Notices by Joe (not2b@sfba.social)

@dangillmor People don't have an instinctual understanding for large numbers, and often they are easier to understand if we divide by the population. So a billion dollars is about $3 per American, a trillion is $3,000 per American, 6 trillion is $18,000 per American. That is a huge number. What time period are they talking about? Something in that range is believable if the price of everything suddenly jumps.

@heidilifeldman And those who want to cave need to be removed from leadership positions. Schumer must go. He can remain as a senator, of course, but since he has demonstrated that he isn't up to the job of defending democracy, he has to be forced out.

@GottaLaff Worse, several Democrats voted to censure him, and others condemned him but did not vote to censure.

@petergleick If I recall correctly, the AccuWeather guy was pushing in the last Trump administration for some kind of privatization of NWS, effectively selling its resources off so that you'd have to pay AccuWeather or whoever winds up owning it for weather forecasts, and the government would no longer provide free information to the public, because that's socialist or something. So, kind of like the looting of government resources that happened in Russia under Putin, with first crack going to Trump and Musk's allies (or maybe SpaceX will wind up with NWS's resources). The $250M Musk paid to get Trump elected was an investment and he wants a good return on it.

@dalias While the details are new, the pattern isn't. I used to review papers for conferences and we would regularly get people applying the general method in vogue for people who don't know much about a subject area to solve a problem. At one time it was genetic algorithms. Simulated annealing was hot before that. Then it was machine learning, and now we ask an LLM to spit out an answer. Anything other than learning a subject deeply and developing methods based on actual insight. I wasn't popular for point out things like this.

@amszmidt @lauren That pauses, does not exit.

@lauren Emacs is control x control c. Editors don't want to make it easy to leave.

@dangillmor @pluralistic Yes, you see too many anti-230 posts on Mastodon, from people who don't understand that without 230, Mastodon instances will all have to close down or be legally eradicated, with admins liable for every post that might appear.

@lauren If someone already has the app, does the law require that ISPs and wireless carriers block the traffic? Not if I understand correctly. Seems users can keep using it but won't get updates. So perhaps a VPN would only be needed to get an updated version?

@glynmoody Wow, that's bizarre. Disagreeing with it is one thing, but refusing to let it go in the face of the threat to democracy we now face is kind of shocking.

@jwz If I understand this correctly, the astronomers get the full original data, but with a three day delay, while the spooks get it with no delay. Is that right? And the telescope images the entire sky every three nights. And astronomers still get immediate alerts but only if there isn't something that the spooks want to chop out near that position. I guess the astronomers will have to hope that we don't get something like a gamma ray burst too close to a satellite, which would inspire them to all look closer at that spot.

@tevo @mcc I used Teco back in the 70s on a PDP-10 (yes, I am old). You had to type a lot of dollar signs.

@molly0xfff Maybe they want it to blow up, so they can turn around and blame the Democrats and the Deep State for somehow hacking them? The political press would go along, because they don't know anything and like drama. If they structure it so that their own money isn't exposed, that might be the idea.

@heidilifeldman I had decided to donate again when you hit $400k, so I just did.

@heidilifeldman @BruceMirken Need to make the point that Musk is all in for Trump and Democrats are crazy to make X the center of their campaign. They should be breaking news on other platforms, maybe follow up with a post to X a day later, and only the fediverse will give them a platform that isn't controlled by an opponent (Zuckerberg should also be seen as an opponent, likewise the bros running BlueSky, though Musk is the worst).

@cdarwin If Biden does decide to drop, the only safe approach would be that it's before the convention, it's in favor of Harris and the party quickly unites behind her. A nasty fight at the convention will guarantee a Trump win. Picking someone else means that the money the Biden-Harris campaign raised can't go to the new person.

@profoundlynerdy @BeAware If it is a new account, the profile picture is of an attractive woman, and "she" DMs you out of the blue, it is almost certainly fake. Same if you block DMs from non-followers, follow someone and get an instant DM. All the other social media platforms have those people. They usually have many simultaneous targets. There was a John Oliver segment on how bad the cons can get. Some of them will try to build up a relationship with you before springing the trap. And yes, they are here on Mastodon now.

@mcc Trump will still be allowed to vote in Florida, because he was convicted in New York, so New York rules about losing voting rights apply. In New York, he can still vote unless he's actually in prison.

@HauntedOwlbear Windows 11 will not have Recall unless the machine has an expensive NPU. The machine has to meet the requirements of a so called Copilot+ machine, and even high end Intel and AMD machines don't. I can't think of why people would shell out the money for this feature.

@Bythus @Mastodon Many European NGOs have an associated US nonprofit. For example I give to MSF/Doctors Without Borders that way. It is a way for US citizens to contribute money, but does not give US authorities any operating control.