James Pappas

game programmer, musician, ISO job?

[More Perfect Union @MorePerfectUS]

BREAKING: Bernie Sanders, AOC, and Jeff Merkley are introducing the Ban Flock Act.

This bill would effectively put an end to AI surveillance cameras that track Americans.

The Ban Flock Act would prohibit federal agencies from using automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) and block federal funding from state and local governments that use this technology, making it untenable for these AI surveillance cameras to continue proliferating across the country.

[Pirat_Nation 🔴 @Pirat_Nation]

A Pennsylvania state senator is proposing new legal protections for people who buy digital video games.

The proposed Protect Our Games Act would require publishers to give players at least 60 days’ notice before shutting down access to a game.

Companies would then have to provide an option such as enabling offline play, allowing continued access through a patch, or offering a refund of at least 25% of the original purchase price.

[Culture Crave 🍿 @CultureCrave]

Disney+ is raising its prices again

• $21.49 with no ads

• The 6th price increase since launch

• More than triple what it cost 7 years ago

(via @business)

[Being Libertarian @beinlibertarian]

Step 1- Remove Mike Johnson

Step 2- Put Thomas Massie in as Speaker of the House

Step 3- Watch Congress return to work, the debt shrink, wars end, and civil liberties return

[Pirat_Nation 🔴 @Pirat_Nation]

Remember the PlayStation game-sharing meme from 2013

Now Shuhei Yoshida and Adam Boyes have recreated the famous photo… without a disc.

Even former PlayStation executives are now mocking Sony

[Thomas Massie @RepThomasMassie]

They shut down the Legislative Branch of the United States of America because I was outmaneuvering the Speaker to expose a global sex trafficking ring and impeach a rogue cabinet secretary.

It was the only way they could stop me.

[Thomas Massie @RepThomasMassie]

Why are we canceling session when there’s so much important work to be done? It’s because they want to avoid voting on my Epstein legislation and the impeachment of Hegseth.

I claimed an hour of time to speak about this and a few of my accomplishments in Congress.

[Spum @spumdonor]

It's too bad there wasn't at least one more Muppets movie in this format, honestly I wish they were still putting out one every few years to this day. It's a perfect film format for them: classic literature with muppets in the supporting roles & a juicy role for a "real" actor. Muppet Treasure Island actually did even better at the box office than Christmas Carol so I don't get why they bailed on the concept for the forgettable "Muppets From Space" next

[Thomas Massie @RepThomasMassie]

And there it is. Just as I predicted. They’re canceling Congress tomorrow to avoid the vote on IMPEACHING @SecWar. It will also make it harder for us to reach 218 signatures on the Epstein Discharge Petition before the election. We were at 190+ signatures last night.

[John Scott-Railton @jsrailton]

“Who’s a good boy?!”

Hackers just dumped the contents of a Flock camera.

They found:

🔴Software explicitly detecting people, not just plates
🔴1.6 million images logged in 21 days
🔴Key to decrypt files stored on the device itself.

Finds directly contradict Flock, which claims someone with physical access can't access images.

Making it worse,@GainSec warned about the physical access issue more than a year ago & Flock downplayed it.

And yeah, the Flock camera logged “Who’s a good boy?!” about every 2 minutes, all while plagued with errors, crashes & reboots.

By @dmehro & @josephfcox
https://t.co/5a91FwVrPf

[theleahfiles @leahfiles]

People keep saying Trump term II is the most corrupt administration ever, so I built a model to find out if it was true.

I took the UN's definition of corruption, turned it into eight criteria and 100 points, and scored the leaders history remembers for looting their countries: Marcos, Suharto, Mobutu, Abacha, Obiang, Putin.

Then I put every president since Eisenhower on the same scale, both parties, with every exoneration counted right alongside the convictions.

Nixon scored 41 and no other American President scored over a 25.

Trump's second term scored a 91, which ties him with Suharto and Mobutu and puts him above Marcos and Abacha.

So he is not only the most corrupt president in American history. At this pace he finishes his term level with the most corrupt rulers of the last hundred years.

PSA: don't come in my comments arguing about the results if you haven't read the full article, because ignorance is a choice.

Full article is up now on my Substack (link in bio) and it's free.

[DiscussingFilm @DiscussingFilm]

‘BOB THE BUILDER’ has returned to stop-motion animation for the first time in 18 years in a new clean energry commercial.

[Pirat_Nation 🔴 @Pirat_Nation]

IGN made a whole article about Sony's downfall that should be studied, they didn't get the check, or they're just tired of Sony's bullshit.

Basically what they argued is what normal people thinks:

> What was once the miracle formula behind Uncharted has basically become the default PlayStation template.

>Sony has spent years refining the same type of single-player blockbuster: huge cutscenes, accessible third-person combat, some light RPG mechanics, stealth sections through waist-high grass, and a meter you fill up to unleash a powerful ability.

>The result is incredibly polished, but also increasingly generic.

>Ghost of Yotei, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, God of War Ragnarök and Horizon Forbidden West are obviously very different games on the surface, but IGN argues that underneath, they share a lot of the same design language.

