"Facial recognition technology in U.K. shops 'will soon alert police in real time to the presence of serious offenders,' reports The Guardian, 'with civil liberties groups warning of a 'dangerous escalation' towards surveillance and criminalisation in the retail sector."

OK, you win. Mass surveillance should be banned outright, not just prohibited from police use. I'm handing in my [principled] libertarian card tomorrow.

MAYBE we can refrain from a total ban for private use and scale it back to a ban on facial recognition and connected networks of cameras.
Well said:

"'It's not against the law to walk into a shop even if you've committed crimes in the past,' he said. 'The idea of calling the police on somebody who hasn't committed a crime, but there's a concern they might, is really upending the way we do things.'

'These systems do make mistakes, and it's very hard to argue with that when it happens to you' A number of people have been forced to leave shops after being falsely identified by Facewatch technology as a shoplifter, with some describing it as 'Orwellian' and saying they felt as though they were 'guilty until proven innocent'"

That's because YOU ARE assumed to be guilty by a shopkeeper relying on unreliable technologies and then requesting a falsely accused to be trespassed.

At least in the US you can be asked to leave and there isn't some magical requirement for a reason to be given. While it's possible to fight such trespass orders you will be arrested if you return independent of any conviction if a trespass order was issued. It's not illegal to necessarily be there in the first place, but once asked to leave if you don't that's when a trespass order can be issued [should you come back or not leave you would be trespassed].

I find it humorous what most distributions and companies focus on when it comes to development. There was a rant on Slashdot today about the COSMIC desktop being built entirely or near entirely on Rust and various cosmetic 'improvements'. I don't know about you, but I'm far more interested in stability and stuff working reliably than cosmetic improvements. In fact we've had a pretty stable, solid, and complete desktop environment for at least a decade now. Distributions incorporating KDE have notoriously included glitchy pieces, GNOME improved stability wise post-2.0, but also switched to less desirable user interface, unity just failed, XFCE was traditionally incomplete, and while pretty solid outside the file manager today I haven't seen any major distro incorporate it and use it as their primary desktop environment or focus.

Anyhow- point is Cinnamon works and someone could integrate XFCE in combination with another file manager to produce a decent distribution so what is the obsession with focusing on what amounts to candy fodder or cosmetic 'improvements'.

There is certainly other functionality that I wouldn't mind seeing integrated into a distribution like some kind of decentralized and distributed encrypted cloud storage mechanism. maidsafe and I think it's called autonomi now for instance has finally had a release ready and non-development network after 24 years and is just one example of something that could probably be integrated into a distribution at this point.

There are other privacy solutions that distributions could incorporate from Feather Wallet (privacy oriented cryptocurrency wallet for Monero that incorporates Tor) to LibreWolf (privacy oriented release of Firefox).

Distributions should be more than just cosmetic diffs.

AI activists are taking to the streets to protest it:

"The Bay Area's AI boom is drawing young disillusioned men and women to join the fight against it. They are upending their lives and leaving behind careers for think tanks, nonprofits and street protest groups."

The thing that everyone is missing is it's not AI that is the real issue. It's unwarranted searches that have been going on for at least 25 years.

The constitution says:

"no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized."

Yet, we have ASLR cameras which conduct automated searches of everyone and lack both a warrant or even articulated suspicion a crime has occurred on everyone. It's just not suspected criminals.

Cops have been trained for near 25 years to 'run a search' at every opportunity so near every interaction innocent peoples IDs are run through databases. Why do you think they demand ID every time they interact with you despite there being no reason to suspect you of any crimes??? This is mass surveillance police state kinda shit.

They're looking for reasons to justify their existence and one way they do it is by violating our constitution and sadly the courts have more often than not permitted them to do it or otherwise let them get away with it.

AI is just adding to the toolset they have and the real underlying problems go back much further. It's not that we need to ban AI, but we do need to 'crack down' on excess government surveillance. Even while it may make sense to mandate body worn cameras we should not have cameras on roadways, at tolls, or intersections. If they are needed for traffic management severe restrictions should exist.

"The Supreme Court concluded that ISPs cannot be held secondarily liable for user piracy unless they actively induce or tailor their services for infringement, which means that rightsholders will need an alternative enforcement tool."

