AcidicBasicGlitch
@AcidicBasicGlitch@lemm.ee
Researcher in the U.S. trying to stay informed and help others stay informed. I write a blog that focuses on public information, public health, and policy: pimento-mori.ghost.io
I only recently began using ghost, and am slowly figuring things out. Apologies for any formatting issues.
- Submitted 2 weeks ago to technology@lemmy.world | 3 comments
- Comment on OSTP Has a Choice to Make: Science or Politics? 3 weeks ago:
UCS definitely has good intentions.
I just don’t have faith in the Trump OSTP to actually look at the evidence or even bother reading a letter to consider their next steps.
They’ve been planning this for a long time. If they can’t capitalize on it, they will be getting rid of it.
- Submitted 3 weeks ago to technology@lemmy.world | 6 comments
- Submitted 3 weeks ago to technology@lemmy.world | 6 comments
- Comment on New Orleans debates real-time facial recognition legislation 3 weeks ago:
I wasn’t arguing with you, everything you said is correct.
Just adding more details and the timeline of events that makes this all even more “what the actual fuck is happening?”
- Comment on New Orleans debates real-time facial recognition legislation 3 weeks ago:
~2012ish: Palantir receives contract with city of New Orleans
2015: Privately owned Project Nola surveillance cam program created
2018: City cancels very shady contract with Palantir that helped them create and test their predictive policing tech
2020: Peter Thiel becomes major investor in Clearview AI facial recognition technology. Free trials are given to ICE and multiple local law enforcement agencies across the U.S.
Late 2020: Ban on facial recognition tech and predictive policing in New Orleans
2022: ~18 months later, Cantrell requests City Council lift the ban, and it is replaced with shady surveillance ordinance giving the city some very concerning privileges in certain circumstances
2024: Cantrell says she won’t fight Landry establishing Troop Nola as a permanent police presence in the city, despite concerns from civil rights advocacy groups
Feb 2025: Forbes reports that Clearview AI remains unprofitable due to multiple ongoing lawsuits and previous inability to secure federal contracts. The company says future focus will be large federal contracts.
May 2025: Washington Post reveals NOPD has been ignoring the fairly lax laws regarding facial recognition tech in the 2022 surveillance ordinance while working with Project Nola. NOPD pauses use of tech, but Troop Nola and federal agencies continue use bc they’re not under city jurisdiction
- Submitted 3 weeks ago to technology@lemmy.world | 5 comments
- Comment on Operation Narnia: Iran’s nuclear scientists reportedly killed simultaneously using special weapon 3 weeks ago:
Not just the military. I found out Palantir had a contract with my own city to develop and test their predictive policing technology until 2018. theverge.com/…/palantir-predictive-policing-tool-…
The city banned predictive policing and facial recognition tech, then quietly lifted the ban and replaced it with a very concerning ordinance in 2022. thelensnola.org/…/mayor-cantrell-moves-to-reverse…
Then it came out that the city wasn’t even following the rules they had created in the sketchy ordinance. washingtonpost.com/…/live-facial-recognition-poli…
The private surveillance company using the facial recognition tech (which was created during the time Palantir was still under contract with the city, but is allegedly totally unrelated to Palantir 🙄) couldn’t keep providing the real time facial recognition tracking to city police bc WaPo exposed they were violating the ordinance. However, since it’s only a city ordinance and they’re a private company, they can still provide it to literally anyone else in the city (state police, federal agents, ICE, military).
They’ve already been doing a lot of shady shit to American citizens, and it’s naive to just trust that they won’t eventually start using these kinds of AI drone weapons on American soil.
- Comment on Reddit in talks to embrace Sam Altman’s iris-scanning Orb to verify users 3 weeks ago:
Who TF is actually going to want to use these platforms bad enough to do this shit?
Facebook sucks and has for quite some time.
Reddit is mainly just very poorly disguised government surveillance and AI generated advertisement, and none of the content is even enjoyable or enticing. Who TF is their target audience?
- Comment on Operation Narnia: Iran’s nuclear scientists reportedly killed simultaneously using special weapon 3 weeks ago:
I’m not defending cluster bombs, I’m saying it’s bullshit to kill multiple families in an apartment building and pretend your the fucking good guys because you have more sophisticated tech. Especially when there was no reason to attack Iran like this in the first place.
He’s been accusing Iran of being weeks away from having nuclear weapons since 2012. He almost gets voted out of leadership and when he doesn’t he jumps on the opportunity to start bombing Iran and taking out these scientists (and everyone around them) who he had been targeting since November.
He and Trump are going to get us all killed to gain money and power. Fuck them and fuck anyone that wants to keep defending this ignorant bullshit, as if people can’t see clear as day, exactly what these sacks of shit are doing.
- Comment on Operation Narnia: Iran’s nuclear scientists reportedly killed simultaneously using special weapon 3 weeks ago:
But like… Presumably, you’re not just individually killing a bunch of civilians precisely
No, they’re not precise at all unless you consider their families and potentially an entire building full of people to be acceptable “precision.”
That’s why it seems like bullshit to pretend lower tech cluster bombs are an inexcusable evil compared to Palantir AI drones.
- Comment on Operation Narnia: Iran’s nuclear scientists reportedly killed simultaneously using special weapon 3 weeks ago:
Right now, the taxes I pay go partially to arming them,
And we are giving millions in contracts to Palantir to help them create these nightmare AI projects with zero oversight.
Alex Karp’s biography makes it pretty clear he’s trying to spin this shit as every American’s patriotic duty to support, and no different than the Manhattan project (as if that’s something great to aspire to in the first fucking place) during WWII.
