danielmewes

20 Followers
31 Following
30 Posts

@dmewes.com on BlueSky

Computer scientist. Interested in technology, artificial and natural intelligence, emergent complexity, among other things.

Websitehttp://dmewes.com

"There’s cause for alarm with TikTok — but is it enough to justify building America’s own Great Firewall?"

https://www.theverge.com/23653141/tiktok-ban-bytedance-congress-hearing-first-amendment-open-internet

The TikTok ban is a betrayal of the open internet

Congress seems closer than ever to banning ByteDance-owned social media app TikTok over its ties to China, mirroring the Chinese Great Firewall in the process.

The Verge

Holy moly!! Lightning caught mid-strike as it hits a tree. ⚡ 🌳 😲

I hope the photographer was using an extremely long-range telephoto lens, as lightning will travel along root systems, which can extend some distance away depending upon the type of tree.

Vertical photograph; click to see the full strike and whole tree (or what's left of it).

Photographer — Debbie Parker of West Virginia.

#Photography #Tree #LightningStrike #AmazingNature

U.S. border officials copy the contents of up to 10,000 phones and computers every year and save them to a big database for 15 years, as we first reported in September: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/09/15/government-surveillance-database-dhs/

Following pressure from Sen. Wyden, the agency, CBP, now says it's considering shrinking that 15-year save time and plans to give people more details about what they're doing: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/01/31/abraham-accords-expand-with-cybersecurity-collaboration/

Customs officials have copied Americans’ phone data at massive scale

U.S. government officials are adding data from as many as 10,000 electronic devices each year to a massive database they’ve compiled from travelers' devices.

The Washington Post
Dream product: AWS, but fast. Where provisioning an instance or task takes 1 second instead of 1 minute. Deploy a service in 10 seconds instead of 5 minutes...
Research seems to indicate that pay transparency laws do reduce pay inequality - but by lowering the high end of salaries. https://www.economist.com/united-states/2023/01/05/pay-transparency-laws-do-not-work-as-advertised
Pay-transparency laws do not work as advertised

Which is a pity, as California and Washington have just adopted them

The Economist

RT @BostonJoan
I can’t believe we gotta go over this again, but here we go…

This article, featuring excellent commentary by @wphillips49, illustrates how the trolls capitalize on outrage to create a media attention.

Don’t take the bait.

(P.s. miss you Whitney!!)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/03/ok-sign-gesture-emoji-rightwing-alt-right

How the alt-right co-opted the OK hand sign to fool the media

The media has been manipulated by extremists but focusing on the victims offers journalists a way to redress the balance

The Guardian
Finally a clear, consistent illustration of the relationship between God, father, son and the holy spirit. (found on Wikipedia)

Writing more about #LastPassBreach feels like beating a dead horse. But I had a look at the official statement again and it is highly misleading. I felt the need to provide some context that #LastPass is willingly omitting.

“Again, it seems that LastPass attempts to minimize the risk of litigation (hence alerting businesses) while also trying to prevent a public outcry (so not notifying the general public). Priorities…”

https://palant.info/2022/12/26/whats-in-a-pr-statement-lastpass-breach-explained/

What’s in a PR statement: LastPass breach explained

The LastPass statement on their latest breach is full of omissions, half-truths and outright lies. I’m providing the necessary context for some of their claims.

Almost Secure
What beautiful footage. Microscopic life forms in single drops of water: https://youtu.be/JTLNXdG-sG4
When The World Becomes Small

YouTube

Some exciting progress from #commaai - autonomous drive, including some (very short) city street driving: https://blog.comma.ai/taco-bell/

Not close to Tesla's, Cruise's or Waymo's level yet, but awesome to see what end-to-end learning from a small team can get you in autonomous driving.

A drive to Taco Bell

Delivering on our first Twitter promise!

comma.ai blog