Notices by John Mark Ockerbloom (jmarkockerbloom@mastodon.social)

@mike @acdha But it he's really defending a "philosophy" and not a "philosopher", then why does his headline, and much of his article, focus on the "philosopher"? Why can't the "philosophy", which as far as I can tell has no defendable reason to be dependent on any particular person, be championed and defended in its own right? (And if it can't, or hasn't, is the philosophy really as sound as claimed?)

@inthehands Though it's worth noting that in Philadelphia the office of sheriff is *not* in charge of law enforcement generally (that's the job of the police commissioner, appointed by the mayor). The sheriff handles things like tax sales, court security, and warrant management.

It's an elected office that hasn't had the best reputation lately (due to recurring corruption). I'm not surprised our current sheriff would be more willing to take a locally popular stand against ICE than our police.

"Last week, the Library sent its staff a newsletter acknowledging the precarious financial situtuation faced by many of its workers - not to offer support, but to encourage workers to forego Christmas presents this year."

Grace Blakely reports on striking workers at the British Library, who are "no longer willing to accept payment in 'prestige'." https://graceblakeley.substack.com/p/you-should-be-honoured-to-work-here

Google stopped letting owners of early Nest themostats remotely control their devices last month. But it's still remotely collecting extensive surveillance data from them: https://www.theverge.com/news/820600/google-nest-learning-thermostat-downgraded-data-collection #privacy

As of now, all 76 replies on Mozilla's AI feature announcement on its own forum are "don't do this" (the majority) or at the very least "don't force users into it": https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/building-ai-the-firefox-way-shaping-what-s-next-together/td-p/109922

The response at Hacker News is more mixed, though it's not clear how many pro-AI folks there use Firefox as their primary browser: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45926779

I'm not sure why Mozilla persists with what its user base doesn't want, but they'll alienate much of it if they make AI hard to avoid.

Info on tomorrow's #NoKings rally in Center City Philadelphia: https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia/no-kings-protest-philadelphia-road-closures-start-time-location-20251017.html Plan your trip there keeping in mind there's also a bike ride closing streets in the morning, and that SEPTA Regional Rail can't handle big weekend crowds even when they have all their railcars online.

There's also a rally in Mount Airy and elsewhere in NW Philly, and others in Philly suburbs.

There are many more across the US. Look here to find one near you: https://www.nokings.org/

The ADL took down its glossary of extremism after Trump-aligned figures objected to its description of Turning Point USA: https://www.mediaite.com/politics/adl-deletes-extremism-database-after-receiving-backlash-for-including-charlie-kirks-turning-point-usa/

The Wayback Machine has a partial copy of the glossary, at least for now. It doesn't look like they crawled everything (and the search doesn't work): https://web.archive.org/web/20250403100909/https://extremismterms.adl.org/search

The ADL's description of TPUSA elsewhere has also changed significantly. Compare
present version: https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/turning-point-usa with a December version: https://web.archive.org/web/20250121192850/https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/turning-point-usa

Update: Delaware, Maryland and Vermont have now also joined the Northeast Public Health Collaborative, announced earlier today. There's already a Wikipedia page for it, which is keeping track of which states are in, with references: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Public_Health_Collaborative (There's also a page for the West Coast Health alliance, a similar organization of the 3 contiguous-US Pacific coast states: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Coast_Health_Alliance )

Today's press release announcing the Northeast Public Health Collaborative. "The group’s shared goal is to protect the health, safety and well-being of all residents by providing information based on science, data, and evidence, while working to ensure equitable access to vaccines, medications and services." https://www.mass.gov/news/several-northeastern-states-and-americas-largest-city-announce-the-northeast-public-health-collaborative.

It includes the states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York State, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island, as well as the NYC health department.

The White House's "Make America Healthy Again" report cites papers that appear not to exist:

"Epidemiologist Katherine Keyes is listed... as the first author of a study on anxiety in adolescents. When NOTUS reached out to her... she was surprised to hear of the citation. She does study mental health and substance use, she said. But she didn’t write the paper listed."

NOTUS couldn't find the paper in the cited journal, and I've verified the claimed DOI doesn't resolve: https://www.notus.org/health-science/make-america-healthy-again-report-citation-errors

While I can't say for sure at this point how the report was written, the fabrication of nonexistent papers (as well as the citation of actual papers for claims they don't support) is a common behavior of "AI" large language model-based text generators. (Such applications can be very good at outputting convincing-sounding text, but cannot be considered reliable or scientifically supportable.)

Nearly 1000 Yale faculty so far have signed a letter to the university's administration urging it to stand firm against "extraordinary attacks that threaten the bedrock principles of a democratic society, including rights of free expression, association, and academic freedom". The last of the 6 actions urged in the letter is to "work purposefully and proactively with other colleges and universities in collective defense". https://sites.google.com/view/yalefacultyletter2025/home #HigherEd #USPol

Our library has access to a book published by Springer, _Advanced Nanovaccines for Cancer Immunotherapy: Harnessing Nanotechnology for Anti-Cancer Immunity_. Credited to Nanasaheb Thorat, it sells for $160 in hardcover: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-86185-7

From page 25: "It is important to note that as an AI language model, I can provide a general perspective, but you should consult with medical professionals for personalized advice..."

None of this book can be considered trustworthy.

(h/t @peterpur )

The first Nazi concentration camp, Dachau, was established on March 22, 1933, just under 2 months after Hitler was named chancellor. It had an initial capacity of 5000 prisoners. Historians estimate that at least 40,000 people died there by the end of World War II: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/dachau.

9 days after inauguration, Trump announced intentions to send as many as 30,000 prisoners to Guantanamo Bay, which has previously never imprisoned more than 1000: https://apnews.com/article/guantanamo-bay-detention-migrants-what-to-know-trump-d027c5c24b523f31a62271dcbe7c010e

One reason we avoided the "connected cars" when we had to replace ours recently: Subaru's Starlink had a huge ineffectively secured backdoor that let anyone with a license plate and last name of a Subaru owner remotely unlock and start the car (and also get various personal information, including everywhere the car had been driven to in the past year). Here's a report from someone who found and reported the vulnerability (which has now been closed): https://samcurry.net/hacking-subaru

@inthehands Not only is email not technically designed for E2E, it's not really socially designed for it. Given that email addresses get shared with various people and organizations, and they're common vectors for spam, phishing, and the like, I'd assume most email users *want* their ISP to be able to scan and filter that stuff out, rather than try to do it themselves. But that means it can't be E2E, and the users have to have a certain level of trust in their ISP.

@photomatt Speking as one person who's been a paying wordpress.com customer for years, I've never had any confusion knowing WP Engine is distinct from Wordpress.com and Wordpress the open source software. I *am* now concerned about the viability and reliability of the platform that your company maintains and that I pay for. However, my concerns are based not on their actions, but on yours.

@publicdomainrev @pdimagearchive Looks very cool! I'm curious about the underlying software you're using for the platform. Is it something you've acquired, or something you've developed?

@pbinkley Thanks for this! This article is in the public domain (in the US at least). Here's a link to a non-paywalled scan: https://archive.org/details/sim_american-library-assoc-ala-bulletin_1936-06_30_6/page/495/mode/1up

@ntnsndr Stallman didn't create Emacs; there were already a number of versions of it when he started the GNU version. The most prominent predecessor was written primarily by James Gosling at CMU. (The Emacs editors grew out of an earlier line-oriented editor called Teco, which a number of people including Stallman had created macro packages for. Vim is the product of a different evolutionary line of editors that grew out of the line editor "ed".) More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs.