Andy Lowry @AndyLowry@qoto.org

At the urging of a few folks here, I decided to run a test to see which social networks clicked through most on this week's scoop about a hack of the FBI's InfraGard program.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2022/12/fbis-vetted-info-sharing-network-infragard-hacked/

LinkedIn tells me I have ~100k followers there. 80 Linkedin users commented on that story, but it looks like only about 25 of them actually clicked the link the first 24h!

A number equal to about 2 percent of my 350k Twitter followers clicked on the story (6600).

In contrast, the story posted here generated 3300 impressions in the same time period, even though I had (at the time) only about 15,000 followers. Also, That 3300 number would probably have been higher, but for the fact that I forgot to add the versioning link and edited that into it after the fact.

That tells me that, for now at least, engagement on Mastodon is significantly higher than on either LinkedIn or Twitter.

US sues Arizona over shipping containers on Mexico border

https://apnews.com/article/politics-mexico-arizona-doug-ducey-katie-hobbs-c5153ab8be0b9441aa3d8c22b2dca565

#BlackMastodon
#USpol

PSA 📣 For Twitter refugees: please remember that here in the Fediverse, we can focus less on finding ways to "disincentivize" bad behavior and just, y'know, moderate it the $%& out of existence.

This is kind of a core fedi strength (in addition to the whole no advertising, no algorithms, no for-profit-autocracy thing):

We actually do moderation here. We have far more moderators-per-megauser than Twitter, and they are also people you can interact with as peers rather than hidden panopticon operators.

First day on mastodon. Will start by following @donmelton of course. 🙂

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) today seized four-dozen domains that sold “#booter” or “#stresser” services — businesses that make it easy and cheap for even non-technical users to launch powerful Distributed Denial of Service (#DDoS) attacks designed knock targets offline. The DOJ also charged six U.S. men with computer crimes related to their alleged ownership of the popular DDoS-for-hire services.

The DOJ said the 48 domains it seized helped paying customers launch millions of digital sieges capable of knocking Web sites and even entire network providers offline.

One of the defendants has allegedly been peddling DDoS for more than a decade. John M. Dobbs, 32, of Honolulu, HI is charged with aiding and abetting violations of the CFAA related to the operation of IPStresser[.]com, which he allegedly operated for nearly 13 years until last month. During that time, IPstresser launched approximately 30 million DDoS attacks and garnered more than two million registered users.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2022/12/six-charged-in-mass-takedown-of-ddos-for-hire-sites/

Stopped posting comics directly onto Twitter as part of my phase-out. It's a bummer, a big loss in eyeballs and interactivity.

Get your friends onto Mastodon!! (And BOOST posts here!)

Thanks for joining us on Mastodon now!

Other platforms Instagram, Facebook, Telegram
https://grndcntrl.net/links/

Surprised church. #iceland #buildings #farm #church #OldHouses #RustyHouses #GoldenHour #Garðakirkja

In 2024, when people suggest that Doug Ducey will make a decent Republican opponent to newly-independent Senator Kyrsten Sinema, and whoever the Democrat who runs is (likely Rep. Ruben Gallego):

Remind them that Ducey is spending his last weeks in office building an illegal border wall out of old shipping containers. It won't keep migrants out as people can climb over them, but it runs through the Colorado National Forest land (not Arizona's land), wastes $95 million to build, and will hurt wildlife and block water systems. There are also "unauthorized armed security personnel" which makes the area dangerous for hunters (and migrants, of course).

Gov.-elect Katie Hobbs said she will have the makeshift wall taken down when she takes office in January. Just what a new administration needs, a 10-mile junkyard to tackle.

Arizona doesn't need more Republican stunts, and if he runs for Senate, remind everyone that the USA doesn't need them either.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/12/13/arizona-border-wall-shipping-containers/

Life is pretty expensive given how garbagy it is.

Musk’s anti-Fauci tweet is my breaking point; leaving the other app behind so might as well do an #introduction!

I’m an Associate Professor of #Immunology at the #UniversityofWashington in Seattle. My lab studies programmed cell death in the context of cancer, infection and autoimmunity. Check out OberstLab.org for more info.

Outside the lab, I spend as much time as I can outdoors: Biking, rock climbing, hiking and #birding with my wife and our Irish Water Spaniel Rufus. What a good boy!

Breakthroughs in nuclear fusion only happen if you have a government that promotes science—not talking snakes, miracles, and Ivermectin.

@jewwhohasitall There are multiple known versions of "Jingle Bells". The way to tell which is the official version is, it's the only one that doesn't mention Batman.

First post on here. Would love to connect with fellow lefties. A wee welcome boost would be much appreciated.

The mRNA vaccines developed for COVID-19 are as close to a miracle as I may ever experience in my lifetime. Unbelievable that so many people in the US deny this for weird tribal reasons. We don’t have to be sick.

While I value the #BBC's #drama output (which certainly can be world class - #HappyValley for instance), the fact that they cannot 'compete' with #Netflix is not the biggest issue that needs to be resolved.

Rather it is the (now) unbalanced & timid (in its relations with the governing party) news coverage that is the problem... what was a beacon of balanced reporting & incisive analysis, too often now fails to interrogate nonsense & either ignores (or reports late) on crucial politics stories!

"They have also instructed employees to not pay vendors in anticipation of potential litigation, the people said.

To cut costs, Twitter has not paid rent for its San Francisco headquarters or any of its global offices for weeks, three people close to the company said. Twitter has also refused to pay a $197,725 bill for private charter flights made the week of Mr. Musk’s takeover"
~https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/13/technology/elon-musk-twitter-shakeup.html

#ElonMusk #Twitter

All these newspaper articles on #nuclear #fusion saying we can "finally harness the power of the sun" are just laughable. We already know how to harness the power of the sun, but we choose not to—we just invest in fossil fuels instead. We don't need technological breakthroughs to solve the climate crisis. We just need to deploy the stuff we already know works.

So, a little bit on Nursing pay.
When the Tories came to power in 2010, a band 5 nurses salary on point 23 (7 years experience on that pay scale) was £32,440. In 2021, the same band & point was earning £35,340, a rise of 8.94%. Over that same period, overall inflation has been 31.5%, so if the salary had risen in line with RPI, it would be £42,600, an effective loss in spending power of £7,260.
Over the same period, an MP’s salary has risen from £65,738 to £84,144, a rise of 28%