Umm because they didn't get what they want your concluding that an additional tool is needed? That makes no sense. There ALREADY exists a tool. They just don't like the tool. These entertainment cartels HAVE NOT GONE UNDER as a result of the internet in the past 25 years so WHY would there be another tool needed???? The fact the supreme court didn't agree that the ISPs were liable is not a reason a new tool is needed given that for more than 25 years ISPs have NOT been liable. This isn't new this is old. It's been the status quo all along. It's not something that has changed. There isn't some new technology your claiming is the reason that a new tool is needed. It's literally the same law of the land as its been interpreted for 25+ years!!! The supreme court just confirmed it because the copyright cartel after 25+ years started to push the claim it wasn't WRONGLY.

Google has come out against site blocking in Europe and comments on any new site blocking laws:

"These injunctions should be transparent, limited in time, while both rightsholders and the intermediaries share the implementation costs. "

Can someone please explain why a service provider aught bear the cost of site blocking when it's the copyright holder whose to profit from the artificial limitation required to prop up the prices of a shitty business model through artificially restricting access?

If copyright holders are to be able to censor the internet then I want to be able to ban my competitors from opening across the street too!

This is just not how things should work in a free market. Then again we don't have a free market. That's just what I was told in school to differentiate us from those dang communists!

Sadly we've got socialism in America... it's just implemented a bit differently than soviet style socialism. Instead the government takes a significant portion (most) of my money/labor and redirects it to things the master class desires and dribbles a tiny bit to the shlebs who pay up. Yup- sounds very much like Russia today and the Soviet Union of yesterday- even if there was a little less lying about it in the Soviet Union.

For anyone who thinks socialism is good ask yourself this- do you even know what percentage of your income in the US is taken from you through the numerous taxes hidden and not? I'll give you a hint it's 90%+. From duties that push up the price of goods on store shelves (a hidden tax that has been anywhere from 10% to 100% in the past 5 years) to unprecedented levels to income, property, sales, vehicle registration (ie it's a tax), gas taxes, corporate taxes, social security (it's a ponzi scheme)+100s more.

It always amazes me how prosecutors are able to pull shit claims out of their ass of which their is ZERO evidence for:

"Attorney General Rob Bonta [office] 'alleges Meta has prioritized profits over the safety of kids and fueled the mental health crisis we see impacting a generation of American children. The California Department of Justice looks forward to holding Meta fully accountable at trial'".

I get their being some obligation not to kill your customers or ruin their health in-so-far as there exists and has actual evidence and reason to believe their product is causing harm. You could make that argument with tobacco and chemicals used to mitigate stains in numerous products to the degree companies have been using or selling products with said chemicals/carcinogens and had the data.

This is not that. This is more like a gambling 'addiction' where a small percentage of a population that gets 'hooked', but it's not a real addiction like a chemical addiction is that is inserted into the product like caffeine might be or nicotine.

Facebook's use of the word addicted is going to be more akin to saying 'we have an amazing product' ... even if that product is being designed in a way to 'take advantage' of human weaknesses (this is literally every product people).

Your still in control, and at any point you can say no. Your not dependent in a chemical sense on any of these products. Without these services you will not suffer withdrawal. This 'hooked' is not what actual addiction looks like. A 'need' is a far cry from from actual chemical addictions.

Many of the so-called 'victims' refused to stop using a product they didn't even like. That's on them, not Meta, and I wouldn't and haven't touched Facebook personally so I have no pro-Meta bias.

"DuckDuckGo just gave its browser a feature that a lot of people have been waiting for. The privacy-focused browser can now block most video ads on YouTube"

Then I read a humorous or maybe disingenuous comment:

"Slashdot reader BrianFagioli argues that the feature raises questions about how creators are compensated when ad revenue is bypassed."

Creators don't make shit from YouTube advertising. They make their money by pimping often questionable products (though probably less questionable than the ads YouTube places in the videos) and services, selling t-shirts, and similar merch.

