The Met Office has issued an "extreme risk to life" warning for our region and my partner and I can't cope. We're extremely limited in our means, so we struggle with a regular summer heat, and right now we're both getting dangerously sick from this heat.
We've found a half decent air conditioner but as it stands we won't be able to buy it for a long time that we just don't have.
We'd be grateful for anything you can give, and it would be hugely appreciated if you could share this around so others can do the same.
Judge Araceli MartĆnez-OlguĆn approved the landmark settlement in the class action copyright lawsuit on Monday. Authors and publishers are e
Anthropic illegally downloaded some 500,000 titles, and 92% of those eligible for an awardāboth authors and publishers are entitled to paymentāhad opted into the class action. MartĆnez-OlguĆn denied all but two requests to opt out of the agreement.
āWe applaud the courtās final approval of this settlement, which represents an important victory in the larger battle to hold big tech accountable for its unscrupulous appropriation of intellectual and creative properties that clearly belong to authors and publishers,ā said Maria Pallante, president and CEO of the Association of American Publishers, in a statement.
Pallante praised the court for recognizing that downloading from pirate sites āis not a choice we should simply accept as an efficiency for the infringer; on the contrary, itās abhorrent conduct that should never be normalized.ā She also argued that fair use should not be extended to allow tech companies to copy copyrighted materials, and that tech giants should look to licensing agreements to train their AI models.
Now we'll see how long the payouts take to come through. I had between a half and two-thirds of my lifetime output stolen by these schmucks, but payouts from many of those thefts will be split 50/50 with the publishers. (Which strikes me as fair enough.)
So the waiting continues. Meanwhile, so does work...
I work with kids and sometimes we have to do safety lessons with them about like, not telling strangers on the internet your home address or something. And sometimes the kids wont understand why, so you have to impart upon them that, well, some adults want to hurt children. And thats kind of difficult to do, because you have to beat around the bush, both because you dont want to scare them (while still making them understand how serious it is) and because you might lose your job if you explain it too straight forward.
Luckily, for some reason, the villain of one of the most popular franchises with children for the last 10 years happens to be a serial child murderer. So when a kid asks why they shouldnt trust strangers, instead of hand wringing and humhawing my answer out, I can just say "we dont always know when a strange adult has good intentions with children, or when they are William Afton."
god I'm such a slut for Chinese eggplant in garlic sauce *decides itās inaccurate to refer to myself as a slut in light of my minimal sexual activity* if The Enemy discovered my ardor for Chinese eggplant in garlic sauce, they would gain a significant strategic advantage
How very depressing that Neil Gaiman had trended not even a tiny bit for demonstrating what a fucking horrific person he is.
As a reminder, he's suing Caroline Wallner, one of his accusers, for breaking her NDA. Not for libel. He's saying she shouldn't have told anyone about it, not that she lied.
The author says Wallner broke her NDA by sharing her story with the media, including with New York Magazine.
He doesn't need the money. He's risking the Streisand effect. He is punishing Caroline, he's trying to intimidate other victims who have signed NDAs to scare them into continued silence.
He is no friend to women, to the LGBTQIA+ community, to anyone quite frankly unless he thinks they are of value to him.
Share the story. Put it on Facebook and bluesky and whatever else you're on. Make it clear what a horrifying person he is. Tell your friends. He's paying Edendale a fortune to try and cover this up. Make this hard for him. Make it cost him money.
REMEMBER: you canĀ“t break NDA by speaking out about something illegal. This??
Gaiman denied that heād abused Wallner and told New York that it was she who had initiated their sexual encounters, but in 2021, Gaiman paid Wallner $275,000 in exchange for signing an extensive nondisclosure agreement that prevents her from suing Gaiman or telling anyone about her alleged experiences with him.
Has no legal basis whatsoever. This is paying someone off to keep them quiet and it's also a very typical way rich people hide their abuses, assuming their victims won't have the ability or knowledge to protect themselves. This is a textbook SLAPP suit. So yeah, she did nothing wrong, and fuck this loser.
Btw the heat *is* why we see water that's not really there, but mirages aren't exactly hallucinations so much as optical illusions:
It's just the changing density of the air refracting light weirdly, so it looks like there's a reflection of the sky on the ground, which our brains often interpret as a pool of water. It can also happen upwards instead of downwards, especially at sea, when the air is much colder near the surface and a warm front appears above it:
Which, btw, is one possible explanation for ghost ship sightings, so that's fun :)
Free service with ads: Well, if I'm not paying for it they have to foot the bill somehow.
Paid service with no ads: Well, if they're not funding it with ad revenue, they need to charge us something.
Paid service with ads: Well that's bullshit.
"We used to be a paid service without ads, but now we're putting ads in it! If you want the ad-free version you have to pay more for preeeeemium": Fuck you fuck you fuck you
a lot of people dont care about insect biomass collapse bc when they hear we are losing 2.5% of the insect biomass per year they just imagine the cockroach and housefly population decreasing by that much. they dont realize those are among the only ones that will remain unbothered
every year of restoring native plants I see a great increase in the insect populations, and loads of new insects i never saw before (all of them harmless--the insects that are harmful or parasitic on humans are the main ones being unaffected by the decrease in insect populations)
(a large part of) the problem is Plant Sameness. we must restore plant diversity
btw guys managing your symptoms also means apologizing for things you didn't mean to do. sometimes you do things because of your disorders that you genuinely didn't mean to do, but if it hurt someone you still have to take accountability and make up for the hurt you caused
Hey. If people aren't aware, Microsoft admitted they know who you and where you are at all times and will give your info to the police.
They have a Global Device Identifier (GDID) Tracker that functions as a fingerprint for your PC that can surpass VPNs, proxy servers and countries. Although it can't survive a clean reinstall of Windows (it can survive updates), because Microsoft forces you to go to the internet and log in into a Microsoft account, they will be able to get to you.
Microsoft kept it secret and it was only found out when the FBI tracked a hacker thanks to the information Microsoft gave them.
You should be paying attention to this, and possibly consider moving away from Windows. If a government, especially the US government, doesn't like you for some reason, this could be seriously concerning.
This article specifically notes:
For journalism, activism, or domestic abuse situations, skip Windows and use Linux routed through Tor instead of a commercial VPN. A GDID doesnāt care which VPN you use, only that itās still the same Windows installation.
GDID is the persistent Windows ID that helped FBI trace a Scattered Spider hacker despite VPNs. Here's how it works and how to limit it.
Other important quotes:
What has researchers uneasy is everything else the case reveals. Costin Raiu, a well-known malware researcher, asked on the Three Buddy Problem podcast how much of this exists on other platforms, and whether it is linked more permanently to hardware. Matthew Hickey, another security researcher, called Windows āsurveillance softwareā.
Two things back that up:
Thereās no consent screen. A GDID gets assigned when you sign into a Microsoft Account. Appleās advertising identifier needs an App Tracking Transparency prompt and a visible reset; Androidās works the same way. GDID has neither, and a Windows reinstall only gets you a new number Microsoft can still get back to the same account.
Then thereās activation. Massgrave, the group behind Microsoft Activation Scripts, notes that Windows setup sends hardware info to Microsoft and gets identifiers back, the same tokens later used for Store access and licensing: āItās impossible to prevent Windows from getting a GDID without breaking activation and UWP app[s].ā Anyone who lost a license after swapping a motherboard has already met a smaller version of this.
