Nick

@nyates314@mstdn.social
409 Followers
743 Following
1,011 Posts
I'm a math/engineering/compsci teacher; a partisan of peace and pi; using he/him pronouns. I have two mastodon accounts: this one will be focused more on local #baltimore #maryland issues, politics, making the world a better place, etc. My alt account, linked below (same username at mathstodon.xyz) will be more focused on math, engineering, computing, and teaching those subjects.
Alt@nyates314
ActivityPub is the network with the highest percentage of Firefox users, and also the highest percentage of people mad at Mozilla all the time
ActivityPub is just social networks but for gays
Book 31: The Plot, by Jean Hanff Korelitz
Book 30: The Answer Is No, a short story by Fredrik Backman

Forgive me, but if your "industry" depends entirely on stealing someone else's work, it deserves to die.

"Nick Clegg says asking artists for use permission would “basically kill the AI industry in this country overnight.”

https://www.theverge.com/news/674366/nick-clegg-uk-ai-artists-policy-letter

Nick Clegg says asking artists for use permission would ‘kill’ the AI industry

Meta’s former head of global affairs Nick Clegg said asking for permission from rights owners to train models would is “implausible.”

The Verge

"Kick 'Em In the Dongle" is the fourth and final episode of "Understood: Who Broke the Internet?", a podcast series I hosted and co-wrote for the CBC. It's quite a finale!

https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/1353-the-naked-emperor/episode/16148346-kick-em-in-the-dongle

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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/26/babyish-radical-extremists/#cancon

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#OtD 26 May 1824 the first recorded factory strike in US history took place when 102 women and girls working at the Slater Mill in Pawtucket RI picketed their factory against a 25% pay cut. After a week they won concessions. Learn more in our podcast: https://workingclasshistory.com/2019/08/12/e28-the-pawtucket-mill-strike/
E32: The Pawtucket mill strike

In this podcast episode, historian Joey DeFrancesco tells the story of the first factory strike in US history when in 1824, young women and girls working in the mills in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, or…

Working Class History

First, they'll ask for your official IDs to confirm your age and identity.

This will create a large treasure trove
of sensitive data, which will attract criminals, and will inevitably leak from either negligence or malice, sooner than later.

Then, they'll claim your official ID is
unreliable, because it was stolen so many times, and demand you share your biometric data.

They will collect your face scan,
your palm scan, and even your iris scan (no exaggeration, these are all already being collected by some companies for identification). They will claim it's super safe.

This will create a large treasure trove
of sensitive biometric data, which will attract criminals, and will inevitably leak from either negligence or malice, sooner than later.

Then what? Rinse and escalate.

You will have lost control of not just your corporate social media accounts by participating to this, but to any data capable of validating your identity, to your privacy rights, to the protections you could use online to stay safe.

We don't have to wait that it escalates.

We can, and must, push back and say No now. Start to say No now.

#Privacy #Biometrics #DataMinimization #AgeVerification

Today in 1844, 181 years ago: from the Capitol in the city of Washington (United States), the inventor Samuel Morse sends the first telegraphic message to the city of Baltimore.

#OnThisDay

Announcing: https://justaqrcode.com.

Tired of "free" QR code generators that are full of ads and trackers, that share your data, and that want to sell you something? Me too. Here's my act of resistance: I made a one-page site that works entirely in your browser to generate a simple QR code. And that's all it does. You can download the HTML page and run it locally, even. Read the source; nothing up my sleeves. Just a QR code.

My offer to you -- I will continue to pay for the domain name and web hosting for it, myself. If you find it valuable, you can pay it back by creating your own useful thing for the world and releasing it for free. Let's take back the friendly web, one vexingly-monetized utility at a time!

#QRcode #Free #FriendlyWeb #Resistance

Just a QR Code