Any person who has used a computer in the past ten years knows that doing meaningless tasks is just part of the experience. Millions of people create accounts, confirm emails, dismiss notifications, solve captchas, reject cookies, and accept terms and conditions—not because they particularly want to or even need to. They do it because that’s what the computer told them to do. Like it or not, we are already serving the machines.

Well, now there is a new way to serve our silicon overlords. LLMs started to have opinions on how your API should look, and since 90% of all code will be written by AI comes September, we have no choice but to oblige.

You might’ve heard a story of Soundslice adding a feature because ChatGPT kept telling people it exists. We see the same at Instant: for example, we used tx.update for both inserting and updating entities, but LLMs kept writing tx.create instead. Guess what: we now have tx.create, too.

Is it good or is it bad? It definitely feels strange. In a sense, it’s helpful: LLMs here have seen millions of other APIs and are suggesting the most obvious thing, something every developer would think of first, too.

It’s also a unique testing device: if developers use your API wrong, they blame themselves, read the documentation, and fix their code. In the end, you might never learn that they even had the problem. But with ChatGPT, you yourself can experience “newbie’s POV” at any time.

Of course, this approach doesn’t work if you are trying to do something new and unique. LLMs just won’t “get it”. But how many of us are doing something new and unique? Maybe, API is not the place to get clever? Maybe, for most cases, it’s truly best if you did the most obvious thing?

So welcome to the new era. AI is not just using tools we gave it. It now has opinions about how these tools should’ve been made. And instead of asking nicely, it gaslights everybody into thinking that’s how it’s always been.

ICE Lawyers Are Hiding Their Names in Immigration Court:

"I've never heard of someone in open court not being identified," said Elissa Steglich, a law professor and co-director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas at Austin. "Part of the court's ethical obligation is transparency, including clear identification of the parties. Not identifying an attorney for the government means if there are unethical or professional concerns regarding [the Department of Homeland Security], the individual cannot be held accountable. And it makes the judge appear partial to the government."

"Part of the court's ethical obligation is transparency, including clear identification of the parties." [...]

When Judge ShaSha Xu omitted the ICE lawyer's name, Attorney Jeffrey Okun asked her to identify who was arguing to deport his client. She refused.

Xu attributed the change to "privacy" because "things lately have changed." Xu told Okun that he could use Webex's direct messaging function to send the ICE lawyer his email, and the ICE lawyer would probably respond with her own name and address. [...]

The government's mystery attorney, who was prosecuting both Okun's and Gonzalez-Venegas's clients, wore glasses and a navy blue suit; her hair was pulled back primly from her face. She spoke quietly, with a tinge of vocal fry. Her name, according to Gonzalez Venegas, was Cosette Shachnow.

Shachnow, 33, began working for ICE in 2021, shortly after she graduated from law school, according to public records and her LinkedIn account. The latter lists "Civil Rights and Social Action" among her "favored causes."

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Tressie McMillan Cottom, one of America’s leading public intellectuals, posted this to Bluesky yesterday:

I’m going to be very honest and clear.

I am fully preparing myself to die under this new American regime. That’s not to say that it’s the end of the world. It isn’t. But I am almost 50 years old. It will take so long to do anything with this mess that this is the new normal for *me*.

I do hope a lot of you run. I hope you vote, sure. Maybe do a general strike or rent strike. All great!

But I spent the last week reading things and this is not, for ME, an electoral fix. So now I will spend time reflecting on how to integrate this normal into my understanding of the future.

Most of this will be personal. Some of it will be public — how we move in the world.

Right now, I know that I need to make a decision on my risk sensitivity. How much can I take? I also need to meditate HARD on accepting the randomness of that risk. No amount of strategy can protect me.

Those are things I am thinking about.

In response, Anil Dash posted:

Yeah, I keep telling people this is a rest-of-my-life fight, and… they do *not* want to hear it.

Author Meg Elison:

I’ve been thinking something like this for a few months now. We will fight, we will resist, etc. But we will also not live the lives we picked out and planned on. They’re not available anymore.

Therapist and political activist Leah McElrath:

Since Trump regained office, I’ve talked about this both gently and bluntly to try to help people understand that we lived in one era but we’re going to die in another.

