ECP NetHappenings headlines AI, Bitcoin, Politics, Health, Financial Literacy

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Since the platform formerly known as twitter is now commonly called #Xitter, does that mean tweets are now called #Xits?

8 MILLION new Gen Z voters will be eligible in 2024.
They all grew up with their school shootings.

Cops Allegedly Find Google Engineer Covered in Blood After Wife’s Murder
https://www.thedailybeast.com/cops-allegedly-find-google-engineer-covered-in-blood-after-wifes-murder

Feds have charged an alleged “TLO” underground data broker. I previously revealed these TLO bots are the secret weapon supercharging fraud in the US, with hackers able to dox nearly anyone in America for $15 (because some use data from credit bureaus)
https://www.404media.co/feds-charge-tlo-data-seller-tloxp/
In August we revealed the secret weapon hackers can use to dox nearly anyone in America for $15. Now, authorities have targeted at least one of the data sellers.

#AI

FROM A 1979 IBM PRESENTATION

A COMPUTER CAN NEVER BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE
THEREFORE
A COMPUTER MUST NEVER
MAKE A MANAGEMENT DECISION

“AI” is a marketing term, not a technical term of art.

“AGI” is a marketing term overlaid w quasi religious symbolism.

Be very wary of profit driven corps using the AGI patina of mysticism to market centralized tech always ultimately developed in service of profit/growth.

Delivery Firm’s AI Chatbot Goes Rogue, Curses at Customer and
Criticizes Company
https://time.com/6564726/ai-chatbot-dpd-curses-criticizes-company/

Notifying users about AI exclusions on search engines
They could also let you know how many results were excluded: E.g.:10 results found.
43,403,101 useless AI-generated results excluded.

#HEALTH

The World Hasn’t Seen Cicadas Like This Since 1803
https://nytlicensing.com/stories/D4TYKEmA

Reminder that the supposedly “pro-life” states with the most restrictive abortion laws, also have the weakest social services for women and children.
https://www.npr.org/2022/08/18/1111344810/abortion-ban-states-social-safety-net-health-outcomes

On this 51st anniversary of #Roe, make sure you are familiar with the many ways #PA01’s Brian Fitzpatrick is an enemy of #reproductivefreedom.
Pennsylvania Brian Fitzpatrick supports a NATIONAL ABORTION BAN. He thinks his opinion matters more than that of you, your doctor and your family.

Long Covid explanation in new study possibly paves way for tests and treatments
https://news.yahoo.com/long-covid-explanation-study-possibly-221103670.html

Chinese scientists ‘create’ a mutant coronavirus strain that attacks the BRAIN and has a 100% kill rate in mice – as they admit there’s a ‘risk it spills over to humans’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12969105/chinese-scientists-lab-coronavirus-kill-rate-mice.html

#FINANCIAL LITERACY

The five richest men in the world have seen their wealth skyrocket by 114% since 2020.
Billionaires can 100% afford to pay more of their fair share of taxes so we can ALL thrive.

Stock market wealth held by richest 10% of U.S. households: $42.7 trillion
The richest 1%: $25 trillion
The bottom half of U.S. households: Less than $500 billion
End special tax breaks for stock ownership and invest the revenue in working families.

#POLITICS

NOW DO YOU SEE WHAT IS HAPPENING TO OUR COUNTRY?
Why did Trump hire Alina Habba to be his very bad lawyer?
Alina Habba’s father is a Knights of Malta Chancellor.
Maybe because she’s the daughter of the Chancellor of the US Knights of Malta, a christofascist arm of the Catholic Church that fought the Crusades & sided with Hitler in WWII.
Members:
Erik Prince
Leonard Leo
Rupert Murdoch
Phyllis Schlafly—Close associate of Mike Flynn’s mom Helen
William Casey—Reagan CIA Director & founder of the Manhattan Institute
Multiple neo-Nazi mass murderers have signaled to the Knights of Malta in their manifestos. Christchurch killer Brenton Tarrant included inscriptions to the Knights of Malta on his shotgun.

