Officers of the Hallandale Beach Police Department were so angered by their chief kneeling to show solidarity with protesters that every member of the SWAT team resigned from those duties. This follows the resignation of 57 members of Buffalo, NY’s tactical team that responds to protests and riots. The officers from both city’s special units did not resign completely from the police force and will stay on duty. The officers in Buffalo say they resigned because they don’t feel they have legal protection from the city of Buffalo.
At least seven Minneapolis police officers have resigned amid the protests over police brutality and racial inequality, and more than half a dozen are in the process of leaving, department officials told the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Those who resigned specifically in Florida cited City of Hallandale Beach Police Chief Sonia Quinones kneeling with protesters against racism, hatred, and intolerance as the reason for their startling act.
“The risk of carrying out our duties in this capacity is no longer acceptable to us and our families. The anguish and stress of knowing that what we may be lawfully called upon to do in today’s political climate combined with the team’s current situation and several recent local events, leave us in a position that is untenable,” the officers said in their resignation letter.
Police agencies have responded to the outbreak of protests and rioting in different ways. While some have tried to maintain their distance from the goals of the protests, others have openly joined demonstrators.
The police do not feel supported by the elected officials who are their bosses, so we don’t blame them for leaving. You risk your life for much of the community and they you are left to flap in the wind. It’s wrong, but the protestors are getting what they want. Be careful what you wish for.
Reply to this email and tell us, do you support the police assertion that they need legal protection and support to do their jobs properly?
Zoom gets a taste of international politics
In every tech giant’s lifetime, there comes a moment when its leader has to make a pilgrimage to Capitol Hill. TikTok’s moment arrived last December, when lawmakers urged execs to cut ties with the app’s Beijing-based owner, ByteDance.
Now it’s Zoom’s turn to sit in the hot seat. Last week, at the request of the Chinese government, the videoconference behemoth shut down 3 meetings held in commemoration of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. The company also banned US and Hong Kong-based dissidents who hosted the meetings. Zoom eventually reinstated them after criticism. Now Congress has entered the chat
The move prompted a group of senators to send Zoom CEO Eric Yuan a letter asking for clarity on what data, if any, it shares with China. Another demanded that the company “pick a side” between the US and China.
Adding to the unease is an announcement from Zoom that it’s developing a tool to block individuals based on geography.
In theory, that means the Tiananmen meetings would have gone down as planned — but participants from mainland China wouldn’t have been able to join. Bending to China’s wishes is nothing new. Last week, Apple deleted major podcast apps from its store at the government’s request.
But Zoom had enjoyed something of a honeymoon period inside China. Until recently, activists felt it was safer than some homegrown video conference solutions.
Reuters dubbed it “a window through China’s ‘Great Firewall.’” Now that’s all over. Zoom looks ready to meet the challenge in Washington. This spring, it’s been staffing up its lobbying team — most prominently with H.R. McMaster, the former White House national security adviser.
Faceboobk A.I. Gets Its Baseline
Alarmed at the growing forged or deepfake videos on its platform, Facebook organised a Deepfake Detection Challenge and the results were not very encouraging, as the highest-performing model achieved an average precision of 65.18 per cent against real world examples. This, however, “establishes a new shared baseline as the artificial intelligence (AI) community continues to work on this difficult and important task”, said Facebook.
The Deepfake Detection Challenge drew more than 2,000 participants, who trained and tested more than 35,000 models using a unique new data set created for the challenge. Tested against a black box data set with challenging real world examples that were not shared with entrants, the top model achieved an average precision of 65.18 per cent. Facebook partnered with other industry leaders and academic experts last year to create the Deepfake Detection Challenge.
“By creating and sharing a unique new data set of more than 100,000 videos, the DFDC has enabled experts from around the world to come together, benchmark their deepfake detection models, try new approaches, and learn from each others’ work,” the social network said in a statement. Facebook in January this year has announced tough policies against the spread of manipulated media on its platform. The company said it will remove misleading manipulated media if it has been edited or synthesized beyond adjustments for clarity or quality.
For those of you that are scared to death of artificial intelligence, this should give you a little bit of comfort that perfect AI is quite a ways off. But Facebook getting their baseline of 65% shows two things; number one, current artificial intelligence is better than 50% at picking out deep fakes. Number two, knowing where their baseline is and studying the data will speed up the improvement rather than just stabbing blindly into the air at solutions to some of the problems.
Tesla Finally Allowed To Sell and Service in Michigan
Tesla has started deliveries in Michigan this week after years of fighting over the right to sell and service its electric cars in the backyard of the Big Three (GM, Ford, and Chrysler). Michigan has been a battleground for Tesla. There are several states where Tesla has been banned from selling its vehicles directly to customers due to misused old laws meant to protect car dealers, but Michigan has stood out among those states.
It is the home turf of the auto industry in the US, and some of those automakers are rumored to have been involved trying to stop Tesla to sell in Michigan. A change to the law in 2014 prohibited direct sales from automakers, which is blocking Tesla from obtaining a dealership license and selling cars in the state.
Earlier this year, Tesla reached a settlement with the state of Michigan to allow direct sales and service of vehicles through some official loopholes. They didn’t officially allow Tesla to get a dealer license, but they are allowing Tesla to sell and service to customers in Michigan through legal loopholes, like registering cars from another state for deliveries and having a wholly owned subsidiary perform service. Now Tesla officially started deliveries in Michigan. Sources say that the process to deliver in Michigan is similar to the few other states where Tesla is not officially allowed to sell directly to customers, like Texas. Michigan was prohibiting Tesla to service its vehicles in the state, which hasn’t been the case in other markets where Tesla is not allowed to sell directly, again, like in Texas. Despite the ban, Tesla has many customers in Michigan who were picking up their cars in Ohio, but the biggest issue was service.
A small victory, but it’s symbolic that established automakers are not able to stop the progress anymore. They are going to have to adapt.
BISON HEADBUTTS KID AT DRIVE-THRU ZOO
Common sense surely wasn’t on the side of one family which visited a drive-thru zoo in Chittenango, N.Y. In a video that was shot May 29 at The Wild Animal Park, a bison can be seen approaching a vehicle that was part of a drive-thru tour. The vehicle had a child poking out of the back window with head and upper body in plain view.
The bison headbutted the child, who sank back into the car. According to WTVH’s Michael Benny, a woman who was at the attraction with her grandson filmed the entire incident, which has been viewed more than 12,300 times on Twitter.
Benny said on Twitter that the owner of the park is aware of the bison attack, noting the animal was removed from the safari’s drive-thru tour.
“Owner has no interest in shaming the adult driver of the car but says hanging out of window is strictly prohibited,” said Benny. “Occupants get safety warnings throughout experience, he says.” Apparently, The Wild Animal Park has had issues since it opened in May. Benny noted the town of Sullivan, N.Y., has sued the zoo for operating without proper permits, and claims there’s been one other incident where an animal has rammed a vehicle with kids in it.