Whether the State seizes Industry, or Industry seizes the State, the result is the same: fascism.
–The Random Texan
Big Gov
- US Customs and Border Protection has been compiling a database of US citizens who travel abroad since 2007. Without warrants, without justification. If a Fed asks you to unlock your phone, just say NO. Original Washington Post article here.
Big Tech
- Researchers Say It’ll Be Impossible to Control a Super-Intelligent AI. This would be worrying if it didn’t sound exactly like a bunch of drunken undergrads sitting in dorm hallway talking crap. I’m not too worried, ’cause the folks who’d build such a cyber-monstrosity are fundamentally inept, see next item:
- Google mistakenly deposits $249,999 into security expert’s account. That’s a lot of money, but not enough to risk getting sideways with Google. A-a-a-nd it only took this poor mook 3 weeks to get Google’s attention to rectify the error.
Big Ed
- A new report from Speech First, a membership association of students, parents, faculty, alumni, and concerned citizens fighting back against toxic censorship culture on college campuses, provides insight into one of the reasons students fear speaking up: Bias Response Teams.
The Counter-Revolution
- Federal appeals court upholds controversial Texas social media law. The new law is an attempt to discourage viewpoint discrimination by social media giants (I’m looking at you, Facebook and Google). The BlueAnons are not happy. I adore the comment “So take all the social media out of Texas…see how they like it.” Wow, depriving the state’s SmartPhoneys of their daily fix of snark, bile, and propaganda sound like good therapy to me.
- Turns out you can change What Google Knows About You. I checked it out, and turned a whole lotta stuff OFF (or as Google says “paused.”) Best part? You can also DELETE your Google account. Remember, Google didn’t really lose their motto, “Don’t be evil.” They just changed the punctuation: “Don’t. Be evil.”
The Home for Wayward Statisticians 