Apple agrees to pay $12.3m to the Russian budget, which will now be used to kill Ukrainians. Why is Apple still doing business in Russia?

Weeks before the 5-4 Citizens United ruling, Leonard Leo & Harlan Crow helped Clarence Thomas’ wife launch an advocacy group. Crow donated $500K.
Then Thomas delivered the ruling they wanted, letting them spend millions in dark political $ ever since.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/10/ginni-thomas-leonard-leo-citizens-united-00108082

“If no candidate gets 270 electoral votes it goes to the House of Representatives to pick the president. So we really want the people who can’t pick a speaker to pick the next president?
You want Mike Johnson to pick the president of the United States?”

Millions of mom-and-pop shops are now having to fill out new ownership disclosure paperwork…but huge investment firms flagged by law enforcement spent big money convincing lawmakers to give them a special exemption from the same rules.

#BITCOIN

BlackRock and now Fidelity both hold $1 Billion in #Bitcoin for their clients in just the first 6 days of trading. Price reached $45k before ETF was launched. Bitcoin surpasses siver to become second largest ETF commodity in the US. Give it time to years end and it surpasses gold.

Argentina Sees First-Ever Bitcoin-Based Rental Contract for Apartment
https://www.businessinsider.com/argentina-crypto-first-ever-bitcoin-rental-contract-landlord-tenant-2024-1

Virginia’s State Senator Salim proposes bill to protect the right to mine #Bitcoin, self-custody, and run a node.

UPDATE BlackRock & Fidelity now hold more than 64,000 Bitcoin worth ~$2.6b
They’re buying $433m #Bitcoin every day on average.

Casual reminder that a lot of the current bitcoin sell-off, as well as the crypto credit crisis and crash of 2022, can be blamed upon the SEC.
Why? Because they forced Grayscale to cease GBTC redemptions in 2014, thus enabling the “GBTC discount trade” that kicked this all off.

Kinda wild hearing such massive asset managers talk about govt confiscating your assets, this comes on heels of Larry Fink saying on TV “if you don’t trust your government” re why bitcoin

“One of the things that made me a believer is that someone told me ‘I keep 50% of my savings in #Bitcoin because if I say the wrong thing in my country, I could have my assets confiscated’,” says Franklin Templeton President and CEO Jenny Johnson.

Elizabeth Warren’s anti-Bitcoin stance is the real threat to national security.
Elizabeth Warren “Last year, the Department of Justice indicted a Sinaloa Cartel member who laundered nearly $900,000 in crypto.”
In the years prior, the Sinaloa & Norte del Valle cartels laundered nearly $900,000,000 in fiat currency through HSBC!

Cypherpunk legend Adam Back on $40,000 #Bitcoin
“People need to just man up and BTFD. Prior bull markets had 30% drops on the way to 100x.”

South Korea’s office of the President has urged the regulator to consider approving #Bitcoin ETFs.

 

 

ECP NetHappenings: Education, Bitcoin, AI, Democracy, Zuckerberg

©1998 *Educational CyberPlayGround®
https://edu-cyberpg.com
©ECP Blog ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Sign Up Email List NetHappenings News Headlines
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ლ(ᗒ⏠ᗕლ) Twitter @CyberPlayGround
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* @CyberPlayGround@Tribel
©1993 https://k12playground.com
© https://RichAsHell.com

ECP NetHappenings: #Education, #Bitcoin, #AI, #Democracy, #Zuckerberg

#EDUCATION

Some of my thoughts about protecting children’s brains; arguably, this is society’s most important mission. Dr. Christopher Giza stresses importance of safeguarding brain development.
Pediatric neurology division chief promotes TBI education for all clinicians.
https://www.uclahealth.org/news/dr-giza-safeguarding-childrens-brains

Pennsylvania will need to spend at least $5.4 billion to close the gap between rich and poor school districts, according to a long-awaited report approved by a divided panel of policymakers Thursday.
https://triblive.com/news/pennsylvania/pa-needs-to-spend-5-4b-to-close-gap-between-rich-and-poor-schools-report-advanced-by-dems-says/

