I’m so glad I never sent them my DNA. It was tempting from a genealogy perspective. But my concerns about privacy and them selling on customer information always weighed heavier than that temptation.

But I feel a lot of sympathy for those who used their services. For a while they incessantly advertised them, including via paid endorsements from many ‘trusted’ podcasters and YouTubers. The company’s failure should bring to the fore a drive for new laws in many countries to protect consumers’ DNA from being monetized and exploited. But sadly we all know it won’t.

Altman is the latest from the conveyor belt of mustache-twirling frat-bro super villains.

Move over Musk and Zuckerberg, there’s a new shit-heel in town!

This has the makings of a great sci-fi story.

Oh he’s screwed. She’s going to sentence him to be hung hanged, drawn, and quartered for trying to kill her lord and savior.

Oh, fair point.

Interesting article. But is that seriously the best AI-generated image they could find for this story?

Nevermind, I guess it probably is a real photo, just from a really weird perspective, so it’s like like the plane below it is merging into the plane in the foreground.

This is exactly my situation. My kids and I could move over there easily and in an instant, legally. But I’m not sure what the process is for my wife.

Also, there’s more to moving to another country than just the legality (and that aspect alone is insurmountable for many unsuspecting people). You’re talking about leaving/moving/selling all your belongings, vehicle(s), possibly also a home. And going through the whole process of getting a new job, new schools, cultural shock for kids. And transferring money over, setting up be accounts, etc. And dealing with starting from scratch with credit scores and such. And all that would involve moving back to a country that has its own pretty profound struggles right now. It’s a massive headache. But it’s something we are definitely considering.

Great point about the battery size.

The Kremlin must have stopped sending out payments to them. The dirty money dries up (presumably due to sanctions?) so Meta finally gets a conscience.

That had one job to do, and they totally screwed it up!

Me too. My initial guess is it’s something along the lines of a Stuxnet infection of the targeted pagers, which had the operating systems do something that caused the batteries to overheat and explode.

But the fact that they all exploded at the same time is very interesting. You’d think that do ing that by overheating the batteries would see them explode at slightly different times due to local environmental variables.

ETA: As others have pointed out, this must be more than just a lithium ion battery overheating/exploding. I read somewhere that Hezbollah inserts a self-destruct explosive into their pagers in case of emergency. And it sounds like the Israeli intelligence forces probably hacked into their network and triggered the detonations. So it’s probably a combination of Hezbollah’s paranoia combined with old school hacking from Israel.

It’s interesting to me how Ackman was portrayed in the 2016 Betting On Zero documentary as some kind of social champion for the poor who wanted to end the exploitation of regular working/middle class Americans by Herbalife.

When watching that that depiction of Ackman rang hollow, no matter how hard they tried to push that narrative. It just seemed like a financial battle royale where both sides were scumbags. And now, of course, that’s been confirmed (yet again). He’s just another entitled ultra-rich asshole peddling bullshit for his own selfish, exploitative intentions.

“…And your wonderful corporate family takes priority over your shitty personal family!”

They are too used to the typical news cycle where they bombard the public with lies to the point where everyone starts believing those are real. They’ve grown complacent.

Grilling chicken in Ohio, eh? Hmm, I hear there’s a huge orange chicken who is scared to have a second debate because he got so badly humiliated in the first one. He might want to stay away from Ohio since they are grilling his kind.

Oh man, if word gets back to Trump that some of his advisors told CNN behind his back that they were stunned (in a bad way) by his debate performance, he’s going to completely lose his damned mind. It’ll push him into a massive paranoia complex. The screaming, the tantrums, the threats against his own team… They will be unreal.

So… Who wants to ping him on Twitter about this? 😈

I find the fact that the Qanon loonies are appropriating the symbolism of legendary rock band Queen both hilarious and offensive.

How the fuck did she think this was anything close to a good idea?! This shows a profound lack of good judgement, and a huge failure of both respect for her job and for the safety of the crew.

I am totally fine with this strategy. My oldest just got his first phone, mostly so he could connect with his friends and contact my wife and I in an emergency. His school requires all students to put their phones in a container when they enter a class (they also have several charging ports available in each classroom, so students can charge their phones during class - a very considerate feature).

From what I can tell no kids or their parents have a problem with this. My wife and I certainly don’t. It helps instill sensible technology usage habits in our kid. And it gives him more independence from us. And in this case, kids can still use their phones during lunch and before/after school. But just not during classes. Not only is this a very reasonable requirement IMO, it’s an excellent way to get them to interact more.

Framing this requirement as “going back in time” is silly. Certainly in situations where kids are only banned from using their phones in class.

No no, they just accidentally ingest some polonium tea… and then shoot themselves in the back of the head with a shotgun… and then jump off a roof.