Notices by Lauren Weinstein (lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org)

@amy @cstross Unfamiliar with this. Just looked it up.

@amy @cstross With a fair number of exceptions that include more recent works, most of my sci-fi novel knowledge is centered on "golden age" and a ways into the "new wave" age. Past that, it drops off fairly rapidly in general.

Despite my strong differences with many of the decisions made by #Google over recent years, I can't emphasize enough what an utter disaster for the privacy and security of ordinary users most of the DOJ "remedies" being suggested to the judge in the Google antitrust case would be. I can't figure out if DOJ just isn't considering these issues in their rush to create "competition" in a manner that wouldn't actually help ordinary consumers at all -- and more likely just cause them more tech-related problems and confusion -- or if the folks at DOJ working on this simply don't really understand the technical realities involved.

The leaks begin! - "Unknown and unauthorized third party" has gained access to Matt Gaetz depositions, source says

As predicted. -L

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/matt-gaetz-depositions-leak-investigations/

Today on my usual Monday evening national network radio tech segment, I'll be discussing how so many innocent users get locked out of their #Google accounts, often losing all of their email and other data in the process -- due to Google's abysmal account recovery systems, their lack of genuine user support beyond decrepit and largely useless "help forums", and how Google over the years has steadfastly refused to even consider meaningful suggestions to improve the situation.

The reason so many firms push so hard to get you to use their phone apps rather than their websites is that the depth of invasive personal data they can gather via the apps is usually enormous in comparison.

Bluesky as a supposed "safe haven" from X has to be the quintessential example of the old adage: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." And a lot of people are being fooled twice.

George Conway (11/17/24): "The Internet will end up having destroyed civilization but it will never stop amusing us along the way."

Pretty much. And thank you for capitalizing Internet"! -L

Long, long ago, in the early days of Internet's ancestor the Defense Department ARPANET, I was interviewed at UCLA (by some media outlet, I don't remember which) about my work at ARPANET site #1 at UCLA, literally the first site on what would become the Internet. This would have been probably in the mid-70s or so.

And I was asked if I thought this kind of technology would ever be used by the public at large.

So I thought about it for a few seconds and I replied that yeah, the public would eventually have access to these kinds of capabilities, though it would take quite a few years to get there. And then I added words along the lines of, "And I'm sure they'll find a way to completely muck it up."

House Republicans plotting ways to throw Dr. Fauci in prison.

Most of Trump's wack job nominees have long histories of seeking media attention, and you can bet videos of their more provocative statements will be featured at their confirmation hearings.

Decided not to deal with #Mastodon/BS bridging. Since BS still limits posts to 300 chars and won't even accept edits, it's useless.

Elon Musk may already be overstaying his welcome in Trump's orbit

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/elon-musk-trump-donald-mar-a-lago-appointment-position-rcna179826

Over time, around 15 or so Roman Emperors learned that upsetting the Praetorian Guard and the Legions was problematic in major ways.

The Trump-announced Musky DOGE "Department of Government Efficiency" (Musk and Ramaswamy) is ... wait for it ... NOT a government agency at all

Trump claims this is like the Manhattan Project. In reality, it's two guys advising the OMB. Whole point was apparently to get Musk's DOGE acronym in there. More of the usual fakery from Trump and his gang of miscreants. -L

Occasionally I stumble across an old film or television series that I really should know about, but that somehow slipped by me completely. Or perhaps these are micro-timeline slips.

In any case, today I slipped into the 1976 British sci-fi series "Star Maidens", that apparently never made it to the U.S. in any timeline I'm familiar with. Or if it did, I was in stasis during its entire run.

Sharing some production and other elements from "Space: 1999", it involves a planet that breaks loose from Alpha Centauri and ends up in our solar system. It's inhabited by a matriarchal society where men are something between second class citizens and slaves. Probably closer to the latter.

It only had 13 episodes, and it has a very mid-70s opening theme! Production budget looks low even for ITV, though it apparently had some funding from German broadcasting concerns and a German-dubbed version was aired on ZDF.

Is it worth watching? Probably not. But that never stops me.

BTW, there is theoretically a way for Trump to be president a third time (this requires him actually still being alive at that point, of course -- somewhat problematic given his current age and health). To do it, someone else would have to run as president and win with him being the VP choice. Then if that candidate for president wins, they could resign, and the VP would become president without actually having been elected president, which is the key word -- elected.

@murph These will be live and probably not recorded (at least by me), so RSS wouldn't work. Nor am I interested in hassling with multiple platforms. Been there, done that.

The social media billionaires are rushing to congratulate Trump. Bezos and Zuck ready to suckle from fascism.

We're now well into "Fall of the Roman Empire" territory not just in the U.S. but around the world. As was famously written, "The fall of the Roman Empire was not an event, it was a process."

And the lesson history teaches in this regard is that once the stable patterns are thrown out of equilibrium, the only predictable aspects are escalating sequences of action/reaction chaotic events.

There are many shoes left to drop in multiple directions, in ways impossible for anybody to foresee, except that they are likely to be increasingly disruptive in ways that impact all sides. Such events that are very unlikely in stable societies are far more likely in unstable ones such as where we find ourselves now.

In other words: "You ain't seen nuthin' yet."