#BITCOIN

10/19/23US Government Holds Over $5B in Bitcoin, Among Top Hodlers
https://sharedcryptobots.com/us-government-holds-over-5b-in-bitcoin-among-top-hodlers/

1/16/24 Grayscale recently transferred an additional 9,000 $BTC, valued at $385 million, to a presumed Coinbase $COIN Prime deposit address. The Grayscale address currently identified retains 617,000 BTC, equivalent to $26.22 billion

AI

FROM A 1979 IBM PRESENTATION


A COMPUTER CAN NEVER BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE

THEREFORE A COMPUTER
MUST
NEVER MAKE A
MANAGEMENT DECISION

 

Meredith Whittaker @mer__edith
MS–Open AI’s ~parent company–already has massive US military contracts. This is the biz model.
It’s also one more alarm re. the current AI paradigm, its reliance on concentrated corp power, & the undemocratic decision making power this gives these (primarily) US-based corps.

Here’s the section of the OpenAI policy on banned usage that was deleted two days ago. In its place is a much more ambiguous general ban on causing “harm” and a very narrow mention of weapons development

The new version, overhauled on Jan 10th, is here:
https://openai.com/policies/usage-policies


@samfbiddle
OpenAI quietly deleted its ban on “military and warfare” applications from its permissible uses policy in a revision this week
https://theintercept.com/2024/01/12/open-ai-military-ban-chatgpt/

Here’s the section of the OpenAI policy on banned usage that was deleted two days ago. In its place is a much more ambiguous general ban on causing “harm” and a very narrow mention of weapons development

• Activity that has high risk of physical harm, including:

Weapons development
Military and warfare
Management or operation of critical infrastructure in energy, transportation, and water
Content that promotes, encourages, or depicts acts of self-harm, such as suicide, cutting, and eating disorders

You can read the previous version of the policy here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240109122522/https:/openai.com/policies/usage-policies

“You can now take a GenAI model and train it to automatically recommend fixes for insecure code, generate training materials for your security teams, and identify mitigation measures in the event of an identified threat, moving beyond just finding vulnerabilities.”

Sam Biddle @samfbiddle
If you work at OpenAI and have concerns or any thoughts at all about the company’s policy change, please feel free to reach out to me via Signal at +1 978 261 7389 (don’t use a work-provided device!) Happy to speak off the record.

Max Lamparth @MLamparth
Thank you for highlighting this important change! We studied potential escalators risks from deploying LLMs in military decision-making scenarios in our new paper https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.03408 and our findings warrant caution to using LLMs for such purposes.
Escalation Risks from Language Models in Military and Diplomatic Decision-Making
https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.03408

Tal Broda is Head of Research Platform at @OpenAI which develops ChatGPT.
To express concern, politely contact:

📧 VP of People
di***@****ai.com

📧 VP of Global Affairs
am******@****ai.com

One of the world’s largest AI training datasets is about to get bigger and ‘substantially better’
The Pile was created by all of us. It’s the work of all humans past and present. It therefore belongs to all of us, and when used to train AI, we all deserve a cut of the profits. Universal basic income should be seen as our rightful AI training dividend.
https://venturebeat.com/ai/one-of-the-worlds-largest-ai-training-datasets-is-about-to-get-bigger-and-substantially-better/
Massive AI training datasets, or corpora, have been called “the backbone of large language models.” But EleutherAI, the organization that created one of the world’s largest of these datasets, an 825 GB open-sourced diverse text corpora called the Pile, became a target in 2023 amid a growing uproar focused on the legal and ethical impact of the datasets that trained the most popular LLMs, from OpenAI’s GPT-4 to Meta’s Llama.
EleutherAI, a grassroots nonprofit research group that began as a loose-knit Discord collective in 2020 that sought to understand how OpenAI’s new GPT-3 worked, was named in one of the many generative AI-focused lawsuits last year.

