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Saved by @AnJamison

It's been eight years since @aaronsw took his own life. Aaron had been charged with 13 felonies under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (#CFAA) for violating the terms of service on the @JSTOR database of scholarly articles.

1/

 Prosecutors Stephen Heymann and Carmen Ortiz didn't dispute that Aaron was allowed to access the articles he retrieved. Rather, they said that the WAY he accessed them (using a script instead of clicking on links) was a terms-of-service violation and hence a crime.

2/
In other words: any business could conjure a felony out of thin air by making you click through an unreadable garbage-novella of legalese proscribing the use of a service they granted you access to. Violate any of those terms and you face a prison sentence.

3/
This isn't law as we know it, it's Felony Contempt of Business Model, and the most alarming thing was that this interpretation of the CFAA wasn't completely ridiculous, given how badly drafted that law is.

4/
Ronald Reagan signed CFAA into law. Fed prosecutors had been seeking broad authority to punish "hacking" and had drawn up an absurdly broad definition of cybercrime that would give them latitude to go after anyone they didn't like.

5/
They wanted to define hacking as "exceeding your authorization" on a computer that didn't belong to you. Even in the mid-1980s, legal and technical scholars recognized the potential dangers of a definition this broad, but not Ronald Reagan.

6/
Then Reagan got spooked by the movie Wargames - yes, the one with Matthew Broderick - and urged the dimbulbs in the Congress and Senate to send the CFAA to his desk. They obliged, he signed it, and CFAA became law in 1986.

7/
In the decades since, CFAA has become a major source of cybersecurity mischief. Security researchers who audit systems and warn their users about defects in them are silenced with CFAA threats, giving companies a veto over who can criticize them and how.

8/
Monopolistic online businesses threaten their competitors with CFAA liability. Companies like Facebook have managed to prevail in court, interpreting CFAA the same way Aaron's prosecutors did, making terms-of-service violations into violations of the law.

9/
But cracks have appeared in this dangerous interpretation of CFAA. The @ACLU and a group of journalists have been litigating to overturn portions of the law since 2016:

https://t.co/JPut5Fgv7A

10/
And in 2019, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals produced a remarkably good ruling on CFAA in Hiq v Linkedin, splitting with its own (terrible) precedents in Power Ventures and Nosal II.

https://t.co/EKPpbIrqeT

11/
But the main event for CFAA-fighters has been at the Supreme Court this year, where the Van Buren case promised to make or break the worst elements of the CFAA for good.

12/
The truism "hard cases make bad law" was especially true in Van Buren. Nathan Van Buren was a crooked Georgia cop who took a bribe to look up a sex-worker's personal information in the state law-enforcement database in a FBI sting.

13/
Van Buren thought he was helping a criminal determine whether the sex-worker was an undercover cop.

Van Buren is a bad man and a bad cop.

But he isn't a hacker.

14/
Nevertheless, prosecutors charged him under the CFAA, saying that while he was allowed to access the database, doing so for an improper purpose was a hacking crime, because he "exceeded his authorization."

15/
This may sound sensible - or just expedient - to you. But if the prosecutors were right - if accessing a computer you were authorized to use, but in an unauthorized way - is a felony, then almost everyone is a felon.

16/
The DoJ's theory of the CFAA would make most terms-of-service violations into potential jailable offenses (think "sharing Netflix passwords"). If federal prosecutors gain the power to threaten prison for anyone - everyone - this won't be used to rid the world of dirty cops.

17/
Rather, it will be used against people who already bear the brunt of prosecutorial overreach, creating leverage over the victims of dirty cops.

Thankfully, the Supremes agreed. Yesterday, they handed down a good - if not great - ruling in Van Buren.

18/
The best analysis - as ever - comes from my @EFF colleagues @kurtopsahl and @aaron_d_mackey.

https://t.co/uOf9altGpw

19/
As they point out, the heart of the ruling is a ban on breaking into computer systems - not criminalizing entering the wrong command into a computer you're allowed to use.

20/
This correct interpretation (far narrower than the DoJ's) safeguards security researchers, competitors, and other researchers doing things like gathering data from a housing site to investigate racial bias in rental ads.

