This is very much my worry with AI in government. Those systems mass hallucinating fraud or some other punishable crime, and then the justice system doing what it does by threatening absurd sentences to compel plea deals and the evidence takes years to be properly challenged.
We are implementing AI in places it shouldn't be used and this whole thing is going to spin out of control at some point.
The raw data collection from TikTok contains much more than that. Think in terms of all branches of military and government messaging each other perfectly blackmailable things and then automating analysis of that.
Byte Dance says that China doesn't have access to the data and that it hasn't been accessed, but from what I've read they have a party office at the company in China. I simply don't trust a foreign adversary with the amount of data that one of these social platforms generates. Neither does China which is why a large number of services operated in China are hosted on Chinese servers run by local subsidiaries, with vastly different and far more permissive laws when it comes to government/intelligence/law enforcement (all one and the same there) accessing that data.
Hopefully that critical thinking can transfer to what's being done by American companies and intelligence agencies with user data and we can get some actual data privacy legislation at some point and enshrine a law preventing from inserting backdoors in everything that moves.
Government routinely posits a desperate need for backdoors in crypto and crypto secured products, but almost universally they get the data they want without needing a manufacturer provided backdoor. So why they insist on continuing to do that is beyond me. It's almost security theater.
If they really want your protected information they will be able to get it. Either through a wrench or a legal wrench. In lieu of that they can use practically unlimited resources at their disposal from who they employ (or contract out to) to the long axis to which most secured devices succumb from, time.
My personal threat model isn't to defeat the government. They will get the data eventually. My personal threat model is corporations that want to know literally everything about me and bad faith private actors (scammers, cybercrime and thieves) that do too.
Ultimately it will take strict legislation and compliance measurement along with penalties to protect the government from overstepping the bounds they promise not to step over already, let alone new ones. It will take even stricter legislation to stop corporations from doing it. There are significant financial and political incentives for our ruling bodies to not do that, unfortunately.
I mean honestly, when you have this kind of ability at your disposal...
>Ultimately it will take strict legislation and compliance measurement along with penalties to protect the government from overstepping the bounds they promise not to step over already, let alone new ones.
They will find ways to not comply, often blatantly. They have no scruples.
The problem with using a wrench is that the person you use it on knows you have their data. Having a backdoor means they can see your stuff without you knowing it's been compromised.
I've had a few outright duds with them, but mostly their product has been as expected.
EXCEPT, they ship mostly in plastic envelopes. And the items not infrequently get damaged during transit.
I have a set of "very good" Magnum PI DVD's that I expect shipped that way. But the DVD's weren't secured in their box. The season 4 plastic case slid far enough out of the boxed set to get dinged and broken. The internal DVD holder's mount is destroyed and the DVD's are just floating around in there.
I was stocking up on some older, "classic" CS titles, and I ordered several together (free shipping on orders over X dollars...). They arrived all crammed into one plastic envelope that looked like it had been dragged along for a while behind the delivery truck. (In reality, this is what the distribution center belts can do to an object, and a heavy package in a thin plastic envelope does not fare well.)
With just a thin, flexible plastic layer for protection, a number of corners on these "very good" books were bent and beat up. I've had covers arrive abraded. One title had one end of the binding crushed.
I still appreciate getting several titles I've wanted for way off cover price. But I wish they'd take a bit more care when shipping.
And, you never know what you're going to get. With them, I've taken to trying to order such that DVD's and Blu rays won't ship together with books (you can imagine what happens). But, when an item may not effectively ship for up to a week, this takes some schedule juggling and follow up. Plus, that used item may sell out in the meantime. And it also means sometimes foregoing the free shipping you get by clustering items.
I guess these are all first world problems, but it's frustrating. Plus, good condition items get trashed for the sake of lack of care / expediency in one step. Wasteful.
Hrm. I've never ordered anything from them beyond books. I'm at 58 books so far this year from them, and they've always arrived as I've ordered them. I've had a couple of books listed as new come in boxed packaging instead of the plastic envelope. Nothing ripped or crushed so far.
