Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Matt Hodges @matthodges.bsky.social · 14h

Sometimes when you post about a software you enjoy, the maintainer of the software will mail you stickers and a nice note.

2

Matt Hodges @matthodges.bsky.social · 17h

This is a wild story. Tangentially: you too can consume (non-sensitive) satellite data! We're all blanketed in free GPS data that you can just rip out of the air with something like this: www.sparkfun.com/gps-module-g... straight over UART.

Matt Hodges @matthodges.bsky.social · 18h

Amazing; thank you!

Matt Hodges @matthodges.bsky.social · 18h

Excited to try this - installation page is 404'ing
alexgarcia.xyz/libfec/insta...

alexgarcia.xyz

1

Reposted by Matt Hodges

Alex Garcia @alexgarcia.xyz · 18h

New blog post: I've been working on a new parser for the Federal Election Commission's custom `.fec` file format.

Written in Rust, completely open source, and the fastest FEC file parser out there.

If you ever work with federal campaign finance data, check it out!

alexgarcia.xyz/blog/2025/in...

I'm working on libfec, a new FEC file parser and CLI tool

Parse federal campaign filings

alexgarcia.xyz

1 2 6

Matt Hodges @matthodges.bsky.social · 18h

_awesome_

1

Matt Hodges @matthodges.bsky.social · 19h

I'm pretty sure everyone is lying about liking Neuromancer.

Rachel Feder @rachelfeder.bsky.social · 1d

Tell me your most unhinged literary opinion, as a little treat

1 1

Reposted by Matt Hodges

Resistance Frog Russ @massivruss.bsky.social · 1d

Thoreau was a mooching misanthrope.

7 4 150

Matt Hodges @matthodges.bsky.social · 21h

"I am a stochastic parrot and so are you." — David Hume, 1748

Matt Hodges @matthodges.bsky.social · 22h

Pretty much.

Matt Hodges @matthodges.bsky.social · 1d

here is my fav Cover Song

1 1 3

Matt Hodges @matthodges.bsky.social · 1d

I'm not saying it's my favorite, but it's objectively impressive that "Torn" was release by Ednaswap (1995) but everyone only knows it by Natalie Imbruglia (1997).

Sophia_Nyx 🏳️‍⚧️ @sophianyx.bsky.social · 1d

Without saying Hurt, fav Cover Song?

1 2 6

Reposted by Matt Hodges

Ben Yoel @benyoel.bsky.social · 1d

@liampert.bsky.social, @mattgrossmann.bsky.social, and I are thrilled to launch SenateData, a new repository pertaining to the US Senate. We have variables on facets like bills, and members, including original data on senator characteristics and an associated R package. github.com/IPPSR/Senate...

GitHub - IPPSR/SenateData: SenateData: A Functional Tool for the SenateData Dataset

SenateData: A Functional Tool for the SenateData Dataset - IPPSR/SenateData

github.com

4 22 51

Matt Hodges @matthodges.bsky.social · 1d

In politics, the comms professionals teach you that you don't have to answer the interviewer's question; you can answer whatever question you want them to have asked you. I think two decades of social media have taught us all to emulate that.

pork, cheese, broccoli rabe @garlicbuffalo.gobirds.biz · 1d

like the number of quotes and replies I get where I’m like “but that’s not even what I’m talking about rn” is staggering

2

Matt Hodges @matthodges.bsky.social · 1d

I love seeing how people always contort themselves to make "this thing would be good" == "this would be a good campaign focus".

1

Matt Hodges @matthodges.bsky.social · 1d

I'm reading Hume right now and a lot of his epistemology seems to align with how AI maximalists describe intelligence.

brasidas @brasidas.bsky.social · 2d

Anyone who claims that Silicon Valley would be better with more humanities education has to grapple with the fact that Peter Thiel was a philosophy major.