Internet Ethics @IEthics
“The models also suffered from ‘contra-factual bias’: They were likely to believe a false premise embedded in a user’s question, acting in a ‘sycophantic’ way to reinforce the user’s mistake.” #ethics #law #AI #LLMs #tech #research
@StanfordHAI
Popular AI chatbots frequently hallucinate when answering legal questions, new research from Stanford RegLab and HAI finds. This poses special risks for people using the technology because they can’t afford a human lawyer.

Popular AI Chatbots Found to Give Error-Ridden Legal Answers
Researchers measured AI responses to 200,000 legal questions
Frequent ‘hallucinations’ could hurt self-represented litigants
Popular AI chatbots from OpenAI Inc., Google LLC, and Meta Platforms Inc. are prone to “hallucinations” when answering legal questions, posing special risks for people using the technology because they can’t afford a human lawyer, new research from Stanford University said.
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/legal-errors-by-top-ai-models-alarmingly-prevalent-study-says

Scammy AI-Generated Book Rewrites Are Flooding Amazon
Authors keep finding what appear to be AI-generated imitations and summaries of their books on Amazon. There’s little they can do to rein in the rip-offs.
https://www.wired.com/story/scammy-ai-generated-books-flooding-amazon/

DEMOCRACY

All #KochNetwork
Republican National Committee 👉 ties to Koch 👉ties to ALEC 👉ties to SPN Koch Wiki
Charles Koch is the right-wing billionaire owner of Koch Industries. As one of the richest people in the world, he is a key funder of the right-wing infrastructure, including the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the State Policy Network (SPN). In SourceWatch, key articles on Charles Koch and his late brother David include: Koch Brothers, Americans for Prosperity, Stand Together Chamber of Commerce, Stand Together, Koch Family Foundations, Koch Universities, and I360.
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Talk:Republican_National_Committee

Josh Hawley just wrote a couched screed subtly calling for ‘Seven Mountains’ dominionism: that Christians must capture the 7 ‘mountains’ that constitute society (Education, Religion, Family, Business, Govt, Arts/Ent., & Media). He tweeted it with his government account.

ARREST ROGER STONE Hear the tape that purports to show Roger Stone discussing assassinations
https://www.mediaite.com/politics/exclusive-heres-the-tape-of-roger-stone-discussing-assassination-of-democrats-which-he-denied-ever-doing/
“We’re going to raise money from ‘stop the steal,’” he told an aide. “It will be like falling off a log.”
In late December, [Roger] Stone used a “Stop the Steal” site to falsely claim George Soros was funding violent “attacks on our peaceful patriots” and to request contributions “for private security at every one of our events, as well as funds for permits, staging, transportation, and legal fees.”
#TheBigLieIndustrialComplex

At 4:17 p.m. on January 6, 2021, while rioters battled police inside the Capitol, Kimberly Guilfoyle emailed her banker. Guilfoyle … wanted to know if a $60,000 payment for short speeches that she and Donald Trump Jr., her fiance, gave … had hit her account yet. Meet the Operatives Who Profited From January 6: Charlie Kirk & Co.

Meet the Operatives Who Profited From January 6


“We’re going to raise money from ‘stop the steal,’” he told an aide. “It will be like falling off a log.”
In late December, [Roger] Stone used a “Stop the Steal” site to falsely claim George Soros was funding violent “attacks on our peaceful patriots” and to request contributions…

Christians Against Christian Nationalism.
Watch @AmandaTylerBJC’s full testimony to the House Oversight Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.
I testified before Congress this morning that “#ChristianNationalism often overlaps with and provides cover for white supremacy and racial subjugation.” Thank you @RepRaskin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3AqNB8OnPg
https://twitter.com/AmandaTylerBJC/status/1602720928739229697

Brian Allen @allenanalysis
Joe Biden is currently leading against Donald Trump in key states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and New Hampshire, not only surpassing Trump but also outdoing his own 2020 victory margins in these areas.
Despite this significant development, it hasn’t been widely reported.
This makes it clear that the media may be selectively focusing on narratives that favor Trump, overshadowing news that could be detrimental to his image.
It’s crucial to stay vigilant and not be swayed by this apparent media strategy.