I wish they did ship a little faster. As it's usually 10-12 days from when I order it before I get it. Then again I'm usually getting free shipping and if I'm not I'm only paying $1.60 for media rate, which is a hell of a deal.
I've placed a number of orders with them, and many come through ok. But the shipping damage is often enough to be frustrating. I had one hard-to-get DVD arrive with the typical DVD plastic case shattered in one area into many pieces floating around the the plastic envelope. Fortunately, the DVD itself stayed in it's splayed fingers holder thingy, and it itself was still ok, image side sheltered by the remains of the case.
They also seem to have become less accurate/consistent in the last year or so, with their quality grading. I've gotten a few "good" or "acceptable" titles that looked very good or almost new, but also some "very good" titles with extensive writing, highlighting, or damage.
Perhaps ironically, I've started looking for the same title used on Amazon, and if the options are comparable, picking a highly rated seller there, instead.
This year, I intend to try looking at eBay, more. Not just for books. For some things, but certainly not others.
Care is required, but there are good sellers and often better prices than Bezosland. This impression is partially formed by more recent comments from others that I've read. So, I'm going to experiment and check that out.
P.S. Just the other day, I ordered a new book from Thriftbooks ( for reasons) and it arrived in that cut to size thin but stiff sticky on one side cardboard, when two pieces are slapped together around the book. That seems to work rather well, and the title, a paperback, arrived in perfect shape.
It shipped from a Texas location, and I seem to recall one or two other books from them that were also shipped that way. And that at least one of those also came from a Texas location of theirs.
The max benefit for EBT in ND is $250-ish for a single person essentially making nothing.
The whole point of EBT is to keep people fed. If they are eating junk food and not maximizing their nutritional value to your satisfaction that’s fine because they’re still eating.
All prepared food is banned in ND for EBT. Meaning you can’t order Taco Bell through door dash.
If you’re really worried about your tax expenditures look at defense contracting and spending. EBT fraud is a rounding error for some of those program overruns. Also at tax policy when it comes to revenue offshoring, inheritance and millionaires to billionaire tax evasion.
> The whole point of EBT is to keep people fed. If they are eating junk food and not maximizing their nutritional value to your satisfaction that’s fine because they’re still eating.
They could eat for much less than that. Again, why should the taxpayer be subsidizing luxury spending? Junk food is a luxury.
> If you’re really worried about your tax expenditures look at defense contracting and spending. EBT fraud is a rounding error for some of those program overruns. Also at tax policy when it comes to revenue offshoring, inheritance and millionaires to billionaire tax evasion.
I would continue discussing this with you, but if you object to people buying a bag of chips, I can draw a relatively easy conclusion to your overall opinion on the social safety net and probably tax policy.
If you "legitimately" want efficiency then you support just giving people $250 outright in cash, not locking it behind food stamps. How inefficient is it to give people 250 that theyre locked to spending on only one aspect of their lives? I would posit, having done it myself, that you could easily feed yourself and probably at least 2 people on half that. If the people are left with 125 that they can ONLY use on food, of course they'll use it for junk - at least that gives them some value at least as far as life enjoyment even if it's bad for them. Give them cash and I would bet they'd put it to much better use on bills, outstanding debts, laundry, etc.
Junk food is popular for many reasons. Beyond “tasing good”, most of it is readily accessible, requires no prep, and is calorie dense. It certainly lacks nutrients, but it does keep people going.
I know any people take this for granted, but knowing how to prepare food from scratch is a skill. It takesa time, it takes effort, it takes knowledge that some people simply don’t feel they have.
Or it can be is as simple as saying a caste system is dumb, Americans and I assume other nationalities find it fascinatingly backward. The idea that there are “upper” and “lower” castes is inherently discriminatory that seem abundantly obvious and there’s no real nuance to it.
> Or it can be is as simple as saying a caste system is dumb
Agreed.
And this ironically is the crux of the problem: most Indians find it dumb, don’t care for it and hope it dies out soon. But some groups would like to keep using it as yet another way to divide for myriad reasons: vote bank politics being the biggest if you follow any Indian politics at all. Preventing base bigoted discrimination is a reason too, but a very small reason.
This group equality labs is less of the latter and more of the former.
