Now that Trump supports releasing the Epstein files, which are in the custody of the branch of government he controls, he doesn't need a congressional vote. He can just release them. Perhaps he didn't understand this.
- Mass deportations without trials
- Extrajudicial imprisonment in foreign concentration camps.
- National registry of autistic people, who are declared "nonproductive"
- Arrests of judges
History is rhyming pretty hard right now.
My honest advice (on another platform) to someone who was making extravagant claims and being indistinguishable from a crackpot.
Unfortunately, I have to say this again:
US election infrastructure isn't perfect and there's still work to do to make it more secure. But there is simply no credible evidence that the 2020 election outcome was altered through technical attacks, despite exhaustive scrutiny.
Shortly after the 2020 election, when these discredited claims were first raised, 58 of my colleagues and I issued this statement:
https://www.mattblaze.org/papers/election2020.pdf .
Nothing we've learned since then alters my assessment.
I'm not dunking on Signal here (though there *are* some features and usability quirks I dislike). It's probably the best designed and implemented secure messaging platform *for general use* that we've got. I use and rely on Signal quite a bit myself.
But it's simply not designed for, or suitable for, classified national security communications.
If you were wondering how my day is going, I'm still being yelled at by Signal groupies who are mad at me for saying the app lacks special features for protecting classified information.
Protip: if someone posts a technical or legal analysis of something the administration is doing or proposing and your response is that legalities are irrelevant and a waste of time, the problem is YOU.
You know who wants you to think laws don’t matter anymore and that pushback is hopeless? Fascists.
Don’t act like a fascist.
DoGE literally burglarized the headquarters of the US Institute of Peace, a private organization not part of the executive branch, which called the cops on them.
via nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnddaehgu3wwp6kyqpqaq2wqds7uk7g9tfv6gmm2qk0t6cmqmpzh5n9hkdghgx3d0x75sysauysde
Trump's latest proclamation that Biden's pardons are invalid because they were signed by autopen should scare us for many reasons. Aside from the constitutional bogusity and revenge-based politics, it's also reminiscent of the Calvinball-like legal "theories" advanced by those tiresome "sovereign citizen" wackos (e.g. "the court has no jurisdictions because the wrong flag is flying in the courtroom").
Ended up taking about blue boxes in my surveillance class today, and
explaining that “long distance” calls cost extra was met with incredulous stares by many of the students.
I am, as I understand it, very old.
The recent cuts to grant overhead by NIH reminds me that among the many casualties of the slash-and-burn policies of the new administration will be the careers of a generation of junior academic STEM researchers, for whom grants are the lifeblood of establishing their early research trajectories and future tenure cases. Without federal grants, scientists don't have the resources to hire PhD students, build up their labs, and pursue their research agendas.
81 Fulham Road ("Michelin House"), London, 2004
All the pixels, drinking up the hazards, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/54196628571
#photography
London's "Thin House" looks as if it belongs in a Potemkin village or as a background facade on a Hollywood studio lot, but it's something of a Tardis, larger on the inside than appears on the outside. Created to make way for the tracks of the Metropolitan Railway (now the District and Circle lines) behind it, its triangular footprint gives it the illusion of being little more than a shallow rectangle when viewed from the street.
5 Thurloe Square ("The Thin House"), London, 2024.
All the pixels, bigger on the inside than the outside, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/54192985864
#photography
Captured with the Rodenstock 40mm/4.0 HR Digaron-W lens (@ f/6.3), Phase One IQ4-150 digital back (@ ISO 50), Cambo 1200 camera (shifted vertically -10mm).
5 Thurloe Square ("The Thin House"), London, 2024.
All the pixels, bigger on the inside than the outside, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/54192985864
#photography
nostr:npub1rucd2y48vtq3mwljn0fa3vfz9tudjh77hk2t7q8kh5dxqxqgt8vsuvpkka Depends on your threat model. One-way pagers don't expose the location of the recipient, which may be more important than message confidentiality for some purposes.
nostr:npub1eulxt0p36rpn0gdsr99tn2pcvv8ne4prf0qz3k3s9pcn3qe0htqq36cndk Yeah, it seems they sold to a new owner, who based the new decor on *LA* delis (call me suspicious), but the food I tasted was entirely acceptable to my NYC-raised palate.
As a native NYer, it pains me enormously to have to admit this, but the bagel palace next door to the Las Vegas Convention Center is entirely passable.
Today is like Christmas for social engineering scammers posing as IT support.
Should Biden drop out based on his debate performance? I don't know. Answering that sensibly requires two things that are not currently publicly known:
- The actual state of Biden's health, with an informed prognosis.
- If he's fit (see above, I don't know), the political landscape, based on highly granular polling data and informed analysis.
I'm neither an MD nor a political analyst, and I've neither examined Biden nor have access to the kinds of political data that campaigns use.
I was just told that I should "have a more constructive attitude" about Mastodon. Maybe if I smiled more?
Basically, the PM/DM mechanism is a "missing stair" of usability design. It's possible for experts - experienced users - to avoid being tripped up by it, because they've already made their mistakes or have been warned. But that doesn't help newer, less sophisticated, or less experienced users.
It's almost like hazing.
Just make it work the way people expect, please.