Has anyone here actually read the article? As far as I can tell, facial recognition is being increased in availability, but it was already in use.

Every police force in the country will be able to use live facial recognition vans, with the number of vans set to rise from ten to 50.

It’s also worth noting that in the UK for a very long time now any data that is not E2EE can be seized by the government from companies without the consent of their users if a warrant is issued. That’s obviously bad but nothing new.

It sounds like what’s actually new here is that the police is becoming more centralised and organised. Instead of a lot of smaller departments in local areas with lack of expertise, more centralised organisations will do the policing.

The article covers some pros and cons from different people’s perspectives.

• There might end up being more policing in cities and less in rural areas.
• There might be some downsizing of policies forces
• Police forces may be less accountable as they grow.
• Police forces believe they will be better equipped to tackle cybercrime.

Overall, to me, this seems like a generally negative move. I don’t want the police to spy on people, and I want them to be more knowledgeable about their local area and more accountable to their people. It does look like there might be more surveillance, and that’s bad too.

Please read don’t take headlines for granted.

Just binged the whole thing and it’s pretty funny, though a bit objectifying.

My friends keep telling me to get Instagram so they can send me memes.

No, thanks.

Yeah, that’s why I’d like them to build more social housing.

The lifecycle of social housing projects like these, as I understand them, is meant to be that you continue to build them, and as the old ones reach the end of their lifetime (around 60 years?) you demolish them and move the people into the new ones.

In practice, most places are not continuously building them as they should, so many of them are reaching the end of their lives without a plan for where to move people afterwards. This shows a lack of foresight and long-term planning.

Of course, politics are a fickle thing so the latest government can choose to decide that actually, poor people should be punished for the failures of the system and long-term initiatives fail.

For me I found out when I wanted them to fix something and they refused to honour the warranty because of the blown fuse.

As far as I know, this is illegal, btw. They have to prove that the error you are reporting is caused by user action. If your battery craps out, they can’t blame it on you rooting your phone.

Can I have the, uh, 2010 sketching timelapse video with a Nightcore anime song playing in the background.

Samsung has been blowing fuses in your phone when you root since at least 2015. I know because it happened to me. Never bought one again after that.

A small snippet of the article (which is long and detailed, but only accessible if you sign up)

Screams echoed through the halls of Bedford Hills Correctional Facility as women begged for their solitude to end. The sound of desperate hands banging on cell doors rang out like a solemn chorus. Exhausted, an incarcerated woman named Cici Herrera reached for a book. “That’s the only way I can keep myself from thinking too much,” she said. “I’m going crazy.”

At Bedford Hills, a maximum-security women’s prison in Westchester County, New York, a new superintendent and a recent policy change have sharply restricted the limited freedom incarcerated people in the general population once enjoyed. They could no longer count on regular showers — times were limited to tightly controlled shifts — and indoor recreation was eliminated even on the coldest days of the New York winter. The women found themselves locked inside of their single cells for the majority of the day, in conditions detention experts and survivors of solitary confinement compared to solitary confinement.

“Nothing is consistent,” said Herrera, one of three people incarcerated at Bedford who told The Intercept about the conditions. “We have to scream for everything.”

The conditions likely violate state law, according to multiple detention experts, all of whom have spoken with people incarcerated at Bedford. The new restrictions put the women in the middle of a political battle between activists who fought to place restrictions on the use of solitary and prison guards who have protested their implementation.

New York’s Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Act, or the HALT Act for short, limits the amount of time an incarcerated person can be forced to stay in their cell and when a prison guard can put a person in solitary, taking into account the punishment’s severe harm to physical and mental health. Researchers have found that solitary confinement increases the risks of premature death both during and after incarceration, from deaths of despair like opioid overdoses and suicide.

“We have to scream for everything.”

“People should be receiving at least a minimum… seven hours out of cell time under the HALT Act,” said Sumeet Sharma, director of policy and communications at the Correctional Association of New York. Most people at Bedford previously had some freedom of movement to access communal spaces, shower, and cook. But when his team conducted a two-day monitoring visit at Bedford in November, they found that “that’s just not happening anymore,” Sharma said. “Essentially, people are locked in.”

The New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision has denied these accusations.

…

For nearly a decade, Kit, who is transgender, was held in solitary confinement in multiple men’s prisons before being sent to Bedford. The federal Prison Rape Elimination Act technically prohibits placing trans inmates in solitary confinement for their protection without their consent, but in practice, the overwhelming majority of trans people incarcerated in the United States have spent time in solitary confinement.

“I almost lost my life on numerous occasions,” said Kit. “These are women who have never experienced solitary confinement, who are used to regular programming … are being thrown into days and days with nothing to do, literally overnight.”

Social housing typically doesn’t look as good as high-end apartments, but it doesn’t have to look terrible. Here’s some pretty neat looking social housing in south Paris.

It’s kind of the China Town of Paris.

It’s right next to an accessible tram station, has green spaces and social areas spread around, a couple of malls with great independent restaurants right next door. There are cycle lanes all around the place.

If you’re curious, here it is on Google Maps

I’d live here. I only wish there were more neighbourhoods like this.

This is obvious. It’s literally trained off of English-speaking people’s online comments / posts and designed to give the most likely answer to a question.

I’ve been to Worcestershire (pronounced wooster-sher) recently.

Sadly, this is the latest news out of there.

https://goodlawproject.org/reforms-new-transphobic-ban-in-worcestershire/

Return of the Obra Dinn deaths be like:

Fake. ChatGPT always answers in 20 lines of text for no reason.

Elon Musk: “I play both sides so I always come out ahead” (i.e. richer)

Also, can we add rakes and other garden equipment too?

DISGUSTING

I think you mean “hilarious”.

I prefer this over people outright shooting ICE agents, which would escalate things even further.

Micron: “But guuyyyyyyys… What about the money? We could be making so much more money!”

Absurd. I read this as: “We’ll pay you with food to forget years of war crimes and genocide. If you don’t comply we’ll make sure it continues.”

So… apart from everything?

I wish I was bored, rather than worrying about the next atrocity.

Explorer already crashes enough without this.

Why don’t they work on Explorer’s awful performance and constant hanging before working in another chatbot?

You know, useful software development work?