Raza Panjwani
@tabularaza.net
Stuff and things. Fan of tinkering, carbohydrates, the New York Mets, outlaw hacker pancreases, and Oxford commas. Personal account, etc.
Just got a replacement credit card in the mail without a signature field on the back. Card processors mostly stopped requiring signatures at point of sale in 2018 (Visa still required them for swipe transactions until 2020). Yet I’m still being asked to sign receipts all the time 🤷♂️
This law is absurd but I have to admit I had a chuckle: after decades of ISPs banging the table demanding Internet services pay *them* to deliver traffic to ISP subscribers, a government realized ‘y not us?’
Alec Muffett@alecmuffett.bsky.social · 2d agoIn case you missed it: #France Government has voted to bankrupt its own popular open source projects like #VLC & raise costs for #Netflix & #Steam (etc) customers, in a badly drafted attempt to milk #Facebook for taxes via a "bandwidth tax" on web servers:
Hard to describe 2006. And it was followed by the brief window where Nate Silver Lisan Al Ghaib’d the 2008 and 2012 elections (and the 2008 TB Rays…)
post malone ergo propter malone@proptermalone.bsky.social · 2d agowe lived almost exactly this in 2006 and I remember vividly that my thought at the time was that no way we’d win *all* the close ones
Politicians must be online, but must not be Online - discuss.
Martin Concagh@mconcagh.bsky.social · 4d agoA lot has been said about Mamdani's social media savvy but he never replies to comments, he never reposts, he uses it as a platform and nothing else.
Public Knowledge’s Lisa Macpherson and Creative Commons’ Anna Tumadóttir argue AI has broken the open web’s old bargain and propose principles for “a new internet bargain that works for everyone” while preserving fair use and protecting the knowledge commons.
Creating a New Internet Bargain to Preserve Fair Use and Protect the Commons
Public Knowledge’s Lisa Macpherson and Creative Commons’ Anna Tumadóttir say AI broke the open web’s bargain and propose principles to protect the commons.
buff.ly
everyone, everyone, a new James Mickens just dropped
Ian Campbell@neurovagrant.bsky.social · 5d agoI'm not usually a keynote guy, but the LABScon keynote was one of the funniest talks on AI I've ever heard, partially because of all the apparent shared trauma that informed it. www.youtube.com/watch?v=usZL...
people woke up this morning and decided to use al gore's internet to come at @elienyc.bsky.social with bad NYC pizza takes in the replies. y'all need to read your Pizza Belt theory.
The Pizza Belt: the Most Important Pizza Theory You'll Read
Recently, the subject of the varying quality of pizza by region has been raised, thanks in part to discussions of Washington, D.C., which has been accused, disparagingly and incorrectly, of being unab...
web.archive.org
ElieNYC@elienyc.bsky.social · 5d agoNYC cuisine is interesting to me. It's strength is that you can get quality *anything*, literally anything, at nearly any hour. But "the best"? You can get *better* anything, in other cities that specialize in the thing. EXCEPT: Pizza, bagels, and cheesecake. Which is not a balanced diet.
This is ridiculous. Quad9's mission is literally free DNS with malware blocking, to help collective Internet defense and threat investigation. That's all they do.
Electronic Frontier Foundation@eff.org · 6d agoQuad9 helps protect internet users from malware and phishing. Now copyright site-blocking orders are pushing it out of France.
This is something I complain about in my forthcoming article, which so far has cost me $1,250 in PACER fees at merely $0.10/page. Public records belong to the public and should be free of charge.
Free Law Project ⚖@free.law · 2w agoPaywalls on court documents impede democracy. But instead of getting rid of PACER fees, the judiciary is implementing a 20% fee hike. free.law/2026/10/21/p...
I grew up in a lower income immigrant family and we ate at Red Lobster for "special days." But we also understood the White House should not look like the inside of Red Lobster. It's condescending to assuming working ppl are culturally illiterate bc their experience is shaped by their limited means.
Still think dynamic lineup orders is the way to go. Manager can send each fielder up to bat in any order he likes. - must go through the entire lineup before sending a batter up again - can’t send up someone who’s on base - can’t bat twice in a row (next batter has to be on deck)
Jon Bois@jonbois.bsky.social · last wk.they should get rid of the designated hitter and just let the pitcher try to throw a base hit when it’s his turn at the plate. that’s the way it always should have been
Getting health insurance coverage as an individual. Dont @ me if you didn’t have to shop for health insurance for yourself because you didn’t qualify or get offered employer health insurance before 2014.
