Notices by Frederic Jacobs (fj@mastodon.social)

Authoritarian Intelligence™️

"Trump administration officials have told some U.S. government employees that Elon Musk's DOGE team of technologists is using artificial intelligence to surveil at least one federal agency’s communications for hostility to President Donald Trump and his agenda"

https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/musks-doge-using-ai-snoop-us-federal-workers-sources-say-2025-04-08/

Macron Urges EU Companies to Pause US Investments

It makes little sense for firms to invest there while the US hits out against Europe, Macron added, speaking ahead of a meeting with representatives of industry groups affected by tariffs.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-03/france-s-macron-urges-companies-to-pause-us-investments

🇪🇺🚀 Isar's Spectrum Launch Vehicle is qualified for the test flight.

Just waiting for Norway to provide a launch license for the flight from Andøya Spaceport

https://www.isaraerospace.com/press/isar-aerospace-successfully-completes-stage-1-2-static-fire-tests-final-preparations-for-test-flight-begin

I've had the chance to visit the Ottobrun assembly hall of the Spectrum rocket in 2022.

It had a vibrant atmosphere, and the teams were iterating at high speed over various designs through the use of additive manufacturing including for the combustion chamber of their liquid oxygen and propane engine.

Such a huge moment that the teams have been working towards. Go Team Isar, best of luck for tomorrow's launch attempt! 🚀🇪🇺🫶

#GoingFullSpectrum

Spectrum is up on the 🇳🇴 Andøya Space launchpad, spending a night out under the aurora before its attempted inaugural orbital flight tomorrow 🚀
#GoingFullSpectrum

🇪🇺🚀 Isar cleared to launch Spectrum from Andøya Spaceport between March 20 and 30th.

European Rocket Launch from Continental Europe

https://www.isaraerospace.com/newsroom-first-test-flight

Spectrum completed its fueling at Andøya🇳🇴.
T-0:30 for opening of launch window

T-22min update: Spectrum is GO for launch 🚀 🇪🇺

Live: https://youtube.com/live/IKLQxe2MvpQ

#GoingFullSpectrum

Unite against Bullies

Image simplified for clarity, but the stick is much longer than that and should include all states rising against authoritarians

https://mamot.fr/@Khrys/114131043122914796

It’s working.

Bully is not happy that the bullied are teaming up to reduce his leverage

“President Donald Trump suggested further tariffs would be imposed on the European Union and Canada if they worked together to do economic harm to the US. “

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-27/trump-floats-more-tariffs-on-eu-canada-if-they-work-against-us-m8qy96vv

When Signal was designed, our threat model was protecting the communications of civil society, journalists, just regular citizens ...

The threat model of military operations & sharing your hate of Europeans was not what Signal was designed for. Ephemeral messages and cryptographic deniability are not fit for communications that require accountability.
But I appreciate their effort to make government more efficient by adding journalists to the chat instead of requiring to go through FOIA.

🔐✌️ Victory for Privacy and Security in France 🇫🇷

End-to-end encryption will continue to be available in France, as the assembly overwhelmingly voted against (119 votes against, only 24 in favor) an amendment to legislation fighting drug trafficking which required backdoors in encrypted messengers.

https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2025/03/21/l-assemblee-vote-pour-le-maintien-de-la-confidentialite-des-messageries-cryptees-lors-d-une-nuit-agitee_6584121_3224.html

@glynmoody @aral Schrödinger's cat NFT, you just need to try to open it to see it vanish.

You know there's a #Quantum bubble about to pop when quantum computing companies who haven't been coming up with compelling use cases for their machines are now coming up with “Blockchain with Proof of Quantum Work”.
https://www.dwavequantum.com/company/newsroom/press-release/d-wave-introduces-quantum-blockchain-architecture-featuring-enhanced-security-and-efficiency-over-classical-computing/

🎓💪CS Prof Lance Fortnow showing how to fight back

"Don't preemptively change your policies and your values. Too many universities are abandoning DEI, changing their curriculum, freezing hiring of faculty and students, in anticipation of challenges to come. […] participate in Stand Up for Science, reach out to our representatives at the national & state level, and just be part of the resistance. We can't let bullies dictate our future, we must control it for ourselves. ”

https://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2025/03/taking-stand.html

I was overhearing students yesterday on the EPFL campus saying they would no longer be willing to go to the US for internships or further studies.

Can't blame them given the rhetoric and actions that are coming out of the White House.

The folks who claim to be defenders of freedom of speech want to imprison you for peacefully protesting.

Reading recommendation for everyone working in tech right now for no reason whatsoever

IBM and the Holocaust
The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation

https://bookwyrm.social/book/13323/s/ibm-and-the-holocaust
https://mastodon.social/@bitboxer/114024300854186610

America is sabotaging its own scientific research with cutting the NSF budget from $9 billion to only $3 billion, using AI to evaluate grant proposals and shift NSF funding from universities to private companies

https://www.science.org/content/article/my-boss-was-crying-nsf-confronts-potentially-massive-layoffs-and-budget-cuts

As a result, applications for positions as research group leaders from the US at Germany‘s Max Planck have doubled 🚀🔬
https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/amerika/usa-forschung-kuerzungen-100.html

The Trump administration "anti-DEI" efforts are now trying to erase contributions of women and people of colour in cryptology, starting at the National Cryptologic Museum by covering them with paper.

https://bsky.app/profile/larrypfeifferdc.bsky.social/post/3lh637hlitc2w

Congrats Fediverse users for having done your part!

“Our user growth is stagnant, revenue is unimpressive, and we’re barely breaking even,”
Musk in an email to X employees earlier this month

Elon’s takeover of Twitter is still considered “one of the worst that banks agreed to finance since the 2008 financial crisis”. Banks are trying to resell the debt at around 90 to 95 cents on the dollar

https://www.wsj.com/finance/banking/wall-street-banks-prepare-to-sell-billions-of-dollars-of-x-loans-c609beb1

I’m intrigued by the choice in the fediverse to require users to reconstruct their social graph for every service (Mastodon, Pixelfed, Bookwyrm …)

Wouldn’t it make more sense to have some standards to have the social graph only once and then able to delegate functionality to another server if special functionality is required for instance?

Curious what considerations went into this design. @dansup