Earlier today I learned that pip includes a bunch of telemetry data in the HTTP User-Agent header for every request it makes, and has for >10 years (with increasing amounts of info): github.com/pypa/pip/blob/545ed…Not only is this not opt-in (as any telemetry should be), but there isn't even an opt-out. I'm still shocked and not sure what conclusions to draw from this, except: This is not okay! ​​
I remember there was quite an uproar when Go tried to add opt-out telemetry a while back, and rightly so. How did I never hear about Python doing this before? Sure, less details, but still sending telemetry without ever asking for consent.

I like #Python, I want to keep using it, but can I if core tooling ignores user consent like this? And what other key development tools (Python or otherwise) have things like that and I just haven't noticed yet?

pip/src/pip/_internal/network/session.py at 545eda389c41478e2f99d23212254d757d8c2cef · pypa/pip

The Python package installer. Contribute to pypa/pip development by creating an account on GitHub.

^GitHub

The U.K. government is warning of continued malicious activity from Russian-aligned hacktivist groups targeting critical infrastructure and local government organizations in the country in disruptive denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.

bleepingcomputer.com/news/secu…

OpenAI defines their mission as creating "highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work."

We need to flip this framing.

The economy is best understood as the way humans divide up the work, and distribute the results.
1/4

#TheGeneralTheoryOfSlop

AI captions do not conform to #WCAG they usually require a lot of work to make them usable

The highest-risk areas for real harm are: (1) named entities/numbers, (2) multi-speaker attribution, (3) timing/readability, and (4) hallucinated “corrections.”

#deaf #multimedia #justsayin #a11y

In testimony from a CBP official obtained by 404 Media, the official described how Mobile Fortify returned two different names after scanning a woman's face during an immigration raid. ICE has said the app's results are a “definitive” determination of someone's immigration status.

404media.co/ices-facial-recogn…

ICE’s Facial Recognition App Misidentified a Woman. Twice

In testimony from a CBP official obtained by 404 Media, the official described how Mobile Fortify returned two different names after scanning a woman's face during an immigration raid.

^{Joseph Cox (404 Media)}

The Digital Domain returns tonight!

How did you spend the first few weeks of the year?
Bob has stoned AI fun, but are there places where it's not as smart as he thinks it should be?
Bob finally got his speaker!

7 PM EST!

HKCRadio.com

Sensitive content Reveal/hide

A US Marine, traveling home after a tour of Iraq just before Thanksgiving, boarded an extremely overcrowded Amtrak train heading west from Penn Station. He searched up and down the carriages for a seat, but the only one available was being occupied by a fancy French woman’s poodle.

The Marine coughed politely and said,
“Ma’am, would you please place your dog on the floor so I can sit down?”

Without even looking up, she sniffed and muttered,
“You Americans are so very rude. Can’t you see my little girl Trixy-Woo is using that seat?”

Exhausted, the Marine walked the length of the train again - still no seat. He returned and asked once more,
“Please, ma’am. I’m really tired. Could you move your dog so I can sit?”

She laughed and said loudly,
“Not only are you Americans rude, but also pig-headed and arrogant as well!”

That was it.

As the train had not yet left the station, the Marine picked up the poodle, dropped it out the window onto the platform, and sat down.

The woman shrieked, “Is there any man here who will defend my honor? This American thug must be put in his place!”

A well-dressed, refined Englishman sitting nearby calmly looked up and said to the Marine,
“Sir, I find you Americans do many things the wrong way. You prefer coffee over tea, drive on the wrong side of the road… and now it seems -

You’ve thrown the wrong bitch out the window.”

The U.S. Department of Justice said Sunday it is investigating a group of protesters in Minnesota who disrupted services at a church where a local official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement apparently serves as a pastor.
A livestreamed video posted on the Facebook page of Black Lives Matter Minnesota -- one of the protest’s organizers -- shows a group of people interrupting services at the Cities Church in St. Paul by chanting
“ICE out” and “Justice for Renee Good.”
The 37-year-old mother of three was fatally shot by an ICE agent in Minneapolis earlier this month amid a surge in federal immigration enforcement activities.
The protesters allege that one of the church’s pastors
— David Easterwood
— also leads the local ICE field office overseeing the operations that have involved violent tacticsand illegal arrests.

Nekima Levy Armstrong,
who participated in the protest and leads the local grassroots civil rights organization
"Racial Justice Network",
dismissed the potential DOJ investigation as a sham and a distraction from federal agents’ actions in Minneapolis-St. Paul.

“When you think about the federal government unleashing barbaric ICE agents upon our community
and all the harm that they have caused,
to have someone serving as a pastor who oversees these ICE agents, is almost unfathomable to me,”
said Armstrong,
who added she is an ordained reverend.

“If people are more concerned about someone coming to a church on a Sunday and disrupting business as usual than they are about the atrocities that we are experiencing in our community,
then they need to check their theology and they need to check their hearts.”
apnews.com/article/minnesota-i…