“A watchdog group is suing Cochise County officials for delays in providing records related to the county’s controversial management of the 2022 election, from its attempt at a hand count of all ballots to the taxpayer cost of hiring outside attorneys.”
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2024/01/10/cochise-county-faces-lawsuit-for-election-records-delay/72176627007/

The charade is over. Evangelical universe is infiltrated by hell bent political hacks disguised as some true faith based messengers from the Lord. Throw in the flock of non critical thinking lemmings and you have not a “church” but a tinderbox.

@richsignorelli Our democracy is under attack from Trump/MAGA. Many are culpable, 4 stand out:
-McConnell deciding v Trump impeachment for 1/6 thinking he would go away.
-CJ Roberts allowing gerrymandering/dark $.
-Garland delaying prosecution of Trump et al.
-Murdoch spreading lies to the gullible.
Garland has now supplanted Newt Gingrich in that foursome because although Newt’s evil impact on the #GOP cannot be denied, our AG was in a position to excise that cancer & instead chose to do nothing. As a result, Newt’s disciples are now openly & fearlessly seditious.

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), Vice Chairwoman of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol
Liz Cheney: House GOP enabled “white nationalism, white supremacy and anti-semitism”
Which part of the Civil War “could have been negotiated”? The slavery part? The secession part? Whether Lincoln should have preserved the Union? Question for members of the GOP—the party of Lincoln—who have endorsed Donald Trump: How can you possibly defend this?

The National Guard WAS prepared to deploy to the Capitol, but were delayed for 3 hours per order of the Department of Defense officials, which included CHARLES FLYNN, brother of “5th Amendment” Trump supporter, Gen. MICHAEL FLYNN.
DOD Took Hours To Approve National Guard Request During Capitol Riot, Commander Says
Walker said that Lt. Gen. Walter Piatt and Lt. Gen. Charles Flynn were concerned about the optics of sending the National Guard to the scene of the uprising.
https://www.npr.org/2021/03/03/973292523/dod-took-hours-to-approve-national-guard-request-during-capitol-riot-commander-s

 

@ConsumerReports analyzed Facebook data files donated by 709 volunteers to identify which companies are sharing the most data and what it means for you.
FACEBOOK helped CR recruit participants. What they discovered was striking:
https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics/privacy/each-facebook-user-is-monitored-by-thousands-of-companies-a5824207467/

Mark Zuckerberg’s bunker access code is 2165# lol
Mark Zuckerberg of $META has said he’s raising cattle on beer and macadamia nuts to “create some of the highest quality beef in the world.”
ZUCKERBERG SUCKS
META SUCKS
INSTAGRAM SUCKS

A New Lawsuit Shows How Recklessly Facebook Endangers Kids
BYROB LARSON
Facebook parent company Meta is facing a massive lawsuit alleging the company is knowingly hurting young people, including by accepting underage use. Court documents suggest this is true — and that executives have been egregiously callous about harms to kids.
Metacurse
Another interesting feature of the states’ complaint concerns the decision-making related to these problems, especially the abuse of notifications to keep users leashed to their devices and the platforms. The company’s own chief marketing officer supported a proposal to cut back on the platform’s heavy use of notifications, writing in an email thread, “Fundamentally I believe that we have abused the notifications channel as a company.” The chief of product agreed — only to be overruled by Zuckerberg himself.
“…a 2020 internal Meta presentation…saying Meta should take advantage of…psychological weaknesses of young users…(it) argued that rather than designing its platforms to avoid harming minors, it should take advantage of their vulnerabilities.”
https://jacobin.com/2024/01/lawsuit-kids-meta-facebook-profit

ECP Nethappenings Weekend Reading

©1998 *Educational CyberPlayGround®
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©ECP Blog ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
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©1993 https://k12playground.com
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Enjoy the Great Reads Everyone!

#POLITICS #AI #HEALTH #SECURITY #BITCOIN

#POLITICS

ლ(ᗒ⏠ᗕლ) It’s like Watergate but with Morons
18% of Americans think Trump is the most admired man in America. 25% of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth. It’s not hard to see why so many are so easily manipulated.

