This AI Tool Helped Convict People of Murder. Then Someone Took a Closer Look
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    RunawayFixer
    5d ago 100%

    In the next paragraph: "by the time of the Daubert hearing, the printer that Cybercheck had identified in its report couldn’t be located.". I suspect there never was a printer. If asked leading questions by the investigators, then the company probably fabricates evidence that corroborates the suspicions of the investigators. And the quality of fabricated evidence is probably poor because of how cheap they are. Quality takes time and skill, and skilled time costs money.

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  • This AI Tool Helped Convict People of Murder. Then Someone Took a Closer Look
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    RunawayFixer
    5d ago 100%

    Parallel construction requires real evidence though. This company just seems to fabricate evidence to confirm police hypothesises. I think what happens is: Police ask "was this person there at that time on that day", the company conjures up a report that the person's mystical digital profile pinged a wireless printer at that place at roughly the right time, but also at a second other time for a tiny bit of credibility (but by only changing the date of the timestamp, which actually makes it more suspect). People go search for that printer, and then there never was a printer.

    And given that the only thing that external parties saw, was less than a 1000 lines of code for automatic searches and none for interpretation, it might not even be automated, but just a human pasting together reports. A human pretending to be ai.

    I'd call it outsourced fabrication of evidence.

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  • What is the European Peace Facility and why Hungary is blocking the disbursements to Ukraine
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    RunawayFixer
    6d ago 100%

    I don't get how Hungary is still inside the eu. Pis in Poland lost power almost a year ago and there should be no other country shielding Hungary anymore. The eu countries should have used the time since then to clean house and remove the single veto mechanism in all eu institutions, instead ... Nothing. Orban just gets to be ever more confident that he can be as crooked, anti democratic and pro Russian as he wants without any real consequences.

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  • [Anecdotal evidence]
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    RunawayFixer
    1w ago 100%

    On the other hand, when someone claims something is impossible/something has never happened before/something happens every single time, but you have just 1 anecdote from a credible source that contradicts that claim, then that 1 anecdote is enough to know that they are wrong.

    Example: some pundit states: our government has never executed an innocent man. You just need proof that they have executed a single innocent man to show that the pundit has no credibility on the subject and that it's thus not an impossibility that other executed men were also innocent.

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  • Chinese authorities demand schoolteachers and other public sector employees hand in their passports as President Xi Jinping tightens his grip on society
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    RunawayFixer
    2w ago 100%

    It's not only their faulty Overton window, imo the big problem is that their "methodology" of determining bias/credibility is very poor. It's basically 1 volunteer scoring a few metrics of the site being reviewed, which has lead to some very questionable credibility scores in the past, probably caused by the bias and/or amateurism of the volunteers. When those odd scores caused enough controversy, then those scores got arbitrarily adjusted, but only those scores. In particular the owner + volunteer staff of mbfc appears to be very pro Israel, so Zionist propaganda outlets like unwatch get given high scores, while media outlets like the guardian were given the same mixed credibility rating as fox news, for no other reason than that the reviewing volunteer happened to be extremely biased.

    If a biased organisation uses a weak process to assign bias ratings, then the output is going to be nonsense. After numerous controversies, they probably have corrected ratings for all large news and propaganda organizations, but smaller ones will not have caused the same controversies and since those ratings are a product of the same process, they're going to be just as faulty. We just don't know it because there have been no public controversies about those yet.

    Basically you can't trust their credibility scores. If you know the site being reviewed, then you can make an assessment yourself if the rating is actually credible, in which case you also actually didn't need the bot to tell you that. And if it's a small unknown site, then there is no way to know that that credibility rating can be trusted, making the bot useless. And if people were to start trusting the bot, it would be worse than useless.

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  • Less than 10 days after Helene made landfall, Florida braces for another hurricane, potentially a Category 3
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    RunawayFixer
    2w ago 100%

    Sometimes knowledge is just an internet search away: https://www.qwant.com/?q=natural+disasters+in+europe&t=web

    Or searching for specific kinds of disasters will also supply results, like fe tornadoes: https://www.qwant.com/?q=tornado+europe&t=web

    How can you be so convinced of things which are so easily disproven? Why do you not try looking something up instead of just spouting the same nonsense again and again? Why do you resort to insults when it turns out that a belief you held strongly, turns out to have been a delusion? Notice how all this time I've been the one providing sources and quotes, while you just resorted to insults and doubling down when what I say doesn't align with your feelings. You'd look far less like a fool if you would accept that it's possible to be wrong about something.

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  • Less than 10 days after Helene made landfall, Florida braces for another hurricane, potentially a Category 3
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    RunawayFixer
    2w ago 100%

    I had found a good quote earlier by another American who had actually visited other places, I think now is a good time to share it:

    "Americans who have never left their own little reality will tell you that American homes are actually solid... they're not... I have lived in and visited many countries. American houses are built like shit.

