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Chopper

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  1. 4 hours ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

    I’m not gonna defend Amazon, but I am a member of One Medical in Austin

    Yeah they discuss One Medical in the link I offered.

    Quote

    Amazon’s health-care offerings include...One Medical, the concierge primary-care clinic with a $199 annual membership fee that appeals to young, healthy, urban patients comfortable booking appointments and talking to doctors via an app.

    (and just to clarify they're trying to bring that model to cover seniors on medicare and call it One Medical for Seniors, and it's going disastrously enough for the paper that Jeff Bezos owns to write about it because the company Amazon purchased is in the DC region.)

    However the question you raise makes me wonder whether you've bothered to read either of Cory Doctorow's articles about the enshittification process because it's literally about Amazon.

    By the way, from the linked article..

    Quote

    Earlier this month, Amazon laid off hundreds of employees across Amazon Pharmacy and One Medical and announced a corporate restructuring. Current and former employees say the move reignited concerns that the e-commerce giant would start prioritizing profits over patients.

     

  2. 41 minutes ago, Incredulity said:

    Unbelievable lack of self-awareness is unbelievable.

     Anyone who doesn't specifically endorse Warren/Bernie/Squad are routinely accused of garggling orange cheeto balls....praying to an Orange God....endorsing NAZI fascism....

    How 'bout you go to CR where I presume you normally post? Or maybe back to your full-time job of being a youtube commenter.

    Also learn how to spell gargle.

     

  3. image.thumb.png.02396768a6c237c2fb267cd63ccbcc3c.png

    "CCDH [Center for Countering Digital Hate] and its attorneys — who include Roberta Kaplan, fresh from her victories against former president Donald Trump on behalf of writer E. Jean Carroll — say the case is about a man who holds himself out as the world’s greatest defender of free speech trying to suppress speech he doesn’t like, by CCDH and others worried that they could be next."

    “We’re living in an age of bullies, and it’s social media that gives them the power that they have today,” Kaplan told The Washington Post. The case, she said, is about “standing up to bullies.”

    “Elon Musk and X Corp. are trying to intimidate and censor a nonprofit that had the courage to speak the truth about the hate that proliferates on X’s platform,” she said in an email. “We are proud to stand with CCDH.”

    ...

    “People are clearly scared about doing research right now, which is particularly worrying in an election year,” CCDH chief executive Imran Ahmed said in an interview. “If we go down, no one will do any more research on X. It will be far too dangerous.”

     

    full article
     

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    SAN FRANCISCO — The social media platform X will go to court Thursday trying to preserve its lawsuit against an advocacy group that’s been critical of the rise in hate speech and racist posts on the site since Elon Musk took over what was then called Twitter.
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    The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a six-year-old nonprofit, filed a motion to dismiss the case, which X brought last year in San Francisco federal court. CCDH is arguing that the lawsuit was brought simply to discourage the group from studying X and is therefore a violation of California’s strict prohibition against what are known as SLAPPs, or strategic lawsuits against public participation.

    The ruling could determine how legal threats are a powerful weapon for groups and scholars that call out lies and propaganda on social media platforms ahead of the 2024 election.

    CCDH and its attorneys — who include Roberta Kaplan, fresh from her victories against former president Donald Trump on behalf of writer E. Jean Carroll — say the case is about a man who holds himself out as the world’s greatest defender of free speech trying to suppress speech he doesn’t like, by CCDH and others worried that they could be next.

    “We’re living in an age of bullies, and it’s social media that gives them the power that they have today,” Kaplan told The Washington Post. The case, she said, is about “standing up to bullies.”

    “Elon Musk and X Corp. are trying to intimidate and censor a nonprofit that had the courage to speak the truth about the hate that proliferates on X’s platform,” she said in an email. “We are proud to stand with CCDH.”

    X has also sued left-leaning Media Matters in Texas, where Musk has multiple businesses and where, unlike California, the state’s anti-SLAPP law doesn’t apply in federal courts. Musk also threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which complained loudly about antisemitism on the platform. Relations eased after ADL praised Musk for agreeing to ban the Palestinian phrase “from the river to the sea” as hate speech.

    The prospect of being in litigation with one of the world’s richest people has unnerved small nonprofits as well as academics who might not be able to count on their universities for complete backing. Researchers and advocates are also under fire from activist lawsuits and probes by politicians including Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the Republican chair of the House Judiciary Committee, who demanded CCDH documents a month after X sued it.

    “People are clearly scared about doing research right now, which is particularly worrying in an election year,” CCDH chief executive Imran Ahmed said in an interview. “If we go down, no one will do any more research on X. It will be far too dangerous.”

    A survey of 167 X researchers conducted for Reuters last year found that 104 were concerned about being sued over their work. Less than half of their research projects were continuing as of September, Reuters reported, though the respondents also cited X’s decision to charge for access to data as a factor.

    That survey was cited in a brief filed in support of CCDH by multiple groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.

