SecretGardener

@secretgardener@mstdn.social
123 Followers
249 Following
2.2K Posts
France’s €2,000 e-bike subsidy goes live, adds second-hand option https://www.cyclingelectric.com/news/e-bike-subsidy-france
France’s €2,000 e-bike subsidy goes live, adds second-hand option

The French Government has now followed through on an earlier commitment to offer any resident a state-funded bike or e-bike

Cycling Electric
Right now #wind is meeting 25% of the National Grid's electricity demand. https://winderful.uk

Anyone wearing one of these things should be required to display a warning sign.

“Bee makes a $49.99 Fitbit-like device that listens in on your conversations while using AI to transcribe everything that you and the people around you say, allowing it to generate personalized summaries of your days, reminders, and suggestions from within the Bee app.”

#AI #Privacy #SurveillanceCapitalism

https://www.theverge.com/news/711621/amazon-bee-ai-wearable-acquisition

Amazon buys Bee AI wearable that listens to everything you say

Amazon is acquiring Bee, an AI startup that created a wrist-based device that listens to everything you say and creates AI-generated transcripts.

The Verge
I am fixing a wrong that has persisted for over fifty years.
When I was fourteen years old I was unmarried and pregnant.
In those days I would like to say attitudes were different but in many states we have made no progress.
I was constantly pressured to give my baby up to a good family that could offer her more than I could, ever hope to.
I said no and became an emancipated minor.
I was not treated well in labor and delivery as no doctor would show up. My friend's mother who was an RN delivered her. Just her and I.
The hospital staff refused to give me a room so I was on a gurney in a hall way for a few hours before being sent home.
The hospital disagreed with the full name I chose and changed it before registering her birth. The birth certificate has been wrong all these years even though she has used the name I intended.
Today I hired an attorney to help her to clean this all up.
Now is not a good time to have a name discrepancy.
Finally.
A rose from our garden.
It’s “frighteningly likely” many US courts will overlook AI errors, expert says
Judges pushed to bone up on AI or risk destroying their court's authority.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/07/its-frighteningly-likely-many-us-courts-will-overlook-ai-errors-expert-says/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

“Microsoft is using engineers in China to help maintain the Defense Department’s computer systems — with minimal supervision by U.S. personnel — leaving some of the nation’s most sensitive data vulnerable to hacking from its leading cyber adversary, a ProPublica investigation has found.”

https://www.propublica.org/article/microsoft-digital-escorts-pentagon-defense-department-china-hackers

#USPol #StupidStupid

A Little-Known Microsoft Program Could Expose the Defense Department to Chinese Hackers

The Pentagon bans foreign citizens from accessing highly sensitive data, but Microsoft bypasses this by using engineers in China and elsewhere to remotely instruct American “escorts” who may lack expertise to identify malicious code.

ProPublica
Maybe 20 years ago my wife-to-be and I were in Chicago and went to a Second City show. One of the skits was about ICE. To demonstrate what they were like, the lights in the theater were doused, and a couple of actors in cop hats came in carrying flashlights, and confronted random members of the audience, demanding proof of citizenship. Well, guess what: middle-class theater-goers don't carry their passports or birth certificates around with them.
The conservative pressure campaign that turned all the big tech companies into Trump appeasers is now coming for AI. It's totally unconstitutional, and might work anyway. I talked to some legal experts about it: https://www.platformer.news/andrew-bailey-chatgpt-trump-jawboning-legal-case/

As Heather Cox Richardson reports today, we now know that the day after the lethal floods occurred in Texas, Kristi Noem did not renew the contracts for four call center companies answering emergency calls for FEMA help — so that on July 6, FEMA answered only 35.8% of the calls it received and the following day, only 15.9%:

#Trump #Republicans #KristiNoem #Texas #FEMA
/1

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-12-2025

July 12, 2025

On July 5, the day after the Texas floods hit, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) received 3,027 calls from survivors and answered 3,018 of them, about 99.7%, according to Maxine Joselow of the New York Times. But that day, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem did not renew the contracts for four call center companies that answered those calls. The staff at the centers were fired. The next day, July 6, FEMA received 2,363 calls and answered 846, or about 35.8%. On Monday, July 7, FEMA received 16,419 calls and answered 2,613, around 15.9%.

Letters from an American