"This is the American story of the past 4 decades: accumulate tech debt, merge to monopoly, exponentially compound your tech debt by combining barely functional IT systems. Every corporate behemoth is locked in a race between the eventual discovery of its irreparable structural defects and its ability to become so enmeshed in our lives that we have to assume the costs of fixing those defects. It's a contest between 'too rotten to stand' and 'too big to care'" @pluralistic https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/28/dealer-management-software/#antonin-scalia-stole-your-car
Outside the #Glastonbury headliners, lots to look out for this weekend on the telly. LCD Soundsytem coming on shortly. Later: Sofia Kourtesis with a bit of luck. Other days: Janelle Monae, Peggy Guo, Keane, Justice, The Feeling...
But not as many of my faves as usual. I would always struggle in person because of clashes.
I knew Brewdog was a shitty company but I didn’t know they ran actual Nazi bars. https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/jun/27/brewdog-sacks-asian-woman-over-reaction-to-edl-members-meeting-in-bar
@jon Looks a bit like a Soviet version of the hotel lobby in The Shining.
Incredible research at BlackHat Asia today by Tong Liu and team from the Institute of Information Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences (在iie.ac.cn 的电子邮件经过验证)
A dozen+ RCEs on popular LLM framework libraries like LangChain and LlamaIndex - used in lots of chat-assisted apps including GitHub. These guys got a reverse shell in two prompts, and even managed to exploit SetUID for full root on the underlying VM!
@Jennifer @stevesilberman
How about 1690?
"[The letter] states that these 13-year-old girls will only be allowed to return to school if they agree to confess in front of the Wells church, school and community that they were worshiping the devil when they took part in the Sunrise Dance. They must promise never to do it again."
@NanoRaptor Someone on Etsy is making stickers along those lines: https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1376165840/lgbtq-stem-ee-pride-flag-electrical
@phil_stevens @bascule This was my take, then and now. And since the time he "fled persecution", those who actually did the leaks, did time in prison for specific charges relating to espionage. And they stand by their actions.
Here's two who were involved in exposing abuses by US and AUS military forces. https://www.laprogressive.com/law-and-justice/david-mcbride
#2951 Bad Map Projection: Exterior Kansas
@xkcd It *almost* feels like it could be useful... but I can't think how.
"Computing without Computers" - not sure how current the content is but some of it is very fundamental, offline.
https://teachinglondoncomputing.org/resources/inspiring-unplugged-classroom-activities/the-intelligent-piece-of-paper-activity/
We also had our UG students develop and write some teaching material as part of their courses. (useful for getting them to really think about the fundamentals and their own learning) https://www.codingcurriculum.com
today in youtube: recreating blue monday using 80's casiotone keyboards https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9mm0YlMa9I
well, except for the ohm sample, but that's fair enough as they use a sampling keyboard
@ZachWeinersmith You've piqued my interest, never picked him up but in my youth I did enjoy the TV series with Fry & Laurie.
@LaF0rge Interesting read (I've only skimmed it so far) - but I think it downplays the subversive role played by UCL and Kent University who provided Internet access over x25 - allowing institutions who were obliged to buy x25 to tunnel TCP/IP over it and connect to the wider internet via leased lines from those institutions to the USA.
Kent went so far as to offer service to commercial research partners for a fee. (1986 perhaps?)
@steely_glint @LaF0rge Peter Kirstein, mentioned in there was great like that at negotiating and expanding access. A more recent history of that time (and early UK internet in 1973) is in his memoirs:
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/computer-science/about/about-peter-kirstein
The left jumped on Assange's case but weren't aware or interested in these tensions. And at the same time have embraced the surveillance Googloligarchy.
https://cryptome.org/2014/08/google-wikileaks-note.htm
That for me is the disappointing part - whatever else has happened in the last decade or so, whatever happened on that couch in Sweden, that's the shot that Assange missed.
3/3
(way out of my swim lane here but these are narratives that I'm not seeing here much)
One element that stood out for me was the safety and security of individuals like Chelsea Manning, who were acting in good conscience.
From the above conversation:
"WikiLeaks reveals, but it is not primarily a tool of
revelation. There are many avenues on the internet for revelation. What does not exist is a social movement to that makes acting ethically by leaking a virtue. What does not exist is a comfortable way for everyone to leak safely and easily."
2/3
Thinking back to discussions from 15 or more years ago, when Assange was just becoming a celebrity and Wikileaks was being courted by news organisations, targeted by security services.
Even back to 2006, Others in the infosec / privacy sphere were highly concerned about how WL operated:
1) the concept of priveleged paid access to "spicy leaks" vs publicly available information
2) the intent of the anonymous leakers
3) transparency of the organisation, especially who was funding it and who was benefiting from the priveleged access
@ajlanes @davidallengreen Yes, good point. I was getting ahead of myself.
I still think it was that disjointed approach to various aspects of constitutionalism which allowed those systems of control and regulation to lose sight.
Seven changes for a better constitution?
Some interesting proposals from some good people.
By me.
At Substack:
https://emptycity.substack.com/p/seven-changes-for-a-better-constitution
At my personal blog:
https://davidallengreen.com/2024/06/seven-changes-for-a-better-constitution-some-interesting-proposals-from-some-good-people/
MOVED PROFILE: Now at https://mastodon.me.uk/@davoloid