executive order, regulatory capture, DOGE cuts, and a rightward-lurching court system, Trump 2.0 really is taking an absolute hatchet to consumer protection, labor rights, corporate oversight, environmental law, […]
Karl Bode

Nintendo Once Again Seeking To Unmask Discord User For Leaking Content

4 months ago
Leaks can be both embarrassing and aggravating for any content producer, though we often see the most anger over this sort of thing coming from large corporate interests. The video game space is lousy with examples of this, but there is perhaps no more notoriously draconian respondent to leaks than Nintendo. The company has unsurprisingly […]
Dark Helmet