Basic Glitch

cross-posted from: sh.itjust.works/post/54622575 emails released by the US Justice Department as part of its Epstein Files disclosures reveal that Jeffrey Epstein emailed Gavin Andresen two days prior to Andresen visiting the CIA headquarters to discuss Bitcoin in June 2011. Andresen was the successor to Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin. Nakamoto personally chose Andresen to be the lead maintainer of Bitcoin development and gave him Commit key access. The newly disclosed sequence of events is remarkably coincidental. Nakamoto retired on April 26, 2011, one day before Andresen announced that he was going to speak about Bitcoin at the CIA headquarters in June. Although Nakamoto never blamed Andresen’s decision for prompting his retirement, there’s widespread speculation that he was unhappy about Andresen attracting government attention to Bitcoin development. Despite Nakamoto’s resignation, Andresen followed-through on his controversial April promise, speaking at the CIA headquarters on June 14, 2011 to discuss Bitcoin. The week before, on June 6, tech reporter and socialite Jason Calacanis responded to an email from Epstein, promising to send along Andresen’s contact information. “I would like to get in touch with the Bitcoin guys,” Epstein emailed Calacanis eight days before Andresen’s CIA meeting.

So what exactly did Ghori reveal on Relentless? Well, he seemed to tip off the possibility that xAI has been skirting regulations and getting dubious permits when building data centers—specifically, its prized Colossus supercomputer in Memphis, Tennessee. “The lease for the land itself was actually technically temporary. It was the fastest way to get the permitting through and actually start building things,” he said. “I assume that it’ll be permanent at some point, but it’s a very short-term lease at the moment, technically, for all the data centers. It’s the fastest way to get things done.” When asked how xAI has gone about getting those temporary leases, Ghori explained that they worked with local and state governments to get permits that allow companies to “modify this ground temporarily,” and said they are typically for things like carnivals. Colossus was not without controversy already. The data center, which xAI brags only took 122 days to build, was powered by at least 35 methane gas turbines that the company reportedly didn’t have the permits to operate. Even the Donald Trump-staffed Environmental Protection Agency declared the turbines to be illegal. Those turbines, which were operating without permission, contributed to the significant amount of air pollution experienced by surrounding communities. In addition to the indication of other potential legal end-arounds committed by xAI, Ghori also revealed some of the company’s internal operations, including relying significantly on AI agents to complete work. “Right now, we’re doing a big rebuild of our core production APIs. It’s being done by one person with like 20 agents,” he said. “And they’re very good, and they’re capable of doing it, and it’s working well,” though he later stated that the reliance on agents can lead to confusion. “Multiple times I’ve gotten a ping saying, ‘Hey, this guy on the org chart reports to you. Is he not in today or something?’ And it’s an AI. It’s a virtual employee.”

Going into this week’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the White House’s top science and technology adviser, Michael Kratsios, signaled some chilly conversations with European leaders may lie ahead on the topic of artificial intelligence and the way it is regulated. “I will continue to point out to my tech minister counterparts the ways they can create a regulatory environment to allow AI to thrive,” Kratsios told NBC News, “to make sure they’re not getting ahead of themselves with overburdening regulations, like the EU AI Act, which are an absolute disaster.” For Kratsios, the Trump administration’s light-touch approach to AI regulation is the winning formula. "There’s been an A-B test for decades on how you lead in technology, and it’s very obvious what the recipe is,” said Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and one of the nation’s leading artificial intelligence advisers.

