Mike Byrne

Imagine the government demanding a key to your home, promising only police would use it. Then, a hostile foreign power steals it and walks in.

This just happened. "Salt Typhoon," a Chinese-sponsored group, exploited backdoors built for US intelligence. There is no safe backdoor.

This isn't abstract. It is the fight for a secure, trustworthy Internet for everyone. We cannot allow this foundation to erode.

21 October is #GlobalEncryptionDay. Read Sally's urgent warning, share this thread, and demand protection for encryption. prosyn.org/zQ7OiTg?h=SS...

Why, no, Apple devices, I do not want to install an x.0 version of the operating system.

I will vaguely consider x.0.1 but won't actually do it until AT LEAST x.0.2, so you can stop asking for a while.

twitter post by brendan carr from august 2022: "This is very concerning. The government does not evade the First Amendment’s restraints on censoring political speech by jawboning a company into suppressing it—rather, that conduct runs headlong into those constitutional restrictions, as Supreme Court law makes clear."

folks surfaced a lot of past brendan carr tweets that seem to contradict his current agenda but i feel like this one got unfairly slept on a bit

This time of year Sunday is for football.

Currently in Salt Lake City for the Election Center 40th Annual Conference. Very cool meeting!

Election officials are amazing.

Episode 2 – Voting Machines - How Voting Works Let's talk about why we need voting machines in the US, and the specific types of voting machines we use and how they work.The Reality of Full Hand Counts: A Guide for Election Officials, by the Elect...

In case you're wondering why we use voting machines in the US: podcast.voting.works/2407158/epis...

And now for something entirely non-academic.

Despite grand claims, a new report shows noncitizen voting hasn't materialized New research confirms what election experts have said all along: Noncitizen voting occasionally happens but in minuscule numbers, and not in any coordinated way.

New research confirms what election experts have said all along: Noncitizen voting occasionally happens, but in minuscule numbers, and not in any coordinated way.

Just your regular reminder that the gov’t does not leak or tweet that they’ve found crimes - they indict and prosecute when they have the evidence. If you see any gov’t off’l, incl the AG, DNI, or POTUS, do that, it’s an admission they have absolutely nothing.

The “new Coke” of the 2020s.

Trump says ‘I don’t know’ when asked if he’s required to uphold Constitution The president also downplayed fears of a recession and spoke of potential successors when his four-year term ends in an NBC interview.

The Presidential Oath, which he has sworn to twice:

"I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

Headed to #chi2025. Was going to read the program on the 14-hour flight but there’s no PDF version I can mark up, only a web version with a UI I would characterize as sub-optimal.

If you sent me one, I could. Just sayin’.

It just keeps getting worse and worse. Sigh.

Wow, that's... criminal. How is that even possible?

you can't spell "tariffs" without "FFS"

Quote from NY Post article

JFC. So the White House now confirms that their not-actually-at-all-reciprocal tariffs are totally unrelated to actual tariffs imposed on us, and just calculated based on our trade deficit, on the assumption that this is a proxy for “cheating”. nypost.com/2025/04/02/u...

If you made too many, I am willing to take one off your hands. Just sayin'.

Reminder: the First Amendment protects everyone who resides in our country. It doesn't matter if you have a green card or a visa or if you're undocumented. The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that any person residing in the United States, regardless of status, is entitled to 1A protections.

Good news has been in short supply of late. Here’s some: my favorite Twitter and then Mastodon client will be built for Bluesky!

I am thrilled to announce the Rice Center for Voting, a new center for interdisciplinary research on election administration.

centerforvoting.rice.edu

As part of this effort, we are planning to re-launch both the EVT workshop and the JETS journal!

You know it's going to be a rough road when the book about human factors has... endnotes. Not footnotes, but endnotes. Sigh.

A German ballot from 2005 showing two columns of selections, where the voter makes one choice in each column.

How does Germany count ballots so quickly by hand? Because this is their ballot. Two questions. That's it.

It takes longer for Germany to count than France, because in France it's *one* question.

We use machines to count in the US because we have 30, 40, 50, sometimes 80 questions per ballot.

Trump administration fires top US general and Navy chief in unprecedented purge of military leadership | CNN Politics In an unprecedented purge of the military’s senior leadership Friday night, President Donald Trump fired the top US general just moments before his defense secretary fired the chief of the US Navy and...

Firing all the military lawyers seems like a preparation for doing war crimes. amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/02/...

Crazy and short-sighted, but not surprising. Anti-science has been a plank in that platform for a while now. Tragic, really.

DOJ leadership has put all Public Integrity Section lawyers into a room with 1 hour to decide who will dismiss Adams indictment or else all will be fired. Sending them strength to stand by their oath, which is to support the Constitution, not the president’s political agenda. 🇺🇸

When Musk, Vance, and others complain about the judiciary ensuring balance between the 3 branches, remember these same people forum-shopped to friendly judges, and applauded when courts enjoined Obamacare, student debt relief, and other executive actions. This is how the system is supposed to work.

Science is the backbone of American strategic dominance.

Whats going on right now is the biggest bonanza since 1849.

They’re gunna cut NSF funding by 2/3rds? Every other nationstate ought to be salivating over that.

Want to rule the world in 50 years? Hire American scientists now. In bulk!