21/
As the court pointed out, the DoJ's interpretation was so broad that it could criminalize "embellishing an online-dating profile to using a pseudonym on Facebook."

22/
The ruling was good, but not perfect. A single footnote explains that the court isn't ruling on whether the CFAA only applies when someone bypasses a technical measure, which leaves the door open to turning policy and contract violations into crimes.

23/
SCOTUS got it (mostly) right here. They vindicated Aaron Swartz and all the other victims who were bullied, silenced and terrorized by the CFAA. They took a huge step towards undoing one of Ronald Reagan's many idiocies.

24/
Van Buren should be punished for corruption - under anti-corruption law, not under a definition of hacking so broad that it captures normal activities we all engage in several times, every day.

Image:
Sage Ross
https://t.co/v5DNkF72C4

CC BY-SA:
https://t.co/guhq1dyHz1

eof/
ETA - If you'd like an unrolled version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on https://t.co/iSBh8s9m7q, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://t.co/aXvTZ5o9d6

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The Democrats are at least two parties. The progressive wing of the party (which is by no means unified) and the finance wing of the party, which is also the party leadership.

1/

During the leadership race, the progressive wing was represented by @SenSanders and @SenWarren; the former wants to minimize the role of markets in our lives, the latter wants to redeem markets by regulating them. It's a distinction with a difference, but I donated to both.

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Both wings of the party have prominent representatives in Congress; Sandersism are most visibly associated with @AOC (whom I donated to) and Warrenism is embodied by @RepKatiePorter (likewise), who was also one of Warren's law school proteges.

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Porter is a force of nature. She is infamous - and celebrated - for her brutal, no-holds-barred questioning of both corporate and administration witnesses, using a white-board to pin them down and eviscerating any attempts at bullshittery.

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This isn't just about getting facts into the record (though, she is SO GOOD at getting facts into the record!), it's also about effecting change, like when she single-handedly cornered the CDC's chief into guaranteeing universal, free covid
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When they write the history of this era, one of the strangest chapters will be devoted to Uber, a company that was never, ever going to be profitable, which existed solely to launder billions for the Saudi royals.

1/


From the start, Uber's "blitzscaling" strategy involved breaking local taxi laws (incurring potentially unlimited civil liability) while losing (lots of) money on every ride. They flushed billions and billions and billions of dollars down the drain.

2/

But they had billions to burn. Mohammed bin Salman, the murdering Crown Prince of the Saudi royal family, funded Softbank - a Japanese pump-and-dump investment scheme behind Wework and other grifts - with $80B as part of his "Vision 2030"

Vision 2030 is a scheme to diversify Saudi wealth away from hydrocarbons by attempting to establish monopolies that will allow the family to control entire sectors of the global economy.

4/

These schemes are longshots, and the fallback position is to unload failed monopolies - with staggering debt-overhangs - on investors who've been suckered with the promise that really big piles of shit surely have a pony buried underneath them somewhere.

5/
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Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
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20 years on, #BushVGore is back in our discourse - an election stolen by mobs at the polling places, a media blitz, and a Supreme Court at its most antidemocratic and antimajoritarian.

1/


We remember this as an election that the plutes stole, but it's also an election that the Dems gave to them. That's why we're talk about it now. There will be an attempt to steal next month's election. Will we surrender again?

2/

The last surrender led to a war being fought today by the children of the soldiers who were sent into battle on day one. It led to climate inaction, monopolistic concentration, erosions to our right to vote and to our right to protest.

3/

Thanks to that surrender, voter suppression was expanded and reinforced, leading to the election of a fumbling liar who got to appoint more SCOTUS judges in 3.5 years than all Democratic presidents did in the previous quarter


You may be wondering how the Dems surrendered in 2020. For a detailed account of what surrender looks like, read @rsgexp's @jacobin memoir of her time as an @AFLCIO organizer sent to Florida during the
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The pandemic has afforded all of us a refresher course on the five stages of grief, a theoretical and controversial framework for describing how people cope with tragedy: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

https://t.co/nqPmjCvyab

1/


A far slower-moving unfolding of these stages can be seen in the reactions of the super-wealthy to the breakdown in neoliberal orthodoxy, the tale that says that inequality results from meritocracy, and makes us all better

Denial came out in the "rationalist" view: the world is better off than ever - richer, less violent, healthier, and any discontent you feel with your plummeting fortunes and the contracting possibilities for your kids is just your tunnel vision. Lack of perspective.

