#Conservatives are typically loath to sign off on any #government spending patch aimed at averting a #shutdown, slamming those stopgaps as further evidence of a broken Washington [as they cause the breakage] stuck on a woeful fiscal trajectory.
New News: A new lawsuit alleges that people in the US with longstanding ties to Hamas have formed shell groups that are supporting US campus protests.
The lawsuit is filled with explosive allegations and seeks compensatory damages.
DEFENDANTS: The two groups named in the lawsuit -- American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) and National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) -- are being sued by 9 American and Israeli victims. The lawsuit alleges that AMP and NSJP are effectively the same entity -- and, unbeknownst to many US student activists, are acting as a propaganda arm to Hamas.
It was filed by a legit law firm.
They claim to have written, admissible-in-court evidence of one of the groups acknowledging they have to be careful not to be seen supporting terrorism.
Through this lawsuit we could learn more about sources of funding tied to student protests.
ALLEGATIONS: One of things they cite is an NSJP toolkit that they say was disseminated on October 8, one day after the October 7 massacre. They claim the toolkit contained “a manifesto” and “materials that appear to have been created before the [october 7] attack.” They allege the groups “identify themselves as “PART of” a “Unity Intifada,” governed by Hamas’s “unified command” of terrorist operations in Gaza.”
QUESTIONS: Just to be clear, there is no allegation in the lawsuit that student protesters are aware of any alleged direct ties to any known terror organization.
I have many questions: How strong is the evidence of direct ties, is it more than circumstantial? Do these plaintiffs have standing to bring this suit? If these allegations are true, this is a very big idea - so who else knew? Who is financing these groups and are they under investigation beyond what’s already public?
Facebook/Meta starts talking about the "Extend" phase of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish as predicted:
"“You could imagine an extension to the protocol eventually — of saying like, ‘I want to support micropayments,’ or … like, ‘hey, feel free to show me ads, if that supports you.’ Kind of like a way for you to self-label or self-opt-in. That would be great,”
Mastodon becoming a US entity with a neoliberal board of directors and the goal of growth über alles is the issue here folks, not whether Eugen and company are compensated for their work. Of course they should be and well too. Or is that a privilege reserved only for the mediocre yes-people at the Googles and the Facebooks of the world?
If, on the other hand, maybe we’d like more folks to contribute to the commons and maybe not even be captured by Silicon Valley how about this radical idea: Fund them so they can live (at least as well) as any mediocre yes-person at a mainstream tech company.
Kickstarter update!
Thank you to everyone who has supported! We are so close to our first mini target of £1,500- 20% of our overall goal. Please share widely and let people know about the project. Also, if you're able to pledge the kickstarter, it is below
EU leaving Fediverse (Mastodon & PeerTube) because no one wants to operate the servers
“In recent years, a total of 40 institutions have opened an account with EU Voice, including the EU Data Protection Supervisor, the European Court of Justice and the EU Commission. The video platform, on the other hand, was used by six institutions … the EU institutions were thus the largest group of public institutions in the Fediverse worldwide.”
So what do we need, ideally? The equivalent of VC but for tech for the common good.
Pick ten organisations working the common good and give them €5M each. Let them experiment. Let them pivot. Let them cooperate. The only thing you don’t let them do is exit. You can’t sell. Build something for the commons that will live on for the next ten, twenty, fifty years… if not more.
I said as much 5 years ago at the European Parliament:
@helma@EDPS ...seriously, with all the money going around in the EU it can't fund the servers for EDPS ? Besides the fact that this funding would directly contribute to explicit EU goals with regard to digital/digitisation ? How can this happen ? 🤔 #EDPS#EU#fediverse#funding
"The University administration respects all student protests, just not this one. Students have fought for many important causes over the years, and their right to protest is sacrosanct. In this case, however, we must arrest and slander them.
“We will not look back and regret this decision. Although we were wrong about not admitting women, abolitioning racial quotas, US involvement in Vietnam, and divesting from apartheid South Africa, we are confident that this time is different."
[NYTimes]: Ukraine Aid Bill Clears Critical Hurdle in the House as Democrats Supply the Votes
Democrats stepped in to support bringing the aid package to the floor, in a remarkable breach of custom on a key vote that paved the way for its passage. By Annie Karni
"Our online spaces are not ecosystems, though tech firms love that word. They’re plantations; highly concentrated and controlled environments, closer kin to the industrial farming of the cattle feedlot or battery chicken farms that madden the creatures trapped within." https://www.noemamag.com/we-need-to-rewild-the-internet/
@lilithsaintcrow@laguiri Well, some of us are trying and it would be amazing if folks actually funded us so we could continue to exist and do our work.
Root problem: Demand in research funding is much bigger than supply. Introducing: complicated grant application system to distribute funding.
20xx: Grant proposals are getting very complicated; writing bureaus are increasingly used to support researchers putting their ideas on paper in a way that increases their chances in winning the funding lottery. 1/x #Academia#Funding#LLM#ChatGPT
2025: Many many more research grant applications are submitted. So many that this is not feasible any more. Introducing: using AI to filter through all the submitted proposals.
This is inspired by a conversation I had today with someone working at a University grant office. This is not a joke. I learned that for a national grant it’s estimated that 30% are written using AI. And that funding bodies currently discuss whether to use AI to deal with possible exponentially increased submissions?? Besides the “to disclose” or “not to disclose” debate… 3/x
SERIOUSLY: What are we doing? 😱
“Solving” a problem (too many submissions) with the very same technology that caused it? And probably making it even worse, because what type of proposals are likely to get through? The human-written or the AI-written ones?
We should look closely at the process; not throwing AI at everything. Only silver lining: closer interaction between applicant & funding body is also discussed. Not sure if that is AFTER the AI filter tho… 4/x #Academia#Funding#LLM#ChatGPT
Coming soon: it’s going to be trivial to deploy a different app on your Small Web server. Useful if you’re a dev and you’re playing around with different apps.
(Also, notice the speed at which deployment happens. I’m one step away from implementing this in Domain using pre-warmed Kitten instances – called toasty kittens – thereby bringing the time it takes to deploy your own Small Web place down to a handful of seconds.)
Interesting story: did you know the Web wasn’t initially understood or embraced at CERN? It was seen as a distraction.
Here’s Robert’s video of Ben Segal – lovely human being and Tim’s mentor – showing us around CERN ~15 years ago and telling the story (see if you can spot a much younger me in shot):