Notices by Matt Blaze (mattblaze@federate.social)

This is a really stupid game. Zero stars.

Playing the game where I look at the delivery driver driving farther and farther away from my house with my food on the little map in the app and helplessly yelling ineffectual driving directions at my phone.

@GossiTheDog Everything else aside, what on earth were they thinking with the date-based password? It's like someone heard that "static passwords are bad" and completely misunderstood the point.

New curse: "May the President of the United States take an interest in your field".

I guess the AI people now know how the election security people feel.

Whoa. Retired head of the German BND (the country's lead intelligence agency) arrested for allegedly selling classified information to an unspecified foreign government. It appears have been quite the enterprise, involving his purchasing documents from a former underling.

Apparently he was found out because he was in some way caught up in an unrelated kidnapping scheme. Wild.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/06/world/europe/germany-spy-chief-hanning-arrested-espionage.html?unlocked_article_code=1.GlE.acl2.gQcmgq73uWe4

@blogdiva I have always been opposed to the death penalty under all circumstances, but if I hadn’t been before, Tennessee would have been enough to convince me. Not blood that I want on my hands, even by proxy.

Titan II ICBM, Launch Complex 571-7, Sahuarita, AZ, 2009

All the pixels, but probably no warhead, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/4185185541

#photography

Captured with a DSLR and a Zeiss 21mm Distagon lens. Handheld (there was no room to set up a tripod).

In 2009, I was fortunate to join a "top to bottom" tour of former Air Force Titan ICBM site 571-7, now preserved as a museum. Titan II missiles carried a nine megaton(!) "physics package" in the "reentry vehicle" (which they emphatically assured me had been removed from this missile, but I still wouldn't advise upsetting them too much).

More ICBM photos and discussion here: https://www.mattblaze.org/blog/titans/

According to https://thebulletin.org/, it's currently 85 seconds to midnight.

The "AI changes everything" people rhyme remarkably well with the "blockchain changes everything" people.

We’ll know they’re serious about slowing down on AI when the price of solid state memory drops back down.

Complex software behaving in unexpected and sometimes harmful ways has been a persistent problem since software was invented. The phenomenon used to be called “bugs” or “defects”, but I guess “going rogue” sounds cooler. It also implicitly frames “rogue” behavior as some kind of inexplicable exception, as if software is somehow usually trustworthy. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/technology/openais-ai-us-government-websites.html?unlocked_article_code=1.EFE.RfLT.x6YBjHa1PMz6

“Our software went rogue!” No. You programmed it wrong.

It's nowhere near the worst or most consequential thing he's done, but I think Trump's threat to demolish the Kennedy Center if he isn't allowed to name it after himself is the clearest demonstration yet that he's gone mad with the imagined power of his office.

It doesn't advance any policy goal, and no constituency has been calling for it. He doesn't even particularly benefit from it. It's just a pure, simple expression of a corrupt ego out of control.

@lufthans Oh please. He does all those things openly. He doesn't need "distractions".

@benroyce @lufthans Yes. People across the political spectrum cling to the fiction that he’s a calculating genius because the only thing worse than admitting to yourself that you voted for a complete nitwit is admitting to yourself that the person you voted for lost to a complete nitwit.

Say what you will about the Supreme Court (and there's plenty to say these days), at least their opinions and docket filings are freely online and not behind the PACER firewall like most of the rest of the federal judiciary is. https://www.supremecourt.gov/

Supreme Court ruling has dropped. Injunction stands! @heidilifeldman

Short, unsigned ruling; “unlikely to succeed on merits”.

Kavanaugh concurred but thinks it could succeed, but is concerned about the late timing for this election.

@heidilifeldman

Notably (and unfortunately), security technology (as used in elections and everywhere else) is generally much better at detecting problems than it is at preventing them.

Cryptographic authenticators can show whether data has been altered, but doesn't prevent alteration. Physical seals can reveal that something was tampered with, but don't prevent the tampering. Prevention requires much more complex protocols and procedures, and generally provides only fragile assurances.

@heidilifeldman