3/

But the Great Financial Crisis and Occupy triggered the anger of the elites: violent suppression of protests, the "Doom Boom" in new luxury bunkers, Howard Schultz's insistence that "billionaire" is a slur (he says we should call him a "person of wealth").

4/

The pandemic - and the "K-shaped recovery"- has revealed the existential threat inequality poses for our species, between price-gouging, fraud, profiteering, flouting health directives, and coercing the poor and vulnerable into risking their lives to keep the economy afloat.

5/
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One of the most Monkey's Paw things about my life is my relationship to books. When I was a teenager, I read all the way through the school and public libraries, spent everything I had on books, and still couldn't get enough and dreamt of more.

1/


Today, as a reviewer, I have more books than I can possibly read, huge, teetering mountains of books that I'm desperate to read, far beyond my ability to ever get through them. Periodically, I declare "book bankruptcy," sweep away the backlog and start over.

2/

Even then, my eyes are bigger than my stomach: I keep back a few books that I can't bear to part with and promise myself I'll read them someday. Usually I don't, but I just did, and boy did I ever make the right call with @TheUniverse's BROAD

I have read a LOT of histories of computing, and I had a front row seat for a lot of the events depicted in this book - people I worked with, people I worked against - and yet I was surprised over and over again with details and perspectives I'd never encountered.

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For example, for some reason, my ninth grade computer science course included lengthy readings on ENIAC, Univac, the Mark I and the Mark II, but none of those mentioned that they were all programmed exclusively or primarily by women.

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அஸ்தினாபுரத்து அரசி👸...
@SivaRoobini555
#தினம்_ஒரு_திருவாசகம்
தொல்லை இரும்பிறவிச் சூழும் தளை நீக்கி
அல்லல் அறுத்து ஆனந்தம் ஆக்கியதே – எல்லை
மருவா நெறியளிக்கும் வாதவூர் எங்கோன்
திருவாசகம் என்னும் தேன்

பொருள்:
1.எப்போது ஆரம்பித்தது என அறியப்படமுடியாத தொலை காலமாக (தொல்லை)

2. இருந்து வரும் (இரும்)


3.பிறவிப் பயணத்திலே ஆழ்த்துகின்ற (பிறவி சூழும்)

4.அறியாமையாகிய இடரை (தளை)

5.அகற்றி (நீக்கி),

6.அதன் விளைவால் சுகதுக்கமெனும் துயரங்கள் விலக (அல்லல் அறுத்து),

7.முழுநிறைவாய்த் தன்னுளே இறைவனை உணர்த்துவதே (ஆனந்த மாக்கியதே),

8.பிறந்து இறக்கும் காலவெளிகளில் (எல்லை)

9.பிணைக்காமல் (மருவா)

10.காக்கும் மெய்யறிவினைத் தருகின்ற (நெறியளிக்கும்),

11.என் தலைவனான மாணிக்க வாசகரின் (வாதவூரெங்கோன்)

12.திருவாசகம் எனும் தேன் (திருவா சகமென்னுந் தேன்)

முதல்வரி: பிறவி என்பது முன்வினை விதையால் முளைப்பதோர் பெருமரம். அந்த ‘முன்வினை’ எங்கு ஆரம்பித்தது எனச் சொல்ல இயலாது. ஆனால் ‘அறியாமை’ ஒன்றே ஆசைக்கும்,, அச்சத்துக்கும் காரணம் என்பதால், அவையே வினைகளை விளைவிப்பன என்பதால், தொடர்ந்து வரும் பிறவிகளுக்கு, ‘அறியாமையே’ காரணம்

அறியாமைக்கு ஆரம்பம் கிடையாது. நமக்கு ஒரு பொருளைப் பற்றிய அறிவு எப்போதிருந்து இல்லை? அதைச் சொல்ல முடியாது. அதனாலேதான் முதலடியில், ஆரம்பமில்லாத அஞ்ஞானத்தை பிறவிகளுக்குக் காரணமாகச் சொல்லியது. ஆனால் அறியாமை, அறிவின் எழுச்சியால், அப்போதே முடிந்து விடும்.
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श्रीमाली हितेश अवस्थी...
@HiteshAwasthi89
Varahi Amman, Madurai, Tamilnadu

