Lou Katz @lou@entropyservice.com

Columbia University did the cowardly thing and caved in to the Trump regime. Now it's learning that bullies don't stop once they've found a pliant victim.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-education-department-says-columbia-university-violated-federal-anti-2025-06-04/

Johnson County, TX sheriff searched 680 license plate reader networks and 83,000 cameras across multiple states in search of a woman who was "having an abortion" using the Flock system. States that permit #abortion access couldn't stop it from happening. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/05/she-got-abortion-so-texas-cop-used-83000-cameras-track-her-down

Among the many dangerous things the Trump administration is doing ...

... this one's a doozy:

the executive order giving his political appointees the power to determine what are "correct" scientific findings, and "the power to 'discipline' anyone who violates the way the administration views science"

Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/climate/executive-order-gold-standard-science.html?unlocked_article_code=1.MU8.OyDj.Zg9c1rftvl0c&smid=url-share

“We live in a country without a comprehensive federal privacy law, so your personal data has been freely harvested and sold for a long time,” EFF’s Lena Cohen told Norfolk's WAVY NBC10. https://www.wavy.com/news/disturbing-data-personal-information-being-bought-and-sold-how-you-can-stop-it/

So now I have:

Subversion as my RCS. Git is overwhelmingly the most popular these days, to point there's people unaware anything else exists.

I never found a compelling reason to stop using Subversion. I like it.

am reposting this meme @MalcolmNance posted without #AltTxt ―of the neonazi group #ProudBoys and #ICE― because it makes the point i made several days ago

❝ Don't be afraid to call things by what they are. #MAGA is a terrorist organization, ICE is a secret police force conducting Ethnic Cleansing, Elon Musk is an oligarch, and Trump is a foreign backed coup d'état figurehead. This is not an administration, this is a regime, and your country is occupied.

previously:
https://mastodon.social/@blogdiva/114603612760706133

Israeli Officer Promoted After He Ordered Killing of White Flag Holders in Gaza https://twp.ai/E67jpj

Automated license plate readers don't prevent crime, they chill speech and put marginalized people at risk. Fortunately organizers in San Diego are pushing back. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/06/san-diegans-push-back-flock-alpr-surveillance

Washington Post editorial page is transforming itself into the early Huffington Post, only this one will be full of right-wingers.

Bezos is working overtime to destroy the Post brand by spitting on its tradition.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/business/media/washington-post-opinion-ripple.html?smid=tw-share

My doctor’s office just asked me if I consented to an AI scribe taking session notes. (Obviously I said absolutely not and over my dead body).

I am physically incapable of minding my own business so I asked for details. They confirmed that means the rooms are capable of recording now, but assured me that it is “completely deleted” in a “timely fashion”.

I’m with One Medical. So that means the steward of that data is AMAZON.

I am utterly horrified.

#tech #dystopia

"If automakers end up shifting some production to China, it would amount to a remarkable outcome from a trade war initiated by President Trump"

https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/car-companies-production-rare-earth-shortage-aaf87ad2

Darren Beattie, a Trump official who dismantled a counter-disinformation office in the United States government has links to the kremlin

His wife – yulia kirillova – is the niece of sergei chernikov, a former russian official who reportedly helped putin in the election campaign which first brought him to power in 2000

https://kyivindependent.com/trump-official-who-shut-down-counter-disinformation-bureau-has-links-to-russia-telegraph-reports/

It's hard to imagine academic papers like "Large Language Models Often Know When They Are Being Evaluated" being published in any area of science. The abstract actively contradicts the title. ("can accurately classify transcripts based on whether they originate from evaluations or real-world deployment, a capability we call evaluation awareness")

In my next paper, "#LLMs perform actual miracles, hallelujah!!" I will redefine "actual miracles" to mean "things that I think would surprise a medieval peasant." 🤯

https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.23836

Old school Plex users, it looks like they're turning on the sell-your-data spigot. Opt out here:

https://www.plex.tv/vendors-us/

Whatever you thought the new internal process at NSF was to decide which huge parts of US science to kill, reality is worse.

A 23-Year-Old Crypto Bro Is No...

San Diego has already spent millions on Flock's network of AI-driven ALPR cameras. Local TRUST coalition is calling on the city to reject this oppressive surveillance system and instead invest in essential services. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/06/san-diegans-push-back-flock-alpr-surveillance

Join us at Austin City Hall tomorrow for a press conference and on Thursday at the city council meeting to urge council members to REJECT our ALPR program, Item #67 (Against). These tools of mass surveillance can be stopped if YOU speak up. https://services.austintexas.gov/edims/document.cfm?id=452767

“Like other discriminatory legislation in our country's history, immigration laws define and differentiate legal status on the basis of arbitrary attributes. Immigration laws create unequal rights. People who break immigration laws don't cause harm or even potential harm (unlike, for example, drunk driving, which creates the potential for harm even if no accident occurs). Rather, people who break immigration laws do things that are perfectly legal for others, but denied to them--like crossing a border or, even more commonly, simply exist.”

― Aviva Chomsky, "They Take Our Jobs!": And 20 Other Myths about Immigration

@mattblaze @fabio I am not sure that your point applies merely to academia. I worked for Pixar, which through the 1990s was actually interested in pushing the boundaries of what was possible, both in technology and in art. But increasingly as it became part of Disney, profitability became the driving force, increasingly at the expense of the people who bought into the creative vision. By the time I left, it was clear that they had ceased to value individuals and their contributions.

"It can transform homes into digital jails, inadvertently surveil others, impose financial burdens, and punish every misstep—no matter how minor or understandable:" The Defense Attorney’s Arsenal In Challenging Electronic Monitoring https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/06/defense-attorneys-arsenal-challenging-electronic-monitoring