Paul Sutton @zleap@qoto.org

We are living in an age of denial. Denial of a genocide. Denial of an ongoing pandemic. Denial of a climate crisis.

Acknowledging reality is an act of rebellion.

Massive leak at #Google confirms what we have all known for years, just how much is tracked, stored, and monetized.

Even clearer now how Chrome tracks and reports EVERYTHING you do. For heavens' sake delete it now and move to Firefox

Also they've outright lied for years about their data collection and search practices.

Looks like 'Don't be evil' wasn't enough. ;)

https://sparktoro.com/blog/an-anonymous-source-shared-thousands-of-leaked-google-search-api-documents-with-me-everyone-in-seo-should-see-them/

https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/28/24166177/google-search-ranking-algorithm-leak-documents-link-seo

Just, get off Google products already!

https://www.optoutproject.net/the-best-non-google-search-engine/

WOW this is incredible & terrifying.

Israel spent over a decade spying on ICC prosecutors to "retroactively investigate incidents of interest to ICC to prove Israel’s legal system is accountable."

Meanwhile Israel has banned all journalists from Gaza and has killed 100+ journalists. This is totally what you do when you're not guilty of war crimes.

How much longer will the USA, UN, & the world enable this injustice?
https://www.972mag.com/icc-israel-surveillance-investigation/

People really don't realize how utterly dependent modern surveillance is on the idea that everybody is carrying a phone — which is always tracked. Their car has a cellular modem in it — which is always tracked. 99% of investigation is one guy and a search box. If you're not low-hanging fruit, you aren't gonna merit the Eye of Sauron of manual, well-resourced, focused team attention—and if you did, you probably planned ahead for it, right? Because it's not a mystery what would get you on Santa's Naughty List.

Anyway, the point is that even in a big city, the phoneless guy in a "covid" mask is going to be invisible to anything less than that exhaustive manual investigation — at least for a few more years. That may go away once they start networking all the cameras and having AI start trying to match up clothing sets moving from camera to camera, butthat capability is hard to hide, so it'll be in the news. And it won't work that well in places with less camera density and, perhaps, for people who wear the most-common outfits (the visual equivalent of a "shared fingerprint").

Remember: Phones are useful, but dangerous. And the people who will still wear covid masks to the beach are helping to normalize facial obscurity—regardless of their intention. Don't be mean to them. Encourage them to wear them everywhere. For passport photos. In police booking photos. At the customs desk. Family portraits! The sky is the limit—let them push the boundaries so that you don't have to.

Looking forward to presenting my computer science colloquium on Small Web at the University of Groningen, Netherlands, on 11th of June, 2024 at 4PM.

https://www.rug.nl/research/bernoulli/calendar/colloquia/computer-science-oriented/2024/20240611-aral-balkan

There might be space for a few people from outside the university to attend so if you want to drop by, make some noise and I’ll have a chat with the university.

Thanking @mirela for organising this and looking forward to hopefully meeting some of you in the Netherlands soon.

#SmallWeb #groningen #netherlands #web #dev

Wondering if anyone's interested in #FLOSS for older systems like #DOS and #FreeDOS? I really liked the #XFDOS distribution based on #FLTK and #nano-x with FreeDOS. I know the lead developer of XFDOS is no longer active, but it would be nice to see some development continue on this project. Is anyone else besides me interested in this sort of thing?

#askfedi #askfediverse

Are you considering participating in #SoftwareFreedomDay2024? It's never too early to start planning. Who'd like to participate in #SFD this year? https://digitalfreedoms.org/sfd/blog
#SoftwareFreedomDay #OpenSource #FLOSS #FreeSoftware

Thames Water urged to ‘get a grip’ on testing water supply after illness outbreak https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/may/29/thames-water-urged-to-test-supply-urgently-after-reported-illnesses?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon #worldnews #guardian

ESA launches EarthCARE satellite to study the impact of clouds on #ClimateChange

The #EarthCARE satellite - a collaboration between #ESA and Japanese space agency #JAXA - will study how the formation of #clouds and the density of #aerosols in the #atmosphere impact the Earth's temperature.

https://www.euronews.com/next/2024/05/29/esa-launches-earthcare-satellite-to-study-the-impact-of-clouds-on-climate-change

#ClimateCrisis #RemoteSensing

Janan Ganesh from the FT nails the Tories' (and not only) misunderstanding of "The Special Relationship" which remains anchored in the last century and the one before that. No, free trade does not lie at the heart of American psyche. Quite the reverse. And that means that the leap to "free trade" by the Brexiters, Truss and the rest was the equivalent of putting your life's savings into DVD manufacturing in 2009. (Paywall $$$) https://www.ft.com/content/8f229e15-9842-46ce-a828-19647a48f6d6

This event with Black Girls Code sounds neat: virtual workshop for ages 10-13, using Scratch to design a dodgeball game. I'd encourage any Black parents or relatives to piggyback with your kids, because Scratch is a really wonderful learning tool for all ages -- I've taught it to humanities grad students as well.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/create-a-dodgeball-game10-13-tickets-905149365117

Any Dutch people around? We are trying to rent an appartment for our son who will start studying at Utrecht University this summer and we were planning on renting a flat in our name and let him live there. Is that kind of arrangement possible in the Netherlands or is he restricted to the (non-existent) student housing? Any insights would be much appreciated 👍🏻.

“Methods-last” papers aren’t really methods-last

When I teach scientific writing, I of course teach my students the canonical IMRaD  structure of a scientific paper (Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion). They really like this, and I understand why: writing a scientific paper is a terrifying proposition, when you haven’t done it before, and having a very clear road map, a core structure on which you only need to hang various smaller bits, makes it…

https://scientistseessquirrel.wordpress.com/2024/05/28/methods-last-papers-arent-really-methods-last/

Please vote for Fiona who called Braverman a war criminal to her face and is also a very smart young leader: #UK

One of my PhD students was invited to give a talk at an international meeting (Belgium), but her visa didn't come in time and she couldn't go. It would have been a really unique opportunity for her to meet other scientists in the field, so it's frustrating that bureaucracy got in the way.

Just another reminder of how many hurdles there are for many international graduate students trying to do their work.

#academicchatter #science #academia

Black holes can form directly out of a gas cloud--no stars necessary. "We are in this amazing time in history where you can make a prediction and within your lifetime it can be validated or invalidated. It’s precisely why people say we’re living in the golden age of cosmology." https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-first-big-black-holes-may-have-formed-without-stars/

Journalist: "So what do you think long-distance air travel is going to look like in 2050?"

Climate Scientist *laughs derisively*: "By 2050, most long-distance holiday destinations will be uninhabitable, so I expect the majority of long-distance air traffic to be non-existent by 2050."

Phew. Hadn't heard it THAT bleakly during a live interview yet.

💁‍♂️ instead of whitelist/blacklist, use allow list & block list.

I’m still seeing the former in plenty of tech content, it’s almost like y’all aren’t even trying to evolve