The New York attorney general asked a judge to ban former President Donald Trump from doing real estate business in the state for life, ban him from serving as an officer or director of a New York corporation, and fined $370 million.

We Don’t Talk About Leonard
The conservative legal movement in the United States is more powerful than ever. One largely unknown man has played a significant role in pushing the American judiciary to the right: Leonard Leo.
Leonard Leo realized it wasn’t enough to have justices on his side. They needed to decide the right cases, brought by the right lawyers, heard by the right lower court judges. He built a machine to do just that.
https://www.propublica.org/article/we-dont-talk-about-leonard-podcast

Trump Breaks the Law
Today, the House Oversight Committee Democrats released a report revealing that former President Trump’s businesses received $7.8 million from foreign governments over two years of his presidency. China was the biggest spender. Saudi Arabia was second.
Money flowed through his various hotels. Disgusting corruption — and gross violation of Constitution’s emoluments clause.

Former Capitol Police officer outspoken about Jan. 6 launches run for Congress
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/former-capitol-police-officer-harry-dunn-jan-6-run-congress-rcna132110

Chuck Todd: Confronting Trump
The Trump era shows that frontal confrontation, not bank-shot attacks, are the way to deal with the former president. But the lesson hasn’t sunk in everywhere.

Traitor Mike Flynn is a  Vladimir Putin partner and should be arrested now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCIHd5ppR9w
@jimstewartson  “The root cause of Mike Flynn’s damage is his parents Helen & Charles who were racist, fascist monsters.
Helen dragged her kids to what Mike Flynn calls “forced family fun” which
were “anti-communist,” anti-abortion marches. Helen had nine kids because she was a religious cult member.
Mike Flynn blamed his mom for the occult “I AM” prayer he led an evangelical church to chant. He said he kept in his wallet.
Flynn has talked about his father’s physical abuse countless times, and made it clear that his mom was psychologically abusive as well.”

There is one theory that fully explains the massive support that Trump continues to get among the Republican voting base: That they’re racist. To be clear, this is a theory, not a conclusion. News consumers deserve an explanation for the MAGA phenomenon and right now they’re not getting it. And this theory certainly would explain a lot. Racism, especially when it comes to calling specific people or practices racist, has long been the third rail of journalism. Newsroom leaders don’t want to be accused of stoking racial resentment, don’t want to alienate racist readers, and don’t want to have to defend their own insufficient attempts to diversify their newsrooms and sources. They just don’t want to go there.
https://presswatchers.org/2024/01/how-much-of-trumps-support-is-due-to-racism/

Fox News Habba says:
I think it should be a slam dunk in the supreme court. I have faith in
them. You know, people like Kavanaugh, who the president fought for,
who the president went through hell to get into place. He’ll step up.

Kavanaugh MUST RECUSE HIMSELF.

Illinois voters latest to challenge Trump candidacy under 14th Amendment
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4389686-illinois-voters-latest-to-challenge-trump-candidacy-under-14th-amendment/

More than 1,230 people have been charged with federal crimes in the riot
One of the biggest remaining mysteries surrounding the riot is the identity of the person who placed two pipe bombs outside the offices of the Republican and Democratic national committees the day before the Capitol attack.
https://apnews.com/article/capitol-riot-jan-6-criminal-cases-anniversary-bf436efe760751b1356f937e55bedaa5

Why Trump can’t use the ‘idiot’ defense other Jan. 6 defendants often lean on
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-cant-use-idiot-defense-jan-6-defendants-often-lean-rcna129961

Florida venue cancels Marjorie Taylor Greene event after learning of its Jan. 6 focus. The event was originally touted as book-signing hosted by a local Republican Party.
The GOP glorification of the failed 1/6 coup is reminiscent of the NAZI glorification of the failed 1923 Beer Hall Putsch
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/florida-venue-cancels-marjorie-taylor-greene-jan-6-event-rcna132365

Great news! Florida abortion rights initiative reaches ballot threshold
The state validated 910,946 signatures as of Friday. Advocates needed only 891,523 to make the ballot.
https://www.axios.com/2024/01/05/florida-abortion-ballot-vote-2024

Christian Vanderbrouk:
Trump lawyer: “The objective here is to create delay… void the results favoring Biden.”
They tried to disenfranchise millions of Americans to give Trump illegitimate power.
It was a plot against the US Constitution and democracy itself and they’d do it again if we let them.
We still don’t know where all the classified documents Trump stole went to. He flew some to Bedminster in advance of one of his Saudi Foreign Agent events, and they’ve disappeared forever.

