Mastodon Feed: Posts

mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

This almost impenetrable maze of agencies and divisions is partly an artifact of the post-9/11 reorganization of federal law enforcement that created DHS in 2003. Prior to that, the two main agencies were INS ("Immigration and Naturalization Service"), which was part of DoJ, and Customs, which was part of Treasury. (INS would stamp your passport, and Customs would go through your luggage). Both agencies also had field and investigative divisions. But all that went out the window in 2003.

mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

Because this is Mastodon, I feel compelled to add a disclaimer that my explaining the existence of these agencies is not an endorsement of current administration policy. It's just an endorsement of the idea that knowing stuff is sometimes useful.

mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

It's even more confusing because both ICE and CBP have divisions that have their own identities. HSI ("Homeland Security Investigations") is the investigative (FBI-like) branch of ICE. Historically they investigate things like smuggling and human trafficking.

The US Border Patrol is a division of CBP that patrols the border between ports of entry (as opposed to the CBP officers you see at the airport).

Anyway, all of these agencies and divisions appear to be detailed to the current raids.

mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

A lot of confusion about this: ICE ("Immigration and Customs Enforcement" and CBP ("Customs and Border Protection") are two different agencies. Both are under DHS, both are tasked with immigration and customs missions, and both do field enforcement.

Both agencies are involved in the current crackdown and detentions, but they aren't the same, and confusion between them often means it's hard to know what happened or who to contact when someone has been arrested in a raid or sweep.

Boosted by pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow"):
mrkrndvs@mastodon.cloud ("Aaron Davis") wrote:

@pluralistic it was intriguing to think about the leaking of typed notes from therapy sessions discussed in Joe Tidy's book (and in an interview on Darknet Diaries https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/159/) alongside your discussion of surveillance-crazed therapy chatbots.

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

Most of the excuses for JS excess involve "app-like" and "fluid" "user experiences", and IDK why branded loading spinners take months to build and seconds to load.

Boosted by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻"):
patatas@social.patatas.ca wrote:

So like, one thing I really appreciate about the #GeminiProtocol is that it’s intended to be finalized and then never changed. And it’s very nearly at that point.

I also appreciate the criticisms that it’s very limited in what it allows one to do. But this also seems like a positive feature in terms of non-capture:

The web, meanwhile, is a surveillance capitalist shopping mall.

The folks with the most say over the direction of ActivityPub seem to be fully in the pocket of Meta et al.

ATProto (putting aside the fact that Bluesky almost feels like a honeypot for leftists) is supposedly going to be transferred to a standards body, but again, as we see with ActivityPub, that’s also a path to capture.

So - is anyone talking about creating a protocol that’s less limited than Gemini but is also intended to stop evolving at a certain point? Or is that an unrealistic thing to expect due to its relative complexity?

In other words, is it fair to say that greater technical complexity demands constant evolution, making capture almost inevitable?

Boosted by adam@social.lol ("Adam Newbold"):
mcornick@social.lol ("Mark (N3MSC)") wrote:

If you're using my clilol program (a CLI for omg.lol services): first, thank you for sticking with it through a period of inactivity. Second, there's a new version out:

https://clilol.readthedocs.io/latest/blog/2025/06/20/clilol-version-111/

For Mac users in particular, please note that clilol was previously distributed as a Homebrew formula, but is now distributed as a Homebrew cask. The link above tells you what to do to remove the formula before installing the cask. (This is due to Homebrew policy around provenance: formulas are supposed to be built from source, while casks are supposed to be distributed as binaries. Since the previous formula distributed binaries, it's not in compliance.) Also, the binary is now signed and notarized, so no scary warnings from macOS when you try to run it.

Other changes include a new coat of paint on the UI thanks to @charmcli 's new Fang library (subject to change as Fang evolves), and some other less significant changes listed at the above link.

Again, thanks for using clilol, thanks to @adam for his support, and as I always say on my radio show, we will try to do better next time.

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

climbed up a ladder onto the back roof & straightened up the pole for my endfed antenna. the wind pushed it aslant and the antenna wire is tangled up in a tree now. I think it is time to down the whole thing and rebuild 🙁

mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

I would vote for the mayor from Jaws over most of the current NYC mayoral candidates.

Boosted by adam@social.lol ("Adam Newbold"):
FontsInUse@typo.social ("Fonts In Use") wrote:

Happy 50th anniversary, #JAWS!
#StevenSpielberg’s thriller film was first shown in American theaters #OTD in 1975.

See the #FontsInUse for a movie poster as well as for the book covers of Peter Benchley’s 1974 novel 🏄🦈
https://fontsinuse.com/tags/4279/jaws

Boosted by adam@social.lol ("Adam Newbold"):
benjancewicz ("Benjamin Young Savage (ᐱᓐᒋᐱᓐ)") wrote:

If your country's police force dresses like this, you may live in a military dictatorship.

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

NO https://www.flickr.com/photos/jef/54602329523/

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

I've read impassioned arguments that, in the same breath, will argue that Meta is the enemy and that #Threads interpolation is important to the revolution, as if Meta will lay down and let us change the web's topography in our favor.

...As if we're the ones with the upper hand, while Meta continues to "interpolate" on its own terms without pushback from those w the biggest megaphones on the #fediverse

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

TACO https://www.flickr.com/photos/jef/54602320576/

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

I watch videos like "Introducing the #Fediverse," which is a great piece of propaganda, and think, we need more of this.

