Zero Particle

04/09/2024

"We are not made to sit in a rocking chair and knit," said one of the older Swiss women who won.

11/20/2023

Tesla’s board of directors should suspend Elon Musk for endorsing antisemitic views on social media, according to one investor in the electric vehicle company.

07/10/2023

"Comedian and author Sarah Silverman, as well as authors Christopher Golden and Richard Kadrey — are suing OpenAI and Meta each in a US District Court over dual claims of copyright infringement.

The suits alleges, among other things, that OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Meta’s LLaMA were trained on illegally-acquired datasets containing their works, which they say were acquired from “shadow library” websites like Bibliotik, Library Genesis, Z-Library, and others, noting the books are “available in bulk via torrent systems.”

Golden and Kadrey each declined to comment on the lawsuit, while Silverman’s team did not respond by press time.

In the OpenAI suit, the trio offers exhibits showing that when prompted, ChatGPT will summarize their books, infringing on their copyrights. Silverman’s Bedwetter is the first book shown being summarized by ChatGPT in the exhibits, while Golden’s book Ararat is also used as an example, as is Kadrey’s book Sandman Slim. The claim says the chatbot never bothered to “reproduce any of the copyright management information Plaintiffs included with their published works.”

She says the companies’ chatbots were trained on her book.

08/31/2022

"Federal authorities, for example, seized more than $62,000 from Jan. 6 defendant John Earle Sullivan of Utah, who shot extensive video footage inside the Capitol and has earned more than $90,000 from selling it to at least six companies. Prosecutors also are seeking to force a Maine man to surrender some of the $20,000 he’s raised for legal defense while relying on a public defender.

One well-known anti-vaccination activist who participated in the Capitol siege, Dr. Simone Gold, raised more than $430,000 for legal expenses for a misdemeanor charge—which netted her two months in prison—to which she pleaded guilty. Prosecutors pointed out that it “beggars belief” that her legal costs were that great, and the federal judge in her case called her fundraising appeal “unseemly.”

When New Jersey gym owner Scott Fairlamb, who punched a police officer on Jan. 6, used donations to a “Patriot Relief Fund” of over $30,000 to cover his mortgage payments and other monthly bills, prosecutors recommended a fine on top of his three-year prison sentence."

J6 insurrectionists tap into right-wing gullibility about ‘political prisoners’ to enrich themselves.

08/16/2019

"The law, enacted after the intelligence contractor Edward J. Snowden revealed the existence of the program in 2013, is set to expire in December, but the Trump administration wants it made permanent," according to the Times.

The administration claimed in its letter to Congress—which was signed by outgoing National Intelligence chief Dan Coats—that the NSA has suspended the spying program, but Free Press Action government relations director Sandra Fulton said in a statement that this "should give little comfort to those whose privacy rights are routinely violated by authorities."

"The White House is calling for reauthorization of a program that security agencies have used to spy on innocent people, violate their privacy, and chill free speech."

08/07/2019

"To enact her plan, Warren hopes to first pass a federal law preventing state-level restrictions that have hampered municipalities that want to pursue a public internet system.

She would then create an $85-billion federal grant program to shoulder 90% of the costs for utility cooperatives, nonprofits, cities, counties and Native American tribes interested in laying the fiber needed to bring broadband ― contemporary high-speed internet ― to the mostly rural regions that do not currently have it."

The White House contender wants to make sure every U.S. home has a fiber broadband connection at an affordable cost.

12/12/2018

"Comcast offered to bring cable Internet to up to 96 percent of households in Charlemont in exchange for the town paying $462,123 plus interest toward infrastructure costs over 15 years. But Charlemont residents rejected the Comcast offer in a vote at a special town meeting Thursday.

"The Comcast proposal would have saved the town about $1 million, but it would not be a town-owned broadband network," the Greenfield Recorder reported Friday. "The defeated measure means that Charlemont will likely go forward with a $1.4 million municipal town network, as was approved by annual town meeting voters in 2015.
..

The town plans to charge $79 a month for standalone Internet service with gigabit download and upload speeds and no data caps, though the price could rise to $99 a month if fewer than 40 percent of households buy the service. The town also plans to offer phone and TV service at rates cheaper than Comcast's."

Comcast offered to wire up Charlemont, Mass. for $462,000—town said, "no."

12/15/2017

"Today, Motherboard and VICE Media are committing to be part of the change we’d like to see. We will build a community network based at our Brooklyn headquarters that will provide internet connections for our neighborhood. We will also connect to the broader NYC Mesh network in order to strengthen a community network that has already decided the status quo isn’t good enough."

To protect net neutrality, we need internet infrastructure that isn't owned by big telecom.

07/12/2017

"Some large ISPs say they support net neutrality, but that they just want the FCC to go enforce it under a different legal provision, or have Congress pass a specific net neutrality law. But this is just a trick—they already know that if the FCC goes back to classifying broadband as an information service, its net neutrality rules will fail (just like they did last time). They also know that Congress isn’t likely to pass a real net neutrality statute anytime soon, if ever, given the millions that telecom giants have invested in making sure they get to write any regulation of their industry.

Make no mistake: if we want to FCC to do its part to protect a free and open Internet—where Internet service providers don’t discriminate between different types of content or communications—we can’t let the agency go forward with its plan to abandon Title II (the legal foundation for today’s net neutrality rules). Competition between ISPs won’t guarantee net neutrality, especially when most of the country has only one option for broadband Internet access."

You might have noticed something unusual when you visited the EFF website today: our site was “blocked” unless you shelled out for “premium” Internet access. As part of the day of action to support net neutrality, we decided to imagine what might happen if FCC Chairman Ajit Pai caves to industry...

01/26/2017

In the United States, more people were employed in solar power than traditional coal, gas and oil energy combined last year.

10/27/2016

Job opportunities are drying up in towns without broadband. Chattanooga, Tennessee turned around its fortunes by building the fastest internet in the United States.