I used to work for a company that did various kinds of biometric recognition. I unfortunately was paraded past these cameras many times for testing purposes, so my face was compromised many moons ago.

We had two kinds of products we installed in airports. When looking at large crowds most airports wanted cameras that would monitor the flow of traffic, determining if there were any bottlenecks causing people to arrive at their gate (or baggage claim) after their luggage.

The other product was facial recognition for identification purposes. These are the machines you have to stand right next to. There are various legal reasons airports did not want to use any crowd-level cameras for identification. They hadn’t obtained consent, but also, the low resolution per face would lead to many more false positives. It was also too costly.

But we did have high def cameras installed in strategic locations at large music halls. These private companies were less concerned with privacy and more concerned with keeping banned individuals out of their property. In those cases, we registered faces of people who were kicked out for various reasons and ignored all other faces.

My point I guess is twofold: first, you might not be facially tracked in as many places as you think you are. Second, eventually you will be and there’s not a whole lot we can do to stop it. For many years, Target has identified people with their payment card, used facial recognition to detect when they return to the store, and used crowd tracking to see where in the store you go (and sometimes they have even changed ad displays based on the demographics of people standing nearby).

Mostly, you will be identified and tracked when there is financial incentive to do so.

Makes sense. Thanks for the info!

I finally got fed up with my Windows machine and upon seeing symptoms of motherboard failure, I’ve ordered all the parts for a new rig and intend on installing Linux as my primary OS.

Haven’t decided on a distro yet. I’m a DevOps engineer with a few passion projects, so I plan on setting up a couple of kubernetes clusters where I can play. I do all the usual things (word processing, gaming, web browsing, multimedia, etc), plus some AI stuff (stable diffusion, local LLMs, OpenCV). Ideally don’t want to have to fuss with drivers too much, but I don’t mind getting my hands dirty every now and then.

Is Chimera the kind of distro I should be looking at, or should I pick something else for my first go at full-time Linux?

I agree. As much as I want to see an open debate between potential candidates, narrowing it down to a single alternative and have a vote whether to switch to that person or stay with Biden… the financial side makes that idea seem unrealistic.

I think the most viable option is to have Biden step down and Harris step up. As much as Kamala Harris is not my favorite politician, I think we all understand this is not about having someone we like in the White House, it’s about ensuring someone with plans to dismantle democracy does not get the chance to bring those plans to fruition.

The red tape Super PACs get around concerns how much money can be received. While a presidential campaign can only receive $3,300 from an individual, and a traditional PAC can receive up to $5,000, a Super PAC can receive unlimited donations from both individuals and corporations. That’s the money laundering part - it allows the super rich to put unlimited money toward a political cause even though the system was originally designed to prevent this.

But the official name for Super PACs is “Independent-expenditure-only political committee”. So, while they are allowed to receive unlimited funds, they cannot give it to a campaign or do any spending in coordination with a campaign (though how many Super PACs strictly follow the no coordination rule is hard to quantify).

Essentially, the DNC giving the money to a Super PAC would be similar to if they kept the money and did the independent political expenditures themselves. The difference being that they would lose control over what independent expenditures the money goes towards.

That’s an oversimplification. The Biden campaign has around $240 million on hand. If Harris becomes the presidential nominee, her campaign inherits the entire $240 mil.

If another person becomes the nominee, the Biden campaign could refund contributions so they can be sent to the new campaign directly. Otherwise, they are permitted to transfer as much as they want to the DNC.

But the DNC can’t spend the money however they like. They can spend an unlimited amount supporting the new candidate independently (running ads, oppo research, etc), but there is a limit to how much they can spend in coordination with the campaign. For example, if they rent a venue for the candidate, that must be coordinated with the campaign and therefore counts towards coordinated expenditures. The coordinated expenditure limit per presidential cycle is $32.3 million.

And if they want to give directly to the campaign, that is even more limited. A political committee can only give $5,000 dollars per campaign per election cycle. Anything more than that would have to go to some kind of Super PAC which also has limits in what it can do in direct coordination with a campaign (though it gets fuzzier because Super PACs are tantamount to political money laundering in my opinion).

So no, if the DNC gets the money, they can’t just give it to whatever campaign they like. The limitations are not due to any contractual obligation when donating the funds, but rather US political rules on how presidential campaigns are allowed to receive money.

Source: https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2024-07-19/what-happens-to-bidens-campaign-money-if-he-drops-out

Oh whale…

Sorry I’m late for work, I got sucked into a black hole again. No, I didn’t take a picture of the event horizon, you should just take my word for it. I wouldn’t even be late if it weren’t for the time dilation.

I’d call it a success, in that as I was scrolling, before I saw the title, I thought, “Is that meant to be Danny Pudi?”

