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October 31, 2022: Nightmares from Silicon Valley

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(by Josh Millard)

(by Josh Millard)

Today: Nightmares from Silicon Valley. Commercial airlines haunted by a voice that can't be turned off! Homes filled with spy devices feeding predatory trillion-dollar companies! Millions of hospital patients secretly spied on by Mark Zuckerberg! And more.

• A mysterious voice is haunting American Airlines’ in-flight announcements and nobody knows how (Andy Baio at Waxy.org, Sep 23, 2022).

• Tour Amazon’s dream home, where every appliance is also a spy (by Geoff Fowler in the Washington Post, Oct 12, 2022): “You may not realize all the ways Amazon is watching you. . .”

• Senator Questions Zuckerberg About Facebook’s Collection of “Sensitive Health Information” (The Markup, Oct 20, 2022).

• No, Elon and Jack are not “competitors.” They’re collaborating. (by Dave Troy, Oct 29, 2022) - thanks to listener Ike for sending:

Q: What does Dorsey mean, “I trust [Musk’s] mission to extend the light of consciousness?”

A: This is a reference to “longtermism,” the heavily marketed philosophy being promoted by Musk and his friend William MacAskill that asserts the only thing that matters is humanity’s future in space, and that the only goal of the living is to maximize the number of future humans alive, as well as the number of artificial intelligence instances that could possibly exist in the future. This mandate is most often used to brush aside calls for improving conditions and alleviating suffering among the living here on Earth now. Because, the theory goes, giving a poor person a blanket isn’t likely to be as useful for the future of humanity as building a rocket to Mars. Longtermism is heavily influenced by “Russian Cosmism” and is also directly adjacent to “Effective Altruism.” Musk’s stated mission, which he intends to fulfill in his lifetime, is to “make humanity a multiplanetary species.” The anti-democratic urge in longtermism is rooted in the belief that “mob rule” will lead to nuclear annihilation; we should, Musk thinks, be guided by “wiser” minds — like his and Putin’s apparently.

[...and later, Troy's conclusion:] "If democracy-minded people don’t seize control of the information environment, powerful sociopathic autocrats will do so instead. We leave a power vacuum open at our peril, and at the moment, Musk and Putin are the ones with the most will to fill it."

• They got a Ring doorbell alert, then opened fire on a bystander, police say (Washington Post, Oct 19, 2022)... and Ring Cameras Are Going to Get More People Killed (Oct 24, 2022):

"a Florida man and his teenage son were arrested after allegedly shooting at and nearly killing a woman sitting in her car after receiving a Ring doorbell camera alert. After a neighbor stopped by Gino (73) and Rocky (15) Colonacosta's front door to drop off prescription medication accidentally delivered to the wrong address, the Ring surveillance camera began bombarding their phones with alerts. The pair grabbed .45-caliber handguns, went outside looking for a burglar, and found a woman sitting in her car on her phone. Gino pointed the gun at her and ordered her out of her car, but she escaped in her car believing she was being carjacked. The pair allegedly shot at her seven times, according to police . . ."

• Cleveland man with a nature app: (Cleveland.com, Oct 10, 2022):

A nature-identification app on his phone had identified it as an edible mushroom. The 54-year-old beekeeper and amateur naturalist from [the Cleveland area] had grown and picked mushrooms in the past, and regularly enjoyed identifying plants. So he did what he thought was the responsible thing: he used the plant identification app on his phone to determine the species of mushroom.
When the app matched his photos of the backyard mushrooms with an edible species, Hickman collected them, took them home, and sautéed them with onions, garlic and butter. Then he ate them on top of the mushroom tortellini his wife had made for dinner. . . . sometime in the middle of that night roughly eight hours later, Hickman became violently ill with crippling stomach pain, and continuous vomiting and diarrhea.
. . . “I think if I wouldn’t have had my phone, I wouldn’t have picked them. I know I wouldn’t have. There’s no question in my mind,” Hickman said.

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