New article on my personal site:
https://mathlover2.neocities.org/Dan-Brown-QAnon-Salon.html
@freemo @xandrachurch@mas.to I can imagine of such a scenario, say, 1000 or 8000 years later(if humans haven't went to extinction )when humans are living together with other Intelligent animals whose ancestors were treated badly by humans but somehow have gained equal rights as human beings at last. If that is the case, maybe all humans living today would be considered by as "human superemists" according to the moral standard at that time. Well maybe it's improper to use animals as an example, but what I am trying to say is that unless you believe that the current developing stage of human society marks the end of history and the close of moral progress, then it's inevitable that some parts of our once-generally-agreed opinions would be considered unacceptable by the future.
Sad news today. I went to photograph the #tree20 liquidambar tree today as it’s right at the end of the year and so my project is almost complete. Except that it has been cut down! When I saw that it was gone, I felt devastated. It has literally been cut down in its prime. I’m not an expert and so maybe it had some disease. I couldn’t bear to photograph the void it has left behind today.
Google is down party! YouTube, Gmail, Drive are all down. Maybe some alternatives to their services have some time to shine now.
Alternative to gmail? @Tutanota Alternative to YouTube? Odysee.com Alternative to Drive? Nextcloud, @operationtulip
You guys know I like to bash Go, but... FUCK!
"The Go security team has determined that the root causes of the vulnerabilities cannot be reliably addressed."
Ok, your language design has some serious flaw that can't be fixed, so they are basically saying "Yup, a core library is going to be vulnerable for a long time".
Also, this is going since August 2020, according to the related post. Project Zero works way fast (30 days) to disclose issues on every other project, but on a project from their own company, 4 months.
Google surely cares about the well-being of the internet, sure.
Link: https://mattermost.com/blog/coordinated-disclosure-go-xml-vulnerabilities/
The Roots of Big Tech Run Disturbingly Deep https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/07/opinion/google-facebook-mergers-acquisitions-antitrust.html
I would love it if I could just download and seed a torrent of some CC-licensed course materials from any number of universities — especially for some niche courses rather than just the “giant lecture hall” 101 courses.
I think the ADA lawsuit against Berkeley probably really damaged that dream, but in general I see it as a very disappointing failure of open / libre culture ☹
The myth that Trump has always tried to push as part of his "Keep America Conned" initiative was that he was successful with the economy, when in real numbers he's had the worst economic record of any president in over 70 years.
He was a documented, verifiable economic failure as president, among all the other failures, of course. More outlets should be covering this.
Trump will leave office with a historically bad economic record -
https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/13/politics/trump-economy-record/index.html
#IT #privacy #encryption #global #uk #politics #democracy
Let me be absolutely clear here.
I am utterly against child pornography. Period!
However, while the Children's Commissioner for England may have good data and a genuine concern for sexual abuse, she is utterly clueless about the wider issues.
For many years the UK Government has used child pornography and safeguarding issues to erode privacy and out-China China in terms of state surveillance.
Encrypted messaging putting children at risk of abuse, says watchdog
Paranoid hat:
Remember this morning failure on Google services? They response is was that a quota on user login was preventing the users from logging in.
Well, a few hours later, there is a vulnerability disclosure on go xml library, which affects elements such as SAML, a distributed authentication protocol.
Wouldn't it be weird if both were linked?
No matter your opinion of Section 230, we should all be alarmed that Trump considers a goofy nickname a security threat. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/its-not-section-230-president-trump-hates-its-first-amendment
Facebook hit with antitrust probe for tying Oculus use to Facebook accounts https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/10/facebook-hit-with-antitrust-probe-for-tying-oculus-use-to-facebook-accounts/?guccounter=1
Tell Congress that new, dangerous copyright ideas shouldn't be snuck into law via "must pass" legislation. https://act.eff.org/action/tell-congress-don-t-let-a-quasi-court-bankrupt-internet-users-a9e11873-62f9-4fa1-a05e-675474e095e5
@Lynx here, have some hemlock 🍷
...
i can't really blame anyone though, why risk your livelihood for some random topic? the chances that you get cancelled are real, your colleagues won't take any flak for you (because they'll also get canceled..).
as long as there is no public outcry that these methods aren't even remotely ok, nothing will change. if the media is really to blame for anything, regardless of their political alignment, then for allowing to happen and actively taking part in canceling. for better or worse, journalism killed itself.
Academia Selects for Careerist Cowardice
……Now let’s examine academia. What are some essential traits that an academic must possess? Of course, to be an academic, one must be intelligent although as I explain in The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense, many of the dumbest ideas originate from academics. Beyond intelligence, one must be highly educated in their areas of expertise typically having obtained a PhD. Intellectual fierceness is likely to be missing from a description of what an ideal academic should possess. Incidentally, I am referring here to a polymath intellectual and not merely a hyperspecialized academic who solely weighs in on matters within their very narrow areas of expertise. Many professors are not in the least bit intellectual. They have chosen a career rather than pursued a calling for truth. Someone with little formal education might in reality be more of an intellectual than a professional academic. In any case, a public intellectual must exhibit intellectual brawn, and the reality is that most academics do not have such temperaments. Yesterday I posted the following comments on my social media, which I reproduce here:
"Academics should be intellectual @USNavy SEALs, exhibiting intellectual fierceness, cerebral tenacity, neuronal courage, & cognitive freedom. Instead, most are afraid of their shadows, tepid to utter a single interesting or controversial syllable. Academia selects for cowardice. Most academics know this to be true but they are unwilling to look deep within and truly pursue an intellectually pure and honest life. Careerism forces them into shackles of self-censorship. It’s tragic."
As someone who has been in academia my whole life, I am always astonished by how tepid most academics are, pathologically afraid to utter the most banal of positions, lest they might be ushered out of town by the Cancel Culture mob. A true public academic should be an intellectual brawler capable of using all of their cognitive training and intellectual acuity to head off to every intellectual battle ready to defend their positions. It does not matter whether you are a historian, a physicist, a psychologist, or a neuroscientist, you should be able to step into the ring of ideas and debate people respectfully albeit forcefully.
An academic who is too insecure to step into the public arena, and who hides from difficult conversations is not worthy of being labelled an intellectual. Moving forward, it is imperative that we attract people into academia who not only possess the necessary cognitive abilities to succeed but also the obligatory temperaments to be Navy SEALs of ideas. The battle of ideas is won by those who are intellectually courageous, who are cerebrally bold, and who are unencumbered by the orthodoxy. Let us foster an ethos that promotes intellectual honey badgers and not one that rewards cowardly mice and conforming sheep.
Mathematics Ph.D. Likes hanging out with almost everyone regardless of political views or anything else.
Akkoma: @ML2