Overheard: “I know what would be fun: let’s crank up forces acting on US government and simultaneously remove the controls that dampen the growth of destructive vibrations just to see what happens.” Sometimes you don’t need to run the experiment. t.co/EuS4pml5u6

1/🚨 BIG RULING IN GA VOTING MACHINE LAWSUIT A judge dismissed the challenge to Georgia’s QR-code voting machines—not because they’re secure, but because no one could prove legal harm. QR codes stay (for now). The lawsuit lost—but still helped change the law. #VotingRights #SeriousElections

Well this is enough to break your heart: “Trump complains Americans left valuable equipment behind when they left Afghanistan…Well he’s about to leave another valuable investment behind: our minds, paid for by the American people.” |Afghan Students Abandoned www.nytimes.com/2025/03/30/w...

Big day for the WITAOD movement

For a bunch of guys obsessed with showing street cred, this has to be the most embarrassing unforced error in memory. Chainsaw Al's destructive legacy was a colossal series of train wrecks. Chainsaw Elon is heading down that path with arrogance and ignorance. Why haven't sane R's stepped in

Dems stunned only bc they treated threat warnings from election security experts w derision. “Mr. Musk’s stealth approach stunned both Democrats and civil servants. Failing to imagine an incursion from inside the bureaucracy, they were caught essentially defenseless.” www.nytimes.com/2025/02/28/u...

#SeriousElections Insider attacks now launched in full view. DOGE technologists Edward Coristine—the 19-year-old known online as “Big Balls”—and Kyle Schutt are now listed as staff at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure … CISA helps state and local election offices assess vulnerabilities.

Apple has officially pulled E2EE backup in the UK in response to a secret (leaked) order. This will make users less secure, chill business adoption of E2EE, and embolden other governments that do not respect the rule of law to do the same. Awful news. www.macrumors.com/2025/02/21/a...

“[DOGE] has trained its initial attention on executing Musk’s belief that by controlling the computers, one could control the entire federal bureaucracy.” My biggest fear is these guys are coders & Easter eggs will remain undetected. This Is What Happens When the DOGE Guys Take Over - The Atlantic

Long-running challenge to constutionality of touchscren voting machine filed when GA scrapped Diebold touchscreen machines, declared unconstitutional by the same federal judge. Action then switched to Ballot Marking Devices (BMDs) that GA wanted instead. #SeriousElections bsky.app/profile/demi...

DANGER! Hidden from view: DOGE will replace “inefficient systems” with opaque, untrustworthy software written by unaccountable entities. This is Madison’s nightmare scenario for empowering factions. Just look at election systems and HAVA to see where it’s heading. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/11/u...

“The real lesson of DeepSeek is that America’s approach to A.I. regulations was nonsense. It was never going to be possible to contain the spread of this powerful emergent technology.That was a self-serving fiction, foisted by an industry to kneecap competitors.” www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/o...

Brilliant: what is the most successful venture capital firm in history? Founded in 1776 by General Partners Washington, Jefferson, Madison, headquartered in a Beaux Arts corporate campus in DC, this firm is the world’s premier funder of technological and commercial innovation. Let’s not break it.

Recently our very own Associate Professor Saman Zonouz was a part of a panel on whether smart #technology increases the risk of #cyberattacks! Interested in learning more? lnkd.in/gMJ3iEJZ #togetherwecompute

My talk about the roots of distrust in American elections posted today: scp.cc.gatech.edu/richard-demi... I hope you find it provocative and relevant to the times we are living through. #SeriousElections

Transform Gaza to Riviera? Sure thing. DJT even has the plans. All he has to do is use his Sharpie to cross out “Atlantic City” and replace with “Gaza.” Didn’t that turn out well? www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/u...

2 insurrections, same President.

The bad news is that the official party’s influence is so meager, in part because the party has largely ceded it to a collection of progressive activist groups.

DNC meetings include multiple shrieking interruptions, and affirmation that its strategy had been sound. The good news for those preferring a viable alternative to the current personality cult is it has little power. https ://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/02/dnc-meeting/681548/

Here’s something to take your mind off important matters like who got snubbed in the Oscar nominations. Maybe we should make sure DJT doesn’t accidentally fire scientists tracking Asteroid 2024 YR24 which may be on a collision path with earth. #Science www.scientificamerican.com/article/will...

It’s been a year since closing arguments in Curling v Raffensperger challenging the constitutionality of mandatory use Ballot Marking Devices (BMDs) in GA; case resting in part on lack of accountability as shown below. Still no decision but I will post trial hilites in coming days #SeriousElections

Deepseek breakthrough (www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJvS...) impressive (ref groupthink rampant in SiValley) but it should not be a thunderbolt to anyone familiar with late Gordon Bell’s law predicting efficiency gains by interleaving hw advances and sw innovation. #Science rjlipton.com/2024/07/08/g...