"Our caucus members will oppose all funding for immigration enforcement in any appropriation bills until meaningful reforms are enacted to end militarized policing practices,” the caucus’s deputy chair, Ilhan Omar, who represents most of Minneapolis, told a press conference at the US Capitol. “We cannot and we should not continue to fund agencies that operate with impunity, that escalate violence and that undermine the very freedoms this country claims to uphold.” Pramila Jayapal, the top Democrat on the House judiciary subcommittee on immigration, said the caucus wanted provisions included in the homeland security appropriations bill that would prevent ICE agents from wearing masks, require warrants for them to make arrests and end the use of private detention facilities, which have been criticized for keeping detainees in squalid conditions. “Because the abuses are so widespread and occur in so many different places, we have to address all of them,” Jayapal said. The opposition from the progressives – who number about 100 members, all but one of whom are in the House – could complicate passage of the homeland security funding bill, which is still under negotiation between House and Senate appropriators. The legislation is one of 12 bills that Congress, which is controlled by the Republican party, must pass to fund the government, and is typically enacted with bipartisan support. The top House Democrat, Hakeem Jeffries, echoed the progressives’ demands at a Monday press conference, saying: “Clearly, there are some commonsense measures that need to be put in place so that ICE can conduct itself in a manner that is at least consistent with every other law enforcement agency in the United States of America.” On Tuesday evening, Democratic senators joined with hundreds of protesters outside the Washington DC headquarters of Customs and Border Protection, where they signaled support for using the homeland security appropriations bill to force changes at ICE. “We must stop funding DHS and ICE thugs, and we must demand that ICE leave Minneapolis and other communities to prevent further escalation and tragic death,” Massachusetts’s Ed Markey told the crowd. Chris Murphy of Connecticut was one of the first Democratic senators to back the strategy, and has described it as a way both to impose reforms on ICE and ensure that resources from other federal law enforcement agencies aren’t diverted to immigration enforcement. "It is not too much to ask for the Congress to say this: if we are going to fund the Department of Homeland Security, we want to fund an agency that is simply complying with the law,” he told demonstrators. Good’s death came after DHS agents fanned out across the Minneapolis area in an operation that was initially directed at its Somali community. Minnesota’s attorney general on Monday filed a federal lawsuit seeking to stop the operation, while Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, announced that hundreds more agents from ICE and other federal law enforcement agencies would be sent to the area. Administration officials have defended the killing of Good, with Noem accusing her of “an act of domestic terrorism”. The Democratic congresswoman Robin Kelly has announced she will file articles of impeachment against the homeland security secretary for “obstruction of justice, violation of public trust and self-dealing”. Delia Ramirez, a member of the progressive caucus whose Chicago-area district was targeted by an ICE campaign last fall, said she supported impeaching Noem but argued for going further. “We need to prosecute the criminals in masks. We need to cut and claw back ICE’s funding as natural consequences for DHS’s disregard for the rule of law and violations of our rights,” she said. “We have to use every single tool, including the power of the purse, to end the campaign of terror.”

Gov. Jeff Landry has the power to appoint three more members to the Louisiana Board of Ethics this year, giving him control over the majority of the entity that enforces campaign finance and government transparency laws. Three of the 15 board members’ terms expired Jan. 1. The governor controls all seats now open to new appointees. He selected five new members last year. Appointing three more would give him a slim majority of eight members. Landry, who has clashed with the board in the past, has more control over its members than his predecessors. In 2024, he pushed through a law that reworked the board selection process to give the governor more influence. He also expanded the board from 11 to 15 members last year, with the number of seats the governor gets to pick going from seven to nine. State lawmakers appoint the remaining six members, up from four under the previous structure. More significantly, the governor and legislators get to appoint members directly to the board, although the governor’s appointees are required to receive state Senate confirmation. Previously, the governor and lawmakers could only select ethics board members from a list of nominees provided by leaders at Louisiana’s private colleges and universities. These college leaders were included in the selection process to insulate the board members from political pressure, but Landry removed that attempt at a firewall. The change upset government transparency advocates, who said it weakened the ethics board’s independence.

SCSO said the victim was stopped by a dark-colored sedan with law enforcement lights flashing inside. “When he entered his neighborhood, he was pulled over by a dark, mid-sized vehicle with red and blue lights flashing,” said SCSO Chief Deputy Anthony Bucker, who is also running for sheriff. Buckner said the victim complied and stepped out of the vehicle like the suspects asked somewhere along Windyke Drive. “We believe that he was attacked and then forced back inside his vehicle, and two, out of what we believe to be three, suspects entered his vehicle and drove him back to his house,” said Buckner. Buckner said once they got inside the victim’s home, his alarm system went off, spooking them. The suspects then forced the victim back into his car and took off. Deputies later spotted the vehicle and started chasing it, but Buckner said it got away. Shortly after, Buckner said deputies got a call that the victim was able to escape and call for help at a business in the area of Quince and Kirby Roads. “This is something that’s concerning for us, because we do know that we have a lot of law enforcement in our community right now. Our local, state, and federal officials are all out conducting traffic stops,” said Buckner.

