@modulux Yes, it's POSSIBLE that some election has been altered without detection. It's impossible to know that it hasn't; one cannot generally prove a negative. This is another compelling reason to continue improving software-independent election systems and perform rigorous post-election audits (which CAN prove the outcome correct). We're not fully there yet. But we're making significant progress.

Given that the White House itself is now endorsing this point, it's especially odd that almost immediately after Trump took office, he gutted CISA, which was providing federal-level threat intelligence and other defensive support to state and local election offices.

Hopefully they restore these vital resources soon.

@lastdinosaur No, that's not correct. The assertion is that non-citizens are not merely voting, but doing so in sufficiently large number to swing election outcomes. That number might not be large, depending on the margin of victory in any given election, but it's more than a handful.

This seems to upset some people, who probably are themselves hosted on instances with different rules and who don’t understand why I “get away” with flagrantly violating rules that I took great care to ensure don’t apply where I post.

But that’s the nature of a federated system. People pick an instance that fits their needs. My choice of instance (and the rules that go with it) is as valid and legitimate as anyone else’s.

A useful thing to remember if you ever need to call an ambulance for a potentially life-threatening emergency, especially if you're alone: After you call 911, UNLOCK YOUR FRONT DOOR SO THEY CAN REACH YOU QUICKLY. If they have to do a forced entry, that will cost precious minutes, possibly more if the fire department isn't already there.

London's Battersea Power Station, built as two nearly-identical halves completed in 1935 and 1955, respectively, was originally a coal-fired electrical generating plant. It was decommissioned in 1983. After being idle for nearly 40 years, the plant has been re-developed as retail space and commercial offices, opened in 2022. Along with the Tate Modern, it gives London a second striking example of large-scale adaptive reuse of an obsolete, but still handsome, power station.

If you want to get a Faraday bag simply because you like gadgets, by all means do so. That's a valid reason, too.

Here's a video of a talk I always show my surveillance students about how revealing phone metadata is and how hard it is to use things like Faraday bags:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwGsr3SzCZc

There are two ways you might react after watching:

Unenlightened: Ha ha, look at the stupid bumbling CIA.

- or -

Enlightened: Holy crap, if actual trained CIA covert operators can't pull this off for a couple weeks in a friendly country, what chance do I have?

There's a particular variety of "election integrity activist" whose "work" consists mostly of (inaccurately) explaining security problems back to the people who discovered them, and then scolding them for not being more frantic.

These people are as rewarding to deal with as you might imagine.

I keep hearing people say AIs are "better at coding than people."
First of all, no, they're FASTER at coding than people, which is not at all the same thing.
Second, am I the only one who remembers when what folks in this industry do was called "software ENGINEERING," which is not at all the same as "coding"?
Notice how no one is claiming that AIs are good at software engineering?
Why do you think that is? 🤔
Most commercial tech was already shit before genAI. The AI is 10x'ing the shit. *sigh*

@farbel Being indicted means a great deal. It means a prosecutor brought a case to a grand jury, got them to sign off on it, and filed charges with the court. Comey is now the subject of a live criminal case, and will have to defend himself in a potentially lengthy and expensive process in which his freedom is at stake.

Yes, the charges are bullshit. But any federal indictment is as serious as a heart attack.

It doesn't matter what you think of Comey. If he can be charged for posting a photo of sea shells on a beach arranged to spell out "8647", anyone can be charged for any speech that the president dislikes.

Among the election conspiracy amplifiers, I reserve my deepest frustration and contempt for the ones who know the claims are baseless, but think these stories helps advocate for improving election security.

There *are* serious problems with election security; it's what I've devoted the better part of my career to studying. But the way to improve elections is to tell the truth about them, not to make up crazy fake stories that lump in those identifying real problems with partisan crackpots.

In particular, because these schemes have voters take home a unique code associated with their votes, I worry they open the door to a malicious party claiming (falsely) that the ballot isn't secret. Refuting those claims requires explaining an enormous amount of fairly advanced math, and still rests on some potentially dubious assumptions.

It's an example where improving something may end up reducing trust in it.

Got another mastoscold yelling at me for "using the platform to promote" my photos.

For the record, I don't generally sell my photos, here or anywhere else. But even if I did, I fail to see why that would be a problem.

Preventing artists from making a living is a strange hill to want to die on.

Trump said he "exceeded his objectives" in Iran. One wonders what those objectives could have been given that before the war, the Strait of Hormuz was freely open, but thanks to Trump's dealmaking prowess, ships must now pay a toll to Iran to be allowed safe transit.

Heck of a job there, Donny.

@BillMcGuire Sorry, that “Musk rigged the voting machines” story is a fantasy, supported by neither evidence nor even a theory for how it would have worked.

Please don’t spread bullshit about elections. It doesn’t help anyone.

Violets are red
Roses are blue
When RGB byte fields
Circular shift by two

Got yelled at again for posting a photo description that included fancy camera gear while failing to performatively disclaim the fact that you can make good photos with cheaper gear.

Yes, OF COURSE THAT’S TRUE. But I’m captioning my work, not writing a complete tutorial on photography. Sorry if my use of fancy tools offends you, but I think it’s helpful to know how an image was created.

One of the things to get over about blocking is the hesitation that you're being "unfair" or "unjust" to someone. No. Your blocking someone only affects what YOU see and how YOUR posts are distributed. It's not a public denunciation. It's personal curation. There's no "justice" involved here.