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Proof of the universality of the “safety activist crusades to undo demonstrable technical benefit to all because of fringe issue…” trope
…when the issues are better addressed through user education and both technology and user interface refinement. It’s not just end to end encryption that suffers: Inside the War Against Headlight Brightness | The Ringer https://www.theringer.com/2024/12/03/tech/headlight-brightness-cars-accidents
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Here is a picture of me using giant, mega marshmallows for their zero-rated VAT approved purpose as an ingredient, in this case for rice crispy cakes
The toddler is going to love these:
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EU GPSR: General Product Safety Regulations
Protectionism through Safetyism. I’m betting that this is what the guy thought when he suggested Bluesky were somehow legally obliged to provide a European POC:
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“So, in response, many NSA employees were like, ‘No, fuck off, I’ll play Pokémon Go all over base’” | …and yet Australia expects to successfully ban teenagers from social media?
This glorious quote is in the attached; if the NSA cannot enforce fearmongering-based operational security discipline over actual employees, what hope do Governments have of coercing (rather than educating) teenagers? U.S. Intelligence Feared Pokémon Go Was a Chinese Plot https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/11/29/pokemongo-cia-nsa-intelligence-spying/
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Electric Dreams | Tate Modern | …I’m here and waiting for the inevitable backlash about “algorithms cannot create art”
Discover how artists used machines and algorithms to create mesmerising and mind-bending art between the 1950s and the early 1990s https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/electric-dreams
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History of “ping -a” (audible ping) on FreeBSD and MacOS, by @brucewmurphy on Threads
I have used it for precisely the purpose described; short thread: […] And then I could go around the lab, under the desks, wiggling bits of that awful bloody thinnet and waiting to hear the beeping stop and start. Saved a bunch of time. 2/ https://www.threads.net/@brucewmurphy/post/DC4JGz1Tsvl
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Runa Sandvik: “Introduction to Investigative Journalism: Digital Security” | Global Investigative Journalism Network
Quote: This chapter presents numerous tips and tools to help you secure accounts, computers and phones, communications, and personal information. In addition to specific tools and settings, we have also included case studies on the importance of considering digital security when planning your work. There is a lot of information here, so we recommend that…
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Remember, Kids: just because Bluesky is suddenly and massively popular whilst X is dying on the vine does *not* mean that all those people screaming that “network effects prevent people moving between social networks, we must regulate!” — were wrong…
Goodness, no; just because Signal regularly swallows huge chunks of userbase from WhatsApp and Telegram, and just because BlueSky[1] and TikTok[2] are eating huge chunks of Twitter and YouTube/Instagram respectively, does not mean that European regulators should give up attempts to eviscerate all the large social networks for the public good. https://firehose3d.theo.io
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This sounds so much like the online safety mafia
The European Commission will soon find that its DMA is built upon a no-win trap: forcing changes that hurt consumers to help middleman companies only to find that those middlemen will never, ever be happy.
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TFW someone’s randomness pretty strongly suggests that they’re a bot, but their grammar is so poor that it’s not worth attempting a prompt-injection experiment because they surely can’t be an LLM…
Case in point, unless LLMs nowadays are using bad grammar to filter out less-likely victims a-la phishing exercises from Nigerian princes …
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So if you’re a historian researching the 17th century Italian use of weasel testicles as contraceptives (yes, really) you may be flagged by your Google searches
This is one of the occasions where you can see what the regulations were intending, but it differs from what they achieve: