Hi,

For reasons too absurd to explain, this Wednesday I'm invited to a virtual "coffee break" with the speaker of one of Spain's cryptoexchanges, https://bit2me.com/. The event is organized by Cinco Días, one of the main economic newspapers in the country.

I'm looking for a list of potential questions I might ask if I have the chance. I already have the basics ("how's this different to a tulip", "what super-legitimate uses, apart from paying for drugs, hitmen, sex trafficking, launder money, evade taxes and inflate bubbles", "what about the electricity usage", etc), and given that BBVA (Spain's second largest bank) and Telefonica (Spain's main telco) are investing money, I also want to ask how they're handling the child porn they have in their servers.

If anyone has more suggestions, I'm all ears.

I guess self-driving cars are not killing people fast enough and they're diversifying.

What the URL above says. It's getting crazy on Xitter.

cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/12406642

Body of the toot:

Absolutely unbelievable but here we are. #Slack by default using messages, files etc for building and training #LLM models, enabled by default and opting out requires a manual email from the workspace owner.

https://slack.com/intl/en-gb/trust/data-management/privacy-principles

What a time to be alive in IT. 🤦‍♂️

Body of the toot:

Absolutely unbelievable but here we are. #Slack by default using messages, files etc for building and training #LLM models, enabled by default and opting out requires a manual email from the workspace owner.

https://slack.com/intl/en-gb/trust/data-management/privacy-principles

What a time to be alive in IT. 🤦‍♂️

Google responded to Ed, Ed responds.

I've suggested the orange site changes the title to "In response to Google?" to keep up with latest practices around there. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40164393

The US has urged Ukraine to halt attacks on Russia’s energy infrastructure, warning that the drone strikes risk driving up global oil prices and provoking retaliation, according to three people familiar with the discussions. [...]

One person said that the White House had grown increasingly frustrated by brazen Ukrainian drone attacks that have struck oil refineries, terminals, depots and storage facilities across western Russia, hurting its oil production capacity.

Russia remains one of the world’s most important energy exporters despite western sanctions on its oil and gas sector. Oil prices have risen about 15 per cent this year, to $85 a barrel, pushing up fuel costs just as US President Joe Biden begins his campaign for re-election.

Un-paywalled link: https://archive.ph/wv1Y3

A thread compiling all Verge articles about AI influence on the upcoming election.

Has its own RSS feed: https://www.theverge.com/rss/stream/23862839

AKA "surprisingly, oligopolies are there to make money and care about their customers just enough not to pee on their faces while someone else is looking".

Kenn Dahl says he has always been a careful driver. The owner of a software company near Seattle, he drives a leased Chevrolet Bolt. He’s never been responsible for an accident.

So Mr. Dahl, 65, was surprised in 2022 when the cost of his car insurance jumped by 21 percent. Quotes from other insurance companies were also high. One insurance agent told him his LexisNexis report was a factor.

LexisNexis is a New York-based global data broker with a “Risk Solutions” division that caters to the auto insurance industry and has traditionally kept tabs on car accidents and tickets. Upon Mr. Dahl’s request, LexisNexis sent him a 258-page “consumer disclosure report,” which it must provide per the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

What it contained stunned him: more than 130 pages detailing each time he or his wife had driven the Bolt over the previous six months. It included the dates of 640 trips, their start and end times, the distance driven and an accounting of any speeding, hard braking or sharp accelerations. The only thing it didn’t have is where they had driven the car.

On a Thursday morning in June for example, the car had been driven 7.33 miles in 18 minutes; there had been two rapid accelerations and two incidents of hard braking.

Desjardins Group announced as of Feb. 1 it would no longer offer new mortgages for properties in “0-20 year” flood zones — where there is a five per cent chance of flooding in any given year — because of what it called the rising effect of climate change.

There are some exceptions: buyers can get financing for up to 65 per cent a home’s selling price if the previous owner had a Desjardins mortgage and the property has protective measures to prevent flooding. But the company’s decision has left mayors of low-lying towns worried that homeowners will be left with properties that no one will buy or that are massively devalued.

What the title says. Before you had to choose either SMS / call via phone or a very clunky code grid.