astrochicken's Techdirt Profile

astrochicken

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  • Jan 17, 2026 @ 03:09am

    Do you promise?

    If cops want to use GenAI to write a report, and then swear the report is true under penalty of perjury, and then get charged with and convicted of perjury when errors show up, I see no issue with said software.

  • Dec 29, 2023 @ 05:18pm

    Barlow

    It's interesting that people would try to paint Barlow as a blind optimist when if you ever heard him speak he was warning us about the dangers of how technology was progressing. It's not just founding the EFF that showed his concern.

  • Nov 14, 2023 @ 04:33pm

    Except it isn't

    Not much risk of Google being the best search engine. Or if it is, that's just because others aren't even trying. The other day I was looking for song lyrics, with both AdBlock and NoScript. On Google, the top five hits all lead to websites that won't show me the lyrics because of "advertising" or "suspicious connections" because of the aforementioned plugins. We all know the real reason: spam. Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, they all have the ability to downrank sites based on absurd requirements, and it would only benefit the end user. Will they ever do so? Don't cross your fingers. But it's not because they can't.

  • Nov 06, 2023 @ 07:02pm

    Indie creators

    Introducing a threshold of minimum annual streams before a track starts generating royalties on Spotify
    This is the key point. If my band makes great music in low quantities, I'll be driven off the site. It also reminds me of when YouTube decided you needed 1,000 followers to monetize. OK, they were solving a problem, but they took supplementary income away from many part-time creators. Sites that used to be supportive of hobbyists and part-timers have become less so, and this is just another example. That's bad for flexibility, innovation, and stability.

  • Sep 01, 2022 @ 08:14am

    Not always 8 feet

    Actually it's not cops all the time, but only cops in specific circumstances that would get their 8 feet. That itself will create a minefield for journalists, and will be abused by dirty cops.

  • Dec 06, 2021 @ 03:18am

    Re:

    A ton of personal information is already available online, from the government itself. Many county governments have publicly-accessible records where you can look up a person's name and get their address, house value, and property taxes. You might think all your personal information is private, but a lot of it isn't. You didn't know, so sorry, but now you do.

  • Mar 12, 2021 @ 05:51pm

    Re:

    You can expand body camera programs, but that costs money, and body cameras alone don't stop bad cops. The basic idea behind Defund the Police is to take some money away from police departments and use that cash to solve societal problems in other ways. For example, having social workers that respond to mental health crisis calls instead of cops. For example, homeless outreach programs that reduce trespass and loitering incidents. For example, better food stamp and unemployment programs so people don't turn towards crime as often. For example, school security instead of school police, because non-cops don't shoot or arrest our kids. These kinds of programs are not perfect, but they have two great qualities: less people with guns and handcuffs looking for an excuse to use them, and more people with the right training for the job. Let's get the cops away from things they suck at and back to things they're good at.

  • Mar 12, 2021 @ 05:39pm

    National Association of Police Officers:

    With the change to qualified immunity, an officer can go to prison for an unintentional act that unknowingly broke an unknown, and unknowable, right.

    No, they can't. QI is a immunity to a civil suit. There can be no prison time. It is standard for cops to not know the law, but I ask the reader, does this group really not understand QI, or are they just pretending not to?

  • Jan 30, 2021 @ 05:15am

    Dirty house

    Acevedo has a history of doing nothing to regulate bad cops. He butchered the Tuttle murders which only proved that his entire narcotics division is out of control, and now instead of firing his dirty little rioters, he's blaming technology.

    If you have neither the facts nor the law, hammer the table.

  • Jan 19, 2021 @ 05:08pm

    Trust?

    And some of the biggest Trump supporters are the same people we pay (and trust) to keep the peace.

    No. We're not supposed to trust law enforcement. Plato wrote about this 2,000 years ago, and the same concerns exist today. We rely on them and hope for the best, but there also is (or should be) oversight and accountability when they (inevitably) do the wrong thing.