What was fascinating, or perhaps horrific is a better word, about the article that I didn’t know about is the brief mention of “The Canary Mission”

Here’s from their about page:

Canary Mission documents individuals and organizations that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on North American college campuses and beyond. Canary Mission investigates hatred across the entire political spectrum, including the far right, far left and anti-Israel activists.

Canary Mission is motivated by a desire to combat the rise in anti-Semitism on college campuses. We pursue our mission by presenting the words and deeds of individuals and organizations that engage in anti-Semitism, racism and bigotry on the far right, far left and among the array of organizations that comprise the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Essentially they gather dossiers on private individuals that they claim are anti-semitic. So, I looked up the woman that was taken off the street like a Ukrainian draft-dodger.

https://canarymission.org/individual/Rumeysa_Ozturk

Rumeysa Ozturk engaged in anti-Israel activism in March 2024, in the wake of the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israelis on October 7, 2023.

Ozturk is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

What was the anti-Israel activism, you ask? I figured it was some sort of protest. Sort of like the one in New York where they occupied a building.

Nope

On March 26, 2024, Ozturk co-authored an op-ed published in the Tufts Daily newspaper titled: “Try again, President Kumar: Renewing calls for Tufts to adopt March 4 TCU Senate resolutions.” The authors urged “President Kumar and the Tufts administration to meaningfully engage with and actualize the resolutions passed by the Senate.”

The op-ed referred to the passing of anti-Israel resolutions by the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate, which demanded the University “…acknowledge the Palestinian genocide, apologize for University President Sunil Kumar’s statements, disclose its investments, and divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel.”

At Tufts university, the Community Union Senate (not really sure what this is. a student council or something) passed a 3/5ths majority resolution urging the president of the university to

1. acknowledge the Palestinian genocide

2. apologize for some statements, I don’t know what

3. disclose its investments

4. divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel

She co-wrote an op-ed essentially demanding the president follow the resolution that was passed. That’s the “anti-Israel activism” she’s guilty of. I suppose that’s enough to be deported. Be careful out there guys. If you aren’t a citizen, shut up about your political views until you are. Because there are eyes out there watching everything you do. Even if you are… consider what you are doing. You may be making an enemy of a vindictive state that is willing to break the rules.

Here’s the op-ed, in case you’re interested: https://www.tuftsdaily.com/article/2024/03/4ftk27sm6jkj

These resolutions were the product of meaningful debate by the Senate and represent a sincere effort to hold Israel accountable for clear violations of international law. Credible accusations against Israel include accounts of deliberate starvation and indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinian civilians and plausible genocide.

Lock 'em up, I guess. If you believe that Palestinian civilians have a right to life then you are a terrorist-sympathizer in this administration’s opinion.

not claiming private organizations don’t have to the right to regulate speech on their platforms. was responding to statement

I understand why there are exceptions for those in positions of power, but I’d be more than happy to live in a world where there weren’t.

which to me implies some sort of state censorship on this type of material

Really, I just wanted to understand the rationale behind the desire to ban this type of material.

On the topic of Judge Roberts, on a similar although different legal issue

He wrote the Court’s opinion in United States v. Stevens (2010), invalidating a federal law that criminalized the creation or dissemination of images of animal cruelty. The government had argued that such images should be a new unprotected category of speech akin to child pornography. Roberts emphatically rejected that proposition, writing that the Court does not have “freewheeling authority to declare new categories of speech outside the scope of the First Amendment.” Roberts also wrote the Court’s opinion in Snyder v. Phelps (2011), ruling that the First Amendment prohibited the imposition of civil liability against the Westboro Baptist Church for their highly offensive picketing near the funeral of a slain serviceman.

In oft-cited language, Roberts wrote:

“Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and — as it did here — inflict great pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker. As a Nation we have chosen a different course — to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate. That choice requires that we shield Westboro from tort liability for its picketing in this case.”

If Judge Roberts were to be consistent, and I make no such claims that he will ever be consistent, I believe he would likewise not support banning fake AI porn.

In this case, it’s clearly a form of speech and therefore protected under the 1st amendment.

I also don’t understand such a strong reaction to non-consensual AI porn. I mean, I don’t think it’s in good taste but I also don’t see why it warrants such a strong reaction. It’s not real. If I draw a stick figure with boobs and I put your name on it, do you believe I am committing a crime?

really it’s a cautionary tale about the intersections of different technologies. for example, csv going into a sql database and then querying that database from another language (whether it’s JS or C# or whatever)

when i was 16 and in driver’s ed, I remember the day where the instructor told us that we were going to go drive on the highway. I told him I was worried because the highway sounds scary- everybody is going so fast. he told me something that for some weird reason stuck with me: the highway is one of the safest places to be because everybody is going straight in the same direction.

the most dangerous places to be, and the data backs this up, are actually intersections. the points where different roads converge. why? well, it’s pretty intuitive. it’s where you have a lot of cars in close proximity. the more cars in a specific square footage the higher probability of a car hitting another car.