Here’s where social media stands today: 1. X’s algorithms favor Musk/right leaning, divisive and aggressive content 2. Meta is not moderating content and Z is pouring $$ into DJT inaugural (see 1) 3. WaPo editorial content sees no reason to upset DJT. Bezos pours $$ into inaugural (see 1) 4. Now👇👇👇

Well this is enough to give you nightmares: “The big joke on democracy,” he observed, “is that it gives its mortal enemies the means to its own destruction.”|How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy in 53 Days apple.news/Ageef1_SCRqO...

Mourning loss of TikTok this morning? RedNote apparently scratches the itch to scroll but alas seems even more problematical. The rush to this app is an example of the “media substitution hypothesis,” in which people fill a media void. www.scientificamerican.com/article/u-s-...

I hope you can join us Thursday January 16 to kick off a discussion of trust in democracies. #SeriousElections #Science

This is a fascinating turn of events

Question this morning about Trump tariffs: The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 is evidence of high tariffs’ negative effects on the economy. This protectionist act raised tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods to record levels at start of Great Depression. Outcome: it made things much worse.

Postcard from my back door in Atlanta this morning. One more reason to be thankful for living in the largest urban forest. Fun fact: @gabrielsterling.bsky.social is just up the street.

@profgalloway.com on Meta's2-fer: softening up the umpires at FTC + adding $$$ to bottom line by shutting down content moderation. Extra points for calling it censorship. More unaccountable special interests at the helm. 👇👇👇👇 www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/...

Remembering a conference call with @osetinstitute.org colleagues as an incited mob stormed the Capitol intent on preventing the kind of peaceful transfer that just occurred today. Exactly four tears ago. apnews.com/live/trump-e...

#Science Shooting from the hip. It's not helpful & conflates a vague feeling based on who-knows-what assumptions with considered doomsday clocks(see thebulletin.org#second_logo). Hinton's a great scientist but there's 50 years of AI research preceeding him. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Due mainly to perverse incentives: 1. journal fees, 2. univ. administrators moving up the ladder, 3. committees conflating bulk and quality. Shoddy commentaries—a quick and dirty route to higher impact numbers—are on the rise | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti... #AcademicSky #Science

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Using GenAI's rapid bursts of creativity to speed ideation creation for subsequent testing. Important in cybersecurity research & many other fields. Unfairly called hallucinations (negative) in reality becoming standard tool. www.nytimes.com/2024/12/23/s...

Trump allies' theft of the GA voting system software was a key element of the Willis RICO case. A number of the defendants were directly involved in the theft, and at least 12 defendants were indirectly involved. AG Carr has done nothing to prosecute them. What is to happen now? 1/

2/ Politicians, officials, and particularly the press, need to move beyond the superficial thinking that since there were no signs of widespread hacking in Nov., that the system is secure. The courage is needed NOW to look at the hard ugly facts of the flawed system.

#SeriousElections “We still have no idea whether GA machines worked, but nevertheless we have high confidence that Trump won Georgia.”

#SeriousElections Miles O’Brien talks “Too big to hack” with U Michigan’s Alex Halderman. Take a deep breath and listen to fact-based, non-partisan convo. milestogo.libsyn.com/episode-38-n...

1/3 I am not a fan of working backward from an election "anomaly" to a nefarious act because of the Law of Small Numbers described by Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in their 1971 seminal paper. Mathematically speaking elections are small data sets. #SeriousElections

#SeriousElections If Dems had not been so quick to marginalize serious election security researchers as "deniers" in 2020 they would be able today to mobilize us today to help figure out if the was meddling in 2024. Danger of believing science only when it's to your advantage. Preachy but true.

#SeriousElections See this? 👇👇👇👇

Like & share this Bsky feed for serious topics related to election security & integrity , voting tech and assurance. Not for denialism or conspiracies. Not a perfect filter though. Algorithm is public feel free to improve. 👇👇👇 bsky.app/profile/did:...

#SeriousElections What's the problem with Ballot Marking Devices? Listen:👇👇 gofile.me/7q2Hu/eBk8yV...

What if the news media presented weather reports like it does politics? www.status.news/p/kash-probl...

#SeriousElections Deflecting attention from 11 CISA verified vulnerabilities (not conspiracy theories) GASOS misstates the science. Audit doesn't prove ballots express voter intent. Only that inscrutible QR codes match unverified and therefore untrusted text. www.savannahnow.com/story/news/p...

I used to think the key solution to eroding confidence in US elections was to fix the cybersecurity problems which means moving to Handmarked Paper Ballots #HMPB. I now think that’s too narrow. We must dismantle the technology that puts power in the hands of the unaccountable few. #SeriousElections

Amazing an incoming administration would prioritize weakening the intellectual capital that has actually made America great but that's apparently what's in the cards. open.substack.com/pub/danieldr...

I guess NBC wasn't kidding. Thanksgiving travel is going break all the records. If you're flying this week get to the airport at least six hours early.