Notices by Matt Blaze (mattblaze@federate.social)

Politicics aside, I hope Biden is OK, and that he lives long to see himself celebrated for setting aside his personal ambitions for a greater good. It must have been very difficult for him.

In all seriousness, this snippet from the revised article is astonishing.

An officer - an ESU sergeant no less - accidentally firing a gun during a planned operation to remove protestors who were merely *trespassing* isn't "abnormal" enough to be worth mentioning? If one of the protesters had accidentally fired a gun, would they have mentioned *that*?

And the mayor knew about this when he was publicly congratulating everyone for how "professionally" and "flawlessly" this was handled.

Come on.

I just want to point out that while I'm not a trained law enforcement officer, I've managed to successfully use a flashlight numerous times without shooting at anything. Mostly this is because I use special flashlights that don't have guns attached.

Oops. An NYPD officer accidentally discharged their gun during the removal of protesters from Columbia’s Hamilton Hall. Fortunately no one was hit. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/03/nyregion/nypd-columbia-shooting-hamilton.html?unlocked_article_code=1.pE0.v6lm.u1Vvy-U6J88X&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Someone just announced that I’m being blocked for “belittling earthquakes”. I thought they were kidding, but I can’t view the account.

Doubling down. Stupid little earthquakes, too cowardly to even come above ground where we can see them.

Pleased to report that our* new paper, "Bugs In Our Pockets: The Risks of Client-Side Scanning", has been published by the Oxford Journal of Cybersecurity. In it, we examine the folly of using client-side software to detect and report CSAM images.

https://academic.oup.com/cybersecurity/article/10/1/tyad020/7590463

* Harold Abelson, Ross Anderson, Steven M Bellovin, Josh Benaloh, Matt Blaze, Jon Callas, Whitfield Diffie, Susan Landau, Peter G Neumann, Ronald L Rivest, Jeffrey I Schiller, Bruce Schneier, Vanessa Teague, Carmela Troncoso

@Gargron it seems like it would shake the entire building.

@Gargron Klpsch something or other. Huge speaker. Says it’s 1600 watts, which is scary.

I just discovered, in a closet, a VERY large powered subwoofer left behind by the previous occupant of my house. I now have an efficient way to become the least popular person in the neighborhood.

Hey! Your tax deductible donations to the Tor Project will be matched 1:1, so now is an excellent time to support privacy and anonymity on the 'net. https://blog.torproject.org/friends-of-tor-match-2023/

(Disclosure: I'm a proud "Friend of Tor".)

In 2020, the emergence of COVID-19 gave us a stark, terrifying, but very valuable lesson in how thin our collective values are once push comes to shove. Within WEEKS after lockdowns started, the op-ed class repeatedly suggested that

- We should suspend child labor laws (they claimed, incorrectly, that children weren't harmed by COVID)

- The elderly have already lived long enough and should be willing to die now to help the economy.

- The weak and compromised should be regarded as expendable.

Troll/reply guy tried to get me to back down from my unequivocal statement that there's no evidence the 2020 election was stolen, claiming it's better to "meet people halfway" if I want to convince them.

No. As a researcher and educator, I believe in providing clear, accurate information.

The "evidence" that the election was stolen is made up bullshit. To call it anything else is a disservice.

If someone claims that 2+2=5, I'm not going to try to get them to compromise that it's 4.5.

My biggest complaint about the Apple watch is that it isn't very good at, well, being a wristwatch. I like the phone integration with notifications, etc, but I gave up on my earlier generation Apple watches because the display would only decide to turn on MOST of the time when I turned my wrist to look at it.

About a year ago, I tried again with the Ultra, with an always-on display, which mostly addresses my complaint. Except the second had still turns off when it decides you aren't looking.

I assume this is for battery conservation, but I find it really irritating. If I'm timing something, the second hand invariably disappears in the middle of what I'm doing. My Casio manages to have a reliable constant seconds display. I wish my fancy expensive Apple did too.

Perhaps the fancy rich people to whom these devices are marketed have assistants for menial tasks like timing things.

Someone yelled at me for posting monochrome photos again.

That's kind of annonying, but this place still has fewer Nazis than that other place, so I'll be sticking around (along with my dreary monochrome photos, devoid of all color and joy as they may be).

UN Secretariat Building, NYC, 2021

More pixels than international disagreements at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/51381729335/

Not horizontal 16:9, so depending on your client you may need to click the preview to see the whole thing.

#photography

As Elizabeth Holmes’s chances of avoiding or delaying her sentence rapidly fade away, I can’t help but feel a bit bemused that her 11 year sentence is for defrauding her investors, not for the bogus medical tests she peddled that might well have resulted in people’s actual deaths.

Pi Day is a fake holiday that exploits a universally beloved mathematical constant to promote US-style date formats.