One thing that they are confirmed to do is when someone you interact with a lot searches for something, that person may be interpreted as a family member and results from their searches may show up in your ads. Devious af.

I’m planning on getting the iPhone 15, now that they’re switching to USB C. My last iPhone was an iPhone 4.

To be honest, some of the cultish gimmicks have swayed me. The “in group” mentality of having the right color of text messages. The ability to send videos that aren’t garbage quality. The ease of having shared photo albums with people in my family who also have iPhones. I know these are mostly underhanded tactics from Apple to make their product a status symbol, but I’ve grown tired of being on the outside. Still, I’m keeping my Android as a second line for various reasons.

There are a few hardware components that made me consider spending the money on an iPhone. The biggest one is the Lidar sensor. I don’t know of any other phone that gives you the ability to combine Lidar and camera technology to create full color 3D models of your surroundings. I can’t wait to 3D print my cat.

8 years if you invest the money and get a 10% roi each year. Not that I was going to.

My favorite games on Android:

1. Shattered Pixel Dungeon

• [Endlessly replayable roguelike. Clear each floor, identify potions, drink the right one to level up so you can use better weapons and armor, keep your health high and see how deep you can get in the dungeon. Game time only advances when you move.]

2. Slay the Spire

• [Deck building game. Use attack, skill, and power cards to beat enemies and earn new cards, use your choice of cards, relics, potions, and card upgrades to create synergies in your deck and make it past all three acts to win the game. Deck resets when you lose (or win).]

3. Infinitode 2

• [Tower defense game. Stop enemy shapes from advancing to earn gold, use gold to buy new towers, upgrade your towers, and swap out various types of tower to maximize your efficiency. Keep an eye on how close enemies are getting to your base or it will be overrun before you notice.]

4. Super Auto Pets

• [Pocket monster-style battling game. Use a limited amount of resources each turn to buy new bitmoji animals and watch your team face off against a random opponent at the same stage of the game, keep hearts if you win, lose hearts if you lose, get better quality pets each round you progress. See if you can win ten rounds to claim victory.]

5. Tomb of the Mask

• [Classic-style 2D arcade game. Use the four directional controls to zip past moving obstacles, collect all the dots on your way to the exit if you can, enjoy the snappy movements and fun retro sound effects. Very reflex-driven.]

6. Antiyoy

• [Turn-based hexagon-tiled conquest game. Buy houses to get more income, buy soldiers and towers to protect your land, upgrade soldiers and towers to face off against enemy assets, careful you don’t upgrade them more than your income supports, enjoy the many hundreds of user-submitted maps. Single player by default, or get Antiyoy Online to compete against other players.]

7. Mindustry

• [Realtime strategy. Research new technologies, build mining drills, create weapons, face off against enemy forces to control the map. Steep learning curve.]

8. Dungeon Cards

• [Tile-based strategy game. Pick a card, help your card survive on a 3x3 grid by using the four directional controls to swap places with any adjacent card, while being careful not to pick fights you can’t win, be strategic about when you pick up weapons and potions. Don’t get caught surrounded by poisons, explosives, or enemies at the wrong moment.]

9. Atomas

• [Science-themed matching game. Distribute atoms around a ring, watch atoms merge and transform into larger atoms when they match, set up chain reactions of many atoms each finding their mates at the same time, careful not to fill the ring beyond its capacity. Learn the periodic table in the process.]

10. I Love Hue

• [Relaxing color matching game. Get a mess of jumbled tiles on a grid and swap tiles around until they form pleasing gradients along both the y and x axes. Breathe in. Hold… Breathe out.]

Honorable classic game mentions:

• Chess [It’s chess.]
• Rummikub [“Rummy-cube”, compete against other players, using tiles from your hand to form “runs” (red3, red4, red5) and “sets” (red3, blue3, black3) in the playing area until a player wins by using all their tiles. At least 3 tiles per set/run, must play 30 points from your own hand on the same turn before manipulating tiles played by others.]
• Rommy’s Gauntlet [Level-for-level remake of the Windows 95 “Best of Windows Entertainment Pack” classic, Chip’s Challenge. Tile-based puzzle game.]

“Hey, you want to play some YYWTGRSHYGNLSYCT tonight?”

“Yeah, I’d love to play some YYWTGRSHYGNLSYCT, bro.”

“Cool, let’s get our YYWTGRSHYGNLSYC on.”

“Wait, what game?”

Cool metaphor and all, but just want to be super clear. We’re talking about regulating oil, right? And plastics, coal, other fossil fuel derivatives. And no one’s going to come take away my candy. Stay away from my candy. Don’t take it, it’s mine.