Notices by Mark Nottingham (mnot@techpolicy.social)

If you work on HTTP implementations, deploy it at scale, or have a unique perspective or interest in the protocol, you might find other people to talk to at the 2026 HTTP Workshop: https://github.com/HTTPWorkshop/workshop2026?tab=readme-ov-file#2026-http-workshop

Is AI a useful option for policymakers who want to evaluate open standards? Let's take a look.

https://www.mnot.net/blog/2025/06/04/using_ai

So, Google just launched a major new AI demo that requires people to relax their browser security settings. Wow.

All of the drama around Wordpress is poster child #1 for why Open Source is not adequate to assure good governance -- forking is expensive and hard, and allows a lot of sins to be swept under the carpet.

Policymakers in every other country should look at this and consider how it is any different to PRISM.

Activity on the Altoona, PA McDonalds’ Yelp page is as one would predict.

https://m.yelp.com/biz/mcdonalds-altoona-2

OMG the NYT just *owned* the Post. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/30/opinion/editorials/kamala-harris-2024.html

If you need cheering up, watch this video. Run, nazi, run.

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/neo-nazis-pepper-sprayed-after-attempting-to-disrupt-refugee-rally-20241022-p5kkh3.html

This is *the* best way for governments to be "sovereign" in the face of big tech dominance. Well done, Germany and STF.

https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/01/freebsd_and_samba_funding/

People say that AI is killing the Web, but content farms existed and were a problem long before AI took off.

What they both share is a profit motive this is satisfied by automated, large scale advertising.

So it’s more accurate to say that unrestricted advertising is killing the Web.

@anildash there is a LOT of work going on on this space, some of it based upon zero knowledge proofs, some of it snake oil. See eg iso mdocs, verifiable credentials (now happening at both W3C and ietf in different flavors), “trust exchanges” etc.

My state’s drivers license allows you to do roughly what you want; phone app shows a QR code that’s only good for two minutes, with selective disclosure of identity or age. I did a FOI for their privacy impact statement; frustratingly redacted.

Ooh, interesting.

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/07/ftc-issues-orders-eight-companies-seeking-information-surveillance-pricing

A boy (@robin) finds his people.

And this is their _earnings call_.

"I think the central risk to Palantir, America and the world is a regressive way of thinking that is corrupting and corroding our institutions that calls itself progressive, but actually — and is called woke — but is actually a form of a thin pagan religion."

RFC 9518 is finally done!

https://www.mnot.net/blog/2023/12/19/standards-and-centralization

@ntnsndr the HTML copies of your articles on your Web site require a password -- is that intentional?

@huitema so, what does this mean? Is it bad, and if so, why - considering that people can move dns hosts easily (because it is reasonably interoperable) and the dns system is resilient to failures? I’m concerned about concentration and centralization, but in markets where there are multiple providers, low barriers to switching and efficiencies of scale, it’s hard for me to be as concerned as much as I am about other ones that don’t have these features.

Mozilla is ringing the alarm bell on a dangerous EU regulation.

https://last-chance-for-eidas.org

South Africa goes peak 'we will regulate the living daylights out of big tech.'

https://www.compcom.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Media-Statement-Final-digital-markets-report-released-31-July-2023.pdf

@evan this is not a well formed question. It assumes a world where there are no other options (such as independent prosecutors), and so parrots populist right-wing views.