Mastodon Feed: Posts

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
Flipboard@flipboard.social wrote:

Leaked audio from a staff meeting at the U.S. Social Security Administration suggests the agency may be in peril. Acting Social Security Commissioner Leland Dudek, a career civil servant who was promoted to his current position by the Trump administration, told others at a closed-door meeting: “Are we going to break something?” referring to what DOGE has been doing with Social Security data. “I don’t know.” Here's more from @ProPublica.

https://www.propublica.org/article/recording-reveals-leland-dudek-thoughts-trump-doge-social-security

#USGovernment #DOGE #ElonMusk #USPolitics #SocialSecurity

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
NewsDesk@flipboard.social ("Flipboard News Desk") wrote:

Ukrainian troops are withdrawing from the Russian region of Kursk. @dw dives into why.
https://flip.it/sp2wey
#Ukraine #Russia #US #Kursk #Putin #Zelenskyy

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

10 Senators who are Democratic Party members just voted to give Trump a budget he will spend however he pleases. I am ashamed to say I am a constituent of 2 of them: the supposed Senate Democratic Leader, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, & Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York.

the power of the purse is the only tool they have to deal with a President who ignores the rule of law, & the Congress has abandoned that power & Constitutional responsibility. we have a “Non Player Congress”.

#JustSayNo

jwz wrote:

https://theonion.com/chuck-schumer-helps-pull-democrats-back-from-brink-of-courage/

jwz wrote:

Just checked my spam folder and in the last week there are more than 100 fake docusigns.

Boosted by jwz:
jef ("Jef Poskanzer :batman:") wrote:

adam@social.lol ("Adam Newbold :usa_distress:") wrote:

“But all of my followers…”
“But I get better engagement there…”
“But my friends are still there…”

Nobody wants to face the reality that their favorite pub has become a nazi bar. But if you can’t see it, and more importantly if you can’t act accordingly, you’re either ignorant, unscrupulous, or a nazi.

There are no more excuses. It’s over.

jwz wrote:

Spam pro tip.

When a spam message gets past my shields and lands in my inbox, the first thing I do is look at the SpamAssassin headers to see if some rule fired whose priority I should bump up. Usually the answer is "Uggggghhhhhh no". It used to be...
https://jwz.org/b/ykkV

adam@social.lol ("Adam Newbold :usa_distress:") wrote:

This; so very much *this*. I really stepped in it the last time I brought this up, so this time I’ll just say: please, for the love of whatever crumbs of decency still remain in the world, tell anyone you know who still uses that platform to get the fuck off of it.

https://mastodon.social/@dangillmor/114159624462377148

Boosted by adam@social.lol ("Adam Newbold :usa_distress:"):
dangillmor ("Dan Gillmor") wrote:

Musk's latest amplification of fascist contempt for humanity is a reminder that if you are still on his evil platform -- especially if you're posting there -- you are supporting his vile business.

https://meidasnews.com/news/elon-musk-retweet-hitler-didnt-murder-millions-of-people-public-sector-workers-did

This goes 10x for journalists, who mock their craft and demonstrate a special kind of indifference to ethics and morality by sticking around.

Stop pretending otherwise.

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

A temporary government shutdown would be painful, but the alternative is a continuation of the government liquidation sale that's currently in progress.

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
coachgowron@tenforward.social ("Coach Gowron") wrote:

// In 14 minutes, Matthew McConaughey* begins his epic journey to recite a million digits of Pi. Don't miss the opening!

* Impersonator. No AI.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KpS54llYUA

jwz wrote:

Man, the fake-docusign spam from weird TLDs is just off the charts in the last few days.

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
trashheap@tech.lgbt ("trashHeap :hehim: :verified_gay:") wrote:

Peter David. #lgbtq ally who pushed for diversity in #Marvel #comics. One of the few writers blessed by JMS to write for #Babylon5 and author of some of my favorite #StarTrek novels, is stranded in tremendous medical debt and needs help. Information and link to #PeterDavid's #GoFundMe here: https://bleedingcool.com/comics/peter-david-runs-out-of-insurance-loses-medicaid-and-needs-your-help/

chipotle@mstdn.social ("Watts Martin") wrote:

While I'm not giving up on Panic Nova, I'm reluctantly dusting off Visual Studio Code again.

pzmyers@octodon.social ("pzmyers 🦑") wrote:

They don't need no education or science, because they already know the answer…and reality might tell them they are wrong.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/03/14/maga-hates-science/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46XaJvIxPeY

Boosted by jwz:
quinn@social.circl.lu ("Quinn Norton") wrote:

I met Gavin Newsom many years ago at an event in Larry Ellison's house. I spoke with him only briefly, but he was very good a expressing his character in short time. I am sure he doesn't remember me. There is no angle in remembering me.

Not a single thing he's done since then has surprised me at all. He is a Reagan; a thermos of a person, pouring out what was last poured into him, slick, a vacuum seal surrounding mostly empty space.

Boosted by jwz:
neil@mastodon.neilzone.co.uk ("Neil Brown") wrote:

In cyberspace, no-one can hear you scream.

Brought to you by ALSA.

Boosted by jwz:
GavinChait@wandering.shop ("Gavin Chait;") wrote:

I'd like to propose **The Godwin Betteridge Corollary**: the probability that any headline that ends in a question mark that should be answered by the word ***yes ***is only left in doubt because the journalists, editors and other privileged proclaimants are too chickenshit to declare that this *is* about Nazis.

