Mike Csees @mikecsees@qoto.org

Truly my greatest professional joy is that, not only did we get to build a tool to help people stop AI bots from scraping up their work without consent, I was able to have our in-house artist create a SLOP sign to mark the spot where the bots expire.

If you are a non-profit or open source project that does good internet stuff, we’ll protect you for free. If not, then you can pay us money and we will hook you up. Either way, good tools to put you in control over the bots. https://www.fastly.com/blog/take-back-control-make-ai-bots-play-by-your-rules

“To the Canadian health-care professionals practising in the U.S., let me say this. If you’ve been thinking about coming back to Canada, there’s never been a better time,” Carney told a morning press conference at the University of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown.

“It’s time to come home.”

Carney rolled out a health-care plan that includes $4 billion for building and renovating hospitals and long-term care homes.

[Can I come, too?] #medicine https://nowtoronto.com/news/carney-urges-canadian-doctors-in-the-u-s-to-come-home/

As President Trump and the Justice Department shift resources away from prosecuting far-right extremism, Luke Baumgartner explores how civil rights organizations can build on the success of previous civil litigation to restrain extremist groups in the absence of criminal prosecutions. https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/how-civil-litigation-can-hold-hate-groups-accountable

I did some digging this evening into a few of the things that have emerged to fill the #CVE gap. It was much less inspiring than I had hoped it would be

https://opensourcesecurity.io/2025/04-can-we-trust-cve/

Boston Globe - At a peaceful Lexington reenactment marking 250 years since the Revolution’s first battle echoes of America’s founding ideals clashed with today’s political tensions drawing parallels between Colonial resistance and modern debates over democracy. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/04/19/business/echoes-rebellion-tyranny-18th-century-250th-anniversary-celebrations-today/

Interesting analysis of China's internal discussions about the country's reliance on US technology ...

... from 2005 to 2022

The researchers (including @henryfarrell) found two inflection points where Chinese authorities got worried about their exposure to US tech

2013: Snowden reveals NSA intrusions into global tech
2018: US gov't threatens ZTE and Huawei

... and from then on, Chinese authorities say "we need to be tech independent"

https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/why-china-is-going-it-alone-on-technology

UPDATE: The CVE board today announced the creation of non-profit entity called The CVE Foundation that will continue the program's work under a new, unspecified funding mechanism and organizational structure.

"Since its inception, the CVE Program has operated as a U.S. government-funded initiative, with oversight and management provided under contract," the press release reads. "While this structure has supported the program's growth, it has also raised longstanding concerns among members of the CVE Board about the sustainability and neutrality of a globally relied-upon resource being tied to a single government sponsor."

The organization's website, thecvefoundation.org, is less than a day old and currently hosts no content. The announcement said the foundation would release more information about its structure and transition planning in the coming days.

I boosted several posts about this already, but since people keep asking if I've seen it....

MITRE has announced that its funding for the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) program and related programs, including the Common Weakness Enumeration Program, will expire on April 16. The CVE database is critical for anyone doing vulnerability management or security research, and for a whole lot of other uses. There isn't really anyone else left who does this, and it's typically been work that is paid for and supported by the US government, which is a major consumer of this information, btw.

I reached out to MITRE, and they confirmed it is for real. Here is the contract, which is through the Department of Homeland Security, and has been renewed annually on the 16th or 17th of April.

https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_70RCSJ23FR0000015_7001_70RSAT20D00000001_7001

MITRE's CVE database is likely going offline tomorrow. They have told me that for now, historical CVE records will be available at GitHub, https://github.com/CVEProject

Yosry Barsoum, vice president and director at MITRE's Center for Securing the Homeland, said:

“On Wednesday, April 16, 2025, funding for MITRE to develop, operate, and modernize the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE®) Program and related programs, such as the Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE™) Program, will expire. The government continues to make considerable efforts to support MITRE’s role in the program and MITRE remains committed to CVE as a global resource.”

Buffer’s popular social media management software can now schedule and post to Mastodon servers. Coywolf has a first look at what it's like to connect and publish posts from Buffer to Mastodon.

https://www.coywolf.news/social/buffer-adds-mastodon/

A TRUE public servant and American hero…

Fauci's warning to America: 'We're living in a progressively anti-science era and that's a very dangerous thing'

https://apple.news/AvchKyb-1TxKbXwOKT7H2Nw

After the report about the Girl Scout mom getting booted from Radio City Music Hall, I spent the last two days reporting out the use of facial recognition technology by the Madison Square Garden empire to keep hundreds of lawyers that work for firms that have sued it from attending concerts, sporting events and shows. It is a radical use of the technology by a private company and I am truly shocked by how forthright MSG is about its real-world block list. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/22/nyregion/madison-square-garden-facial-recognition.html

“That something exists outside ourselves and our preoccupations, so near, so readily available, is our greatest blessing.”

In praise of walking https://www.themarginalian.org/2022/12/18/in-praise-of-walking-thomas-a-clark/

New York is one step away from setting a new standard for the right to repair. Tell Governor Hochul to sign this bill! https://act.eff.org/action/new-yorkers-tell-gov-hochul-to-sign-this-landmark-right-to-repair-bill

#TomLehrer has placed his entire song and lyric catalogue into the #PublicDomain.
https://tomlehrersongs.com/

Should all Journalists show solidarity with the banned accounts on Twitter and stop posting on Twitter?

It is a few today that fell foul of Elon Musk, it could be you tomorrow over something else.

If you see this post, vote and boost it.

Twitter 's attempts to suppress Mastodon by claiming it is malware, by silencing journalists and by *checks notes* "not allowing hyperlinks on the internet" are failing.

At least four thousand people an hour are joining, a rate three times higher than yesterday.

Picture source: @mastodonusercount@bitcoinhackers.org

#Twitter #Mastodon #TwitterMigration

Please, whatever you do, don’t delete your twitter account. Make it private and delete the app. But if you delete/deactivate your account, you’re inviting squatters to take over your name after 30 days. #MyAdvice

Just before the invasion, #Ukraine made a deal with #Amazon #AWS to create a data warehouse for its government information and infrastructure: tax and property records, bank statements, and the like. Things that an invaded and occupied Ukraine might lose if Russia got their hands on the only copies.

They literally snuck Pelican crates full of SSDs into the country and spirited them back offshore after backing up 10 petabytes of important historic and legal records.

This paragraph, second from the end, really put a fine point on why Amazon did this: They were not beholden to, nor being held hostage by, any Russian operations...because they never had any:

Amazon didn’t have to worry about its relationship with Russia on the Snowball project. It doesn’t have one. “We didn’t have anything to turn off there,” Maxwell said. “We had never invested there. It’s a point of principle.”

Truly an amazing story from the #LATimes.

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-12-15/amazon-ukraine-war-cloud-data