Dave "Wear A Goddamn Mask" Cochran 

@dave_cochran@infosec.exchange
614 Followers
737 Following
1.2K Posts

We do not have much in common, you and I - still, this encounter feels special. I hope you will not mind if I consider you a friend.

he/him

enthusiastically anti-nazi

RTs are *absolutely* endorsements unless I'm arguing with whoever got RT'd in the replies - and sometimes even then.

old mastodon profilehttps://mastodon.social/@dave_cochran
404 Media - ICE agents have gained access to a massive database of health and car insurance claims and are using it to track down people they want to deport. https://www.404media.co/ice-is-searching-a-massive-insurance-and-medical-bill-database-to-find-deportation-targets/
ICE Is Searching a Massive Insurance and Medical Bill Database to Find Deportation Targets

The database, called ISO ClaimSearch, is nearly all encompassing and contains details on more than 1.8 billion insurance claims and 58 million medical bills.

404 Media

If you’re a UK resident and/or a UK citizen, please make sure you sign this petition. It’s at almost 80k signatures and it’s got 3 weeks left to get to 100k.

‘Legally enshrine the right of adults to physically transition using NHS services’

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/704793

#trans #TransRightAreHumanRights

Petition: Legally enshrine the right of adults to physically transition using NHS services

Introduce a law to legally protect the right of those aged 18 and over to transition using NHS services. This should specifically cover physical transition, including hormone treatment and surgery, as otherwise I believe it could potentially be interpreted as including conversion therapy.

Petitions - UK Government and Parliament

No, computers won’t replace humans to write code for themselves.

Please stop with this nonsense.

What we will see though is tremendous losses in productivity as deskilled programmers will get less and less education and practice—and take longer and longer to make broken AI-generated code work. Meanwhile, AI models will regress from eating their own generated shit when being trained on.

Eventually AI companies will finally run out of investors to scam—and when they disappear or get so expensive they become unaffordable, “prompt engineers” will be asked to not use AI anymore.

What’s gonna happen then?

We’re losing a whole generation of programmers to this while thought leaders in our field are talking about “inevitability” and are jerking off to sci-fi-nostalgia-fueled fantasies of AGI.

Side note: thanks to mastodon for existing because it gives me the confidence to post this without hashtags, because I have absolute faith that a tree signage expert is a thing and i can contact them at a moments notice

Any tree signage experts out there help me understand the meaning of this tree signage - it popped up on a tree i run past a couple of weeks ago. Is it meant to say, “do not cut?”

Confused

Starting today, Gemini AI will access your WhatsApp and more. Learn how to disable it on Android. | Tuta

Gemini AI needs to be disabled on Android or it will override your privacy settings and gain full access to your texts, calls, and WhatsApp - even if you’ve turned off Gemini Apps Activity. But what does this Android update really mean, and how can you stop it? Let’s take a deep dive!

Tuta
“The mosquitoes look like elephants. The food has worms. No toothbrushes. We can’t wash. They took my Bible.”
happy birthday to sent!
Trump regime ICE forces brutally attacked a man who screamed for help at a Walmart in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Walmart staff removed the witness filming, the employees were collaborating with ICE in covering up the incident. #3E #StopICE
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7. More cop apologia (including finally elucidating one or two small good things this spy cop is supposed to have done), but then some more clever bits. She appeals to Britishness, with "American police are bad, not like our good British bobbies", then goes straight onto a bogeyman: culture wars. Culture wars are Bad. She knows this. That's why she used those specific words.
See point 2 here - "concern trolling" is another one of those phrases where they don't really know what it means, they just like to use it. And it's expected to use it.
See point 5. The death threats excuse. No evidence it hasn't. This time, with bonus irresponsibility. While she's careful not to say James made death threats, she's very content to literally include a named individual who made mild criticism of the brand right next to a statement about "death threats". This is, I think, deliberate, to punish the guy for daring to make mild criticism and talk to the media (her turf!). And also wildly, wildly irresponsible.
8. Obviously this is just entirely risible, but it's important to frame your critics as not just evil trolls, but also bigots. This is an absolute classic in the playbook. Misogyny, antisemitism, racism... these are usually the ones in play. Anti-policemanism is, well, it's new and fair play to Liz for inventing a new bigotry.

