Nick @internic@social.cleverlibre.org

I'm a published author now!!! https://micahflee.com/2023/12/hacks-leaks-and-revelations-the-art-of-analyzing-hacked-and-leaked-data/

The best time to install Firefox was 15+ years ago.

The second best time is now.

Delighted to have received one of the 15 per year "CMS shifter mug 2023” for my contributions as shift leader in the last 2 months of the year, and my integrated support in 2023.

As expected from the name of this #prize that rewards #teamwork, the prize is this lovely mug!

New huge AI story from 404 Media: leaked docs show Civitai, hot AI startup funded by VC firm a16z, generated images that could be child pornography. Even after this discovery, OctoML, the engine that powers the startup, decided to keep working w/ Civitai

This investigation is based on:
- Slack chats
- logs of what prompts Civitai users actually typed to generate images

This is the real threat posed by generative AI right now, today. People can talk about the end of humanity all they want. But basically no one is paying attention to these very real issues which are happening right this second.

https://404media.co/a16z-funded-ai-platform-generated-images-that-could-be-categorized-as-child-pornography-leaked-documents-show/

NEW: Today, we say goodbye to Facebook's PGP encrypted emails.

In 2015, Facebook gave users the chance to use their public PGP key to get encrypted emails from the social network.

Now the company is deprecating the feature.

RIP.

https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/05/used-by-only-a-few-nerds-facebook-kills-pgp-encrypted-emails/

I've been using Inkscape for over 10 years. If I had been using Illustrator for 10 years I would have paid Adobe over $2,500 in "rental" fees for a subscription that stops as soon as I stop paying.

Instead I started paying $5 a month to Inkscape to help make sure we can all use it for free for as long as we want.

#inkscape #openSource

From xkcd's What If?:
What if we aimed the Hubble Telescope at Earth?
https://youtu.be/2LSyizrk8-0

The universe may last forever, but there’s no guarantee. A Big Rip, a Big Chill, proton or vacuum decay are all threats to the cosmos, ushering in a final curtain. It’s “End of Eternity” on Big Picture Science. Listen here: https://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/end-of-eternity

#podcast #science #universe #cosmos #scicomm

Automakers’ data privacy practices “are unacceptable,” says US senator

OEMs collect too much personal data and share it too freely, says Senator Markey.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/12/automakers-data-privacy-practices-are-unacceptable-says-us-senator/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

You may have heard about the hate crime where three Palestinian students were shot in Burlington, Vt., last week.

Hisham Awartani has been paralyzed from the chest down.

Here is a fund for his care:
https://gofund.me/d2d08c99

And an article that also links to the fund and explains what happened:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/palestinian-american-student-shot-vermont-paralyzed-chest-rcna127803

Astronomers found a super-bright supermassive black hole blasting out X-rays so far away its light took over 13 BILLION YEARS to reach us.

https://badastronomy.substack.com/p/a-giant-black-hole-a-long-long-way

Psst: I feel this way too (about trying to write political satire about the post-Brexit UK):

For National Cat Lover’s Month, we’ll take you on a Hubble tour of the beautiful and complex Cat’s Eye Nebula! Located about 4,000 light-years away, this planetary nebula is a visual "fossil record" of the evolution of a dying star: https://bit.ly/47Bxmva
#astronomy #cats

Wait, NORAD tracks my sleigh? In real-time?! This is outrageous! I never gave permission for this!

Goodness gracious, all I want to do is break into your houses and leave gifts relative to how good I think you’ve been, which I’ve been tracking meticulously in my book along with your constant whereabouts and sleeping patterns.

Normalize saying "I don’t know enough about the topic to be able to comment."

This one aged pretty well. IMHO, it's more true now than ever.