I'm always amazed how the public perception of kids is somehow to dumb to get through AV but also super geniuses at tech that need to teach thers parents at the same time?

Please remember that the purpose of the OSA was not child safety, it was to create a captive market for the AV and content scanning sectors, and sales pitches were what shaped the law, as I wrote here. internet.exchangepoint.tech/the-dog-that... They want their ROI and they want it now.

Oh. www.threads.com/@stephen_dea...

Not bad for a Raspberry Pi: 22:16:11 up 837 days, 10:11, 2 users, load average: 0.12, 0.24, 0.16

It's 38 years since I first had to do it, and I just built and installed NMH / the RAND Mail Handler, because it's the least invasive and the most robust solution for local mail UX on Unix. And the wrapper I wrote for it in 2000 still works.

I cannot repeat enough how bad it is that we put the "ban Firefox to stop prostitution" guy in charge of this stuff.

For non-Irish readers: the gormless minister trying to ban social media for teenagers is the same one who tried to ban open source browsers a few years back: www.limerickpost.ie/2014/01/24/o...

Gosh, £1.37 per litre. That's approximately what we were paying in the UK prior to Trump starting his little escapade in Iran, so that now we are paying ~ £1.59 per litre / 16% more bsky.app/profile/john...

"agentic is the new metaverse." Discuss.

Yes please.

alecmuffett.com/article/110094 Flashback to 2017 and that time when anti-malware and antivirus companies complained to the European Union that Microsoft was making Windows too innately secure nowadays, which was monopolistic behaviour and blocking out their market opportunities. Gosh, how terrible

Don’t take away our freedom to play games when we want | 38 Degrees https://alecmuffett.com/article/157789 #GamersVoice #OnlineSafety #OnlineSafetyAct #censorship #footloose

TFW when you are running an LLM at home analysing À la Recherche du Temps Perdu and it's coming in between 30 and 45 hours per half volume; but on the other hand it's free, and it is sending you push notification updates

After 15+ years of solid use I'm finally giving up on #Homebrew on MacOS; it was once the first thing I installed on any new Mac but now it's hindering me running older-but-still-capable machines. The surprising thing so far has been how little I'm missing it.

I am very here for this analysis by etymology nerd: www.tiktok.com/@etymologyne... /Cc @etymologynerd.bsky.social

I am very here for this analysis by etymology nerd: www.tiktok.com/@etymologyne... /Cc @etymologynerd.bsky.social

I'm not a fan of iOS but in attempting to keep track of my kid's beloved plushie I'm at the cusp of buying a refurbished iPad & a batch of AirTags in order to keep track of it; unless anyone has better suggestions?

‘Von der Leyen Announces the EU’s New Age Verification App Claiming it is “Completely Anonymous” & users “Cannot be Tracked”’ | …the EU is about to have its ‘Clipper’ moment https://alecmuffett.com/article/156478 #AgeVerification #ZeroKnowledge #clipper #eu #oops #rofl

I will add to the sentiment expressed by several other commenters that I hate that I can read this.

The Tech Outrage Playbook wins again: alecmuffett.com/article/139710

Oh.

And yes, Joe, you are absolutely right: back doors suck. But only tangentially because of AI and instead more directly because they are a state-centric parochial affront to liberty and privacy and integrity.

Also I can recommend this thread: bsky.app/profile/ciar...

The amplification of security intrusion is an old problem and we will survive because we will adapt. Blog post from 2004: alecmuffett.com/article/733

1991: "releasing crack and other password cracking and security tools onto the net is like throwing guns into a daycare for the kids to play with" and similar sentiments.

From 2019: ‘If there were 5 million “bad people” on Facebook – terrorists, criminals, drug-dealers, whatever – that would be 0.2% of the userbase’ https://alecmuffett.com/article/156179 #OnlineSafety

"if it requires a government document and a selfie in order to register for a service, then it should require a government document and a selfie to close your account"

<laughs in online safety act age verification> bsky.app/profile/mayo...

I find it bizarre that the AgeVerification (AV) industry says “platforms don’t want AV because they don’t want private data” – BUT civil society says “platforms DO want AV because they want priva[…] https://alecmuffett.com/article/156094

Trump posts graphic video of slaying to argue for stricter immigration policies | BBC News https://alecmuffett.com/article/155924 #OnlineSafety #trump

Clearly you are not double-checking because I did explain why; it's curious that you wish to critique how I choose to use my time. bsky.app/profile/alec...

I find it disappointing that so many folk in "digital rights" today are defining themselves wholly via opposition to [phenomena & entities] rather than in pursuit & support of [liberties & capabilities]; it's tragically narrow, limiting, & strategically unwise.

I'm having the absolute time of my life, the past 10..15 years have been globally impactful and I've helped improve the lot of security and privacy. Mostly: by being willing to take the fight to people and pursue what I believe in rather than pursue consensus. I hope you do/get-to-do likewise.

In a X/Twitter post that garnered over 3.2 million impressions, EFF declares X is”…no longer where the fight is happening” https://alecmuffett.com/article/155764 #TakingMyBallAndGoingHome #eff

Something something respawn something

In a X/Twitter post that garnered over 3.2 million impressions, EFF declares X is”…no longer where the fight is happening” https://alecmuffett.com/article/155764 #TakingMyBallAndGoingHome #eff

So I rode a kick scooter up a disused airport runway whilst mushing a sprinting Yorkiepoo who was loving it. How was your day?

I'm amazed to learn that professional philosophers pursue their efforts out of a love of rational enquiry, whereas my work is almost wholly motivated by the Festivus dictum:"I got a lotta problems with you people & now you're going to hear about it"

A bug on the dark side of the Moon https://alecmuffett.com/article/155136 #apollo #bugs #software

The trial lawyers come for online free speech | Blaze Media https://alecmuffett.com/article/154743 #Section230 #censorship

New Mexico’s Meta Ruling and Encryption | Schneier on Security https://alecmuffett.com/article/154741 #EndToEndEncryption #censorship #encryption #meta

I don't know how many people this will resonate with, but it's probably quite a narrow set who'll appreciate why the most revolutionary app I've adopted in the past 12 months has been #Zotero for Android. And also why I need more sleep.

#AgeVerification #Apple

Age Verification causing people to stop installing security updates on iPhone https://alecmuffett.com/article/153062 #AgeVerification #OnlineSafety #OnlineSafetyAct #censorship #irony #surveillance

Most of the discourse about the (proposed) social media ban(s) has been about steps to verify that people are over 16 to enable them to participate in adult social media. I’ve not seen anything about steps to verify that people are *under* 16 to enable them to participate in child social media.

I really fucking wish reporters would stop repeating the lie that the law only affects 10 sites when it's literally every site that allows UGC

Australian eSafety: “It is a ‘dark pattern’ to permit people to 1/ amend mistakes 2/ be in control of information about themselves 3/ be obliged to validate abuse reports” https://alecmuffett.com/article/152831

Australian eSafety: “It is a ‘dark pattern’ to permit people to 1/ amend mistakes 2/ be in control of information about themselves 3/ be obliged to validate abuse reports” https://alecmuffett.com/article/152831

It's April 1st & I'm doing my best to stay off social media today, because I'm already angry enough at all the real badness in the world that I don't want to risk adding fake badness to the heap. Good day to be doing garden work.

Spent much of the last 12 hours drinking coffee & reading too many papers on metaphysics, came to the conclusion that not enough philosophy students watched #StarTrek when growing up. Especially the "transporter/replicator accident" episodes like "Second Chances".