To us, Upton's interview is basically incoherent gibberish, but we, the Mob, are not the intended audience. She's appealing to a different class entirely: the polite face of the right-wing culture war. She's pitching to British journalists, saying their talking points to them, meeting them on their patch. This is deliberate, because it is basically what PR people are trained to do!

And ultimately, I suspect she's succeeded at that.

I think, in giving this interview, Upton will be adopted and embraced by the worst of the British Polite Sensibles. I give it a year before she starts on weird conspiracy theories about Jeremy Corbyn and gets a bit TERFy.
@stavvers Rishi Sunak puts Upton in charge of a struggling state comprehensive to turn it into a stem focused free school. Channel 4 to produce fly on the wall series cataloging the ups and downs of its first year.
@yaldi and also, an inevitable BBCQT panellist gig.
@stavvers The ‘hurt feelings to full right wing package’ pipeline is remarkably short and all you need to join it is an overactive sense of entitlement.
@christineburns Has anyone done any scholarship on it yet, because it is definitely A Thing which has been seen over and over
@stavvers @christineburns In all seriousness, I think some sociologists need to get on that, if they haven’t already.
@XanIndigo @christineburns I completely agree, it's a definite radicalisation pathway
@stavvers @christineburns Tempted to look into this deeper myself, honestly. I’m no sociologist, but a good essay can be a valuable thing.

@stavvers @christineburns
There's this piece - which looks at the deeper shift in social norms.

I suspect social media has supercharged parts of this process (e.g. creating the moral panic).

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09579265221095407

@stavvers @christineburns half of it's done by the two-inch pipeline between complacent white suburbia and full on active supremacist, and how fascism is already encoded in the colonial culture. Etc etc. But this specific example of the pipeline could do with being written up in small words.
@stavvers @christineburns Phipps kinda touches on that looking at white feminism in Me Not You, I think - espec the final chapters
@stavvers @PeeBeeJayBee I think we’re seeing a very interesting fork of this phenomenon right now among people who became ‘someone’ on Twitter — influencers whose platform relies crucially on their following. They don’t even have to be talked back to ATM to be having an existential crisis in full view at the thought of losing their following in the great exodus. It plays out in denial but also anger and a hunt for people or things to blame. Will they reach acceptance?
@christineburns @PeeBeeJayBee I think it's probably exacerbated to some extent by the ones who have already gone through the pipeline being pre-emptively banned from the platform. So there's fear of losing the audience, plus a paranoia that the Mob are talking about them somewhere else
@PeeBeeJayBee @stavvers I think you’re right there. Imagine the feeling that (a) your reputation preceded you into the lifeboat, (b) your old tricks for attention and clout don’t work (the magical powers have gone — you’re effectively a nobody) and (c) if you try to set up shop in an instance with attention-hungry mates then you can all be cut off by the nice world and left to yell at each other. It’s like Hell’s customised torments in ‘Old Harry’s Game’
@PeeBeeJayBee @stavvers @christineburns I loved the show Old Harry's Game! Andy Hamilton is hilarious!
@christineburns @stavvers @PeeBeeJayBee People who *need* to go viral don’t like this place.
@christineburns @stavvers @PeeBeeJayBee
👆
I've >20k followers on #TheBird. I've <500 on Mastodon. I hope to find lots of the 20k on here, but I've got to get out of #ElonWorld pretty soon; I can't be tacitly supporting what #Twatter has become/is becoming.
@fencoul @christineburns @stavvers @PeeBeeJayBee I feel exactly the same. The people I follow are a much broader community than on Twitter. Much more interesting and far less tribal /partisan. Much more comfortable and relaxing. 😊
@fencoul @christineburns @stavvers @PeeBeeJayBee
The people who follow you here are real people; 'nuff said.
The >20k are what? Mostly inactive accounts if I were to believe what seems to be the case for numerous ex-twitters.
Anyways, it's quality over quantity. Cheers.