    My cousin built a house in Europe out of brick and concrete... and it's WAY WAY WAY WAY better than the most expensive, nicest house I've ever been to in the US. I have anger issues and have punched through my walls on repeated occasions. You can't do that with brick and concrete... probably a good thing I live in the US.

    This is why when a tornado comes around, entire towns are demolished.. All that would happen in other countries is some broken windows and shingles would come off the roof.

    Americans pay more for their houses in terms of price, property taxes (insanely high), and repairs... to live in the lowest form of construction on this planet second to bamboo huts.

    This is all due to American greed. America is a big mall where you get shit quality everywhere you go, but you think you're actually winning because you are so self-deluded and isolated. Most Americans have never been anywhere else, but yet they will defend their garbage buildings that fall apart in a couple of decades or less. Speaking from my piece of shit house that was built 20 years ago that needs all floors and walls replaced because of mold seeping into the... wood... everything... wood and cardboard. ".

    I also don't get how you came to believe that there are no natural disasters in Europe. We have a stereotype of dumb arrogant Americans who are confidently incorrect, but still, what the hell man :)

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  • Less than 10 days after Helene made landfall, Florida braces for another hurricane, potentially a Category 3
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    RunawayFixer
    2w ago 50%

    "Their homes are robust, and built to last 400 years (estimated) without having to make substantial repairs." You must have missed that part, so much for reading comprehension.

    The difference in building quality between houses in the usa and northern Europe really is night and day. Tornadoes which would only take off the roof from European houses, tear down entire American neighborhoods. To us, it's just shocking how bad those American buildings hold up. There are of course also Americans who chose to build to a higher standard, but they end up with smaller houses at a higher price, like we do in Europe. I don't get why this is so hard to accept for you. We pay more for a smaller house, but that house is then build to a much higher standard. It's really not a mystery.

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  • Less than 10 days after Helene made landfall, Florida braces for another hurricane, potentially a Category 3
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    RunawayFixer
    2w ago 100%

    Those are historical buildings, this discussion was about new construction.

    Historically people used to use what was locally available. Most of Italy has plenty of stones, that were also easily accessible, so regular people could build out of stone. But in other regions of Europe there were no stones lying about, so cheap houses were being build out of mud + straw, more expensive ones out of brick and much more expensive ones from imported stones.

    Thatched roofs will survive storms without issue. The reason why they aren't used anymore except by rich people is cost: very labor intensive to place and on top of that the thatching has to be replaced every x years. They made sense when labor was cheap and transporting heavy goods expensive.

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  • Less than 10 days after Helene made landfall, Florida braces for another hurricane, potentially a Category 3
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    RunawayFixer
    2w ago 50%

    Relative to the cardboard houses in the usa, houses in Europe are indeed very sturdy. Our concrete houses might not be designed for hurricanes, but they would still fare way better than a house entirely build from stud walls. It's always a bit of a wonder to us that in the usa, houses are being built in a manner that will not survive the next storm. And that that is allowed. The downside of the sturdier European houses is that they take longer and cost more to build, which is also why the average house is smaller.

    Here's some obversations from an American engineer travelling in Europe: https://forstconsultingllc.com/blog/european-vs-american-home-construction/

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  • A school district in Pennsylvania approved nearly $9,000 ‘to cut windows into the ‘gender-identity’ student bathrooms so passerby can look inside’
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    RunawayFixer
    2w ago 100%

    I've stopped giving USA republicans the benefit of doubt years ago, Trump's first year in office was enough to convince me. I've accepted that they are comically evil and that they have no redeeming qualities. So if I see something that is comically evil, then I'm not going to invent possibilities of why it might not be as bad, because in my experience it will turn out that after a little digging, it's actually worse.

    Also the administration was given the opportunity to justify or explain their actions by the reporter, and they chose not to, most likely not because they didn't want to, but because they couldn't do so in a matter that did not make them appear like spiteful bigots. There's no point in inventing possible defenses for them if they could not provide them themselves.

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  • A school district in Pennsylvania approved nearly $9,000 ‘to cut windows into the ‘gender-identity’ student bathrooms so passerby can look inside’
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    RunawayFixer
    2w ago 100%

    They have already created gender neutral restrooms, according to the article these windows are not in those.

    There's 2 stalls visible in the picture. The walls are not floor to ceiling, the doors have larger gaps above and though it isn't visible, I expect also a gap below. It's not clear if there are vertical visibility slits on the sides of the doors. But they're clearly just stalls really.

    But it doesn't really matter how the stalls are, the way that we know that this is targeted spite and bullying, is that windows are being cut only in a specific subset of the restrooms. They're trying to shame and intimidate the kids that are in those restrooms.

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    Jump
    For Republicans, truth is... honestly overrated
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    RunawayFixer
    3w ago 90%

    It's always matter of time before some radical nationalists and radical socialists talk to each other, come to the realization that they actually have a lot in common and then decide to work together in a single nationalist socialist organisation. The inevitable backstabbing comes later.