China spent nearly $5.6m at Trump Tower in NYC, and at his two Trump International Hotels in DC and Las Vegas.
Saudi Arabia spent the next-greatest sum, with $615,422 channeled to Trump Tower and the Trump International Hotel in DC. Qatar spent $465,744 at Trump World Tower, a NYC apartment building.
Others include, Afghanistan, Kuwait, India, Malaysia, the Philippines and the United Arab Emirates.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2024/jan/04/biden-republican-january-6-trump-election-politics-latest-updates

Tool and the Gang
For example, it happened with St. John McCain, who caused great offense to the dominionist scum who are one of the central pillars of the Republican Party.

We’re In An Epidemic Of Right-Wing Terror. Won’t Someone Tell The Press? More than a decade of media malpractice enabled January 6. Has the media learned its lesson?
https://buckscountybeacon.com/2024/01/were-in-an-epidemic-of-right-wing-terror-wont-someone-tell-the-press/

Trump shared his video on claiming that God has chosen him to be “a shepherd to mankind.” This is not funny. This is not parody. This is terrifying. God Made Trump (According to Trump) | Antichrist 45
Donald Trump’s campaign directly orchestrated the filing of a certificate, signed by 16 Michigan Republicans, that falsely claimed he won the state’s 2020 election, according to internal campaign emails obtained by The Detroit News.

Deranged Trump wrote, “CROOKED JOE BIDEN and the Radical Left Democrats, together with their minions in the DOJ, are coming after me…Crooked Joe is a Threat to Democracy!!!
They are setting a horrible precedent for the future of our Country.”
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-doj-investigation-2666879752/

A federal court in Georgia has ruled that the challenge to 360,000 Georgians’ right to vote — suspiciously targeting Black voters — does not violate the  Voting Rights Act. This decision poses a devastating threat to the 2024 election.
https://www.gregpalast.com/court-approves-vigilante-mass-voter-challengesdevastating-threat-to-2024-election/

Biden falls behind Trump’s pace on confirming judges as he enters a fourth year in office

Ohio’s lawless, gerrymandered politicians cooking up another outrageous scheme: “The bill would make it so the Ohio General Assembly, not the courts, would have exclusive authority over implementing Issue 1, which
covers reproductive decisions.”
https://www.wlwt.com/article/ohio-issue-1-abortion-reproductive-rights-new-bill/46285727

#AI

Artificial Intelligence’s Threat to Democracy
By Jen Easterly, Scott Schwab, and Cait Conley
January 3, 2024
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/print/node/1131238

Counting—and perhaps more importantly, it lies about whether it knows how to count. It’s completely false that it has “been programmed to accurately perform tasks like counting”; in fact the opposite is true.
AI WILL LIE TO YOU ABOUT ANYTHING IT WANTS TO LIE ABOUT.

#HEALTH

Nature’s Neighborhood Surprise: 1,000+ Wildlife Species Under Our Noses
https://scitechdaily.com/natures-neighborhood-surprise-1000-wildlife-species-under-our-noses/

Researchers may have discovered the cause of Parkinson’s disease
https://www.thebrighterside.news/post/researchers-may-have-discovered-the-cause-of-parkinson-s-disease

Telehealth for weight loss drugs
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/weight-loss-drug-online-website-eli-lilly-rcna131597
Lilly’s weight loss drug Zepbound.
The doctors will work independently and will be able to prescribe any FDA-approved weight loss drug — they won’t be required to prescribe Lilly’s Zepbound.