Hundreds of protesters gathered Sunday afternoon for an anti-ICE demonstration that ended with a tense encounter between demonstrators and Tennessee State Troopers on Summer Avenue. The ICE Out for Good protest, organized by Indivisible Memphis, saw demonstrators march from the AutoZone in the Berclair neighborhood to Grahamwood Elementary. Tensions escalated during the march back after one protester was detained by state officials. Phone video from the scene also shows a patrol vehicle striking a protest marshal who was standing on the street in front of the vehicle. The demonstration was organized in response to the deadly shooting of Minnesota mother Renee Good by an ICE agent on Wednesday. Protesters demanded accountability from the federal agency while accepting donations for The Immigrant Pantry. “What happened in Minneapolis was an offense to every decent person in America who believes in due process, justice, the rule of law and the sanctity of life,” said U.S. Representative Steve Cohen, who represents Tennessee’s 9th District. At the protest, Cohen shared he and fellow Democrats are working on legislation to reform ICE and said he supports abolishing the federal agency. “They’re not even looking into their backgrounds. They’re telling them if you don’t like your hands being tied by rules and regulations, they won’t be tied at ICE. That’s why we had this lawless behavior in Minneapolis,” Cohen said. Action News 5 has reached out to Memphis Safe Task Force and Tennessee Highway Patrol for information on the incident with protesters and the detainment. Both agencies have not yet responded.

cross-posted from: sh.itjust.works/post/51996289 The U.S. Department of Energy said on Thursday it has signed agreements with 24 organizations, including tech giants such as Microsoft, Google, and Nvidia to advance the Genesis Mission. The mission is a national program aimed at using artificial intelligence to accelerate scientific research and strengthen U.S. energy and security capabilities. The department said the program is designed to boost scientific productivity and reduce reliance on foreign technology. Participants include major cloud and chip providers such as AWS, Oracle, IBM, Intel, AMD, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, alongside AI specialists OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI. Nvidia will provide accelerated computing platforms and AI models for scientific simulations, while Microsoft and Google will contribute cloud infrastructure and AI tools to support large-scale research. Oracle is expected to assist in building high-performance computing systems, and Palantir will offer data integration and analytics capabilities. Startups Cerebras and Groq will supply advanced AI chips optimized for scientific workloads. OpenAI signed a memorandum of understanding under its “OpenAI for Science” initiative, deploying frontier AI models in national lab research environments and providing its tools and workflows to DOE scientists. Anthropic will supply its Claude models and offer a dedicated engineering team to DOE to develop AI agents, model context protocols, or MCPs, and specialized Claude “skills” for national labs. The partnerships will focus on AI models for applications ranging from nuclear energy and quantum computing to robotics and supply chain optimization. The Genesis Mission builds on earlier collaborations between the DOE and the booming industry to deploy high-performance computing systems at Argonne and Los Alamos National Laboratories. The department said it expects the effort to significantly accelerate scientific discovery, as it plans to expand partnerships with academia and non-profits.

Alex Karp, the CEO of controversial tech company Palantir, raised eyebrows during a recent live interview with the New York Times. In a viral video of the discussion, Karp defended his company to the Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin, gesturing dramatically with his arms, bouncing up and down on his chair, and struggling to make his point. Palantir’s X account shared the video on Sunday morning and announced Karp is launching The Neurodivergent Fellowship: “If you find yourself relating to [Karp] in this video — unable to sit still, or thinking faster than you can speak — we encourage you to apply.” Palantir announced Karp himself would conduct final interviews for the fellowship. In a reply to the first message on X, the company included an application link to the fellowship, which is available in Palantir’s New York City and Washington, D.C. offices. “The current LLM tech landscape positions [neurodivergent people] to dominate,” according to the application. “Pattern recognition. Non-linear thinking. Hyperfocus. The cognitive traits that make the neurodivergent different are precisely what make them exceptional in an AI-driven world.” Palantir, a data and analytics company co-founded by conservative “kingmaker” Peter Thiel, was quick to argue that the fellowship is not a DEI initiative. “Palantir is launching the Neurodivergent Fellowship as a recruitment pathway for exceptional neurodivergent talent,” according to the application, “This is not a diversity initiative. We believe neurodivergent individuals will have a competitive advantage as elite builders of the next technological era, and we’re hiring accordingly for all roles.”

