From the raging dickcunts at The New York Times…

The Signal App and the Danger of Privacy at All Costs

(archive.ph link) (bolding is mine)

The company — an L.L.C. that is governed by a nonprofit — is founded on the belief that it needs to combat what it calls “state corporate surveillance” of our online activities in defense of an uncompromisable value: individual privacy. Distrustful of government and large corporations and apparently persuaded that they are irredeemable, technologists look for workarounds.

This level of privacy can be beneficial on a number of fronts. For instance, Signal is used by journalists to communicate with confidential sources. But it is no coincidence that criminals have also used this government-evading technology. When the F.B.I. arrested several Oath Keepers for rioting at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, one of its primary pieces of evidence was messages on Signal. (It’s unclear how the F.B.I. got access to the messages in this instance; there is a longstanding cat and mouse game between lawmakers and technology.)

The J6 Boogeyman has been raised, so strap in for high-pressured spray of liquid bullshit.

The ethical universe, according to Signal, is simple: The privacy of individuals must be respected above all else, come what may. If terrorists or child abusers or other criminals use the app, or one like it, to coordinate activities or share child sexual abuse imagery behind impenetrable closed doors, that’s a shame — but privacy is all that matters.

I guess it’s OK to raise the spectre of groomers in this context.

One should always worry when a person or an organization places one value above all. The moral fabric of our world is complex. It’s nuanced. Sensitivity to moral nuance is difficult, but unwavering support of one principle to rule them all is morally dangerous.
The way Signal wields the word “surveillance” reflects its coarsegrained understanding of morality. To the company, surveillance covers everything from a server holding encrypted data that no one looks at to a law enforcement agent reading data after obtaining a warrant to Eastern Germany randomly tapping citizens’ phones. One cannot think carefully about the value of privacy — including its relative importance to other values in particular contexts — with such a broad brush.

Fuck you. They don’t get warrants to read stuff and even if they did, they’d go to a lapdog judge. And I hope “coarse-grained” describes the next pegging you pay for.

What’s more, the company’s proposition that if anyone has access to data, then many unauthorized people probably will have access to that data is false. This response reflects a lack of faith in good governance, which is essential to any well-functioning organization or community seeking to keep its members and society at large safe from bad actors. There are some people who have access to the nuclear launch codes, but “Mission Impossible” movies aside, we’re not particularly worried about a slippery slope leading to lots of unauthorized people having access to those codes.

“Good governance.” What a fucking joke.

The author is an expert in “AI Ethics.” What a fancy way to grift.

 

Wife sparks fierce debate after banning husband from napping on Christmas

She’s knows when you’re sleeping — she knows when you’re awake.

A wife has sparked a raging holiday debate after revealing that she has forbidden her husband from napping on Christmas Day as it leaves her with the kids. A now-viral social media thread detailing her Santa-like snooze sanctions is currently blowing up online.

In the thread, posted in the popular Reddit forum “Am I The A – – hole (AITA),” anonymous user u/anyaccount123 described how her husband of 15 years is a “night owl” while she’s a “light sleeper” who never naps.

“My husband LOVES to nap. He’d do it almost everyday,” the exasperated wife wrote, describing his nap-ocalyptic habits. “Besides, he sleeps in every morning on weekends and days off. I don’t mind that much because I would also like to do it, if only I could. We used to take turn[s] when I was still able to sleep in.”

She added, “Even if I tell him to please go to bed earlier, to please not nap, especially when the girls are around, he just doesn’t care. He’ll nap anyway. He never gives in to my requests.”

By contrast, the neglected gal claims she “never” naps in general as she considers “it lost time in a day, and time lost with our daughters (9 and 10) and time that could have been well spent doing chores, playing, exercising, etc.”

The great nap debate reportedly came to a head on Christmas Day after the couple had been up late partying, and the wife was “exhausted.”

“We managed to wake up at 9 a.m., which is awesome for me,” she explained. “We watched our daughters open up their presents and ate breakfast. I asked everyone if they’d like to watch a Christmas movie. The girls declined, preferring to play with their toys.”

Then she dropped the bombshell, explaining: “Then my husband immediately went to bed. At like 11 a.m. on Christmas Day­. I’m beyond appalled. I can’t even believe this.”

Let the poor guy sleep. It’s exhausting to have a rabid type-A bitch for a wife.

 

 

With the Powerball jackpot so high be careful what you wish for. An SC winner’s cautionary tale

On the morning after she became a multi-millionaire, a South Carolina woman drove by the KC Mart No. 47 in Simpsonville where she bought her lottery ticket, to see if anyone was there, just in case she had made a mistake and didn’t really win.

It was the largest Mega Millions jackpot to be won by a single ticket — more than $1.5 billion — and she had seen the numbers reported on television.

“If no one was there, I would say, ‘okay, well this was a disaster, we made a mistake,’ and I’d drive home and all would be good. But as we went by the convenience store, there was every media — there was helicopters, there was every piece of media, there was locals, you know, national. I so badly wanted to get out of there, I wanted to go under the seat, I became anxious.”

That was some of her testimony in a trial earlier this year in which her lawyer, Jason Kurland, the self proclaimed “lottery lawyer,” was charged with taking money from some of his clients — in her case more than $80 million.

The South Carolina woman has never been identified and was allowed to testify using the pseudonym, Beth Smith.

And her husband’s anonymized name? Steve Smith. A Rick & Morty and Glibertarians double reference!

(Via the Mysterious Mr. D.)