    Edit: I had written national instead of nationalist.

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  • Men Stole Over $1 Million From DoorDash Delivery Drivers By Impersonating Them to Customer Service
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    RunawayFixer
    3w ago 100%

    "because it's up to the drivers to not get phished. "

    The drivers were not phished, Doordash the company was.

    If I do work for a client, send my invoice by mail, that mail gets intercepted by a scammer, that scammer sends on an altered invoice with their bank account number on it, and the client sends a bank transfer to the scammer ... Then the client still owes me money and they still have to pay my real invoice (to me), irregardless of whether or not they manage to reclaim the money that they paid to the scammer.

    The technology may have changed, but the same principles apply.

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  • TIL miniblinds with pull cords to raise and lower them are now illegal to sell in the United States
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    RunawayFixer
    3w ago 100%

    This seemed like such an arbitrary law that I went looking for it and apparently it's a small committee (4 persons*) rule that was poorly substantiated. The rule itself has been shot down by an appeals court in 2023, but the industry obviously had already set plans in motion to change their product line ups.

    "On September 13, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals vacated the CPSC’s rule on custom window coverings. The court agreed with WCMA that CPSC failed to provide an opportunity to comment on the underlying incident data, conducted a flawed cost-benefit analysis that ignored the enormous harm that the rule would have caused the multibillion-dollar custom window coverings industry, and selected an arbitrary effective date for the rule. The CPSC acknowledges that the industry will need at least 2 years to develop completely new products. So the six-month effective date would make it impossible for the window covering industry to create proven safe replacement products."

    https://suncoastblinds.com/understanding-the-cpsc-rule-on-window-coverings-and-the-appeal/

    • I'm not from the USA, so to me it seems very weird that this is how decisions with far reaching consequences are taken. In the eu legislation like this gets putten through the wringer in the eu Commission, probably also voted on by the eu Parliament, and then still given years preparation time and back and forth between industry/lobby groups/government. But instead this was: 4 non elected people take a vote and those 4 see no issue with a 6 month deadline. Wth, what a rugpull this would have been for the industry.

    Edit to add: that rule that lost in appeal in 2023, was from November 2022, so maybe it does go in effect in november 2024, since it seems like that timetable was the biggest issue for the industry. Just speculating though, can't look it up atm.

    5
  • Modern wonders exist
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    RunawayFixer
    3w ago 100%

    Hitler's flak towers are not going anywhere. There's other 20th century buildings which can last a thousand years with occasional maintenance, but those flak towers, nothing will take them down.

    Most very old buildings that survived to this age, survived because the locals had a use for them and maintained them, or because they had a pyramidical shape. The colloseum was a castle, the parthenon a church, ... Without that usage, we'd only have the foundations and a few basements left.

    3
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    Jump
    Teach the children.
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    RunawayFixer
    4w ago 100%

    Personally I'm ok with discord for private social communication, imo not everything needs to be archived or searchable. But there's people/devs who use discord as a knowledge repository and that's the recipe for disaster imo.

    The recipe: Old problem questions, solutions, how to guides, ... All hidden behind a login wall and if you do get in, then you still have to contend with the crappy search engine, so you might just as well ask the probably already answered question yet again. And one day it's probably all going poof or behind some kind of paywall. Basically also what quora has been trying to do for years, but I don't think any people with more than a few braincells complain about quora being hard to access, since most of their content stinks anyhow.

    12
  • 💸💸💸
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    RunawayFixer
    4w ago 100%

    A quote from Netanyahu: "Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas... This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank."

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_support_for_Hamas

    I already knew that Israel facilitated transfers of funds from other sources, but I didn't know that they also did direct funding and transfers. According to that wiki article, Israel was at least certainly doing that in the 1980s and 90s. Not that it really matters, Israel soliciting other parties to give money to Hamas or Israel directly giving money to Hamas, there's little difference really.

    I can't find anything right away about video evidence, but I wouldn't be surprised at this point. I'd love a source for that as well.

    20
  • www.brusselstimes.com

    Nothing new. This is also unchanged: "while countries like Sweden and Denmark also have quite high taxes, they manage to offer better services in terms of health care, higher pensions and free child care, among others."

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    www.vrt.be

    Oud nieuws, maar nog niet gepost denk ik. De Pano reportage is zeker het bekijken waard, best wel grappig, en tegelijk ook triestig. Gerelateerd: https://www.humo.be/tv/dankzij-humo-brengt-pano-geen-andere-onzin-walter-de-donder-gaat-af-als-een-gieter~bf6b7eea/

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    www.demorgen.be

    Also of interest: https://www.gezondheidenwetenschap.be/gezondheid-in-de-media/factcheck-mazelen-is-terug-en-veroorzaakt-in-een-op-de-vier-gevallen-complicaties#article-detail-wrapper

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