Nick @internic@social.cleverlibre.org

The adorable Venezuelan poodle moth was discovered & photographed in 2009 by Dr. Arthur Anker. It’s supposedly the only sighting of this critter, but insects are small & Earth is big. So imagine the diversity of species we haven’t found yet…

<tap tap tap> Hello? <tap tap tap> Is this thing on?

As Twitter slowly empties into all the new things, it is making it harder to know exactly how to share information or promote things I'm part of, but... Here goes....

<tap tap tap>Attention: Hangout-a-thon is November 3-5

🧵

You might be scared that black holes could suck you in, but look what I have just found in our GLOSTAR Galactic plane survey, that we conducted with the Very Large Array and the Effelsberg Telescope.

I have no idea what it is, but it looks very hungry and it's lurking in the Cygnus X region. So you better watch out!

#spooktober #astronomy #astrodon

Good morning 😂 #CatsOfMastodon #NorahNeko

Everyone thinks they know how #trust & #safety should work, but very few have actually done #ContentModeration.

@mmasnick, Randy Lubin, and Leigh Beadon developed this really fun game, exploring the difficult choices and tradeoffs involved in managing a trust and safety team.

I was immediately hooked and ended with these scores:

🛡️ #TrustAndSafetyTycoon

🏆 Won via IPO and retired from the tech world

📈 Score: 1984
📏 Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐◾️

Can you beat me? https://trustandsafety.fun/

Remember, the fact that they can confidently generate vast amounts of text doesn’t mean there’s any actual intellectual capacity inside the tech billionaire.

Official Israeli account posted on the bad site that IDF "intelligence information" showed "the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization is responsible for the failed shooting that hit the hospital"

The tweet included video of a missile shot that a NYT reporter flagged as being recorded 40 mins later, and they just edited that part out.

#israel #gaza #propaganda

https://twitter.com/RobertMackey/status/1714374889568911506

It's funny: Both Bandcamp and Patreon had the easiest and most straightforwardly long-term profitable business models imaginable: Sit between indie creatives and their fans, provide some basic services for mediation (comment sections, media posts, semi-global payment) and take enough of a cut of any payments to cover the costs and then some.

But because that business model wouldn't scale forever, they are instead being gutted, because ever _increasing_ growth is the only model capital accepts

My latest: the Religious Right is back on their bullshit, trying to get the Ten Commandments posted in public school classrooms. Watch one Texas lawmaker demolish the theocratic argument in favor of it https://skepchick.org/2023/10/texas-lawmaker-destroys-theocratic-argument-for-the-ten-commandments/

The price of Covid-19 treatment Paxlovid could rise to $2,500 next year, a 5 times increase.

This is horrible. The government keeps saying "we have the tools," but this isn't true for the people who need them most.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/16/health/paxlovid-price-expected-to-rise/index.html

Thirty years ago, Peter Shor discovered a fast factoring algorithm that launched the field of quantum computing. Now, another researcher has extended the algorithm in a new direction that could make it run even faster. My latest for @QuantaMagazine:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/thirty-years-later-a-speed-boost-for-quantum-factoring-20231017

Eric Adams is using AI to make New Yorkers think he speaks their language, which experts called "Orwellian."
https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgw78a/nyc-mayor-casually-announces-hes-deepfaking-himself-experts-horrified?at_medium=Social%20media&at_campaign=Mastodon
#Technews #ericadams #NYC #AI #deepfake

“I just always assumed, despite the fact that the US hadn’t sent any women up there, or people of color, that I was going to go.”

Dr. Mae Jemison (@maejemison) was born #OTD in 1956. Doctor, peace corps volunteer, first Black woman in space, and first astronaut on Star Trek.

Enjoying “An Immense World” by Ed Yong, on animal senses. I think I heard once before that scallops have up to 200 eyes with mirrors made from guanine crystals, but failed to be sufficiently amazed at the time, so I’m glad to have been reminded.

@saper

Under FIDO, to which Google declares compliance for passkeys[^1], the private key should never leave the client device so they shouldn’t be stored on the server… but that applies to the service provider (e.g. Shopify website). Identity provider, in this case Google or Apple, of course do store private keys on their servers for backup purposes, only they declare them to be encrypted by the sync passphrase.

I guess there are two workflows here: one under normal usage scenarios, one under TAO[^2] or other “law enforcement love letter” scenarios.

Granted that identity like Google provider controls all data flows for any software keys, from storage (Android), sync passphrase entry (Android) to operating system and application updates (especially after hosted developer keys were introduced to Android[^3]), it would be naive to have any illusions that under TAO scenario they won’t retrieve that one way or another.

This shouldn’t be the case with hardware authenticators, of course, which are also allowed by Passkeys. Or at least building a side channel for private key retrieval will be much more difficult even in TAO scenario.

[^1]: https://developers.google.com/identity/passkeys

[^2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tailored_Access_Operations

[^3]: https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/01/android_app_bundle/

@PlaneSailingGames @GossiTheDog

Pretty much exactly 19 years ago I got on a train to Oxford and made Mark Shuttleworth's laptop successfully suspend and resume using ACPI and that was the turning point in my entire career

Very insightful analysis in this piece from Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic) -- a succinct and accessible summary of the intersection between IT and Politics in 2023.

If you know someone struggling to understand why they should care about digital privacy and data rights, just send them this.

https://theintercept.com/2023/10/16/surveillance-state-big-tech/

Do you want to know why companies keep trying to get you to install their app? @pluralistic has the answer:

"An app is best understood as “a webpage wrapped in just enough IP to make it a crime to install an ad blocker” (or anything else the app’s shareholders disapprove of)."

https://theintercept.com/2023/10/16/surveillance-state-big-tech/

Everyone knows that all food is made of chemicals, right?

Do you know what contains glycosylated flavonoids, phenolic acids, carotenoids, the vitamin B groups, ascorbic acid, tocopherols, and sesquiterpene lactones?

Lettuce.

There are *ads* in the *start bar* in Windows 11, in an operating system I paid for. Whose joke of enshittification is this?