Mastodawn

Trump signed an executive order today about mail in voting. It's an attempt to restrict postal delivery of mail in ballots to people on a DHS-compiled list of citizens.

Rick Hasen has a nice summary (tl;dr: not much to get worked up over here, for both legal and practical reasons):

https://electionlawblog.org/?p=155187

Breaking: President Trump Signs New Executive Order on Elections: It is Underwhelming Compared to What Was Threatened. It's Key Part is Likely Unconstitutional: Directing the Post Office to Reject Mail Ballots Except from Those on Federally Approved Voter Lists #ELB

President Trump has signed a second executive order purporting to regulate federal elections (especially mail ballots). His first executive order from last August has already been enjoined in key parts for violating the Constitution. As Judge Kollar-Kotelly wrote in one … Continue reading Breaking: President Trump Signs New Executive Order on Elections: It is Underwhelming Compared to What Was Threatened. It’s Key Part is Likely Unconstitutional: Directing the Post Office to Reject Mail Ballots Except from Those on Federally Approved Voter Lists →

Election Law Blog

Dave Mason 26m ago

Electronic Frontier Foundation 1h ago

“The answer isn’t to try to take a dictator and make them a better dictator, right? We’ve got these social media dictators,” EFF’s Cindy Cohn said on The Daily Show. “The answer is to get rid of the dictators and make them less important.” https://www.thewrap.com/culture-lifestyle/culture/daily-show-cindy-cohn-ai-social-media-x-meta-video/

Cindy Cohn Warns Jon Stewart That Americans Have to Make X and Meta 'Less Important' | Video

Cindy Cohn touched on the toxicity of the social media space in a wide-ranging interview with "The Daily Show" host Jon Stewart Monday night.

TheWrap

Dave Mason 5h ago

RE: https://mastodon.social/@DaveMasonDotMe/116330881730354518

When I'm on a mobile device, I generally do *not* want to use 'apps', mostly due to surveillance capitalism. Gimme the same or similar functionality in a web browser instead. (Yeah, yeah, yeah...there's some exceptions to this 'rule', such as Signal or a Maps app, etc.)

When I'm on a laptop/desktop, I prefer apps. When you've got a full sized keyboard and mouse, web apps suck compared to native apps.

If that's a contradictory stance, so be it.

Dave Mason 5h ago

Being forced to use anything in the Big Tech stack for work is bad enough.

Having to use a web client for calendar/email is doubly bad. I just wanna use Thunderbird. 😭

Dave Mason 11h ago

Khalid ⚡11h ago

Is there a tool in #dotnet that can determine if an object being accessed is a Singleton within a given code block? I'm guessing no, but maybe there's some static analysis tools that look for code patterns of "oh this is definitely a singleton 90% of the time”.

Dave Mason 21h ago

Bruno J. Navarro 1d ago

Once each semester, Grit Matthias Phelps, a German language instructor at Cornell University, introduces her students to the raw feeling of typing without online assistance. No screens, online dictionaries, spellcheckers or delete keys. https://apnews.com/article/typewriter-ai-cheating-chatgpt-cornell-ce10e1ca0f10c96f79b7d988bb56448b

College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work

Once a semester, a Cornell University instructor requires her students to complete an in-class assignment using typewriters — an exercise to help them understand what writing, thinking and classrooms were like before everything turned digital. The exercise started in 2023, as Grit Mathias Phelps grew frustrated that her German language students were using generative AI and online translation platforms to churn out grammatically perfect assignments. The revival is part of a national trend toward old-school testing methods like in-class pen-and-paper exams and oral tests to prevent AI use for assignments on laptops.

AP News

Dave Mason 1d ago

Three things:

1️⃣ Teenagers are loud.

2️⃣ I'm old.

3️⃣ Get off my lawn. 🙃

Dave Mason 1d ago

evacide 1d ago

EFF's Cindy Cohn sat down to talk to Jon Stewart on the Daily Show about 30 years of fighting for digital privacy. I think that's pretty cool. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkC1aK7jfLo

Cindy Cohn - Fighting for Digital Human Rights in “Privacy’s Defender” | The Daily Show

YouTube

Dave Mason 1d ago

Peter 2d ago

this is sharp as hell. https://karlbode.com/ceo-said-a-thing-journalism/

"CEO Said A Thing!" Journalism

"CEO said a thing!" journalism involves parroting the claims of a business leader or executive with absolutely no context, correction, or challenge whatsoever, no matter how elaborate the delusion.

The Fine Print*

Dave Mason 2d ago

Re-gripe: renewing the certificate on my website is annoying.

(But at least it's done for another year.)

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