Ben Taylor @VoxDei@qoto.org

As someone who did her PhD on consent I just want to flag a few things in the bsky bridge discussion. One: medical style disclosure based consent (terms and conditions, EULAs etc.) is totally inappropriate for this sort of situation and has been for decades. But it serves the needs of slow-moving legal requirements and companies that like people to forget they signed up to stuff (or were coerced into doing so for social or other reasons). See https://liedra.net/thesis for more details. (1/n)

Canada's 10 seasons:
Winter
Fool's Spring (we are here)
Second Winter
Mud, Potholes and Allergies
Hope
Summer
False Fall
Second summer
Fall
Hello darkness my old friend

Here's today's press release for JAXA's SLIM lunar landing!

TL;DR:

Pinpoint site identification was crazily successful.

We were lowering into position, detecting boulders like a champ.

THEN ONE OF THE ENGINES DROPPED OFF.

(I kid you not)

(we don't know why yet)

(maybe space pirates)

But we still soft-landed on 1 engine.

(TAKE THAT SPACE PIRATES!)

but on our head.

Strangely, might not be a big deal once the Sun moves round to the other side of the spacecraft.

https://global.jaxa.jp/press/2024/01/20240125-1_e.html

😀

Okay, sex determination in humans.

This shit is COMPLICATED and this will probably be a longish thread. Sorry. But I've seen a lot of people claim that "biology says" that everyone is either male or female, full stop, and it's just not true. 1/22

History is curiously quiet on what "minor repairs" the Royal George required in 1782, but I'd cautiously venture the toolbox talk was inadequate.

I mean, killing up to 800 people and leaving the ship 20m deep at the bottom of the Royal Navy's most important anchorage doesn't *imply* a safe system of work...

After 60 years the wreck was removed - along with windows 6 miles away - by the traditional application of [checks notes] a shit-ton of explosives. Top work all round, lads.

#FailureFriday

Heads up UK citizens overseas! The disgraceful ‘15 year rule’ which disenfranchised you is being binned TODAY! From 16 January you can now at long last register to vote, which you should do ASAP in view of in the upcoming general election, because *gestures at everything*

https://mailchi.mp/a6cd97a73d7e/3mn-brits-abroad-regain-right-to-vote-in-uk-elections?e=897c54e3ba

"Heat pumps don't work in the cold"

Context: This is data from my mom and dad's new cold climate heat pump. While the system has been calling for heat continuously during this time, it has only needed to kick on the backup resistive heating in the deepest of cold, and even then only for a couple of hours overnight.

@marcel @pluralistic Nice article. This quote hits the mark too:

"while we're nowhere near a place where bots can steal your job, we're certainly at the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job"

I'm severely colourblind - my eyes can hardly detect red light at all.
So, working in web development, picking colour schemes is hard.
There are tools around to help you pick accessible colour schemes, but they assume that you can tell by looking that a colour is the one you want, and the only information you need the computer to calculate is the contrast ratio.
I realised I need a tool that will take the name of a colour and find a shade that gives a target contrast ratio.

Here it is: https://colourblind-palette-maker.glitch.me/

It uses the new APCA perceptual contrast algorithm and the Oklab colour space to help me find colours that people with better colour vision will interpret correctly, while ensuring there's good contrast for as many people as possible.

The Intercept: #OpenAI quietly deleted its ban on "military and warfare" applications from its permissible uses policy in a revision this week #AI

Someone on LinkedIn pointed out that #OpenAI doesn’t use an LLM for their support chat, but has instead opted to use some extremely limited decision tree. Which is both understandable, telling, and fucking hilarious.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT:

There is an increase of account takeovers due to insiders at telco firms simply giving control to people paying them. Do a check on systems where this single factor would permit an account compromise. And change the configuration. These are opportunistic trawling attacks. This is becoming more common as attackers replicate the success.

The attacker uses other channels (like people search websites) to enumerate and guess the phone number attached to an online account and then checks against the telco they have control over.

The insider only briefly temporarily forwards the victim number to a 3rd party then switches it back to normal once they’re in. This is how they stay quiet since most victims will not have leverage or telemetry to understand how they got hacked.

It was their cell phone provider.

Make it so account recovery systems require multiple factors and remove telephony-based recovery for VIP accounts entirely.
Go check your systems now. Go try to access all your stuff like you forgot your password.

I am very serious.