Bombshell new reporting from 404 Media found that Flock, which has its cameras in thousands of US communities, has been outsourcing its AI to gig workers located in the Philippines. After accessing a cache of exposed data, 404 found documents related to annotating Flock footage, a process sometimes called “AI training.” Workers were tasked with jobs include categorizing vehicles by color, make, and model, transcribing license plates, and labeling various audio clips from car wrecks. In US towns and cities, Flock cameras maintained by local businesses and municipal agencies form centralized surveillance networks for local police. They constantly scan for car license plates, as well as pedestrians, who are categorized based on their clothing, and possibly by factors like gender and race. In a growing number of cases, local police are using Flock to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents surveil minority communities. It isn’t clear where all the Flock annotation footage came from, but screenshots included in the documents for data annotators showed license plates from New York, Florida, New Jersey, Michigan, and California. Flock joins the ranks of other fast-moving AI companies that have resorted to low-paid international labor to bring their product to market. Amazon’s cashier-free “just walk out” stores, for example, were really just gig workers watching American shoppers from India. The AI startup Engineer.ai, which purported to make developing code for apps “as easy as ordering a pizza,” was found out to be selling passing human-written code as AI generated. The difference with those examples is that those services were voluntary — powered by the exploitation of workers in the global south, yes, but with a choice to opt out on the front-end. That isn’t the case with Flock, as you don’t have to consent to end up in the panopticon. In other words, for a growing number of Americans, a for-profit company is deciding who gets watched, and who does the watching — a system built on exploitation at either end.

When it can be assumed that you are being surveilled while expressing negative opinion about the federal government, it’s probably best to go ahead and make the assumption, particularly during the punitive heights of the second Donald Trump administration. New reporting from the Associated Press this weekend detailed some aspects of not only United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) latest anti-immigrant and deportation campaign in New Orleans, but also some interesting insights into how both the federal and state law enforcement agencies involved have been engaged in online surveillance campaigns to track public sentiment toward that crackdown. The story paints a chilling profile of a United States in which dissent against the regime’s campaign of immigrant-targeted cruelty is being carefully compiled, filed away for the potential of future use against American citizens. Not that any of this should be a surprise for any of us. We have, after all, been warned over and over that organizations like ICE have been wanting to vastly expand their online operations, using the same vastly expanded budget that recently saw them purchase a new $7.3 million fleet of (Canadian made) armored vehicles. The online expansion of ICE, meanwhile, is not just in the name of locating more groups of undocumented immigrants to target, but also to compile sprawling digital enemies lists, creating databases of those who have expressed anti-ICE sentiment. Earlier this year, The Intercept wrote about surveillance contractors sought by ICE, who would be expected to perform algorithm- and AI-aided deep dives into social media users’ post histories, searching for, among other things, “proclivity for violence,” which could include “empathy with a group which has violent tendencies,” among other things. Hope you haven’t expressed “empathy” at any point for any group with “violent tendencies,” right? How does it feel to know that you’d be at the mercy of a freelance surveillance contractor’s mastery of “social and behavioral sciences” and “psychological profiles,” according to ICE’s statement of objectives? How much of these draconian operations have already been implemented isn’t entirely clear thanks to the shroud of secrecy surrounding the DHS and ICE, but fresh reporting in October noted that ICE was in the process of seeking an additional 30 full-time surveillance contractors to staff two of its “targeting centers”–and yes, that is apparently the official, deeply dystopian term for these facilities. These facilities, in Williston, VT and Santa Ana, CA, would run 24/7 shifts as surveillance analysts “receive tips and incoming cases, research individuals online, and package the results into dossiers that could be used by field offices to plan arrests.” The obvious question: How long until the same resources are being used to target those critical of ICE, or those organizing to impede ICE crackdown efforts, under the guise of “interference with law enforcement operations”? It should also be noted that even if ICE isn’t directly targeting those individuals yet, the unspoken threat of this kind of online surveillance could be intended to have a chilling effect on anti-ICE criticism.