Sauron Denies Request for Contract Information Reading a prepared statement from the tower of Barad-dûr, the Mouth of Sauron indicated today that the Dark Lord would not be complying with the demands of lawmakers to provide information on its contracts with the Trump Administration. The Messenger of Mordor further called the demands "ridiculous" and "unnecessary government intrusion into private affairs of Sauron, who does not answer to any higher authority, save that of his fallen master Morgoth." Furthermore, the statement chastised the lawmakers for contacting Sauron through the Palantir, which he described as "an illegal privacy breach," and said he planned to seek legal action for this invasion of his personal communications.

These clauses added to the Bill yesterday grant powers for police to access any online account and the information within it, on approval of a senior officer, through a seized phone or device. Any online account. So Instagram and TikTok, but also NHS accounts, banking apps, work accounts, they have carte blanche to just rifle through anything and everything that you've signed into? With no judicial warrant required. America may be openly fascist now, but the UK isn't far behind. And this is under a Labour government. If you have any left wing leanings, vote Green in future, convince friends and family to vote Green. Labour are authoritarian and the Lib-Dems will sell out any principles for a whiff of power. The Greens might have some shit candidates, but they at least support proportional representation and not starting a police state.

I have never used a food delivery service because they all feel so fucking scummy and exploitative. Seems like they are in equal need as we are for regulatory overhaul of this business practice.

Does that run the risk of leading to a future collapse of certain businesses, especially if their expenses remain consistently astronomical like OpenAI? Please note I don’t actually know—not trying to be cheeky with this question. Genuinely curious.

Thanks for sharing this, it is an interesting read (though an additional comment about what this about would have been helpful). I want to say I am glad I do not use either of these services but Yandex implementation seems so bad that it does not matter, as any app could receive their data

I don't drive and have minimal experience with cars. Does it make a big difference whether your Android Automotive solution is based on Android 13 or 15? It's been a long time since I've cared about OS upgrades for Android on smartphones, perhaps the situation is different with Android Automotive?

(Premise - suppose I accept that there is such a definable thing as capitalism) I'm not sure why you feel the need to state this in a discussion that already assumes it as a necessary precondition of, but, uh, you do you. People blaming capitalism for everything then build a country that imports grain, while before them and after them it’s among the largest exporters on the planet (if we combine Russia and Ukraine for the “after” metric, no pun intended). ...what? What does this have to do with literally anything, much less my comment about innovation/competition? Even setting aside the wild-assed assumptions you're making about me criticizing capitalism means I 'blame [it] for everything', this tirade you've launched into, presumably about Ukraine and the USSR, has no bearing on anything even tangentially related to this conversation. People praising capitalism create conditions in which there’s no reason to praise it. Like, it’s competitive - they kill competitiveness with patents, IP, very complex legal systems. It’s self-regulating and self-optimizing - they make regulations and do bailouts preventing sick companies from dying, make laws after their interests, then reactively make regulations to make conditions with them existing bearable, which have a side effect of killing smaller companies. Please allow me to reiterate: ...what? Capitalists didn't build literally any of those things, governments did, and capitalists have been trying to escape, subvert, or dismantle those systems at every turn, so this... vain, confusing attempt to pin a medal on capitalism's chest for restraining itself is not only wrong, it fails to understand basic facts about history. It's the opposite of self-regulating because it actively seeks to dismantle regulations (environmental, labor, wage, etc), and the only thing it optimizes for is the wealth of oligarchs, and maybe if they're lucky, there will be a few crumbs left over for their simps. That’s the problem, both “socialist” and “capitalist” ideal systems ignore ape power dynamics. I'm going to go ahead an assume that 'the problem' has more to do with assuming that complex interacting systems can be simplified to 'ape (or any other animal's) power dynamics' than with failing to let the richest people just do whatever they want. Such systems should be designed on top of the fact that jungle law is always allowed So we should just be cool with everybody being poor so Jeff Bezos or whoever can upgrade his megayacht to a gigayacht or whatever? Let me say this in the politest way I know how: LOL no. Also, do you remember when I said this? ‘Won’t someone please think of the billionaires’ is wearing kinda thin You know, right before you went on this very long-winded, surreal, barely-coherent ramble? Did you imagine I would be convinced by literally any of it when all it amounts to is one giant, extraneous, tedious equivalent of 'Won't someone please think of the billionaires?' Simp harder and I bet maybe you can get a crumb or two yourself.