Nick @internic@social.cleverlibre.org

My 9 year old had an ST Math level dealing with prime numbers, and he needed a little help. We talked about how exciting prime numbers (and discrete logarithms) are, and how important they are in computer security. That made my evening.

Browsers based on Chromium like Brave and Chrome need to enable memory tagging themselves. They also don't enable strict site sandboxing or CFI yet.

Browsers based on Firefox lack a content sandbox on Android, not just site isolation. They're also missing CFI and memory tagging.

Pixel 8 providing hardware memory tagging support is a massive security advance for GrapheneOS. This hardware feature only helps if the OS uses it like GrapheneOS, and the security it provides entirely depends on how it's used. We have a great implementation in hardened_malloc.

#GrapheneOS #privacy #security #MemoryTagging #MTE #Pixel8 #Pixel8Pro

“The first thing I would say is that we’ve now lived in the deregulated system for 40 years. What we ended up with was a system that failed to achieve the things that the deregulators said it would. We now have a system that is less competitive than it was even during regulation. The top four airlines collectively have a larger market share now than the top four airlines did in 1977. This system of markets and competition has led to massive consolidation and concentration”https://hls.harvard.edu/today/airline-deregulation-may-be-why-flying-is-such-a-miserable-part-of-holiday-travel/

@pjohanneson @pluralistic There was one still a real classic one in place at Colter Bay Visitor Center in Grand Teton National Park when we passed through in early October. It was the first I've seen in ages.

They used to be so important when I was a kid on vacation with my parents, travelling in a truck camper. We would find one every few days to call home, alternating between my maternal grandparents and paternal grandmother, with each of them subsequently relaying the details to the other.

#Astrobiology community: How do you view the positives and negatives of future privately-funded astrobiology missions? Do you expect greater flexibility in terms of community demands, instrumentation? Faster response times? Planetary protection risks? Unclear data handling? etc.

@kat - since she never got tenure, Sabine has decided to make a living doing science popularization. Selling books doesn't get you much money unless you get a big following and stay in the limelight. So, people who try to earn a living explaining science feel immense pressure to talk about fashionable subjects. I maintain my purity by being a retired math professor with no need to earn a cent!

Fox News did to our parents what our parents were afraid video games would do to us. -- Stephen King

So I went to CVS to get the RSV vaccine and I asked the nurse? Giving me the shot to please put on a mask. She sighed and then went and got one. I thanked her and explained that Covid gave me heart damage and I didn’t want to risk another bout.
And she told me that I should just stay home. I told her I usually do but I needed the vaccine. FFS, this is a medical person telling me this. I hate it here. #CovidIsntOver

Project N95 is ceasing operations, with final sales on December 15. This is sad news.

It is impossible to overstate the value of lifesaving protection made available to hundreds of thousands of people across the country through their work, particularly their donation program. Unfortunately, they aren’t receiving the volume of purchases or donations needed to continue on.

They’re running deals for this shopping weekend. This is a great time to get more protection. http://projectn95.org

Short blog post: Last hours of MST3k Season 14 fundraiser! https://skullsinthestars.com/2023/11/24/last-hours-of-mst3k-season-14-fundraiser/

Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection" was published #OTD in 1859.

Yesterday I was thankful for his explanation of the process by which certain saurischian dinosaurs became, over millions of years, delicious and small enough to fit on a plate:🦖→🦃.

Firefox is officially and directly fucking with Google and I am here for it!

Well, that's interesting.

Cards against Humanity is starting their own social network.

I wonder if it's part of the Fediverse, or uses Fediverse software?

#CardsAgainstHumanity #Yowza #Fediverse #SocialMedia

https://www.yowza.social/

😆 In general ‘AI’ is a very poor name for a bunch of technologies that enable computers to do better pattern matching. Even worse, #OpenAI is now using ‘AGI’ to mean better-than-human level performance—at what task exactly is unclear—which isn’t what the phrase is generally understood to mean at all. The more you look into this whole area, the more you realise there’s a lot of smoke and mirrors: marketing hype dressed up as technological revolution. #AI #AIEthics https://mastodon.social/@jamesbritt/111466685493641006

We're hiring!

https://jobs.eu.lever.co/quantinuum/fa3fd261-5537-42db-9157-4e83b308a186

@adamconover mastodon has provided a default instance (same onboarding as bluesky) so that users don’t have to choose anything since April. Yet “normies will never know how to sign up” is repeated so often people think it’s true.

Don’t get me wrong, Mastodon has plenty to critique. But I don’t think that’s it.

Just released a new YouTube video about why we're all still trapped on Twitter even as the platform continues to circle the toilet drain. (I know, the irony of posting this here...) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-tUhFpbXLk

Planning my year-end giving, and looking for charities that give direct aid to trans folks trying to access gender affirming care in states that restrict such care. Would love suggestions if anyone has them! (Must be a registered 501(c)3.)