Nick @internic@social.cleverlibre.org

Precarious
http://smbc-comics.com/comic/precarious (click for bonus panel)
#smbc #hiveworks #comics

By JWeiland @JPWeiland

🇺🇸 September 8th US update:

Community spread of COVID is "high", with a correction upwards last week as well. Current estimates:

🔸720,000 new infections/day
🔸1 in every 460 new people were infected today
🔸1 in every 46 people currently infected

#COVID19US #COVIDisNotOver #COVIDisAirborne @auscovid19

Twitter/X source: https://twitter.com/JPWeiland/status/1700277959532196168

@thatandromeda @spiegelmama @deadbeefthemonster

I think it's not just that they aged poorly. I think the role of movies in the lives of hacker types was just so very different back in the '70s, '80s, and '90s.

To be a computer nerd back then was countercultural. We got very very little representation, and almost all of it was extremely negative. The internet existed, but was itself countercultural: the mainstream had no idea it existed. There was no social media like we think of it today, meaning not just the form of the thing, but how deeply embedded it is in the larger society.

So for everyone who was countercultural, including computer nerds and science fiction and fantasy fans, every iota of culture that spoke to us was a treasure. We hoarded that stuff in our hearts.

U2's I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For is about a person that's getting increasingly frustrated trying to do a simple web search, but only getting ads and irrelevant links from Google.

Since I've seen a lot of chatter about people switching to #Firefox as Google ramps up the enshitification of #Chrome, let me tell you about a killer feature for people who (a) need multiple accounts on the same websites (eg. devs) or specifically (b) have to use multiple Google accounts.

Firefox has an official addon called Multi Account Containers that lets you trivially set up color coded tabs that have separate sets of cookies. Log into your dev account in one, and your test account in another. Log into your personal #gmail in one and have another tab next to it with your work Gmail. I'm actually not signed in to any Google accounts in most my tabs, I just have containers for the specific tasks I do on Google products.

It'll take you 30 seconds to set up.

Add-on: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/

Mozilla's explanation: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers

When rock star Isaac May and theoretical physicist Brian Newton first teamed up to explore alternate realities, everybody laughed at them.

#MicroSF #Physics #Rock

X was caught inserting ads into people's feeds without disclosing they were ads!

I lean on the side of thinking this is a bug rather than deception; the very best of X falling apart. Either way, it's illegal and warrants an FTC investigation and a hefty fine.

This comes after X changed the way ads looked, removing the little “Promoted" text for smaller text that just reads "Ad."

Yikes!

https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/08/x-formerly-twitter-caught-running-unlabeled-ads-in-users-following-feeds/

The sky was showing off yesterday

There’s a pretty good look at unanswered questions the MSRC blog on the Microsoft 365 customer data breach in this: https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/09/hack-of-a-microsoft-corporate-account-led-to-azure-breach-by-chinese-hackers/

Unsurprisingly MS aren’t using words like ‘breach’, ‘vulnerability’ etc when clearly it was both. It’s almost like there’s misaligned incentives.

Other obvious issues include a compromise in 2021 where the threat actor took process dumps etc but nobody checked what they were doing (you live and learn etc), no HSMs etc. Assume MS are compromised.

We are doing the opposite of everything we should be doing as the 'unexpected' summer Covid wave impacts hospitals. If it is this bad now with 30% of beds occupied via hospital acquired infection, imagine the disaster that will unfold this winter.

No outbreak declared because government and public health want to preserve their image

#Covid #Covid19 #BCpoli

https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/covid-vancouver-island-no-outbreak-1.6959369?cmp=rss&utm_source=press.coop

So I'm finally basically done with twitter - now using it only to reply to people or promote products, but man does it suck for a lot of artists. Twitter was never a big part of my business, but for some people it was the popular streetcorner they did their work. For them it's just lost money that they won't get back. The modern all-social Internet is brutal.

Hope other browser developers realize chromium is a ticking time bomb. I’ve used firefox for over 15 years and see no reason to change with the current landscape of browsers being so reliant on google .

The reality on the ground is that as soon as the UK's Online Safety bill becomes law then the de-facto assumption must be that any service provider with significant exposure to the UK might be under a notice that mandates the compromise the security and/or privacy of that service.

The statement made today - explicitly designed to defuse any tension that might have held up the bill - only re-enforces that position.

The framing that this is a "win" for online privacy is deeply disingenuous.

“A species of bamboo found all over Japan – Phyllostachys nigra var. henonis – is about to flower for the first time in 120 years, and then die.”

https://cosmosmagazine.com/nature/plants/bamboo-flowering-die/

“Health-care workers at a hospital on Vancouver Island are sounding the alarm about the fast spread of COVID-19 at the facility in the last few weeks, after public health officials said they would not declare it an outbreak because of ‘negative connotations.’”

These “public health” officials need to be fired.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/covid-vancouver-island-no-outbreak-1.6959369

I haven't seen many monarch butterflies this year so I spent extra time photographing this beautiful butterfly.

The large and brilliantly-colored monarch butterfly is among the most easily recognizable of the butterfly species that call North America home.

https://pixels.com/featured/beautiful-monarch-butterfly-chad-meyer.html

#butterfly #nature #insect #zinnia #flower #monarch

Contrived
http://smbc-comics.com/comic/contrived (click for bonus panel)
#smbc #hiveworks #comics

Because we need to celebrate the #XRISM launch!

#XRISM #astrodon #XraysAreTheBestRays #SciArt

The Inside Story of How the Navy Spent Billions on the “Little Crappy Ship”
==

Littoral combat #ships were supposed to launch the #Navy into the future. Instead they broke down across the globe and many of their #weapons never worked.

Now the Navy is getting rid of them. One is less than five years old.

#Military #DefenseSpending #Pentagon #LCS #News

https://www.propublica.org/article/how-navy-spent-billions-littoral-combat-ship?utm_medium=social&utm_source=mastodon&utm_campaign=mastodon-post