Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Deirdre Connolly¹ ² @durumcrustulum.com · 41m

nothing bad will happen, it can only good happen

x.com/sama/status/...

Reposted by Deirdre Connolly¹ ²

Center for Online Safety and Liberty @c4osl.org · 1h

"Governments across the world are expanding surveillance, weakening encryption, and curtailing freedoms under the guise of staunching the proliferation of sexual images and videos of children" https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/13/chat-control-child-abuse-internet-privacy #Privacy

Against ‘chat control’: we can’t eliminate child abuse by eliminating privacy

Banning online anonymity tools like Tor won’t stop crime. It will only drive people underground and normalize government control over the internet

www.theguardian.com

6 5

Reposted by Deirdre Connolly¹ ²

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 4h

wow. bezos has destroyed this paper.

karl rove knausgård @uhactually.bsky.social · 20h

Lmao WaPo has fewer than 100K circulation now. It turns out “alienate your liberal subscriber base” is not a good strategy when the Republicans also hate you. www.forbes.com/sites/andyme...

The Washington Post Is Running Out Of Readers Willing To Pay

Once a titan of American journalism, The Washington Post now struggles to reach even 100,000 print subscribers most days.

www.forbes.com

250 890 5K

Reposted by Deirdre Connolly¹ ²

Karl Jacoby @karl-jacoby.bsky.social · 21h

Student government leaders of MIT, UVA, U of AZ, Dartmouth, UPenn, Brown, and Vanderbilt united in their opposition to the "compact" proposed by the Trump administration.

Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 23h

www.instagram.com/p/DPm507ljBJ...

6 190 810

Reposted by Deirdre Connolly¹ ²

Maria Corte-Real Santos @maria.isogeny.club · 8h

Last week at The Isogeny Club we had a great talk by Sebastian Spindler about modular curves! Check it out here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDU7...

Be sure to join us again next Tuesday at the usual time :) isogeny.club

The Isogeny Club #7.2 Counting l-isogenies with different modular polynomials

YouTube video by The Isogeny Club

www.youtube.com

3 3

Reposted by Deirdre Connolly¹ ²

Matthew Green @matthewdgreen.bsky.social · 16h

Here’s an article about it in WIRED: www.wired.com/story/satell...

https://www.wired.com/story/satellites-are-leaking-the-worlds-secrets-calls-texts-military-and-corporate-data/

t.co

1 8 35

Deirdre Connolly¹ ² @durumcrustulum.com · 14h

Another @nadiaheninger.bsky.social W

Techmeme @techmeme.com · 15h

Researchers used an off-the-shelf system to compile a vast collection of private data, including T-Mobile users' calls and texts, sent by satellites unencrypted (Wired)

Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

1 2 7

Reposted by Deirdre Connolly¹ ²

Death's Hedges @jmhodges.bsky.social · 16h

There's so many good reasons to default to using Signal

Andy Greenberg @agreenberg.bsky.social · 17h

Researchers pointed a satellite dish at the sky for 3 years and monitored what unencrypted data it picked up. The results were shocking: They obtained thousands of T-Mobile users' phone calls and texts, military and law enforcement secrets, much more: www.wired.com/story/satell... 🧵👇

Satellites Are Leaking the World’s Secrets: Calls, Texts, Military and Corporate Data

With just $800 in basic equipment, researchers found a stunning variety of data—including thousands of T-Mobile users’ calls and texts and even US military communications—sent by satellites unencrypte...

www.wired.com

4 11

Deirdre Connolly¹ ² @durumcrustulum.com · 14h

I finally got a tight edit up of the Signal PQ Ratchet deep dive:

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

Signal's Sparse Post-Quantum Ratchet

YouTube video by Deirdre Connolly

www.youtube.com

1 10

Reposted by Deirdre Connolly¹ ²

Andy Greenberg @agreenberg.bsky.social · 17h

Researchers pointed a satellite dish at the sky for 3 years and monitored what unencrypted data it picked up. The results were shocking: They obtained thousands of T-Mobile users' phone calls and texts, military and law enforcement secrets, much more: www.wired.com/story/satell... 🧵👇

Satellites Are Leaking the World’s Secrets: Calls, Texts, Military and Corporate Data

With just $800 in basic equipment, researchers found a stunning variety of data—including thousands of T-Mobile users’ calls and texts and even US military communications—sent by satellites unencrypte...

