Michael A. Specter 👻

“Sorry, we can’t let you in, your application wasn’t novel enough. No, we won’t define what ‘novel’ means.”

Nah, Ivy League rejection letters don’t include angry notes about how you didn’t cite the admissions officer’s work.

Proposed Federal Moratorium on State AI Laws Clears Hurdle in US Senate | TechPolicy.Press The path forward for the moratorium is now procedurally clear, pending broader negotiations over the budget bill’s contents.

On Saturday, the United States Senate Parliamentarian determined that the proposed 10-year federal moratorium on enforcing state AI legislation contained in the budget bill has survived procedural scrutiny — known as the Byrd Rule — and will remain in the bill.

BREAKING: Judge denies NSF's 15% indirect rate plan. Like the DOE and NIH attempts, it too has now been rejected by courts. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

[Exit King.]

The Guardian launches Secure Messaging, a world-first from a media organisation, in collaboration with the University of Cambridge Secure Messaging is a new innovation for confidential story-sharing and source protection, underpinning the Guardian’s commitment to investigative journalism. The Guardian has published the open sourc...

Congratulations @lambda.bsky.social! Today @theguardian.com is launching a new way for whistleblowers to anonymously contact journalists, based on years-long research by Daniel and other colleagues. www.theguardian.com/gnm-press-of...

Red = Secret Key
Blue = Public Key
Green = Shared

I have no idea why.

YouTube video by Harvard University President Alan Garber's Welcome | Harvard Commencement 2025

Harvard President's commencement welcome speech:

"Welcome members of the class of 2025 -- members from down the street across the country and around the world. Around the world _just as it should be._"

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiT0...

Trump Has Cut Science Funding to Its Lowest Level in Decades (Gift Article) The lag in funding extends far beyond D.E.I. initiatives, affecting almost every area of science: chemistry, computing, engineering, materials and more.

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Legal briefs and automatic legal citations with LawTeX An online LaTeX editor that’s easy to use. No installation, real-time collaboration, version control, hundreds of LaTeX templates, and more.

www.overleaf.com/latex/templa...

I’m the Private Messaging App Signal, and the Trump Administration Is Ruining My Brand “The unofficial version of Signal used by Donald Trump’s former National Security Adviser Mike Waltz has been hacked.” — Reuters - - -Want to hear ...

"What anonymous source is going to go anywhere near me now? If you were some high-up whistleblower, the last thing you’d do is message a journalist on an app strongly associated with JD Vance."

Maybe they’re saved by AI’s tendency modify the font to have bad kerning — no one wants to take credit for that

Of course, this is not a rigorous analysis by any means, but it's about as good as any of the other ranking systems I've seen.

All university ranking systems are pretty lame and I wish we'd stop using them.

This paper confirms all of my biases: Apparently the effort required for one top-tier paper in security and privacy == three ML papers.

arxiv.org/pdf/2503.16623

Interesting chart.

I’m thankful for all of these institutions pushing back. Keep going!

Law professor here: Things are F-U-C-K-E-D up.

For what it's worth, this is the first I'm hearing about this.

The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.

Key lesson: No amount of encryption can save you from clown-level opsec.

www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

I am a commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission. Earlier today, the president attempted to illegally fire me. This is corruption, plain and simple. I will see the president in court. My full statement:

Former Homeland Security Official Joins SCP as Professor of Practice | College of Computing

We are thrilled to welcome Mary Ellen Callahan, former assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office (CWMD) to SCP as a professor of the practice! www.cc.gatech.edu/news/former-...

Tech has _always_ been intrinsically connected to questions about democracy, freedom, and the rule of law.

@mmasnick.bsky.social (and TechDirt) is awesome for explicitly acknowledging that fact.

Pentagon guts national security program that harnessed social science Dozens of U.S. academics lose grants from Minerva program for studies related to terrorism, drug trafficking, and other threats

www.science.org/content/arti...

Once again, the quiet/lawsuits/don't rock the boat publicly strategy is a category mistake in this moment & R1 university presidents need to be out in front of microphones, now, in DC, collectively & loudly speaking out against the existential threat to 🇺🇸 higher education:

bsky.app/profile/mcop...

Absolutely.

This is a _global_ concern, not just the UK.

If nothing else, consider the process a company go through when considering E2EE deployment. It costs money. It costs time and effort to do right. It can make the service somewhat less usable.

Now the costs are even higher.

Apple Pulls Encrypted iCloud Security Feature in UK Amid Government Backdoor Demands Apple has withdrawn its Advanced Data Protection iCloud feature from the United Kingdom following government demands for backdoor access to encrypted...

Apple has officially pulled E2EE backup in the UK in response to a secret (leaked) order.

This will make users less secure, chill business adoption of E2EE, and embolden other governments that do not respect the rule of law to do the same.

Awful news.

www.macrumors.com/2025/02/21/a...

Vance says the US will dominate AI. Meanwhile his administration is kneecapping the source of AI talent and emboldening China to move in Taiwan, a major source of superconductors in the US.

I guess this makes sense if one thinks Grok is the peak of AI?

Upon learning that yesterday would be my last day as a program officer at the National Science Foundation, I shared this parting message with my colleagues. The next few months will be frenetic and stressful for them. Here are some things that you can do to help them with the mission ahead. (1)