I read of social media causing mental health crises & despair re: the meaningless & futility of life. Folk should study Astronomy instead. The Sun one day will bloat & consume the Earth, yet we fritter away our time with trivialities like "power" & "conquest". Do better.

[Europe] voted today to end chat monitoring 1.0. This ends an exception that was used, in particular, by US Big Tech companies to monitor billions of people’s private messages without suspicion https://alecmuffett.com/article/151697 #ChatControl #EndToEndEncryption #surveillance

#AgeVerification #Apple

MEPs block tech firms from scanning for child sexual abuse material | POLITICO https://alecmuffett.com/article/151666 #ChatControl #ClientSideScanning #EndToEndEncryption #csam #surveillance

I am very much looking at the Apple Age Verification (AV) approach as the least bad way to do something terrible https://alecmuffett.com/article/151652 #AgeVerification #apple #censorship

Remember that big win on ChatControl a couple of weeks ago? It turns out they didn’t like  the result and they want to vote on it again, TODAY. Sorry. https://alecmuffett.com/article/151637 #ChatControl #EndToEndEncryption #censorship #surveillance

This cybersecurity tweet from @SciTechgovuk / DSIT is getting *brigaded* by people pointing out how the UK Government is actively undermining cybersecurity https://alecmuffett.com/article/151611 #AgeVerification #OnlineSafety #OnlineSafetyAct #censorship #dsit #gchq #ncsc #surveillance

Human rights chief warns against banning social media for kids | POLITICO https://alecmuffett.com/article/151370 #HumanRights #OnlineSafety #OnlineSafetyAct #SocialMediaBanned #censorship

‘Restricting access to social media presents “issues of human rights, because a child has a right to receive information just like anybody else.”’ https://alecmuffett.com/article/151359 #CouncilOfEurope #SocialMediaBan

thought for the day: vibe coding of today is the perl programming of 1992.

PseudoDNA: Identifying Critical Vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s PhotoDNA https://alecmuffett.com/article/151219 #OnlineSafetyAct #PhotoDna #censorship

Spain: football-match-induced online censorship regularly prevents installation of Postgres on Docker for fear of illicit streaming https://alecmuffett.com/article/151241 #OnlineSafetyAct #censorship #spain

PseudoDNA: Identifying Critical Vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s PhotoDNA https://alecmuffett.com/article/151219 #OnlineSafetyAct #PhotoDna #censorship

oh lol it only depends on R+G+B at each pixel and you could construct images that keep that constant and only vary in the orthogonal plane

Paper: eprint.iacr.org/2026/486

Video wrapped in a couple layers of blog/Twitter link is www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYyD...; you should always have been pretty damn skeptical of hashes that are collision-free but sensitive to a perceptual distance metric IMO, and quadruply so of Microsoft's "lol, the algorithm is secret" hash

Natural collisions in Apple’s #NeuralHash and Microsoft’s #PhotoDNA show worrying false positives/negatives in widely deployed perceptual hashing. Our findings highlight severe risks for privacy and civil liberties at scale. Watch this short demo: 🎥 www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYyD...

New Le Soir piece on COSIC research: we reverse‑engineered Microsoft’s secret #PhotoDNA and show how #CSAM detection can be bypassed or weaponised to falsely flag innocents. Our results challenge the push for large‑scale client‑side scanning. www.lesoir.be/735999/artic... [paywall]

“Natural collisions in Apple’s NeuralHash & Microsoft’s PhotoDNA show worrying false positives/negatives in widely deployed perceptual hashing” https://alecmuffett.com/article/151208 #NeuralHash #OnlineSafetyAct #PhotoDna #censorship

Investigation: UK spends millions on VPNs as government weighs ban for children | TechRadar https://alecmuffett.com/article/151079 #OnlineSafetyAct #censorship #surveillance #vpns

Curiously I wrote an entire primer about this kind of issue; end to end security and at what point & when does it become illiberal to demand that *other people* exclusively use software which meets *your own* personal security specification? alecmuffett.com/alecm/e2e-pr...

