Technology

Google has sharply reduced its support for nonprofit groups devoted to diversity, equity, and inclusion, in what appears to be another sign the company is falling in line with President Trump’s anti-DEI crusade, the Tech Transparency Project (TTP) has found.

Google publishes a list of organizations that receive the “most substantial contributions” from the company. In early 2025, Google removed more than 200 groups from the list, its biggest purge in at least five years. The largest category of removals related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), a concept that has come under sustained attack by the Trump administration. A total of 58 DEI-related groups disappeared from the list.

It is unclear if Google stopped funding these organizations or is simply seeking to hide its support for them. However, either scenario suggests Google is taking further steps to distance itself from DEI programs.

After Trump took office and began rolling back DEI efforts, Google removes references to diversity, equity, and inclusion from its annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and ended diversity-related hiring goals. Like other Big Tech companies and executives, Google donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration.

Google and most of the groups removed from Google's list did not respond to questions. One of the groups, the ACLU of Illinois, declined to comment and directed questions to Google.

In a statement to CNBC, which covered this report, Google said, “We contribute to hundreds of groups from across the political spectrum that advocate for pro-innovation policies, and those groups change from year to year based on where our contributions will have the most impact.”

TTP identified Google’s disappearing DEI groups while updating its Tech Funding Database. The searchable database, which is linked on TTP’s website, provides information on whether organizations have received funding from Big Tech firms, based on company disclosures. The latest update adds disclosures from 2021 to the most recent available.

Had to verify to use Bluesky today.... guess that's the end of that platform in the UK (not that it was doing great anyhoo)

Dozens and perhaps hundreds of individuals who applied to visit inmates at Everglades Correctional Institution (ECI) in Miami-Dade County last weekend had their personal contact information shared with every inmate at that facility, according to five different individuals who have spoken to the Phoenix over the past four days.

The Florida Department of Corrections has not commented publicly about the incident since it occurred last week.

That data breach has frightened and infuriated some of the women who had their names, email addresses, and telephone numbers released to those incarcerated at the prison located near the Florida Everglades.

Inmates received that information via an email sent out by a staff member of the facility on Thursday. Florida inmates have access to emails through both interactive kiosks as well as secure tablets.

“It’s kind of disturbing when you think about it,” said Madeline Donate, who regularly visits her husband at the prison. “The privacy aspect of this is concerning. This is how other inmates get information and can sometimes extort family members and things like that. It’s concerning.”

Jan Thompson said she fears extortion.

“What if there’s some inmate that doesn’t like another inmate?” she said. “And he tells his family, ‘Okay, here’s his wife’s phone number. Call her and tell her if she doesn’t pay and put $500 on my book, I’m going to have her husband stabbed and killed.’ What’s stopping them from doing that?”

(Inmates can receive funds for deposit into their “inmate trust accounts” from individuals already identified on the inmate’s automated visiting record).

“I’m very worried. This is not okay,” added a woman who wanted to be identified only as Dakota, her middle name. “Someone needs to be held accountable for this. They need to take the necessary precautions to ensure that this does not happen. And what about this information that’s out there? There’s what, 1,600 [inmates] there? They all have information. God knows what they could do with it.”

Thousands of South Dakotans have been publicly labeled as applicants for government assistance and thousands more have had their email address and phone number exposed, due to a new state law and the way the state’s election office is implementing it.

Although the legislation creating the law received some Democratic votes, it’s a product of the Republican-dominated Legislature. Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden signed it into law and Republican Secretary of State Monae Johnson is carrying out its provisions.

Several legislators, both Democrats and Republicans, are now telling South Dakota Searchlight they did not intend for the law to expose sensitive information — especially the identity of public assistance applicants.

“This is what happens when you put the wrong people in charge,” said state House Minority Leader Erin Healy, D-Sioux Falls, who voted against the bill. “We talk a lot about freedom and privacy in this state, so it’s a shame that this legislation led to this type of breach.”

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.bestiver.se/post/528970

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/49042391

I was sick of always fighting with WordPress to get a local set up to develop a plug-in or update the theme for a client, so I made a dev container.