@stavvers @christineburns If anyone has suggested reading, I am seriously interested in the topic of white fragility and what causes so many people to suffer from it. There was a popular book about it in the US, but the author was a white woman and got some significant criticism from the Black community, so I’m wondering if there are better choices.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Fragility#Reception

White Fragility - Wikipedia

@mathew

I think about the arguments in Corey Robin's Reactionary Mind frequently.

"Historically, the conservative has favored liberty for the higher orders and constraint for the lower orders. What the conservative sees and dislikes in equality, in other words, is not a threat to freedom but its extension. For in that extension he sees a loss of his own freedom." ...

"Behind the riot in the street or debate in Parliament is the maid talking back to her mistress, the worker disobeying her boss."

https://www.powells.com/book/reactionary-mind-conservatism-from-edmund-burke-to-donald-trump-9780190692001

The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump: Corey Robin: Trade Paperback: 9780190692001: Powell's Books

@christineburns @stavvers I feel like you're starting already having crossed home plate if you've hired the surveilence specialist cop *before* your feelings are are hurt.
@Kichae @christineburns I'm gonna be charitable, some people really are that oblivious as to why most people hate the police

@stavvers @christineburns It's not obvious to me why people like American football, or NASCAR, but it's clear that a lot of people do like it, that many of those people have strong feelings about it, and that I'd probably get a reaction by walking into a sports bar in Alabama and proclaiming my disdain for them.

Also, if I had a lengthy statement to make to the press the very next day, someone might, rightfully, believe that I did it knowingly so that I'd have a reason to be in the press.

@stavvers “I view with alarm ... ”
@stavvers I miss the RemindMeOfThis bot on Twitter for cases just like this.
@thette yeah, thinking of setting a reminder in my calendar to check lol

@stavvers great analysis. It’s very interesting to watch these early sparks as the Fediverse gains mainstream cultural relevance for the first time.

Personally I’m baffled by Rpi’s handling of this situation. I have no objection to the hire at all. Heck, I like that they want to stand by their employee! But their media strategy around has been astoundingly counter-productive.

And yes, as someone in the market for an SBC already frustrated by the supply chain, it’s off-putting.

@stavvers you and aaron sorkin must never, ever be on the same plane - like the coke execs with the recipe.

(this is a reference to this scene from "the newsroom" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOlPsUbAHJo - in which basically the exact same sort of breakdown occurs)

The Newsroom - Casey Anthony

YouTube
@stavvers On the other hand, Upton and @raspberrypi.social (both the commercial arm and the foundation) by showing us their intended audience, we can now assume “we”, the people who’ve been buying their boards for a decade and supporting their open source and community and recommending them to others and helping others use their products, at least partly out of altruistism towards their mission, we are not longer the people they care about. So let’s stop doing that.
@stavvers “are you equating being Chinese with being a spy cop?” No no, absolutely not but now you mention it…
@stavvers well, maybe not *that* new; isn't this just a new way of saying "blue lives matter"? Absolutely risible of course.

@stavvers

When I first read the interview I made this. Still makes me laugh, although I can't escape the feeling it's probably faintly inappropriate somehow.

@stavvers ‘he identifies as a policeman’ has blown my mind and I can’t stop thinking about how the right co-opt the language of the oppressed and use it against them
@iain it is the most astounding sentence I have seen in a while, I can't get over it

@stavvers So she confirms the cop is a cop is a cop who does cop things and will continue doing cop things like everyone is concerned about.

Definitely upped the suspicion factor of all this considering where RPis are used.

@stavvers ACAB means Assigned Cop At Birth
@stavvers “...should not have been blocked” stands out for me .

@stavvers a "surveillance officer getting drugs out of schools"

does that, uh, mean what i think it means

@stavvers

It will be interesting to see if the group of people she‘s addressing with this is a relevant group to do business with for #raspberryPi

Or if burning the last bit of good will in this specific over here segment of makers and tinkerers will influence their over all business perspective on the long run.

@stavvers see, my take is if he's been a cop for thirty years he's DEFINITELY done some dodgy shit. Probably had tea with Savile.