>The problem isn’t that these games are bad. It’s that what felt exciting ten years ago now feels increasingly familiar.

PlayStation magic formula is failing, it’s getting boring and generic, they need something new or just look at the games they made in past generations..

[Poncho @PorkPoncho]

Guys….I think it’s time for a radical culture shift with the senior leadership at PlayStation.

It feels like bad decision after bad decision here, stepping on so many rakes and whilst some of them are hangovers from past eras, many of these are easily avoidable.

The ship is being steered into the rocks and you don’t seem to be able to see that.

[Patbacknitro @Patbacknitro]

@PlayStation Couldn't possibly be because Kojima was very against Sonys move to digital only.....

[NachoCat @NachoCat16]

According to this webinar, Flock’s workup system can be used for this hypothetical:

- State makes it illegal to pray outside an abortion clinic use Flock’s system to:
- Identify a vehicle meeting a certain description (Catholic or pro life bumper stickers)
- Tie it to a specific person, (police/motor vehicle records)
- Track where it goes and when (Catholic church on a weekday, probable devout Catholic, attendance at anti-abortion protest)
- Tie to social media (anti-abortion Facebook posts)
- Set up an alert if the vehicle goes inside a geofence surrounding an abortion clinic.

This isn’t theoretical. These are all capabilities of Flock’s Nova system they desperately don’t want you to know about. Not worried about abortion? Substitute whatever thing you think your political opponent might do to you.

[MW4Liberty @MW4Liberty]

Ruh roh. Here is a leaked webinar hosted by Flock demonstrating to police how to track individuals in real time involved in the no kings protests. Maybe you’re thinking “so what?! I don’t go to those and don’t agree with those who did.”

Let me remind you, a digital dragnet built to target your political opponents today will be used against you tomorrow.

Once the surveillance state is turned on, it watches everyone.

[Rand Paul @RandPaul]

Video shows Flock walking police through how to monitor a No Kings protest in real time. I do not have to agree with a single sign at that protest to say this plainly: Surveillance aimed at your political opponents today will be aimed at you tomorrow.

[Abdulkadir | Cybersecurity @cyber_razz]

Get a Raspberry Pi 5.

Or a Windows mini PC. Or a spare laptop you don't use anymore.

Or literally any computer that doesn't cost more than the TV you're trying to block.

Install Docker.

Pull the Pi-hole image.

Point your router's DNS to that device's IP address.

Now every DNS request on your network gets intercepted.

LG TV tries to call home to LG Ad Solutions.

Pi-hole sees it. Blocks it.

TV gets nothing.

Stores nothing. Sends nothing.

The fingerprints just stop.

But here's the part nobody mentions.

You now run your own DNS server.

You're the ISP of your own home network.

You see every domain request everything tries to reach.

Your phone. Your laptop. Your smart fridge.

All of it flows through your Pi-hole.

LG's servers? Blocked.

Amazon's trackers? Blocked.

Google's ad network? Blocked.

But now you're staring at the list of what's trying to reach where.

And it's a lot.

It's always a lot.

Your TV tried to phone home 47 times in four hours.

Your kid's gaming console hit 200 different ad servers.

Your thermostat wants to talk to three cloud services.

Running a Pi-hole isn't fixing privacy.

It's just showing you exactly how much your devices violate it.

Then letting you decide whether to care.

Most people see the list and turn it off.

Ignorance was cheaper than knowledge.

[Abdulkadir | Cybersecurity @cyber_razz]

Your LG OLED is watching your living room while you sleep.

Gamers Nexus just ran 135 minutes of bench tests.

Retail LG OLED TVs. Including the G5.

Microphone stays active in standby.

Screen is dark. Remote is down. Microphone is still on.

Recording clear audio.

Storing it locally.

Uploading it when the internet comes back.

The TV was disconnected from Ethernet.

Still kept recording.

The researchers put audio near the mic. The TV logged it. Stored the file. Uploaded it the moment connectivity returned.

Plain text voice logs sitting on the device.

LG says it has sold 216 million smart TVs globally.

LG's advertising arm claims access to 363 million secondary devices in the US.

Secondary. Meaning devices that aren't the TV. Your phone. Your partner's smartwatch. Your kid's laptop.

The TV scans your entire network in standby.

Maps every device. Gets their IP addresses. Logs nearby Wi-Fi networks. Signal strengths. Location data.

Then feeds it to LG Ad Solutions.

Automatic Content Recognition catches what's on screen.

Even your HDMI input. Your Apple TV. Your gaming console. All logged.

But the microphone in standby is the part that hits different.

Because standby means off to you.

To LG it means the listening device is still powered.

Just not telling you.

Researchers found remote code execution vulnerabilities in webOS.

So your network-scanning, audio-recording, data-harvesting television is also potentially hackable by anyone on your Wi-Fi.

LG says nothing.

No comment. No response. No explanation.

Just microphones in 216 million living rooms.

All quietly working while the owner thinks the TV is asleep.