As per the README, this supports:

• Automatic database dump import and site URL rename
• Automatic WordPress theme and plug-in loading from .zip, wpackagist or directory
• Mounting of a user-provided uploads directory

It also means your IDE automatically gets access to a WordPress installation for easy auto complete of WordPress functions and features when writing PHP code.

Theoretically, it can also easily be converted into a normal container if you don't use VSCode by setting up /workspace as a mount. Dev containers are unfortunately a bit broken with JetBrains products, and this container will not launch.

Contributions welcome!

A representative for Tesla sent Ars the following statement: "Today's verdict is wrong and only works to set back automotive safety and jeopardize Tesla's and the entire industry's efforts to develop and implement life-saving technology. We plan to appeal given the substantial errors of law and irregularities at trial. Even though this jury found that the driver was overwhelmingly responsible for this tragic accident in 2019, the evidence has always shown that this driver was solely at fault because he was speeding, with his foot on the accelerator—which overrode Autopilot—as he rummaged for his dropped phone without his eyes on the road. To be clear, no car in 2019, and none today, would have prevented this crash. This was never about Autopilot; it was a fiction concocted by plaintiffs’ lawyers blaming the car when the driver—from day one—admitted and accepted responsibility."

So, you admit that the company’s marketing has continued to lie for the past six years?

Follow-up to yesterday's post: https://lemmy.world/post/33780933

Experimenting with unproven technology to determine whether a child should be granted protections they desperately need and are legally entitled to is cruel and unconscionable.

The New Orleans City Council is considering Ordinance 35,137 that would authorize the continued use of the live facial recognition system implemented by Project NOLA. Project NOLA, a non-profit organization, runs a centralized surveillance system that has equipped New Orleans with more than 200 facial recognition cameras at various establishments and residential locations. The program, run by a former officer, was until recently, sending law enforcement live, real time alerts of people identified by facial recognition from predetermined lists. The use of Project NOLA’s live facial recognition system by the New Orleans police was a clear violation of a preexisting 2022 city council ordinance that limited the use of facial recognition technology to searches involving specific cases with violent crime. The 2022 ordinance did not allow for the use of live facial recognition or the mass deployment of the technology. Despite the police’s clear violation of the ordinance, the New Orleans City Council is considering a new ordinance to sanction the mass deployment of live facial recognition.

The possibility that New Orleans will officially implement mass surveillance via facial recognition would be an about-face that would see New Orleans go from a 2020 ordinance that rightly banned facial recognition because of the heightened risk of false positives for Black people to embracing a dystopian future of a dragnet facial recognition surveillance that treats everyone as a suspect. This opens the door to a level of intrusion that we’ve only seen in authoritarian governments. The intrusion will not stop at our faces, Project NOLA can not only track faces, but also clothing, cars, and bikes. The kind of surveillance presents a real threat to our privacy, civil liberties, and undermines our democratic values.

The use of live FRT surveillance would make everyone a suspect and go against democratic values. This type of mass surveillance would undermine individual freedoms and citizens’ ability to freely engage in social and political activity. The European Court of Human Rights unanimously concluded that highly intrusive technology (e.g. real-time dragnet facial recognition surveillance) is incompatible with the ideals and values of a democratic society governed by the rule of law. Mass deployment of live facial recognition suppresses dissent and disproportionally targets marginalized groups.

Sanctioning the indiscriminate use of live facial recognition would destroy the previous guardrails around this technology and would be the first major American city to specifically allow live facial recognition.

~~Font Awesome is currently experiencing an outage, so many webpages will have a broken UI or even broken functionality if there was any tied to icons (ask me how I know)~~

It has been fixed. Back to work!

Figured I'd make a meme too:

In a Thursday speech, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman Paul S. Atkins announced “Project Crypto,” an initiative to modernize the country’s securities rules and regulations to move financial markets on-chain.

“Under my leadership, the SEC will not stand idly by and watch innovations develop overseas while our capital markets remain stagnant,” he said at an America First Policy Institute event in Washington D.C. His plan includes measures to reshore crypto businesses that have left the country and to ensure that “archaic rules and regulations do not smother innovation and entrepreneurship in America.”