Mastodon Feed: Posts

pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow") wrote:

The AOL dump was a catastrophe. In an eyeblink, many of the users in the dataset were de-anonymized. The dump revealed personal, intimate and compromising facts about the lives of AOL search users.

2/

pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow") wrote:

Back in 2006, AOL tried something incredibly bold and even more incredibly *stupid*: they dumped a data-set of 20,000,000 "anonymized" search queries from 650,000 users (yes, AOL had a search engine - there used to be *lots* of search engines!):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL%5Fsearch%5Flog%5Frelease

--

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/19/privacy-breach-by-design#bringing-home-the-beacon

1/

Boosted by pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow"):
nlarson830@techhub.social ("Nick 'The Viking' O'Pelican") wrote:

@pluralistic @Mastodon@mamot.fr

Thank you Cory for bringing this issue out into the light.

@Mastodon thanks for correcting your error.

Boosted by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻"):
heydon@front-end.social ("Large Heydon Collider") wrote:

Been working on some monochrome #pride gear and this came to me out of nowhere. Thoughts?

Boosted by taral ("JP Sugarbroad"):
antifaintl@kolektiva.social ("Antifa International") wrote:

#antifa, #nazis, #weimar #history, #WeimarRepublic

Boosted by taral ("JP Sugarbroad"):
miriamboosh.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy ("Miriam Boosh") wrote:

The NYT was cited in the Supreme Court ruling used to strip trans people of healthcare. This is EXACTLY WHY the “just asking questions” crowd of centrist edgelord journalists are dangerous. They launder transphobia through faux neutral “debate” and act like it’s intellectual curiosity

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:

Americans have become so used to the idea of slave-wage labor, that when we argue in favor of immigrants, it's always "well, who will pick our fruits?"

And that is terrible. #ICE

Boosted by pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow"):
huxley@furry.engineer ("huxley(fur) 🔜 Prowl Pride 6/28") wrote:

Enshittification comes for open source:
Slack is kicking two large open source groups, Cloud Native Computing Foundation and Kubernetes, off of their donated enterprise tier, giving them one week notice to migrate multiple years of data to a new platform before it's all deleted: https://www.cncf.io/blog/2025/06/16/cncf-slack-workspace-changes-coming-on-friday-june-20/

Instead of learning from this experience and not trusting the good will of profit-motivated closed source companies, it looks like both projects will be moving to ... Discord. Because "people know it." Will we never learn?

@pluralistic

#enshittification

Boosted by pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow"):
pteryx@dice.camp ("Pteryx the Puzzle Secretary") wrote:

@Myoldpiano @pluralistic
Seems the situation has just changed in any case due to public outcry:

https://mastodon.social/@Mastodon/114709820512537821

pzmyers@freethought.online ("pzmyers 🕷") wrote:

My current Honda is getting a bit old and unfashionable.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/06/19/not-in-the-market-right-now-but-id-consider-it/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0jjxqpC0aY&t=76s

cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen") wrote:

How about some light hearted stuff to start your day? A song about social media relationships, "NOT FRENZ":

https://rumblefrenz.bandcamp.com/track/not-frenz

Some quiet encouragement, "DON'T GIVE UP THE FIGHT":

https://rumblefrenz.bandcamp.com/track/dont-give-up-the-fight

The rest of the album from Rumblefrenz:

https://rumblefrenz.bandcamp.com/album/we-will-free-you-from-your-body-tonight

pzmyers@freethought.online ("pzmyers 🕷") wrote:

One dead, rotting rabbit can be transformed into an awesome, overwhelming number of happy squirming maggots, I have learned.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/06/19/my-purpose-in-life/

pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow") wrote:

Good to see that @Mastodon has hit pause on the new ToS and are going to revisit the offending clauses.

https://mastodon.social/@Mastodon/114709820512537821

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻") wrote:

I’m so excited for the new Clipse project.— Their first album in over a decade, Let God Sort’em Out features wall-to-wall production by Pharrell Williams, with a Kendrick Lamar feature.

Long live Pusha T and No Malice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JayCuiHERUQ&pp=ygUTY2xpcHNlIGFjZSB0cnVtcGV0cw%3D%3D

lloydmeta ("Lloyd") wrote:

TIL "deepwiki"... I ran it on frunk and was quite impressed, at least by the diagrams that it was able to generate...

Makes me wonder why I went through the trouble of *writing* blog articles about this on beachape.com!

https://deepwiki.com/lloydmeta/frunk/3.2-labelledgeneric-and-structural-transformations for instance.

#GenAI

Boosted by pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow"):
Gargron ("Eugen Rochko") wrote:

@addressforbots @pluralistic I mean… yeah, that’s pretty much it.

Boosted by pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow"):
urixturing@mastodont.cat ("Urix Turing") wrote:

@pluralistic to pile up, in Spain this ToS also seem unenforceable under current consumers' rights law 1/2007:

- Article 57.4: arbitration agreements cannot be binding for consumers if agreed before a dispute arises.
- Article 58.1: acceptance of arbitration agreements must be explicit, written and voluntary.

