Kris Sargent, MD @kristofor@qoto.org

Good blog post in the privacy and national security (that's US national security) concerns of TikTok, by @malwaretech, who decided to have a look whether the app actually asks for location permissions https://malwaretech.com/opinions/tiktok-is-a-national-security-risk.html

The sooner that Musk's Twitter goes out of business, the better for freedom of expression, the open web, and most of all democracy. He and his company are a clear and present danger.

https://www.techdirt.com/2022/12/14/twitters-big-ad-plan-violate-both-ftc-consent-decree-california-privacy-law-to-force-users-to-hand-over-info-for-ad-targeting/

Handy Glossary

NON-CHOICE: Being gay.
CHOICE: Joining a church that hates gay people.
NON-GROOMER: A drag queen.
GROOMER: A priest or youth pastor.
NON-INDOCTRINATION OF CHILDREN: Reading them stories.
INDOCTRINATION OF CHILDREN: Reading them stories and telling them God wrote them.

In 1933, Nazis led torchlit mob into the square and looted the library of the adjoining -Universitat. 40,000 people cheered as they burned over 20,000 books by mainly Jewish, communist, liberal and social-critical authors. Many years later, a panel of glass was set into the ground to mark the spot. It’s a window. Leaning over you can look into a room below. The room is white, lined from floor to ceiling with plain shelves—an empty library. The sort of world we’d live in if the fanatics had won.

In the past 24 hours, Ukrainians have been been blocked from signing up for Twitter using their phone numbers and using 2FA and accounts tracking Russian oligarchs' jets have been suspended.

What happens on Twitter can seem like a sideshow, but Elon Musk's actions are a direct threat to democracy.

@hacks4pancakes just won the lifetime achievement award at SANS!

I’d like to live in a country where they arrest the president when he attempts to overthrow the government.

It's interesting to see how many current Tesla owners are now expressing embarrassment at driving them in public, due to the now unavoidable associations with Musk's increasingly fascist behavior and statements, with many owners noting that they will never drive another one, and many prospective drivers saying they will now cancel and/or look elsewhere than Tesla.

Of course it's not fair for drivers (who bought into Teslas before Musk's true proclivities were obvious) to be faced with this, but that's what Musk has done to the brand -- single-handedly and with eyes wide open.

Zoom in as far as you can. Then zoom in as far as you can... #zoom #animation #digital #art

"We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must — at that moment become the center of the universe." — Elie Wiesel (from his Nobel Peace Prize speech)

I suppose another takeaway from this whole "Twitter Files" circus is that access journalism is complicit in the rise of American fascism— but I feel like we already kinda knew that

Interesting. I have been using a cross-poster to bring tweets between Twitter and Mastodon - http://crossposter.masto.donte.com.br - Mastodon posts no longer are allowed onto Twitter - Twitter is severely limiting third party tools. This is really, really bad news.

On Twitter it took us almost 5 years to reach to 50,000 followers.

Here at Mastodon we may be able to do it within one month.

Support our mission & amplify our voice.

#follow #Auschwitz #memory #museums #memory #history #fediverse #mastodon

Okay, so I used to regularly do this on the other site, but now let's do this here: If you are a reporter and you are writing about a lawsuit where you have access to the complaint and DON'T link to the complaint in your article, you are failing at your job.

It hit me this morning that often what I find frustrating in discussions around "intellectual property", piracy, large datasets for training things like CLIP, &c. is that IP is a really really poor substitute for actually useful conversations around consent and respect

Like Elsevier asking me to "pwease no steal uwu" about journal articles is very different than, like, an individual selling self-published books on the side saying "hey I need this money to pay rent, so please purchase it legit"

An artist saying "hey I don't like for-profit companies building generators from my work that I posted to deviant art" is very different than Disney cracking down on people making shit with characters they "own".

Someone saying "hey this is really personal work, I don't really want it passed around and edited without my consent" is not the same as pebbleyeet getting mad at anti-fash edits of his comics.

IP is bullshit but that doesn't mean we have to take unnuanced all-or-nothing approaches to things.

That would be like saying if you want to support squatters taking over an airbnb then you can't have a lock on your bathroom door: it's conflating such wildly different things that it's a little silly.

The ability to opt-in to encrypted iCloud backups is a really big win for users and bad news for law enforcement, who loved to request iCloud backups to save them the trouble of breaking into a phone.

Paul Gosar has tweeted his support of terminating the US Constitution.

...

When I took vows, I promised "perpetual chastity, poverty, and obedience in the Society of Jesus"

When Senators take the oath of office they promise "to support and defend the Constitution of the United States."

If I were to suddenly say, "I think I'm going to stop honoring my vows, I would no longer be a Jesuit.

...🤔

Just sayin'

https://www.businessinsider.com/paul-gosar-donald-trump-termination-constitution-arizona-2020-election-2022-12?r=US&IR=T

Okay, here we go: my new post: "Hello! You’ve Been Referred Here Because You’re Wrong About Twitter And Hunter Biden’s Laptop"

Feel free to refer people to it as needed. https://www.techdirt.com/2022/12/07/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-twitter-and-hunter-bidens-laptop/

To all Mastodon-admins: seems like there's an attack on all instances by troll accounts. Servers get slow because of it.
They use thousands of subdomains of activitypub-troll.cf. My 'pull' queues skyrocketed.

I now blocked the domain activitypub-troll.cf and all is back to normal. Please check if you're hit too.