- Comment on Operation Narnia: Iran’s nuclear scientists reportedly killed simultaneously using special weapon 3 weeks ago:
I think it’s probably pretty hard to keep simultaneously assassinating 10 targets and their families under wraps, so they’re trying to get ahead of accusations by pretending it’s a show of military strength instead of horrifying skynet murder.
It looks especially bad when they’re pointing the finger at Iran for fucking cluster bombs.
The argument being cluster bombs are a dirty move, but using simultaneous AI powered assassin drones to strike while people are sleeping makes you the good guys?
- Comment on Operation Narnia: Iran’s nuclear scientists reportedly killed simultaneously using special weapon 3 weeks ago:
Are you ok with just accepting any innocent humans as collateral damage? Bc as far as slippery slopes go, accepting that is a fast track to dehumanization.
I don’t believe those scientists deserved to die, but even if you do, why did their spouses and children deserve to die too?
Try to imagine you’re the neighbor of that scientist. Good chance you’ve barely interacted with each other more than a passing nod of acknowledgement when you’re coming and going from your home. Do you and your whole family deserve to die bc of proximity to a target?
Apply that same question x all 10 scientists they killed. It almost makes the KGB targeting people with poison seem like humanitarian work by comparison.
If these were your friends and family being killed by a foreign government while they slept in their beds, you would have to be a psychopath to just brush it off as necessary collateral damage.
- Comment on Operation Narnia: Iran’s nuclear scientists reportedly killed simultaneously using special weapon 3 weeks ago:
It sounds nearly identical to the program Time said Palantir was using in Israel in December 2024 to help track Hamas
“Where’s Daddy?” reportedly follows their movements by tracking their phones in order to target them—often to their homes, where their presence is regarded as confirmation of their identity.
Except if they just come right out and say that, it becomes more difficult to deny the U.S. is already directly involved. Especially since they just gave members of Palantir positions in the U.S. military
- Submitted 3 weeks ago to technology@lemmy.world | 126 comments
- Comment on Operation Narnia: Iran’s nuclear scientists reportedly killed simultaneously using special weapon 3 weeks ago:
Fuck, also explains why Netenyahu jumped at the opportunity as soon as he avoided having his government dissolved by vote. Fuuuuck this is so much evil bullshit.
- Comment on Operation Narnia: Iran’s nuclear scientists reportedly killed simultaneously using special weapon 3 weeks ago:
It’s guarantee the number of bystanders that were killed while they killed these “targets” is not zero.
- Comment on Operation Narnia: Iran’s nuclear scientists reportedly killed simultaneously using special weapon 3 weeks ago:
It doesn’t
- Comment on Operation Narnia: Iran’s nuclear scientists reportedly killed simultaneously using special weapon 3 weeks ago:
Those are American drones from Palantir.
- Comment on Operation Narnia: Iran’s nuclear scientists reportedly killed simultaneously using special weapon 3 weeks ago:
And everyone in their family, building, and general vicinity. And anyone in that 10% of targets who are misidentified apparently.
- Comment on Operation Narnia: Iran’s nuclear scientists reportedly killed simultaneously using special weapon 3 weeks ago:
No it doesn’t.
- Comment on Operation Narnia: Iran’s nuclear scientists reportedly killed simultaneously using special weapon 3 weeks ago:
It’s not normal. It’s ok until the majority of America accepts what this means can be done with that database Trump is having Palantir build really means
- Operation Narnia: Iran’s nuclear scientists reportedly killed simultaneously using special weaponwww.timesofisrael.com ↗Submitted 3 weeks ago to technology@lemmy.world | 425 comments
- Comment on Army gives shady offer to tech bros so they can play soldier 3 weeks ago:
Yep, “no reason,” and that giant database on all Americans Palantir and all these other tech companies “aren’t” helping build is nothing we should be concerned about.
And we’re “not going to war with Iran,” and Trump planned the military strikes against Iran, but also the U.S. wasn’t involved in any way.
- Comment on Army gives shady offer to tech bros so they can play soldier 3 weeks ago:
Rest assured the only combat these men will see is via drone surveillance feeds from behind a desk.
I can’t help but I worry that in addition to all the concerns about surveillance and privacy, Foundry/the megadatabase being created on all Americans could be used in some pretty horrific ways against individuals that speak out against our new leaders, or individuals that vaguely resemble somebody that spoke out against our elite technologists.
How Israel Uses AI in Gaza—And What It Might Mean for the Future of Warfare
A program known as “The Gospel” generates suggestions for buildings and structures militants may be operating in. “Lavender” is programmed to identify suspected members of Hamas and other armed groups for assassination, from commanders all the way down to foot soldiers. “Where’s Daddy?” reportedly follows their movements by tracking their phones in order to target them—often to their homes, where their presence is regarded as confirmation of their identity. The air strike that follows might kill everyone in the target’s family, if not everyone in the apartment building.
Abraham, whose report relies on conversations with six Israeli intelligence officers with first-hand experience in Gaza operations after Oct. 7, quoted targeting officers as saying they found themselves deferring to the Lavender program, despite knowing that it produces incorrect targeting suggestions in roughly 10% of cases.
- Submitted 3 weeks ago to technology@lemmy.world | 10 comments
- Comment on Gov. Landry signs new drone defense law; first in nation 4 weeks ago:
Things can change very quickly if there’s an “attack” on U.S. soil they totally didn’t know about in advance or anything when they signed this.
Federal regulations and protections can get pushed aside real fast in the name of security, especially when you have states like Louisiana already working so closely with DHS.
- Comment on America’s drone 9/11 is coming — and just like on 9/11, we aren’t ready 4 weeks ago:
Or be the public motivation somebody is looking for to join in a war he totally doesn’t want to join even though he just handed a bunch of tech bros military seniority roles…
- Comment on America’s drone 9/11 is coming — and just like on 9/11, we aren’t ready 4 weeks ago:
You’re preaching to the choir