    X said the case is about CCDH improperly scraping posts and reactions from its site. The company said the group violated its terms of service, improperly used a tool giving subscribers to advertising services from Brandwatch greater visibility into the site’s activity, and violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act’s provision against unauthorized access to machines and data.

    The “claims are based on the Defendants’ course of conduct that resulted in CCDH gaining unauthorized access to nonpublic data that X Corp. licensed to Brandwatch, and on CCDH … breaching its agreement with X Corp. by scraping data from the X platform,” X wrote in December.

    What particularly upset Musk, the lawsuit suggests, is what CCDH did with that information, which was to publish reports that spooked advertisers.

    X said CCDH’s report and call for advertisers to quit cost it “tens of millions” of dollars in revenue. “It cherry-picked from the hundreds of millions of posts made each day on X, and used the data to falsely claim that it had statistical support showing X is overwhelmed by harmful content,” the company wrote.

    Looking at the number of impressions being generated by 10 problematic accounts Musk reinstated, CCDH estimated ads on them would generate about $19 million in annual revenue for the company. The accounts that CCDH focused on included neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin, a doctor who asserted coronavirus vaccines did not work, and erstwhile Newsmax correspondent Emerald Robinson, who claimed the vaccine included a satanic bioluminescent marker.

    In a mirror image of what CCDH sees as the issue, X claims the result is about more than money: “X Corp. has been harmed in its mission to establish X as an open marketplace for the exchange of ideas, free from censorship.” X and its attorney in the San Francisco case, Jonathan Hawk, did not respond to requests for comment.

    It made similar arguments in its suit against Media Matters in November, after the nonprofit showed screenshots of ads from Apple, IBM and others next to pro-Hitler posts, prompting those two companies to stop buying ads.

    In the Texas case, the company accused Media Matters of disparagement and interference with X’s contracts with advertisers. X said Media Matters followed white supremacists to trigger the ads. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) then said he would investigate the nonprofit for fraud.

    X’s case is in the Fort Worth division of the Northern District of Texas, where it is being heard by George W. Bush appointee and conservative favorite U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, whose rulings include one, later reversed, that found the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional.

    With the prospects in Texas more in Musk’s favor, the founder of a federal anti-SLAPP coalition said it was even more important for CCDH to win dismissal in San Francisco and avoid trial.

    “If one believes in free speech and that it’s desirable be able to hold platforms accountable and be critical, it’s especially criticism of large and powerful and wealthy public entities that is most important,” said Mark Goldowitz, founder of the Public Participation Project.

     

     

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  4. 19 minutes ago, BeardIP said:

    ...the most generous interpretation of Google’s over-aggressive RLHF of their models is that they are scared of being criticized. That, though, is just as bad: Google is blatantly sacrificing its mission to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” by creating entirely new realities because it’s scared of some bad press. Moreover, there are implications for business: Google has the models and the infrastructure, but winning in AI given their business model challenges will require boldness; this shameful willingness to change the world’s information in an attempt to avoid criticism reeks — in the best case scenario! — of abject timidity."

    The most generous interpretation of anyone who believes that google responded with those pictures on purpose in response to the question received is that such persons are extremely gullible to the far right scare machine, or part of it.

    Meanwhile back to elmo...I'm sure there's an AI thread for y'all to enjoy somewhere around here. Enjoy the Colorado River while/if you still can

    image.thumb.png.b123a8681e62823e0135a116040795af.png

    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/google-left-terrible-bind-pulling-061652069.html

     

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  5. 23 hours ago, immamac said:

    I do think it's a manifestation of being run by a bunch of fucking morons who care more about metrics and feel good DEI than they do about reality. 

    I think it's more a manifestation of google firing their entire Ethical AI staff (which I interpret as an actual anti-DEI move rather than yelling at clouds), and then rushing an incomplete product out the door only to learn their quick fixes sucked, that despite having four wheels it gets stuck in the dirt, it rusts upon contact with liquid, and offers up inputs for questions that they never did get around to testing. (Okay, you got me, not all of those were google.) We're talking about the same company that returned images of Black people a year or two ago when people searched for images of gorillas, aren't we? Black people can't use many automatic hand dryers because skin tone s apparently difficult to account for. I find it appalling that there's a bigger outcry and hysterical pants pissing about a few made up cartoon images than there ever were about real world consequences.

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  6. 4 hours ago, Firemans4Horn said:

    dies when he is run over by a Tesla burned to death by toxic sludge in his stupid tunnel under Las Vegas. 

    FIFY

    bloomberg https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-02-26/elon-musk-las-vegas-loop-tunnel-has-construction-safety-issues?srnd=phoenix-americas

     

    image.thumb.png.833cd00f71b6940f0347c8a214077862.png

    rest of the article
     

    Quote

     

    Like others interviewed for this story, the tunnel worker spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisals from the billionaire who operates it: Elon Musk. For nearly a decade, Musk’s tunneling venture, the Boring Company, has made grand pronouncements about buildi

    ng an underground mass-transit system he calls “the hyperloop.” Musk once described this technology as a system of futuristic pods capable of ferrying people between major cities at the speed of sound. He suggested that a hyperloop would allow people to commute between New York City and Washington, DC, or between San Francisco and Los Angeles, in about half an hour.

