Annoyed at the quiet, I ended up putting on a wildlife documentary in the background a couple nights ago. It's always fun to watch foxes, right?

And on the screen there were these creatures enduring in the most brutal elements in an unforgiving and competitive world. All teeth and claws, yells and screams, covered in dirt and blood -- and absolutely *thriving* to the point of having time to play despite *everything* going against them in their world.

Hey furries -- whether you chose your species or it chose you, let it be a reflective reminder that for all the cute softness inherent in them that they -- *you* -- can fight, survive, and thrive in even in the most difficult of times.

Hey, if you write role-playing games, even if it's just for you and your friends, I just wanted to let you know that I'm pretty damn proud of you.

Look at the billions of dollars and all the other finite resources they're shoveling into the AI furnace just to forge the most banal poop in all of human history.

And here you are, making art that actually, genuinely gets human to make art.

“The astronomical number of firearms owned by U.S. civilians, with the Second Amendment considered a sacred mandate, is also intricately related to militaristic culture and white nationalism. The militias referred to in the Second Amendment were intended as a means for white people to eliminate Indigenous communities in order to take their land, and for slave patrols to control Black people.”

- Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, "Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment."

Interesting. According to Brent Spiner (the actor who plays the android Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation)

1) it was Patrick Stewart's UK pronunciation of his character's name (day-tah instead of the US's dah-tah) that made this pronunciation canon, and

2) the character of Data and the popularity of Star Trek has led to "day-tah" now being the common pronunciation in the US, too.

https://youtu.be/xeqTMTOxid8 (π min)

#StarTrek #StarTrekTNG #TNG #data #pronunciation #English #EnglishLanguage

Brent Spiner on the "Data" name in "Star Trek: The Next Generation"

Brent Spiner tells a funny story about the Data name from "Star Trek: The Next Generation", and how Patrick Stewart is responsible for the way the word is no...

^YouTube

FBI Seizure of Mastodon Server Data is a Wakeup Call to Fediverse Users and Hosts to Protect their Users (2023)

In May [2023], Mastodon server Kolektiva.social was compromised when one of the server’s admins had their home raided by the FBI for unrelated charges. All of their electronics, including a backup of the instance database, were seized.

It’s a chillingly familiar story which should serve as a reminder for the hosts, users, and developers of decentralized platforms: if you care about privacy, you have to do the work to protect it. We have a chance to do better from the start in the fediverse, so let’s take it. ...

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/07/fbi-seizure-mastodon-server-wakeup-call-fediverse-users-and-hosts-protect-their

HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41434600

This is an issue that's troubled me since joining the Fediverse in 2016, and as one of the people heavily involved in the "Plexodus" diaspora from the late unlamented #GooglePlus. Whilst large commercial providers have their failure points concerning privacy and law enforcement, they've also often stood up to over-broad attempts to surveil peoples' online activity. Small instances on distributed systems often run as hobbies or very small-scale subscription / donation-based operations might avoid the roving eye of such efforts, but also lack resources, knowledge, and procedures for how to respond when such seizures occur. As the EFF notes, Kolektiva failed to alert its members (and remote contacts) until months after the FBI raid.

The EFF does have a promising guide to legal rights and considerations specifically tailored at the Fediverse:

"User Generated Content and the Fediverse: A Legal Primer"
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/12/user-generated-content-and-fediverse-legal-primer

#KolektivaSocial #Kolektiva #EFF #ElectronicFrontierFoundation #CyberRights #FBI #OnlineRights #JacksonGames

Edit: This is a 2023 story.

FBI Seizure of Mastodon Server Data is a Wakeup Call to Fediverse Users and Hosts to Protect their Users

We’re in an exciting time for users who want to take back control from major platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

^{Electronic Frontier Foundation}

> #Microsoft confirms that #Windows 11 Recall #AI is not optional — a glitch made it appear so in the Windows 11 24H2 KB5041865 update
https://www.tomshardware.com/software/windows/microsoft-confirms-that-windows-11-recall-ai-is-not-optional-a-glitch-made-it-appear-so-in-the-windows-11-24h2-kb5041865-update

But don't worry, the company that is unable to correctly implement a toggle switch assures us that they definitely implemented this new immensely complex piece of technology nobody asked for directly in the operating system in a way that is secure and under no circumstances puts anyone in danger in ways security researchers said it will.

Microsoft confirms that Windows 11 Recall AI is not optional — a glitch made it appear so in the Windows 11 24H2 KB5041865 update

Windows senior product manager Brandon LeBlanc says, "This will be fixed in an upcoming update."

^{Christopher Harper (Tom's Hardware)}

I really miss going to Rust and Wasm events, hanging out with folks, geeking out. But like, the last time I got Covid it knocked me flat for about six months - and I don't know how I'll respond to a Next Time. So there really can't be one.

It's so draining to feel like I'm the only one advocating for clean air, accessible environments, spaces that don't risk having participants walking away with long-term disabilities.

Like, I don't even know how to begin to explain that this is important.

"i host my api serverlessly"

THEN HOW DO I CONNECT TO IT, BEN???
WHAT AM I CONNECTING TO???
A FUCKING LOCAL FILE????

I'll be fursuiting as these two huge larger-than-life floofs at Furry Migration from Thursday to Sunday!

Just see me around, talk, hug, or I could also be open for cuddles too!

I can't wait for Furry Migration!

"the bluesky network is federating"

JUST ONE SMALL PROBLEM
FEDERATING WITH WHO, JAY?
FUCKING ACTIVITYPUB?

If your open source project makes me jump through hoops to report a bug, I will just conclude you don't care about bugs.

That includes requiring me to create an account. Big projects like the Linux kernel manage just fine with a simple mailing list, there's no reason your small project needs a big corporate solution with accounts and data leaks. Leave that to big corporate projects like Mozilla, who really don't care about bugs.

I'm not an expert in labor history or activism, but from a lay perspective, it seems unavoidable that in its modern and present form, AI is an attack on labor. Not even just in the direct sense of replacing and supplanting labor, but also in the form of *devaluing* it (e.g.: the shift from translation jobs to "editing" jobs).

Opposing the proliferation of AI is thus, to my naive understanding, an act of labor and class solidarity.

I mean, who could've possibly imagined?!?!

STUDY: "In acute care settings, staff N95 respirators and admission screening testing of patients can reduce hospital-acquired #COVID19 and COVID-19 deaths, and are cost saving because of reduced patient bed-days and staff replacement needs."

I still cannot imagine why healthcare workers need to be told to care about patients and put on masks, particularly during COVID surges!

https://www.journalofhospitalinfection.com/article/S0195-6701(24)00236-6/fulltext

Despite all the doom and gloom about YubiKeys, I’m not ditching mine:

• the attack is far from trivial and cheap. It’s not impossible, but unlikely
• I’d likely treat my YubiKey as compromised anyway if someone had unsupervised physical access
• as far as I can tell, I’m still likely to be much better off with the YubiKeys and, unlikely worst case scenario, they add nothing.

In 1973, Nixon made for-profit healthcare legal.

This is in a nation where those with lots of money can legally bribe those who make and enforce the laws.

The results should surprise no one. America is a nation by, of, and for the corporations. The only useful thing we can do is to serve as a warning to others of what happens if you give too much power to wealthy people and corporations.

Brain: "20 years ago is 1984."
Time: Five seconds later.
Brain: "...shit, THAT was 20 years ago... FUCK!"

It's still weird being the same age as old people.

Holy shit 🤯

Timelapse of a plasma rain event on the sun I captured on Sept 1.

103 minutes condensed down to 9.65 seconds (640x)
#solar #astrophotography