Daphne

@LilahTovMoon@tech.lgbt WTAF. “Print books from the pre-LLM era are structurally guaranteed to be free of this contamination. That alone is a significant advantage,” it explains in an article on its website, as quoted by 404. “Physical books published before this date [pre-2022] are structurally clean of modern poisoning tools.” Weirdly it makes me think of steel. Modern steel is contaminated with nuclear fallout, so for sensitive applications, pre-1940 steel is particularly valuable. So naturally the AI company response to this is to destroy the books.

@rooster@beige.party https://ssd.eff.org is excellent. Really, most anything from the @eff@mastodon.social is going to be well done. https://nostarch.com/smartgirlsguide is from 2015 (so an antique in internet time!) but still has good advice in it.

@siderea @ShadSterling @Fishercat @trisweb My understanding is they're looking for a chain of documentation to connect the requestor to the record in question. If it's someone's own birth certificate and they have an ID that shows a matching name and birth date to the birth certificate, that might be enough. Failing that, they need to prove the steps in the chain. So if you changed your name, you would need to show your ID and name change, etc. If all else fails, you can file a motion with the court, but they'd likely ask the same question: prove your link to the birth certificate in question. If the overall intent is to prove parentage, though, there is a whole setup for specifically that (and yes, it goes through a judge). It's a common enough thing that there is a defined process for it.

@ShadSterling @Fishercat @trisweb @siderea You can always get your own records (the sealing doesn't apply to you). It's still possible to get the records for other people too, but now you have to file a motion with the court to unseal them and the court will want a good reason, etc. It's definitely a higher bar (well, anything is a higher bar then "look on the website") and notably more difficult for the requestor.

@Fishercat @ShadSterling @trisweb @siderea To be sure, people change their names for many reasons and not all the people searchable were trans, but when you see things like "Nathan" becoming "Natalie" or vice versa it's easy to surmise. Plus a number of people flat-out give "I'm transgender" as their reason for the name change. The whole thing was effectively a trans person search engine for Massachusetts.