Inky says "What the hell?!"

@InkySchwartz
183 Followers
258 Following
700 Posts

Geo prof because...because. Eternally curious.

But also:
I read like there is no tomorrow, mainly history, SF/Fant, natural history, but also many other things.

I garden for fun and food though I do a fair share of guerrila rewilding.

I do some small amount of sketching, though mainly I do photography mainly (with my ancient 2005 Canon XTi).

geography #bicycles #running #gardening #photography #inaturalist #hiking #outside #stuff

Automatic post deletion in 6 months.

Header image credit:The Barents Observer
inaturalisthttps://www.inaturalist.org/people/dschwartz01

O Sarilho is my pride and joy, the thing I make out of my little heart. And it's for free, for all of you to read!

O Sarilho will always be free but if you are feeling generous, you can donate to my ko-fi and help me make it :3

https://sarilho.net/?utm_source=kad
https://ko-fi.com/shizamura

#sarilho #webcomic

RE: https://mastodon.social/@arstechnica/116397070356098122

In an ideal world courses would have pass/fail grades if they have grades at all. Grades get in the way of learning. (Students turn to LLMs to save their grades.)

So, I think part of this tension goes back to what we grade and why.

I'm lucky that in math I only ever assign grades for in-class tests.

In my CS classes I lean a lot on sharing student work. Fortunately my students like to show off for each other. They are excited to see what I and their peers think of their projects.

I do not like the new surreal fascism. It's not cute. It's not ironic. I thought part of the whole appeal of authoritarianism was the consistency, the lack of complexity, the comfort of a world brutally sorted into little metal boxes.

But, you're not going to get any of that with these guys.

I guess the fear is still there. "The Pope is Weak on Crime" no one knows what this means, but also everyone gets it.

A startup is putting military-style drones in high school ceilings. Ceiling-mounted. Charging. Waiting. And when something happens, a pilot in Austin, Texas, decides whether to deploy pepper gel on your kid's school. I'm not saying the problem isn't real. It absolutely is. But read that back.... in schools. We've taken a Ukrainian battlefield tactic against Russian soldiers and ported it to Deltona High School in Florida. The co-founder literally said the idea came from watching drone videos of the war in Ukraine. The chief pilot described it as "cheating in a video game after you die." These are children.

Here's what's not in the headline:

🔒 The drones use an encrypted connection — but the article notes they're potentially vulnerable to cyberattack. A compromised drone in a crowded hallway isn't a security tool; it's a weapon pointed in the wrong direction.

⚖️ Mithril reserves the right to act independently during an attack, without waiting for law enforcement. A private company operating remotely is making use-of-force decisions at a school.

💰 Florida and Georgia approved $500K+ each for this. A group of Texas parents raised $200K more. That's real money going to ceiling drones instead of mental health services, counselors, or de-escalation programs.

The ACLU said it plainly: when force becomes a zero-risk remote action, it gets overused. Axon tried a Taser drone for schools in 2022, and its own ethics board killed it. Mithril is picking up where that got dropped.

I teach cybersecurity. I've spent years in boardrooms helping organizations think through risk. And the risk calculus here isn't just about whether the drone works. It's about what we're normalizing when we turn schools into drone-monitored combat zones and call it progress.

"This is the future," said the sheriff's captain.

I hope not.

https://www.wsj.com/business/a-startup-is-supplying-drones-to-high-schools-to-stop-mass-shootings-a7800ade

#SchoolSafety #Cybersecurity #Leadership #security #privacy #cloud #infosec

So how warm has it been recently across the contiguous United States for different monthly periods (1 month through the last 60 months)? Oh dear... 😬

Data from @noaa.gov: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/climate-at-a-glance/national/rankings

When the waiver closes, every foreign router in the US becomes state-mandated abandonware.

New piece on The Sovereign Auditor.

https://sovereignauditor.substack.com/p/fossilised

#infosec #sovereignty #FCC #infrastructure #USA (2/2)

Fossilised

The FCC said foreign routers were a national security threat. Then it made sure you couldn’t replace them.

The Sovereign Auditor
The FCC cited botnet attacks on aging, unpatched routers as justification for banning foreign-produced consumer hardware.
The policy response: make it harder to replace aging, unpatched routers.
The waiver that lets manufacturers keep patching existing devices runs until March 2027. It is permissive, not mandatory. A company formally expelled from the US market has diminishing incentive to patch hardware its customers cannot upgrade. (1/2)
Shock from Iran war has Trump's vision for US energy dominance flailing
Record domestic oil and gas production hasn't saved US drivers from price spikes.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/04/shock-from-iran-war-has-trumps-vision-for-us-energy-dominance-flailing/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

A lot has been discussed about e-bike lithium ion battery safety due to potential fires.

Q6. Have you personally had a related issue with an e-bike battery, or do you know anyone who has?

#BikeNiteQ #BikeNite #BikeTooter #Cycling #MastoBikes cc @bikenite