I am, at least. I know my probable life expectancy and, at 61, have about 15 years left.

And @2naonwheat.bsky.social:

We’re all going to have to start planting shade trees we fully know we’ll never sit under.

Cottom nails how I’ve been feeling for the past few months (and honestly why it’s been a little uneven around KDO recently). America’s democratic collapse has been coming for years, always just over the horizon. But when everything that happened during Trump’s first three months in office happened and (here’s the important part) shockingly little was done by the few groups (Congress, the Supreme Court, the Democratic Party, American corporations & other large institutions, media companies) who had the power to counter it, I knew it was over. And over in a way that is irreversible, for a good long while at least.

Since then, I’ve been recalibrating and grieving. Feeling angry — furious, really. Fighting resignation. Trying not to fall prey to doomerism and subsequently spreading it to others. (This post is perhaps an exception, but I believe, as Cottom does, in being “honest and clear” when times call for it.) Getting out. Biking, so much biking. Paying less attention to the news. Trying to celebrate other facets of our collective humanity here on KDO — or just being silly & stupid. Feeling overwhelmed. Feeling numb. But also (occasionally, somehow) hope?

All of this is exhausting. Destabilizing. I don’t know what I’m doing or what I should be doing or how I can be of the most service to others. (Put on your oxygen mask before assisting others, they say. Is my mask on yet? I don’t know — how can I even tell?) I barely know what I’m trying to say and don’t know how to end this post so I’m just gonna say that the comments are open on this post (be gentle with each other, don’t make me regret this) and I’ll be back with you here after the, uh, holiday.

Tags: Donald Trump · politics · Tressie McMillan Cottom · USA

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The fact that Waymos need to use video cameras that are constantly recording their surroundings in order to function means that police have begun to look at them as sources of surveillance footage. [...]

The fact is that police have begun to look at anything with a camera as a source of surveillance that they are entitled to for whatever reasons they choose. So even though driverless cars nominally have nothing to do with law enforcement, police are treating them as though they are their own roving surveillance cameras.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

LOS ANGELES — A leaked memo from high-ranking law enforcement officials encouraged officers on the street tasked with confronting protesters to “Picture them as your wives and children” so they would be more willing to inflict extrajudicial violence.

“Don’t forget, you are a hero. People might give you the finger, spit on you, and call you a class traitor for pursuing a career on the police force, but just remember you have the upper hand because you are above the law,” read a small portion of the memo. “Some of you might still have a shred of humanity left inside of you and it can be hard to fire a tear gas canister into someone’s face from point-blank range. We encourage you to picture these lawless heathens as your wife who won’t stop nagging you, or your children who recently went non-contact with you. This will make it easier for you to get your revenge and help you sleep better at night.”

Local Los Angeles Deputy Peter Kelliher said the memo helped him through a tough day.

“We were fenced in. There were dozens of people holding phones up at us, waving flags, and talking really loud. Honestly, I was afraid for my life, but then I just pictured all of them as my bitch wife and started firing rubber bullets at the eyeballs of anyone who wasn’t wearing glasses,” said Kelliher. “Everyone else in my platoon followed suit, and soon enough we were able to heroically beat back the crowd with our strength of will, military grade body armor, and vast array of weaponry that we were encourage to fire at will.”

President Trump commended the officers on the front lines.

“Antifa is at it again. I’ve seen these guys, real bad hombres. They were there on January 6th starting a riot, but it was also a day of peace, and we love peace don’t we people? There has never been a more peaceful time in America, and we are going to make it more peaceful by putting big beautiful tanks on every street corner and aiming the barrels at any house that isn’t saluting the flag,” said Trump. “The brave police in Los Angeles will soon be joined by the Marines, really buff guys, I’ve seen these guys, I’ve felt their muscles. Almost as big as mine, close, but not as big. Doctors said my muscles are almost too big sometimes, and that’s all natural. Can you believe that?”

At press time, GOP members of the House introduced new legislation that anyone who says “Fuck ICE” will be put to death by lethal injection

The post New Report Shows Cops Were Told to Escalate Violence in LA By Picturing Protesters as Their Wives and Children appeared first on The Hard Times.