    That these boasts were taken seriously enough for Boring to raise about $800 million in outside capital, with its most recent valuation reaching $6 billion, speaks to the mythology surrounding Musk. These days, however, his luster has dimmed somewhat. His takeover of Twitter has been marked by huge losses and reports that board members are concerned about his mental health and drug use. Musk has laughed these off. His car company, Tesla, is stagnating. As Musk put it, optimistically, on an earnings call, the company is “between two major growth waves.” In January, a federal judge voided the $55 billion pay package that Tesla had awarded Musk, calling it “unfathomable” and concluding that the automaker’s board was too friendly to its CEO. The latest controversy: On Feb. 24 Forbes reported that the chair of the House China committee had accused Musk's satellite internet service, Starlink, of possibly breaching a government contract by withholding services to Taiwan. Musk has yet to respond to that claim.

    Through all of this, Musk has said relatively little about the Boring Company, perhaps because of the gaping distance between his promises and execution. After more than seven years in business, the company’s only commercial project amounts to a drastically scaled-down shuttle bus system for the Vegas convention center. Mostly, it takes passengers from one side of the convention center to the other. There’s also a spur that takes guests between the convention center and the Resorts World hotel, which sits on the far side of Las Vegas Boulevard. The system operates only during conventions, and attendees ride in Tesla sedans limited to 40 miles per hour. The company has said the system can handle more than 4,500 passengers hourly.

    The Encore and Westgate tunnels are extensions, part of a theoretical project to widen coverage to most of the Strip and downtown Las Vegas. But progress has been slow—so slow that Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman says she doubts it’ll ever happen. “It’s impractical,” says Goodman, who is claustrophobic and has yet to ride in any of the tunnels. “I pray that it works, but I see these stumbling blocks.” Among them, she says, are issues of capacity and safety.

    Although no one has been killed at a Boring Company worksite in Las Vegas, the OSHA report shows some very close calls. Last summer, according to employees interviewed by the investigators, an intern was nearly crushed when a bin made out of two-ton concrete blocks collapsed. It had been overloaded with muck, the employees said, and the metal brackets holding it together gave way, sending the intern running. (The intern didn’t respond to inquiries for this story.) Altogether, OSHA found eight violations it categorized as “serious” and fined the Boring Company a total of $112,504 last fall.

     

    image.thumb.png.a790593fe0d4de80f0569c973e787a8f.png

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  7. I dunno man. I'm gonna have to say the fact that Netflix is the only streamer adding new users, that WB Discovery's market value has gone from $130B to $60B in 2 years since the merger, and their subscriber numbers haven't budged since Max debuted has more to do with it than AI. And their studio business has sucked despite a hit like Barbie, and paramount's studio is sitting on the market without a bidding frenzy surrounding it. But that's just me.

    WBD's earnings were announced on Friday.  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-23/warner-bros-sales-miss-as-tv-advertising-continues-to-fall

    image.thumb.png.d8cb9da73225afea5013438e1590d2a2.png

    image.png.99c21585be2811236c974733d946454c.png

     

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    Total subscriber numbers for Max were buried deep in WBD’s earnings announcement for a reason. The growth rate, whether measured sequentially or year over year, was unimpressive for a frame in which Netflix bolted on 13.1 million subscribers. Max’s worldwide subscriber base stood at 97.7 million at the end of last year, up from 96.9 million at the end of 2022. Domestic subscribers stood at 52 million, down from 54.6 million in the year-ago period.

     

    Quote

    WBD is in the same leaky streaming boat as Disney, Comcast and Paramount Global when it comes to squeezing out a profit from its direct-to-consumer ambitions. The solution for all of them seems to be moving away from the “direct” and “consumer” parts of the equation and back to the B-word: Bundling.

    https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/warner-bros-discovery-zaslav-q4-earnings-warning-1235921220/

     

     

  8. 2 minutes ago, Bevo said:

    I doubt anyone who is pro-Israel would want his name and location printed, but yet we see it printed by the Daily Mail.

    I am pro-Israel. I am anti-Benjamin Netanyahu. If Israel is safe for the PM it's safe for his son. Or so one would think.

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  9. On 2/23/2024 at 9:10 PM, Hornbeliever said:

    Anyone watched Criminal Record?  Halfway through and don’t know if I like it or don’t like it…so I guess either way I would out it at not fantastic.

    I didn't exactly hate-watch the series but didn't particularly like it much either. Definitely picked up at the end. I thought the last 2 eps were the best of the bunch.

  10. 5 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

    Elon has learned over and over again that there are no consequences for him, so why would this be any different? 

    Somehow this went viral. Tesla ordered $6k worth of stuff from a small bakery then didn't pick up the items and refused to pay. Offered the bakery owner a factory tour instead. Once it went viral, Elmo said he'd pay it. But will he?

    image.png.a39260a3cbd28613b8f3530d56a2adc5.png

     

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