UK House of Lords seeks ban on Swiss Army Knives that “…could be used to cut people” https://alecmuffett.com/article/150803 #DualUse

UK House of Lords seeks ban on Swiss Army Knives that “…could be used to cut people” https://alecmuffett.com/article/150803 #DualUse

Meh. alecmuffett.com/article/149384

This is absolute perfection: UBUNTU SECURE BOOT AGE VERIFICATION | Hacker.House https://alecmuffett.com/article/150554 #AgeVerification #OnlineSafetyAct #OpenSource #censorship #kosa #systemd #ubuntu

Lawyer mocks Ofcom’s big fine with bigger hamster | RollOnFriday https://alecmuffett.com/article/150545 #4chan #RollOnFriday #censorship #ofcom

So it appears that the way to get massively retweeted on Mastodon (so to speak) is to get a boost from Charlie Stross. Quite astonishing consequences, really…

Ofcom accused of posting misinformation https://alecmuffett.com/article/150498 #4chan #OnlineSafetyAct #censorship #misinformation #ofcom

Useful perspective, from one of the very few people I would trust to say “calm down, this $megacorp privacy change may not actually be so bad.” The point about app stores as “attestation 1.0” is especially well-taken. (1/3)

All you would need to do is send one small cat meme to key politicians via diverse routes like SMS and WhatsApp and Email, and then Apple & Google would do the rest for you:

Let Me Explain How a State Actor Could Perform a Denial-of-Service Attack on the Entire UK Government in the Wake of Ofcom “Online Safety Act” Client-Side Scanning https://alecmuffett.com/article/150401

If you read one thing about encryption today, this should be it, although my upcoming post just after 10:00 a.m. is also a banger.

One Week, Three Stories About Meta, Encryption, & Age Verification, and Why I’m Not Worried About (This Aspect of) Meta https://alecmuffett.com/article/149384 #AgeVerification #EndToEndEncryption #instagram #meta

Ofcom persist in pretending that 4chan are trading in the UK, rather than accepting that Britons are visiting a foreign website https://alecmuffett.com/article/150156 #4chan #OnlineSafetyAct #censorship #ofcom #surveillance

#VastyDeep bsky.app/profile/ofco...

I suspect that Ofcom only ever accept that it is “highly effective age assurance” if somebody gets paid, ideally repeatedly | Apple permit “account age” as a means of age verification https://alecmuffett.com/article/150045 #AgeVerification #ofcom

As ever, meta have no vision or direction for horizon worlds. This week they are trying to compete with Roblox or something, instead of VRChat, so the vr parts aren't necessary right now.

Via @alecmuffett.bsky.social This development is going to get *a lot* of attention as online safety policy interest turns to AI chatbots. 'Moxie Marlinspike, of Signal fame, announces partnership with Meta to bring end-to-end encryption to Meta AI Chat' alecmuffett.com/article/149867

Meta is shutting down its VR metaverse on June 15th | The Verge | …BUT WON’T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE REGULATORS? https://alecmuffett.com/article/149862 #metaverse #regulation

Moxie Marlinspike, of Signal fame, announces partnership with Meta to bring end-to-end encryption to Meta AI Chat https://alecmuffett.com/article/149867 #EndToEndEncryption #ai #encryption #llm #privacy

There is an entire genre of tricking AI customer service bots into doing work; but few are pointing out the obvious… https://alecmuffett.com/article/149128 #ClientSideScanning #OnlineSafety #ai #censorship #surveillance

Lloyds, Bank of Scotland and Halifax apps showing customers other users’ transactions | BBC News https://alecmuffett.com/article/149070 #dns #hbos

#ADHD + #Algorithms Life Hack: set up a WhatsApp or Signal chat with only yourself, for Notes. Set 90 day expiry to stop clutter. Share 'TODO' items with that chat: gives you a 90-day window to review & act, plus sharing = algorithmic boost signal for similar content.

It's hard to express how utterly maddening it is that the #LibDems, rather than actively defending our right to private internet usage, entirely abstained from voting on the #SocialMediaBan https://votes.parliament.uk/votes/commons/division/2270#notrecorded#LibDems

Rarely have I been so happy to be wrong: the Amendment 92 voted-in in block is not the same Amendment 92 as discussed (https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3909/stages/20215/amendments/10027478) in the Lords. Different numbering schemes.

It's hard to express how utterly maddening it is that the #LibDems, rather than actively defending our right to private internet usage, entirely abstained from voting on the #SocialMediaBan https://votes.parliament.uk/votes/commons/division/2270#notrecorded#LibDems

A New Jerusalem https://alecmuffett.com/article/148779 #AgeVerification #SocialMediaBan #censorship #surveillance

Today: laundry, cleaning, & debating digital policy futures with my locally-hosted Qwen 35B instance. It's more fair, informed, & articulate than many activists & pundits. The pace feels like old-school email or 1980s BBS messaging. Secure, too, & free.

I have a 2018-era MacMini with 64Gb of RAM + negligible GPU, running a 35 billion parameter model and I’m getting 4 tokens per second out of it; tell me again how we aren’t going to be running AIs locall[…] https://alecmuffett.com/article/148512 #ai #llm #qwen

I've just been adapting my blog's social media feed to post short messages to all platforms. I've named the resulting script 'rwall'. Bonus points if you know why without looking. :-)