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Watching Sam Altman's World ID announcement on its new ID verification partnerships w/ Tinder, Zoom, AWS, etc & want to point out that @technologyreview.com predicted all of this 4 years ago—while pointing out the privacy violations they built on. www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/06/1...

Is it a race though? Is anyone racing? Or is it more like panic in the face of continued public indifference /hostility?

Design x dystopia:

Today in luxury surveillance.

Does this work well? No. But at least there’s the fact that also customers don’t like it.

Not everything that breaks is technically the fault of vibe coding but the kind of culture that would foster vibe coding is the kind that produces a lot of shit that breaks.

spoiler: none of these opportunistic extraction class weirdos support universal basic income, equitable tax reform, or any other functional counterbalance to the rise of automation because they are liars who only tell people what they want to hear hope this clarifies things

for sale, pervert glasses, lightly smashed

Upon “accessing certain capabilities,” you may be prompted to verify your identity. “You would have to show a valid and physical government-issued photo ID. You’d also have take a selfie with your phone or computer camera that the system will compare against the ID you present.”

if you take "relevant" to mean "relevant to the ruling class," then it seems clear that tech companies and the lackeys who promote AI's usefulness are imposed generative models as this kind of "discourse network," setting boundaries on what will be transmissible

"The term “AI” resists definition because it is continually reappropriated by people to mean different things. This, in turn, means that discussions of AI that do not provide working definitions for the purposes at hand risk incoherence. [...]" >>

do. you. believe. girls & women yet?

Please read this urgent paper. I am then going to repost a bunch of comments I made last night (sorry).

That’s Gucci-glasshole to you.

So at the risk of maybe overreading this and making an educated guess, I think I can guess what specifically Wyden is talking about. I think it's about use of AI (LLMs) by FBI to surveil American communications without a warrant

nonzero chance the FBI is plugging LLMs into wiretap data under the legal theory AI alone can’t implicate 4th amendment concerns (semi-known 702 issue). or the NSA has now hard coded wiretaps across all newly built US data centers due to expanded ECSP scope. or probably both.

I sent a classified letter to House and Senate colleagues about a secret interpretation of surveillance law that every American should be concerned about. Representative Massie is right. The Constitution requires EVERY member to vote against a clean reauthorization.

Oh, every one is always nostalgic for the geocites era web but when somebody actually makes a platform that crashes every 10 minutes, suddenly everybody wants future technology, I see how it is.

Today in luxury surveillance.

Greetings all. I'm looking for a podcast producer to help do a (much) more regular BLOOD IN THE MACHINE show. I thought I'd start by reaching out here, and to the broader BITM community. If this sounds like it's up your alley, details are in the link below:

IBM, specifically, represents arc of corporate diversity post CRM. IBM was once a case study for “racially progressive” capitalism. Their march from Black Company Man to diversity apologia asks a Q: what is diversity in a post liberal state? www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

Bluesky must be running one of those Facebook-style experiments of throttling people to see how hard they will work to post.

Even if it works equitably (which Hypervisible is right to point out, it probably won't) WHY WOULD YOU WANT THIS? Why would you want to fake your memories? Have none of you SEEN Black Mirror? Do I have to campaign to make "Ghost in the Shell" required text in High School English Class?

Precisely

New Google racism incoming…

Extremely correct

“Tennis players well be permitted to wear fitness trackers at grand slam tournaments for the first time after the French Open announced a trial on connected devices and wearable technology.”

S.T.O.P. is thrilled to see two Syracuse lawmakers introduce a citywide bill banning biometric surveillance, "ensuring that emerging technologies are deployed in a manner consistent with transparency, accountability, and civil liberties." Read more. www.syracuse.com/news/2026/04...

That’s the take.

They don’t need to work effectively. They just need to have the drone program running long enough to pivot to surveillance.

Ha.

back a couple decades ago at my graduation they just took two packs of index cards, at maybe $5 total cost today, and had each student write down a simple easy phonetic pronunciation of our name we walked up, handed the card to the person handing us our diploma and they read it into the mic $5

Now you can wash down your AI-assisted pizza with an AI-supported coffee experience, designed to "strengthen the human connection at the heart of every coffeehouse." What a time to be alive. about.starbucks.com/press/2026/s...

AI is pushing a crisis of meaning. What makes graduation meaningful? Sitting in a robe and a silly hat and waiting your turn to get a piece of paper? Or participating in a ritual that signals your membership into a new kind of person? Too bad so many unis shut down anthropology departments.

If a child can use a parent's ID to gamble, the use of ID collection as regulation is a failure.

“It really sunk in how wild this decision was… There is such a distinct human factor to having somebody who knows you and contributed to your education say your name while you walk.”

Right, specifically they can tell us how pervasive gambling has gotten

Upon “accessing certain capabilities,” you may be prompted to verify your identity. “You would have to show a valid and physical government-issued photo ID. You’d also have take a selfie with your phone or computer camera that the system will compare against the ID you present.”

Glue and rocks are on the secret menu.

it’s a trap dot gif

“We are launching a portal for parents to basically submit their identification, even if they don’t want to be users of Kalshi, to see if someone is using it. Because then they can see if their children are using their ID and police it…”

If Bluesky engineers insist on crediting their successes to “AI” while praising vibe-coding, it’s only reasonable for the rest of us to blame their failures on “AI” and vibe-coding as well.

“Other corporate leaders will be watching the outcome of these trials avidly, though. Many think their ability to realise their grand strategies is limited only by hours in the day. It is why personal productivity is an executive obsession.”

Get the Flock outta here.

An alert from Denver’s gunshot detection system prompted officers to swarm a Montbello woman’s 70th birthday party with guns drawn and detain Black partygoers for nearly an hour — even though the ShotSpotter alert was for another address and likely triggered by fireworks, according to a lawsuit.

“MPD’s ALPR cameras alone, set up at 30 intersections in the city, collected data at all hours every single day on more than 31 million vehicles in the two months from January 9 to March 9 this year. That averages out at more than one million at each intersection.”

In 2015, I was busy fighting Shell, not data centers/AI. I missed this Altman gem: "I think AI will probably most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime there’ll be great companies created with serious machine learning.” In one sentence, show me that evolution is not linear...

“If you tell people often enough that your product is going to upend their way of life, take their jobs, and very possibly pose an existential threat to humanity, they just might start to believe you.”

“…the suit argues that the city’s use of the technology constitutes an unreasonable law enforcement search, in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.”