Michael Druker 🇨🇦@mdruker.app · last wk.Social media loves talking about how everything is getting worse. But what’s something that you’ve seen get _better_ in your lifetime?
Info on repairing shit. The ability to type in your make and model of car into YouTube and see an uncle make a video about how to fix any part of it? AMAZING.
Michael Druker 🇨🇦@mdruker.app · last wk.Social media loves talking about how everything is getting worse. But what’s something that you’ve seen get _better_ in your lifetime?
In college I took Alan Brinkley's "America since 1945" survey course. Two of the books we were assigned as perspectives on the 70s: Jonathan Schell's "The Time of Illusion" (1976) Christopher Lasch's "The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations" (1979)
Raza Panjwani@tabularaza.net · 2w agoNot saying it makes up for all the other ways elder millenials got hosed, but we did get: - Peak Prestige TV - Golden Age of Streaming Video - 7th and 8th Gen Console Era - Web 2.0 (nostalgic) what a time to be alive. (earnest) 🥲😢
i am on a plane sitting next to a lady who looks 40ish and has informed me that this is her first time flying she is visibly excited. she asked the flight attendant how much a soda costs and was happy to learn that drinks are free on airplanes. she's taking lots of pictures. i love this for her
Sometime in the early 21st century I encountered xkcd. There were a lot of software/linux jokes that I found funny even if i didn’t quite fully get the joke. I’ve learned a lot more about that stuff since then. And the jokes are much funnier as a result. Anyway I’m laugh/crying without knowing why.
norvid_studies@norvid-studies.bsky.social · 2w agothe story goes like this
I very much hope that archive.Org has the public parts of them but I know that a lot of phpBB forums are going down never to return
Kenny Lauderdale@kennylauderdale.bsky.social · 2w agoThis PHP stuff is so depressing because there's gonna be 15 Years worth of old sites that are going to become lost media now.
Some guys, about to start MCI in the 1960s: "Hey, what if we used microwave radio relay to wirelessly transmit voice and data over long distances?" Time traveler from the present: "Actually, maybe just stick to two-way radio for truckers and barges, ok?"
David Roberts@volts.wtf · 2w agoRight-wing billionaires now own the Washington Post, the LA Times, CNN, CBS News, virtually every local TV station, virtually every news radio station, most local newspapers, X, Facebook, Threads, and TikTok. (Did I miss any?) They own almost the entire information environment.
I’ve been saying for years that Google had lost to the SEO spammers. Then it appeared they had capitulated. Now it’s clear they’ve joined the war against spam on the side of spam
Eric Ravenscraft@lordravenscraft.bsky.social · 3w agosomething that fascinates me about this is how, for many years, whole teams inside giant tech companies were devoted to preventing exactly this scenario you didn't 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 most of your traffic to be from bots trying to game the system, so people worked hard to prevent it
something that fascinates me about this is how, for many years, whole teams inside giant tech companies were devoted to preventing exactly this scenario you didn't 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 most of your traffic to be from bots trying to game the system, so people worked hard to prevent it
Bruno Dias@brunodias.dev · 3w agothe "agentic" vision of computing is a spam world where everyone has their own personal army of spam bots working 24/7 on their behalf choking everything with spam to try and get one over on the next guy. and that's just not something that can really... exist, long term?
the "agentic" vision of computing is a spam world where everyone has their own personal army of spam bots working 24/7 on their behalf choking everything with spam to try and get one over on the next guy. and that's just not something that can really... exist, long term?
Some personal news, as the kids say:
Public Knowledge@publicknowledge.bsky.social · 3w ago@publicknowledge.bsky.social is pleased to announce two new additions to our staff: We welcome @tabularaza.net as Senior Policy Counsel, and Jasmine Held-Hernandez as Government Affairs Policy Counsel. 🎉 publicknowledge.org/public-knowl...
Please please let the students have called this “the jet pack”
Brutalismbot@brutalismbot.com · 3w agoThe Faculty of Physics at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine, 1972-1980 r/brutalism
lol. some of the mugs we got for our wedding (~15 years ago) are wearing out. the manufacturer still sells what appears to be the exact same mug (same product name, code stamped on base, etc.) reader, it is not the same mug 🤡
aaron@hillenjoyer.myatproto.social · 3w agothe problem with recommending anything because you bought it fifteen years ago and it’s lasted is thats no guarantee that the ones they’re selling today will because tricking you into overpaying for something that resembles a product that used to be good is one of the two business models now
the problem with recommending anything because you bought it fifteen years ago and it’s lasted is thats no guarantee that the ones they’re selling today will because tricking you into overpaying for something that resembles a product that used to be good is one of the two business models now