@mnemonic @ianb

Boosted by jwz:
MissingThePt ("Missing The Point") wrote:

Senator Schumer gives off “likes are not an endorsement” energy.

Boosted by jwz:
indivisibleteam ("Indivisible") wrote:

New Yorkers were up bright and early to demand that Chuck Schumer stops enabling the Trump-Musk coup and instead fights back against fascism.

Attachments:

• video: 7c5cf58da0ee180b.mp4

Boosted by jwz:
seachanger@alaskan.social ("wet forest moon folklorist") wrote:

now is the time to sit down and make some calls to friends in these states

Boosted by isagalaev ("Ivan Sagalaev :flag_wbw:"):
johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz ("John Carlos Baez") wrote:

On January 21, the Trump gang took down the Centres for Disease Control (CDC) website. Later they put it back up, but with a lot removed. Information about vaccines, HIV, abortion, trans issues, gender issues... all gone. 😠

Some good news: thanks to a lot of hard work by good people, you can now see the restored CDC website here:

https://restoredcdc.org/www.cdc.gov/ 🎉

It has 46,000 web pages! A bunch of the links are broken, and the videos don't work yet, but they're fixing things, and each page has a button where you can report problems.

The team doing this good work is called RestoredCDC, and they write:

.....

This is a volunteer-based, unfunded project. The team consists of public health professionals, experienced web developers, experienced Python coders, and others.

Do you have a passion for accurate and transparent science communication? We could use you on our team! We are looking for people with the following special skills:

Python programming
Project management
Marketing and communication
Web development

Connect with us on Discord: https://discord.gg/XAvvp8Y4N4

.....

For more info about the RestoredCDC project, go here:

https://aboutus.restoredcdc.org/

Boosted by jwz:
zwol@hackers.town ("Zack Weinberg") wrote:

Here is a template. If you follow this template for your binary file format's magic number, you will be doing it better than a depressingly large number of senior software engineers.

First eight bytes of the file:

0xD8 0xDF X X x x (0x01 0x00 | 0x00 0x01)

0xD8 0xDF are bytes with the high bit set. Together with the next two bytes, they form a four-byte sequence that cannot appear in any valid ASCII, UTF-8, Corrected UTF-8, or UTF-16 (regardless of endianness) text document. This is not a perfectly bulletproof declaration that the file does not contain text, but it should be strong enough except maybe for formats like PDF that can't decide if they're structured text or binary.

X X x x: Four ASCII alphanumeric characters naming your file format. Make them clearly related to your recommended file name extension. I'm giving you four characters because we're running out of three-letter acronyms. If you don't need four characters, pad at the end with 0x1A (aka ^Z).

The first two of these (the uppercase Xes) must not have their high bits set, lest the "this is not text" declaration be weakened. For the other two (lowercase xes), use of ASCII alphanumerics is just a strong recommendation.

0x01 0x00 or 0x00 0x01: This is to be understood as a 16-bit unsigned integer in your choice of little- or big-endian order. It serves three functions. In descending order of importance:

1. It includes a zero byte, reinforcing the declaration that this is not a text file.
2. It demonstrates which byte ordering will be used throughout the file. It does not matter which order you choose, but you need to consciously choose either big- or little-endian and then use that byte order consistently throughout the file. Yes, I have seen cases where people didn't do that.
3. It's an escape hatch. If one day you discover that you need to alter the structure of the rest of the file in a totally incompatible way, and yet it is still meaningfully the same format, so you don't want to change the name characters, you can change the 0x01 to 0x02. We both hope that day will never come, but we both know it might.

pzmyers@octodon.social ("pzmyers 🦑") wrote:

An inspiring tale of the eternal struggle against ignorance and hate: George Dale vs the Ku Klux Klan.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/03/14/a-hopeful-historical-story/

jscalzi@threads.net ("John Scalzi") wrote:

Tomorrow is the Ides of March, and here at the Scalzi Compound we have a whole stack of new books and ARCs to peruse. Which of these books would you like to take a stab at?

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
signal9@hackers.town ("signal9 :hackers_town:") wrote:

On heavy rotation

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

Boosted by isagalaev ("Ivan Sagalaev :flag_wbw:"):
_elena ("Elena Rossini ⁂") wrote:

Thanks to the magic of the Streisand effect, I just heard about #CarelessPeople - a book by former Meta employee Sarah Wynn-Williams.

Apparently the company is FREAKING OUT and seeking legal ways to stop its promotion. I can see why. This article about it in the Times made my jaw drop: https://web.archive.org/web/20250310221013/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/10/books/review/careless-people-sarah-wynn-williams.html

I will definitely order it at my local bookshop.

🔗: https://bookshop.org/p/books/careless-people-a-cautionary-tale-of-power-greed-and-lost-idealism/22213433

Edit: included non-paywalled link (thanks @gemlog)

#books

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
qrper@mastodon.radio ("Thomas (K4SWL)") wrote:

QRP POTA with Vlado: Elecraft KX1 in Pisgah National Forest (Part 1)

https://qrper.com/2025/03/qrp-pota-with-vlado-elecraft-kx1-in-pisgah-national-forest-part-1/

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
CNN@flipboard.com wrote:

Trump plan to house migrants at Guantanamo Bay faces mounting hurdles, internal doubts
https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/14/politics/guantanamo-migrants-trump?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

Posted into Politics @politics-CNN