Americans should be more worried about the NSA than they are.

This is a tragic detail in an even more tragic story. Government can absolutely be good, and our allergic reaction to spending, laws, and policy only makes these situations worse.

It isn’t that TikTok doesn’t pose a real threat, it’s that it’s not alone in doing so. In particular, I appreciate that this article points out that U.S. border agents REGULARLY SEARCH COMPUTERS AND SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS. So, yes, raise concerns, but be consistent instead of creating a moral panic around thus one app (which, by the way, would be a privacy threat even if it were totally owned by a U.S. company).

A good case for why the edit button probably isn’t as good as everyone thinks.

This is a cute story—hat tip to Boing Boing for recommending it.

Ashamed to say I hadn’t ever thought about this possibility.

Intellectual property is a social justice issue.

What a story. I knew how awful the TSA could be to passengers, but I never knew how bad it also was for its own employees.

This is very interesting—it gives me some hope that I haven’t had over the past couple of months.

Speaking personally, I’d be happy to pay extra taxes to better support our local schools.

This ‘Black Mirror’ class comes out of my department—happy to see a colleague get credit for such an interesting class!

This is my issue with CS education efforts, especially ’teaching people to code.’ It’s narrowly focused on technical skills and not broader social and ethical reflection. I’d never argue that programmers shouldn’t work for defense contractors, but I’m uncomfortable with associating them so closely with CS education.

Sad news. I had the livestream up and was hoping to watch the launch before going into the office today.

C’est dommage de perdre un tel prof. Je ne suis pas de près la situation des profs en France, mais vu combien de problèmes il y a aux États-Unis, ceci ne m’étonne pas trop. Il est peut-être temps de relire « Le hussard noir ».

Looks like a fun local gaming pub.

I don’t know that any of this is surprising, but it remains worrying.

The inconsistency here is infuriating. When I was in grad school, I had the philosophy that I (a Mormon working toward a PhD) couldn’t rule out the possibility of working at BYU. There’s still a lot that I like and respect about BYU, but seeing the way they’re putting the squeeze on their employees makes it clear that I could never have survived there.

BYU is really on a roll this week.

Learned about the Trib article from this blog post, which I think also makes some solid points. It’s one thing to prefer that outside organizations not provide materials, but if BYU isn’t doing anything itself…

What a disappointment.

I read Feed in high school and found it interesting, but when I read it again in 2019, it was amazing. This review gets at why the book is so good—and important. Maybe it’s time for me to visit it again.

Great example of how automation often makes things easier but not better. The former can be good so long as we don’t lose sight of the latter.

What a mess of a story. School safety tech is edtech, and like edtech, a lot of it appears to be more posturing and theater than effective practice.

Exciting news! This still leaves a lot of research behind paywalls, though.

See, this is censorship.