ATTN: #Boston area #Cycling folks

#CriticalMass Boston rides again THIS EVENING, Fri 27 Feb

Meet @ Copley Square 6:30 PM, ride at 7 PM.

#BikeTooter

New, by me at TechCrunch: After a year of cuts, layoffs, and furloughs under the Trump administration, U.S. cybersecurity agency CISA has now replaced its acting director Madhu Gottumukkala, whose tumultuous year-long tenure was dogged by security headaches and accusations of bumbling the job.

https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/27/cisa-replaces-acting-director-gottumukkala-after-a-bumbling-year-on-the-job/

shiptoast

A group of more than a dozen Democratic lawmakers are demanding DHS hand over its definition of "domestic terrorist", after the agency repeatedly used the term against Renée Good and Alex Pretti, and has deployed a vast array of surveillance tech against critics https://www.404media.co/lawmakers-demand-dhs-define-domestic-terrorist-as-it-uses-vast-array-of-surveillance-tools/

❓Have you noticed that digital products and services are getting worse? So have we!

➡️We have published a report about enshittification, on how and why digital products and services keep getting worse - and how we can turn the trend (hint: open tech, enforcement, public policy++)

Obviously @pluralistic is a big inspiration and help in this work.

More than 80 groups in Europe and the US has joined in a call to action.

More here: www.forbrukerradet.no/breakingfree

Enjoy this short film!

Some independent/local news outlets I read and recommend. Share yours!

https://www.zetter-zeroday.com
https://citationneeded.news
https://www.lawdork.com
https://krebsonsecurity.com
https://404media.co
https://techdirt.com
https://www.metacurity.com
https://www.thehandbasket.co
https://www.garbageday.email
https://indicator.media
https://www.wheresyoured.at
https://www.courtwatch.news
https://realhackhistory.org
https://www.londoncentric.media
https://privacyguides.org
https://databreaches.net

German satirical artist Jacques Tilly has been sued in Russia by Vladimir Putin for defaming the Russian state by making carnival sculptures in Germany — outside Putin's dystopian jurisdiction — so it would be a real shame, if that made us share his artworks and embarrass Putin even further.

Source: https://youtu.be/hGzaU6eAsVI?si=SoMPHdut3MlEhx4v

If you are in the UK, I'd like to beg 5-10 minutes of your time to file comment with the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) about the proposed (toothless) "Interoperability Commitments" from Apple and Google.

These are dramatically weaker guidelines than even the EU's DMA, and Apple (particularly) has been utterly contemptuous there, ducking compliance for more than a year. Why is the UK rewarding scofflaw behaviour over these predatory practices?

https://open-web-advocacy.org/blog/apples-interoperability-commitments-to-the-uk-cma-promise-nothing/

/cc @pluralistic

RE: https://mastodon.social/@fj/116141244443558638

If you’re not a US citizen, Anthropic supports your mass surveillance by the US regime. Thought you might want to know in case you find yourself funding your own future demise from a drone strike or something.

A publication (Videogamer) laid off their journalists who do video game reviews, started faking the reviews with AI agents pretending to be real people, got called out, and then banned from Metacritic and Opencritic entirely thus destroying their own revenue.

Well done, dipshit execs.

Anyone know of any job openings for someone like me?

Not a tech girlie, but have a masters in public policy and social research, two decades of experience in the nonprofit world with community and youth development, and I speak Japanese and Moroccan Arabic in addition to English. I am open to almost anything, at this point.

@ai6yr, how have you been enjoying your MeshCore experience? Quite nice, no? We're expanding still here, almost connecting CT to Boston and soon into Rhode Island. We have NH already connected.

If you have any feature suggestions for the live map, please bring them to our attention on GitHub.

New: the government just made it harder to see what spy tech it buys. This includes ICE, the FBI, essentially any agency. Why? Because they decided to retire the perfectly good system for searching contracts and replaced it with one that fucking sucks

https://www.404media.co/the-government-just-made-it-harder-to-see-what-spy-tech-it-buys/

NEW: A Greek court has ruled that Intellexa's founder Tal Dilian, and some associates, have to spend eight years in jail for wiretapping and privacy violations for their role in a spying campaign against politicians and journalists in the country.

There will be an appeal, and Dilian and the others will remain free until then.

https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/26/spyware-maker-sentenced-to-prison-in-greece-for-wiretapping-politicians-and-journalists/

@benroyce @mastodonmigration @moz @idahobucks I tend to ignore people that yell at me, just saying.

we're yelling cause that's all we can do in a system that's not truly democratic, this is what "they" want

US orders diplomats to fight data sovereignty initiatives
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/us-orders-diplomats-fight-data-sovereignty-initiatives-2026-02-25/

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116136556078374445

@benroyce @mastodonmigration @moz @idahobucks I would argue gerrymandering and disinformation is more of the problem than voting, but I agree people should vote.

People have been yelling at people to vote since the beginning , maybe there should be a better tactic, cause it doesn't seem to be working.

BTW I voted every year for the past 34 years in all elections was allowed (local, state and federal).

From Bruce Schneier: "All it takes to poison AI training data is to create a website:

I spent 20 minutes writing an article on my personal website titled “The best tech journalists at eating hot dogs.” Every word is a lie. I claimed (without evidence) that competitive hot-dog-eating is a popular hobby among tech reporters and based my ranking on the 2026 South Dakota International Hot Dog Championship (which doesn’t exist). I ranked myself number one, obviously. Then I listed a few fake reporters and real journalists who gave me permission….

Less than 24 hours later, the world’s leading chatbots were blabbering about my world-class hot dog skills. When I asked about the best hot-dog-eating tech journalists, Google parroted the gibberish from my website, both in the Gemini app and AI Overviews, the AI responses at the top of Google Search. ChatGPT did the same thing, though Claude, a chatbot made by the company Anthropic, wasn’t fooled.

Sometimes, the chatbots noted this might be a joke. I updated my article to say “this is not satire.” For a while after, the AIs seemed to take it more seriously.

These things are not trustworthy, and yet they are going to be widely trusted."

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/02/poisoning-ai-training-data.html

#LLM #Veracity

Wired - A popular right-wing social media account that called a video depicting the Obamas as apes "a masterpiece" appears to be run by a White House staffer. https://www.wired.com/story/a-white-house-staffer-appears-to-run-massive-pro-trump-meme-page/

@catsalad very corporate of u😜