I have to wonder how these people come to the idea that this somehow impacts creators unless I've totally overlooked what this is doing. I'll admit I didn't read the story, but it sounds like 'blocking' here is akin to what uBlock Origin does based on the summary which is NOT an adblocker that blocks creator advertising. It blocks the wayyyy more annoying Google placed advertising that gets inserted or played while the content creators video is basically paused at random terrible spots in the videos. Google makes money off the advertising that is placed in this way, not creators. Creators make money off the products the creators pimp within the videos themselves.

My gut says this irrational questioning is basically a left-wing tactic trying to get you to think that the only answer is socialism.

This is far from the reality. Google long ago abandoned funding most creators. They had a revenue sharing program regarding its placed ads, but it's largely irrelevant for the vast majority of creators now. Unless your one of the top content producers your not making your money from Google advertising. The solution didn't depend on socialism, but entrepreneurial efforts.

Some law enforcement agency is upset that autonomous vehicles are 'interfering with' law enforcement and demanding engineers fix this, but also within this context these cops are making absurdly inaccurate claims:

"Every second matters when law enforcement officers, firefighters, or paramedics are answering a call because lives are on the line,"

More often than not, particularly with police lives are NOT 'on the line' despite this image that is falsely projected, neither the drivers being pulled over, nor the officers, nor most other law enforcement interactions. In fact police are far from having the most dangerous job in America.

More people need to challenge these bald face lies. This projection teaches people to be obedient for no good reason and leads to bad laws that are excessive in nature that harm real people. This leads to real oppression of the population. Instead of saving lives we end up with cops who kill, mame, and wrongly imprison good upstanding people. Cops as a consequence are given the benefit of the doubt when they should not be. They're human, they lie, cheat, steal and more often than not beat their wives.

If we want well behaved cops that do the right thing (and on the rare occasional 'save a life') there needs to be accountability and there is sadly little to no accountability in the real world.

Cops are trained to prioritize their own 'safety', not protect the public. Protecting government, yes, protecting the public is at best an afterthought propagated for publicity reasons.

Some law enforcement agency or other is getting upset because their precious crime scenes are being 'interfered with' by semi-autonomous vehicles and while I may not disagree that there is an issue their statement flies in the face of what an edge case is. It's something that you don't see often making it harder to fix more or less. A person acting as a traffic light for instance is 100% an edge case in most countries, but does occur when power is out or if you happen to be driving through Iraq under Saddam Hussein's regime (as an example).

"'Let me be clear: the inability to detect and appropriately respond to such situations represents a functional insufficiency,' Morrison's letter reads. "Emergency scenes are not rare or extreme 'edge cases.'"

I don't know how often you encounter an emergency scene where the road is cordoned off or similar, but that's not a typical day for me. A pullover here or there? Sure, but even that I don't run into every day. Things I see regularly though are cops on the roads, other cars, traffic lights, stop signs, lines on the road, pedestrians, and similar.

The later are things that are easier to deal with in part because they're common. The asks here are for basically what amount to an impossible insurmountable challenge given the current technology.

When people have to make judgement calls and there isn't a correct or perfect answer it's no surprise that an autonomous car is bound to make the wrong call. People similarly make bad calls all the time (even if elsewhere) and so it shouldn't really surprise us that some situations these vehicles are going to have less data to train off and fail more often as a consequence.

How do you train for rare situations where half of people make call a, and the other b?

"Humanoid Robots Controlled By Surgeons Did World-First Operation On Live Pigs"

Get ready for some major push-back by US and western surgeons over cheaper foreign surgeons doing surgeries in the US. It'll take the meaning of medical tourism to a new level. You won't even have to leave the state let alone your country for cheap medical care.

That is until they pass a law prohibiting remote work. I mean, did you seriously think they'd allow competition in the US?

Banning kids from Social Media is about to backfire on parents, as new research suggests we need to ban parents from using social media as it's the real thing that is harming the kids, not the kids themselves use of social media:

"'A child with insecure attachment may lack confidence or display a lower sense of self; demonstrate difficulty with interpersonal relationships and intimacy; and possess an unwillingness to take risks necessary to achieve success,' reports Bloomberg, citing one of the study's researchers.

'This type of behavior has become normalized: 2024 Pew data found that nearly half of U.S. teens say their parents are at least sometimes distracted by phones during interactions.'"