LeaseGuard: Raft Leases Done Right! A new Raft enhancement for fast, consistent reads.

Yay, SIGMOD just published the paper I wrote with @muratdemirbas.bsky.social and Lingzhi Deng, it's about strengthening Raft's consistency and time-to-recovery lnkd.in/ef6qUJzw

Professor of the Practice in Computer Science with a Focus on Artificial Intelligence - Providence, Rhode Island job with Computer Science | 37970844 The Department of Computer Science at Brown University is seeking applicants for a Professor of the Practice position at the assistant, associate, ...

My department is looking to hire a professor of practice in CS, with a focus on AI. Job posting below. If you have questions I'll do my best to answer them, else find someone who can! We are in Providence, easy commute access from Boston.
jobs.chronicle.com/job/37970844...

Unique daily likers as a graph over the last year. It's down from about 1.6 million a day a year ago to 1.1 million a day now.

I tend to get dogpiled every time I say this but: as someone *who likes bluesky and benefits from being here* we have a problem.

The network is shrinking, not growing. It's shrinking a lot: only about 1.1m people a day even like a post. This time last year it was 1.6m.

Strongly recommend people try this. It's not only instructive, it's also fun.

While Washington wages war on science, NASA just sent humans to the Moon's vicinity for the first time since 1972. Bravo #TeamNASA — proof that public science, when it's funded and trusted, still does extraordinary things.

Review: Measuring AI Ability to Complete Long Software Tasks What we talk about when we talk about time horizon.

What's an AI time horizon, how is it measured, and how fast is it growing? emptysqua.re/blog/review-...

Last second but the deadline to apply for the Community Privacy Residency in Germany is tomorrow. This is a 3-week residency for researchers, builders & organizers to co-design open-source tools for communities w/ a focus on countersurveillance & community infrastructure
community-privacy.github.io

🔥 🌐 Workshop announcement: 🌐🔥
AI and the political economy of information filtering
May 25-27, 2026

Workshop website:
maxkasy.github.io/home/informa...

Registration:
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

The whole tech CEO celebrity culture the press created in the early 2000s has been such a disaster

I'm glad someone is calling out this trend. It's particularly pernicious in tech.

Contextualizing Cryptography What Is Cryptography For?

A student once emailed me to say they weren't sure they could justify staying in academia unless they knew they were providing a meaningful service. That email led to a workshop, a community and this post about why so many of us feel a malaise they can't name
open.substack.com/pub/senykama...

This is very grim

“This erodes roughly one-fifth of the average worldwide decline in maternal mortality achieved since 1985.”

Sycophantic AI decreases prosocial intentions and promotes dependence Despite rising concerns about sycophancy—excessive agreement or flattery from artificial intelligence (AI) systems—little is known about its prevalence or consequences. We show that sycophancy is wide...

OK, I'm obsessed with this study in @science.org

It took Reddit "Am I The Asshole" posts & asked LLMs if the poster was the asshole. Aaand (surprise) AI was more likely to tell people they were NOT the asshole ... even when humans said yeah YTA 🧪

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Excited to be co-chairing RAID 2026 (raid2026.org) alongside Tiffany Bao this year!

Looking for a security venue to submit your research? The deadline is just around the corner—April 16, 2026.

CFP: raid2026.org/call.html

Looking forward to seeing you in Lancaster this October (11–14)!

I’ve had a longstanding policy of always doing whatever @friedler.net says and it hasn’t led be astray yet. So goes for these recommendations.

CC: Congress

What the ‘Birthday Paradox’ Can Teach Us About Black History Opinion | Statistics can help fill in historical gaps, revealing surprising and empowering things about the past and present.

New for @undark.org

On: "The Birthday Paradox," the transatlantic slave trade, ancestral bonds, and the hidden power of statistics.

"Family is family, whatever our genetic relationship. Impressively, the birthday paradox study captures this possibility."

undark.org/2026/02/27/o...

[SCALE]: Software, Community, Territory April 17 – 18, 2026

Super excitedly looking forward to this workshop on Software, Community, Territory at Brown's humanities center @cogutinstitute.bsky.social : @biella.bsky.social , @steveklabnik.com , @ohrg.org , and all kinds of other amazing people.
humanities.brown.edu/events/AILab...

Iranians Don’t Have a Missile Alert System, So Volunteers Built Their Own Warning Map The crowdsourced website and app Mahsa Alert provides citizens in Iran with crucial information amid the country’s ongoing war with the US and Israel—and an internet blackout.

NEW with @lhn.bsky.social: The US claims to have struck more than 9,000 sites in Iran, but the war is taking place in an information void.

Iranian volunteers are mapping confirmed strikes and warning citizens about potential strike targets, as the country enters its 26th day without the internet

A short little “did you know” fun historical fact on West African griots.

#TAIKinspires #DidYouKnow #AfricanHistory #Griot #OralTradition #WestAfrica #AfricanCulture #UntoldStories #Storytelling #CulturalHeritage #IndigenousKnowledge #HistoryMatters

Information Transit Got the Wrong Man The mechanized tradition of peer review and the absurdity of bureaucratic conference review.

I wrote about the ICML LLM witch hunt and why it's paradigmatic of the absurd bureaucratic scaling of peer review.

If you're a tech worker who's interested in reading Marx's Capital with other tech workers, there's a free online course that's starting later this month cftw.ohrg.org

What an inspiration. Her appointment as Brown University president in 2000 was a landmark moment

Escaping Flatland STEM vs. Humanities Training

And would add that there are real limitations with STEM education that the humanities can fix.

senykamara.substack.com/publish/post...

The Danger Behind Meta Killing End-to-End Encryption for Instagram DMs Meta blamed users for not opting into the privacy-protecting feature. Experts fear the move could be the first major domino to fall for end-to-end encryption tech worldwide.

Them: "Instagram is rolling out end-to-end encryption via the Signal protocol. Isn't it great!!"

Me: "We'll see…"

*Meta deeply buries E2E encryption in Instagram as an opt-in choice.*

*2+ years pass*

*Meta kills encrypted Instagram DMs*

Scoop by @lhn.bsky.social

New study shows democracy has deep global roots—not just Greece and Rome A new study on ancient societies from around the world is rewriting what we thought we knew about democracy. A team of researchers analyzed archaeological and historical evidence from 31 ancient socie...

Press release for our new paper!

“…people across the world created inclusive political systems, even under difficult conditions…An understanding of the hallmarks of autocracy and democracy can help identify threats and pump the brakes on burgeoning totalitarian regimes.”

phys.org/news/2026-03...

Inside a rare lab that's blazing a bold trail as it hunts for new drugs A scientist from Zambia who loves — LOVES! — chemistry runs a lab in South Africa that is being hailed for "extraordinary" work.

A scientist from Zambia who loves — LOVES! — chemistry runs a lab in South Africa that is being hailed for "extraordinary" work. n.pr/4spvLU2

Statistical Rethinking 2026 is done: 20 new lectures emphasizing logical and critical statistical workflow, from basics of probability theory to causal inference to reliable computation to sensitivity. It's all free, made just for you. Lecture list and links: github.com/rmcelreath/s...

The user is going to download WhatsApp and get whatever defaults or “strongly recommended and nudged” opt-ins they get. And security folks who know better will say things like “the user chose a threat model” while five years of backed-up data goes into the ingestion pipeline.

People are acting like AI agents + TEEs in E2E messengers. is a privacy feature. They’re out of their mind.

TEEs process data and extract valuable “meaning.” What do you think Meta is going to do with all that valuable extracted data? Keep it locked up on device? Are you joking?!

The deadline for Brown AI Policy Summer School is coming up soon: March 27!