that logic follows with software too. in a lot of ways devs are traffic engineers controlling the flow of data. that’s why, like you said, it’s up to the devs to catch these things early. intersections are the points where different technologies meet and all data flows through these technologies. it’s important to be extra careful at these points. like in the example i gave above…

the difference between

WITH (FORMAT csv, HEADER true);

and

WITH (FORMAT csv, HEADER true, NULL '');

could be the difference between one guy living a normal life and another guy receiving thousands of speeding tickets https://www.wired.com/story/null-license-plate-landed-one-hacker-ticket-hell/

How do devs make this mistake

it can happen many different ways if you’re not explicitly watching out for these types of things

example let’s say you have a csv file with a bunch of names

id, last_name
1, schaffer
2, thornton
3, NULL
4, smith
5, "NULL"

if you use the following to import into postgres

COPY user_data (id, last_name)
FROM '/path/to/data.csv'
WITH (FORMAT csv, HEADER true);

number 5 will be imported as a string “NULL” but number 3 will be imported as a NULL value. of course, this is why you sanitize the data (GIGO) but I can imagine this happening countless times at companies all over the country

there are easy fixes if you’re paying attention

COPY user_data (id, last_name)
FROM '/path/to/data.csv'
WITH (FORMAT csv, HEADER true, NULL '');

sets the empty string to NULL value.

example with js

fetch('/api/user/1')
  .then(response => response.json())
  .then(data => {
    if (data.lastName == "null") {
      console.log("No last name found");
    } else {
      console.log("Last name is:", data.lastName);
    }
  });

if data is

data = {
  id: 5,
  lastName: "null"
};

then the if statement will trigger- as if there was no last name. that’s why you gotta know the language you’re using and the potential pitfalls

now you may ask – why not just do

if (data.lastName === null)

instead? But what if the system you’re working on uses JSON.parse(data) and that auto-converts everything to a string? it’s a very natural move to check for the string "null"

obviously if you’re paying attention and understand the pitfalls of certain languages (like javascript’s type coercion and the particularities of JSON.parse()) it becomes easy but it’s something that is honestly very easy to overlook

Up until fairly recently, you could just drag and drop files onto the Kindle with a usb. I’ve had my first generation Kindle for almost 15 years now and it still works. Just download an .epub file, convert it to .mobi with Calibre, and drag and drop it over to the Kindle.

I have a newer one too, that I got a couple of years ago as a gift.

The trick is just disable the wifi and never let it communicate with Amazon servers. They will mess with your settings and push secret updates that remove features. For example, it could “sync” your books with your Amazon account if you naively log into your Amazon account and that literally results in you not being able to remove items from your Kindle without logging into your Amazon account on your computer and going through a million menus. It won’t let you do it from the Kindle, even if you’re offline.

But if you just never let it connect it to the internet at all, you’re fine.

Although the new Kindles now require a special Amazon software to copy files over (because of “convenience”) and it won’t communicate with the usual protocol so you can’t drag and drop like you could for the last 15 years.

So yeah, don’t buy a Kindle. at least not a new one.

I haven’t used an antivirus software in over 10 years and I haven’t gotten a virus or had any other issues. As for VPN,

a) I wouldn’t trust Malwarbytes because they have an abysmal customer service history

b) I wouldn’t trust NordVPN because I don’t trust companies that advertise on youtube

Look, I’m all for freedom of speech. I’m nearly as close to an absolutist as they come.

This is an example of a protest. Nobody is restricting anybody’s speech. They aren’t banning Musk-supporters. They aren’t censoring Trumpers. They are specifically banning links to a website owned by a billionaire who did a Nazi salute at an event where hundreds of millions if not billions of people would witness him.

yeah i just try not to think about it. I’m glad I was in the myspace generation during my teenage years. so I was actually able to just delete my myspace later on as an adult

i feel worse for the kids growing up today. they don’t fully understand the implications of what they are posting online. anything and everything is being recorded forever. my generation got a chance to be a stupid kid and have it be forgotten. today’s kids don’t get that opportunity

the best you can do, though, is just stop posting potentially damaging things online. you can’t change what you already posted. and 999 times out of a thousand, it’s not gonna hurt you.

i understand the overwhelmed feeling though

the safest perspective to have is this -

every single thing you send online is going to be there forever. “the cloud” is someone’s server and constitutes online. even end to end encryption isn’t necessarily going to save you.

for example iCloud backup is encrypted. but Apple in the past has kept a copy of your encryption key on your iCloud. why? because consumers who choose to encrypt and lose their passwords are gonna freak out when all their data is effectively gone forever.

so when FBI comes a’knocking to Apple with a subpoena… once they get access to that encryption key it doesn’t matter if you have the strongest encryption in the world

my advice

never ever ever write something online that you do not want everybody in the world seeing.

to put on my tin foil hat, i believe government probably has access to methods that break modern encryptions. in theory with quantum computers it shouldn’t be difficult

sad story. it’s emblematic of a mentality that is all too common in “ivory tower” positions

whether you work for a university or a news agency or a government organizations, etc. everyone ends up self censoring because they realize that rocking the boat is bad for your personal interests. after working so hard to get into this little elite club, you don’t want to jeopardize your position. your identity and sense of self worth is tied up with it

the few that end up trying get quickly chewed up and spit out by the whole.

it’s essentially group think and self censorship. too bad this guy killed himself instead of trying to move forward in his life with another avenue.