www.wired.com

17 430 840

Reposted by Deirdre Connolly¹ ²

Techmeme @techmeme.com · 15h

Bhutan announces that it is migrating its national ID system for roughly 800,000 residents from Polygon to Ethereum, with completion expected by Q1 2026 (Brayden Lindrea/Cointelegraph)

Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

3 4

Deirdre Connolly¹ ² @durumcrustulum.com · 16h

when the transcription bot refuses to understand your pottymouth

1

Reposted by Deirdre Connolly¹ ²

Techmeme @techmeme.com · 17h

Researchers detail "Pixnapping", a new covert attack to steal 2FA codes and other private data on Android; Google's September patch only partially mitigates it (Dan Goodin/Ars Technica)

Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

1 7

Reposted by Deirdre Connolly¹ ²

Matthew Green @matthewdgreen.bsky.social · 17h

This is amazing research by Nadia Heninger and her co-authors Wenyi Morty Zhang, Annie Dai, Keegan Ryan, Dave Levin and Aaron Schulman. TL;DR a huge number of satellite links over our heads are totally unencrypted. satcom.sysnet.ucsd.edu

🛰️ SATCOM Security

Research project homepage for SATCOM Security: papers, source code, and recent satellite communications vulnerabilities.

satcom.sysnet.ucsd.edu

4 64 130

Deirdre Connolly¹ ² @durumcrustulum.com · 17h

jennifer garner looks amazing

1

Reposted by Deirdre Connolly¹ ²

Techmeme @techmeme.com · 17h

The UK's NCSC dealt with a record 204 "nationally significant" cyberattacks in the year to August, up 89% YoY, and "highly significant" cyberattacks rose by 50% (Joe Tidy/BBC)

Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

1 2

Deirdre Connolly¹ ² @durumcrustulum.com · 20h

ohhhh yesssssss ⚱️

4

Reposted by Deirdre Connolly¹ ²

fesshole 🧻 @fesshole.bsky.social · 20h

My girlfriend has her dad's ashes in an urn on the mantelpiece. Lately I've started picking it up and doing a, quite frankly, incredible impression of Paul Bearer from WWF in the mirror. If she caught me, I'd be dumped, but it's SUCH a good impression.

14 14 210

Reposted by Deirdre Connolly¹ ²

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 21h

Obama: "When you see an administration suggest that ordinary street crime is an insurrection or a terrorist act, that is a genuine effort to weaken how we have understood democracy."

470 7.4K 26K

Reposted by Deirdre Connolly¹ ²

Kevin Collins @kwcollins.bsky.social · 1d

Protests in 2025 have been notably older than earlier protest waves. Check out @fisherdanar.bsky.social's protest crowd surveys on this point: bsky.app/profile/fish...

2 9 38

Reposted by Deirdre Connolly¹ ²

Jesse Mermell @jessemermell.bsky.social · 1d

He is 13. A 7th grader w/ a pending asylum case. Being held more than 500 miles from home & housed w/ adults. He called his mom crying, & reported that he’s sleeping on concrete w/ an aluminum blanket.

How is this anything other than sick & shameful? www.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/12/m...

Everett 13-year-old arrested by ICE and sent to Virginia detention facility - The Boston Globe

The boy’s mother, Josiele Berto, was called to pick her son up from the Everett Police Department on Thursday, the day he was arrested.

www.bostonglobe.com

49 610 1K

Reposted by Deirdre Connolly¹ ²

Bluesky @bsky.app · 22h

Quick Tip: Don’t want people getting pinged when you post or reply?

You can turn that off by heading to: Settings → Privacy and Security → Allow others to be notified of your posts and toggling it off.

A screenshot of “Allow others to be notified of your posts” with “No one” selected

180 510 3K

Reposted by Deirdre Connolly¹ ²

🎃scarecrowcialism👻 @swolecialism.bsky.social · 22h

going academically beast mode

2 1 31

Reposted by Deirdre Connolly¹ ²

Techmeme @techmeme.com · 23h

Quantum computing stocks jumped after JPMorgan announced a $10B strategic tech investment; Arqit, D-Wave, Rigetti, and IonQ each rose about 20% (Jaures Yip/CNBC)

Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

2 5

Reposted by Deirdre Connolly¹ ²

tef @tef.bsky.social · 1d

it's kinda weird that all the software i am expected to use for work are all written by distributed teams, go, python, postgres, linux, chrome, k8s etc

and despite being told "the best teams work in an office together" i don't know of any software i use that's actually written that way

20 270 1.1K