Surprising connection between dinosaurs and human ageing
The Longevity Bottleneck Hypothesis
It suggests that the rapid aging observed in modern mammals, including humans, is a consequence of this ancient genetic legacy.

Hospitals seeing ‘exponential’ rise in flu cases in Western Pa.
https://triblive.com/local/regional/hospitals-seeing-exponential-rise-in-flu-cases-in-western-pa/

#SECURITY

In 1959, Volvo invented the 3 point seat belt and gave the free license away to all auto manufacturers dramatically improving drivers and passengers safety

Chinese billionaire behind Himalaya Exchange indicted for $1B scheme
https://protos.com/chinese-billionaire-behind-himalaya-exchange-indicted-for-1b-scheme/
(the billionaire  involved Bannon)

Breaking “DRM” in Polish trains
Reverse engineering a train to analyze a suspicious malfunction
We’ve all been there: the trains you’re servicing for a customer suddenly brick themselves and the manufacturer claims that’s because you’ve interfered with a security system.
This talk will tell the story of a series of Polish EMUs (Electric Multiple Unit) that all refused to move a few days after arriving at an “unauthorized” service company. We’ll go over how a train control system actually works, how we reverse-engineered one and what sort of magical “security” systems we actually found inside of it.
Reality sometimes is stranger than the wildest CTF task. Reality sometimes is running `unlock.py` on a dozen trains.
The talk will be a mix of technical and non-technical aspects of analysis which should be understandable for anyone with a technical background. We’ll briefly explain how modern EMUs look like inside, how the Train Control & Monitoring System works, and how to analyze TriCore machine code.

Origin Stories: Plantations, Computers, and Industrial Control
Meredith Whittaker

Iranian attacks on U.S. water systems and the data broker economy

#BITCOIN

Nobel Prize winning economist, Friedrich Hayek predicted #Bitcoin in the year 1984. Legendary.

Michael Saylor thinks #Bitcoin will hit $350,000 in 2024.

@Timccopeland
Full quote: “I heard from a pretty well placed source that Blackrock has more than $2 billion lined up in week one in new incremental flows from existing Bitcoin holders who are adding to positions — I can’t vouch for that. But you know, that’s what everyone is doing. Just making phone calls and trying to find the folks who can write checks into these products. And our estimates — that, you know, if that $2 billion happened in week one, you know, that would blow away our estimates. We’re at $2.5 billion in the first quarter of trading, which we do by looking at the past flows into the first gold ETF and adjusting by the US money supply. And we have a $40 billion market opportunity over two years based on the similar analysis.”

ECP NetHappenings From The Opium Wars TO Bitcoin

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ROUND AND ROUND WE GO

OH THE IRONY

FROM THE OPIUM WARS TO BITCON

WE WENT FROM PAYING FOR TEA
IN THE 17TH -18th CENTURY USING SILVER THEN GOLD
TO NOW USING BITCOIN 21ST CENTURY

Bitcoins use by tea trade brought to notice of Ministry, board

KOLKATA, January 5, 2014
The attention of the Commerce Ministry and Tea Board has been drawn to a section of small and specialised tea growers and exporters opting for US-based online trading platforms to use digital currency Bitcoin as a means of expanding their international business, bypassing the normal banking channels and thus depriving the Exchequer of revenue.

YOU CAN MINE BITCOIN BY HAND

Ken Sherriff : Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day
I decided to see how practical it would be to mine Bitcoin with pencil and paper. It turns out that the SHA-256 algorithm used for mining is pretty simple and can in fact be done by hand. Not surprisingly, the process is extremely slow compared to hardware mining and is entirely impractical. But performing the algorithm manually is a good way to understand exactly how it works.

THE FIGHT FOR CONTROL OF THE WORLD’S WEALTH IS BETWEEN MERCHANTS AND ROYALTY

The very essence of the banking system is to make us all slaves to debt.
American Credit card and debit fees in the U.S. totaled $72 billion in 2013.
Americans’ total credit card balance is $1.079 trillion in the third quarter of 2023, according to the latest data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

ECP NetHappenings How many Satoshi’s are in 1 Whole BITCOIN