Which begs the question as to why an European company would choose the most harming jurisdiction to users, which I predict to be unenforceable in most of the EU. https://boe.es/buscar/act.php?id=BOE-A-2007-20555&p=20250103&tn=1#a57

Boosted by pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow"):
angusm ("Angus McIntyre") wrote:

Hey, @pluralistic , I think they heard you ... ;-)
https://mastodon.social/@Mastodon/114709820512537821

pzmyers@freethought.online ("pzmyers 🕷") wrote:

@mattblaze "Bullshit" is among the milder terms I hear from academics discussing the current situation.

pzmyers@freethought.online ("pzmyers 🕷") wrote:

SpaceX provides great fireworks.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/06/19/boom-again/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcJoZdfbKQw&list=RDNSVcJoZdfbKQw&start%5Fradio=1

Boosted by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻"):
codeinabox@hachyderm.io ("Mathew Attlee") wrote:

@Edent the bit where you talk about generative AI making mistakes with OCR, reminded me of a great interview with @timnitGebru, and how she points out that LLM can be less accurate at text-to-speech than existing machine learning approaches https://techwontsave.us/episode/267%5Fai%5Fhype%5Fenters%5Fits%5Fgeopolitics%5Fera%5Fw%5Ftimnit%5Fgebru

Mastodon wrote:

We've heard your feedback on the Terms of Service updates for mastodon.social and mastodon.online, and we're pausing the implementation date (previously announced to users via email as 1st July 2025) so we can take further advice and make improvements.

It may take us a moment to consult with the right people, so please bear with us while we do so. As always, we appreciate your patience and support.

Boosted by jwz:
astra_underscore@wetdry.world ("Astra Underscore") wrote:

JSON implies the existence of JDÓTTIR

Boosted by jwz:
kaye@cathode.church ("Kaye") wrote:

Fun fact: If you see someone at a nerd event wearing a vim-themed shirt, it's because they put it on in 2003 and couldn't figure out how to take it off

Boosted by jwz:
jwz wrote:

@david_chisnall First assume a spherical cow with UBI and a frictionless liver.

Boosted by jwz:
r_flash@mastodon.r-flash.eu ("Adam P") wrote:

#Escherism experiments 🙂

Attachments:

• gifv: A black and white mosaic of triangular and rectangular spirals vanishing into infinity in the center. The spirals rotate and the whole thing continually zooms in in a perfect loop.

denschub@schub.social ("Dennis Schubert") wrote:

sometimes I like to use my magnetic stirrer to dissolve things just because it's fun to watch it go wheeeeeeee.

thanks for your attention

Boosted by adam@social.lol ("Adam Newbold"):
Mer__edith@mastodon.world ("Meredith Whittaker") wrote:

'Meredith,' some guys ask, 'why won't you shove AI into Signal?'

Because we love privacy, and we love you, and this shit is predictable and unacceptable. Use Signal ❤️

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

407 years ago, the first slaves arrived in Virginia. They were from Angola.

162 years ago, Lincoln declared that all enslsved people in Confederate territories were free.

160 years ago (to the day!), on #Juneteenth, the last enslaved people in the USA were freed.

61 years ago, racial discrimination and segregation were outlawed by the Civil Rights Act.

60 years ago, black Americans finally secured comprehensive electoral protections through the Voting Rights Act.

But:

- 12 years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that states no longer require federal approval for new voting policies. Since then, more than 100 voter suppression laws have been passed across states with histories of discriminatory practices.

- For every dollar earned by a white person in the USA, a black person earns 87 cents.

- White Americans hold 84% of the country’s wealth, while black people hold just 3%.

- Institutional racism remains a serious problem, with black people facing disparities in education, housing, employment, healthcare, and in the criminal justice system.

- Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, three good things that help *everyone*, are under constant attack.

Today is Juneteenth, and it’s a day to celebrate. But I hope all of my white friends can take a moment to consider that however far we think we’ve come with civil rights in this country, it hasn’t been far enough. Every day we see more examples of people in power actively working to undermine fairness and decency while driving increasingly larger wedges between ethnic groups. We have to be better than this. We must refuse to accept this. There is so much work to be done, by all of us.

Boosted by adam@social.lol ("Adam Newbold"):
exiva@social.lol ("Travis La Marr") wrote:

Does anyone have a suggestion for wirelessly getting iPhone camera video over to OBS with audio input selection for wireless mic packs? We heart droidcam but the lack of audio selection is a bummer. (Tried both Bluetooth and connected DJI packs it always goes to internal mic). Vdo.ninja was close, but a bit laggy and not as high quality in our testing. I tried experimenting with Larix Broadcaster and SRT in OBS, which looks like it’d be perfect but was getting 3 sec of delay 😓

We run a few streams off laptops (I know I know. I’ve fought against it.) and they are absolutely cooking themselves to death in hot warehouse. Want to have just the iPhone connect to remote a broadcast machine.

#obs #streaming #liveStream #livestreaming