1 2

Matt Hodges @matthodges.bsky.social · 1d

“get up around eight, grab some Soylent, and Uber over to the DNC for a day”

1

Matt Hodges @matthodges.bsky.social · 1d

bluesky devastated

Most people are fairly optimistic that their lives will improve

If you ask people about whether the world as a whole is getting better or worse, most people say the latter. People are generally pessimistic about global or societal progress.

ourworldindata.org

1 1

Reposted by Matt Hodges

Tomb Cook @tom.horse · 1d

Yay, my one published mention in a book about our response to the 2016 Russian DNC hack. Crazy this was nearly a decade ago. archive.org/details/hack...

FIREFIGHTERS
189
intrusion. In this hodgepodge of a network, they would be facing them several times a week. Plus, they believed this work was vital to the election, much more important than what they had imagined when they signed up.
The team also needed more people. Rob and Ryan roughed out a list of people they were going to approach about coming to DC for a few weeks. They needed a great infrastructure person to help them gather the information necessary to make sense of the activity in more than thirty cloud accounts, several data centers and hundreds of desktops and laptops across the DNC.
Each piece of the network produces data for every action taken and those actions are recorded in logs. To make this environment easier to analyze they wanted Lom Cook, an infrastructure expert who has worked at the biggest Internet service companies in Silicon Valley, to set up the telemetry.
Rob and Ryan also needed hunters: engineers who are gifted at poring through the information generated by the network logs, server monitors, applications and cloud event logs to find patterns that identify where the bad stuff is hiding. They called Chris Long and another hunter TIl call Ron because he doesn't want his name used.
Then Ryan ordered $200 worth of Soylent, a meal-replacement fluid designed in Silicon Valley that supposedly fulfills all your body's nutritional needs. Ryan believed the schedule would be that they'd get up around eight, grab some Soylent, and Uber over to the DN for a day that would last until nine or ten at night, sometimes longer. Ryan decided he needed to buy the Solyent bars, too, as they didn't know if they'd be able to leave the computer room when an incident was underway.
And Rob called his girlfriend to cancel the trip to Paris they had planned for later that month. "We can go to Paris, or we can save the election," he told her. Lucky for him, she reluctantly agreed they could go another time.

1 1 1

Matt Hodges @matthodges.bsky.social · 1d

It's fun to search your own name in quotes. It's also wild how many high school year books are on Internet Archive. I dunno if decades-old pics of high school kids is weird or not tho.

Matt Hodges @matthodges.bsky.social · 2d

Well this is fun: Internet Archive full text search: archive.org/details/text...

Matt Hodges @matthodges.bsky.social · 1d

It's good to treat loser behavior as such.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 2d

STEPHANOPOULOS: I didn't insinuate anything. I asked you whether Tom Homan accepted $50k as was heard on an audio tape recorded by the FBI in September 2024. You did not answer the question. Thank you for your time.

VANCE: No, George, I sai--

STEPHANOPOULOS: We'll be right back

2

Matt Hodges @matthodges.bsky.social · 2d

Well this is fun: Internet Archive full text search: archive.org/details/text...

1 1 8

Matt Hodges @matthodges.bsky.social · 2d

Shorter version: I gained weight during the 2020 election, then I started dieting and exercising it away, then I moved to Austin, TX and enjoyed a lot of good food and drink for a few years and gained the weight back, but now I'm losing it again.

1 1

Matt Hodges @matthodges.bsky.social · 2d

This week I achieved a few milestones: I hit 1,000 rides on Peloton, I weighed in at my goal, and I crossed five years of logging all this health data. I wrote a little bit about it here.

matthodges.com/posts/2025-1...

Tracking Five Years Of Health Data

A thousand rides, a stack of apps, and actual motivation to get in shape

matthodges.com

1 3

Matt Hodges @matthodges.bsky.social · 4d

Rishi Sunak, who is still a member of of Britain’s parliament, is now also on the payroll of Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, and Anthropic, and is going to donate the income from those roles to a charity run by Rishi Sunak.

finance.yahoo.com/news/microso...

Microsoft, Anthropic Hire Former British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak

Sunak, who remains a member of Britain’s parliament, said he would be working with the tech companies as a senior adviser and strategic consultant.

finance.yahoo.com

2 1 4