But it also highlights a faction in the #OpenSocialWeb revolution. This vid puts #Meta front and center as the entity we're revolting against.

But not everyone agrees.

Some (foolishly) believe Meta is on our side of the line; that they'll willingly hand over the keys so we can have the web we want.

If that's so, who are we revolting against?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YRJHIJy5Nno&pp=0gcJCf0Ao7VqN5tD

Boosted by jwz:
Crell@phpc.social ("Larry Garfield") wrote:

Priorities...

#GenAI #LLM #AI #ClimateChange

Boosted by isagalaev ("Ivan Sagalaev :flag_wbw:"):
timbray@cosocial.ca ("Tim Bray") wrote:

Mastodon (and other Fedi software) should stop stripping the C2PA manifest from the EXIF of uploaded media.

In the long run there are lots of good C2PA things to be done, but for now, just get out of the way and let the emergent ecosystem of tools work with it.

Probably best as an opt-in, although in all the software I've seen, to get C2PA in your images you have to explicitly request it, so one assumes anyone who does that and shares wants to share the provenance too.

#Fediverse

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

Mark Zuckerberg is so leveraged, investing billions and billions of dollars on AI and infrastructure, that if this doesn't pan out for #Meta, they're in trouble.

In other words, if we figured out a way to get people to walk away, it would be a devastating blow.

Pipe dream, I know. But if there were ever a time to strike, it would be right now.

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
dev@discuss.systems ("Dev") wrote:

This is so exciting! 55 different radiocarbon results now support that humans were in New Mexico 22000 years ago, 8000 years before first humans have been assumed to be in the Americas https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/06/study-confirms-white-sands-footprints-are-23000-years-old/

Boosted by pluralistic@mamot.fr ("Cory Doctorow"):
ishotjr@chaos.social ("ishotjr ✨💙✨💗✨") wrote:

I can't imagine a more perfect keynote speaker than @pluralistic for @crowdsupply #Teardown2025 🤘🤩🤘

jwz wrote:

I was today years old when I learned that Patreon offers no mechanism to download all of your own posts from your "creator" account. Because fuck you that's why.

Confirmed with "support" [sic] who sent me a response with the level of overly-verbose obsequiousness that clearly flagged it as having been "AI"-generated...
https://jwz.org/b/ykpm

mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

#photography note: You might have noticed I post (approximately) a photo a day here. I typically post a small(ish) thumbnail and a link to the full resolution version. I also usually add a short thread with technical details on the image and whatever I found notable about the subject or the composition or whatever.

This is (like, it seems, everything on Mastodon), controversial. Some people want art to speak for itself. But I'm a professor, and so I drone on endlessly about every little thing.

Boosted by mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze"):
mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze") wrote:

@joshuajfriedman.com Seems a bit ironic to require surrendering the document that allows someone to leave the country in a case where what they're trying to do is force him to leave the country...

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
meg@fediscience.org ("Megan ⚘") wrote:

S.G. Goodman released a new album today and it is fantastic. The delicate songwriting and crossover styles easily make this one of my top records of the year. I've already been obsessing over the singles all month. My current favorite is "Michael Told Me."

#Music https://sggoodman.bandcamp.com/album/planting-by-the-signs

#Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdo29t0O-z0&list=PLKx0rq4273ue-iCNbRqjvmWkJAE2%5FEdZ3

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
spacehobo@teh.entar.net ("Space Hobo") wrote:

https://youtu.be/DMVcdbpJFbQ ← This cool talk about Lore Harp by @garius is finally up!

Boosted by kornel ("Kornel"):
carnage4life@mas.to ("Dare Obasanjo") wrote:

Cloudflare’s CEO has shared that Google is sending 3x less traffic to publishers relating to how much it crawls their sites compared to 6 months ago. But it’s better than OpenAI and Anthropic who send 40x and 1000x fewer users per page crawled than Google.

To protect their business models, publishers will block & sue these companies as freeloaders and switch to paywalls. The Open Web is dying and the Paywall Web will take its place.

https://www.axios.com/2025/06/19/ai-search-traffic-publishers

Boosted by mattblaze@federate.social ("Matt Blaze"):
w7voa@journa.host ("Steve Herman") wrote:

Friday’s VOA TV broadcast in Farsi is going out right now on a satellite transponder beaming to Iran. It's a repeat of yesterday’s news program because all remaining VOA staff deactivated a few hours ago.

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
LIGO@scicomm.xyz wrote:

LIGO and Virgo will resume observing on 11 June joined by KAGRA! All four of our kilometre-scale #GravitationalWave detectors will observe at the same time!

Our observing run (O4) has been extended to run until 18 November 2025 and we are looking forward to many discoveries

https://ligo.org/ligo-virgo-kagra-to-resume-and-extend-the-o4-run/

#O4IsHere #Astrodon

Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your friendly 'net denizen"):
researchfairy@scholar.social ("The research fairy") wrote:

> No hangovers, home by 9 p.m.: Why some Canadians are choosing daytime parties over nightlife

> organizers are rethinking what it means to party, flipping the script on traditional nightlife culture by challenging the idea that celebrations must happen after dark

> Alcohol is often swapped with non-alcoholic beverages, shifting the activities toward joy, connection, and well-being rather than excess

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/nightlife-for-day-parties-1.7563379

Aw hell yeah