• 0 Posts
  • 7 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
cake
Cake day: July 1st, 2023

help-circle

  • Dehumanization is a core mechanism of fascism. It’s not possible to eradicate fascism by using its tools. Your statement also stands in stark contrast with your position that empathy is the most important part of a person.

    The problem is, we’re all capable of atrocities, even if some are much more easily convinced to participate than others. It’s an uncomfortable truth of being human. But we have the choice to attack the parts which are actually contemptible - their words and actions. Alienating people based on their physical appearance equally alienates the people who perceive themselves to have a physical similarity, even when they hold entirely opposite views. That collateral damage is neither necessary nor desirable.




  • Persona’s exposed code compares your selfie to watchlist photos using facial recognition, screens you against 14 categories of adverse media from mentions of terrorism to espionage, and tags reports with codenames from active intelligence programs consisting of public-private partnerships to combat online child exploitative material, cannabis trafficking, fentanyl trafficking, romance fraud, money laundering, and illegal wildlife trade

    In the 1930’s, IBM subsidiary companies were responsible for the census data and concentration camp cataloguing systems in Nazi Germany (and it’s invaded territories). The numbers tattooed on prisoners were five-digit IBM Hollerith numbers, corresponding to their dedicated punch card. With an estimated 40k+ camps of different types, the machine leases would have been very lucrative for IBM. They won’t say how lucrative, and they made sure they had complex financial setups through “neutral” countries.

    IBM systems also underpinned the concentration “internment” camps in the US holding people of Japanese background. But of course, they’re much louder about their 1930’s history in winning the US Social Security contract - older SSNs were also Hollerith numbers.

    It would be amusing that punch cards were a more secure system if history didn’t look like it was rapidly repeating.


  • Because they’re using them in their products, or the non-public infrastructure that keeps the product running, or their teams are using them internally.

    Check the licenses of the projects you listed. If they allow free commercial use, you can assume those products are key to the software somewhere.

    Don’t underestimate how much of big tech is made of OSS - companies will always take free stuff. They pay them because if the projects die or are compromised, so are their paid products.