Vaarahi is one of the Saivite Shakti deities with the group of goddesses known as SAPTAMATAS.
They are: Brahmi, Maheshwari, Kaumari, Vaishnavi, Vaarahi, Mahendri and Chamundi. 1/n


They are the Shakti (female) equivalents of their male counterparts. Vaarahi is the Shakti of Bhairavar who is one of the Amsam of Bhairavar.Created from the boar avatara of Vishnu, Vaarahi is often associated with Goddess Kamala (one of the Mahavidyas). 2/n


She is also called Dandini (Lady Commander of the forces of the Mother-Goddess, symbolizing the might of SriVidya). As Vaarahi ("hog-faced" or "the great consumer") she destroys evil forces that obstructs the devotees' progress, paralyses the enemies 3/n


and led the devotees ultimately to SriVidyas. She is also called Panchami). With Kurukalla, she is accorded the parental status to Sri-Chakra (Lalita Tripura-Sundari). While Kurukalla represents the full moon, Vaarahi represents the new-moon. 4/4

Jai Maa Varahi 🙏


Tag for 📷 credit
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#Thread Two divine forms of Khatu Shyam ji...


On the day of Amavasya, devotees get the darshan of Shyam Baba in Shyam varan (black color). In ordinary days, the form of Baba is saffron. The reason for this is a custom. The real head of Shyam Baba which had appeared from Shyam Kund is of Shyam varan.


Every day Shyam Baba's grand Shringar is done by Pujaris. The main part of Shyam Baba's shringar is Tilak. This Shringar is done by the members of Nij Mandir sevaks. The sevaks of the Nij Mandir do sandalwood tilak to Baba everyday in the auspicious time.


This Divine Tilak is applied from the forehead to the nose. When Baba is given a bath by sevaks, this tilak comes off. Then in the auspicious time, the sevaks again apply tilak to Baba.


There is no auspicious time on the Amavasya. Because of this, tilak is not done on that day. That's why devotees have darshan of Shyam Baba on the Amavasya only in the actual real form (Shyam Swaroop). Baba's tilak is done on Amavasya only on the day of Deepawali.
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APIs in general are so powerful.

Best 5 public APIs you can use to build your next project:

1. Number Verification API

A RESTful JSON API for national and international phone number validation.

🔗 https://t.co/fzBmCMFdIj


2. OpenAI API

ChatGPT is an outstanding tool. Build your own API applications with OpenAI API.

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3. Currency Data API

Currency Data API provides a simple REST API with real-time and historical exchange rates for 168 world currencies

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4. Weather API

Real-Time & historical world weather data API.

Retrieve instant, accurate weather information for
any location in the world in lightweight JSON format.

🔗 https://t.co/DCY8kXqVIK
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Buzz Chronicles
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@SaveToBookmarks Hi! Sure. Original tweet by @buzz_chronicles: "@SaveToBookmarks Namaste! You can find it here. Original tweet by @AchuthArora: ...". Enjoy 👌

Hi! Of course! Original tweet by @SaveToBookmarks: "@buzz_chronicles @AchuthArora @AJA_Cortes @rattibha You won't miss this tweet an...". Enjoy 👌
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STORY OF PURANAS AND SUB PURANA (उप पुराण).

We have already gone through the series on importance & characteristics of all the eighteen Purans. We also know that originally there were hundred crore shlokas but were divided by Vyas in each Kalp and was compiled as eighteen Purans


for the common people to understand it properly and now their total is about four lakhs.

In Brahm Puran, Brahma preached this to Marichi. So this Puran of ten thousand shlokas is called Brahm Puran.

In Padma Puran, the base of the story is the appearance of Brahma on a lotus(Padm) from Vishnu' s navel.This has fifty five thousand shlokas.

Vishnu Puran is primarily based in Varah kalp. This book is on Vishnu and this book has twenty three thousand shlokas.

Vaayu Puran is written in Shwet Kalp and has twenty four thousand shlokas. Here Vayudev preaches about Dharma.

In Bhagwat Puran, which is written with the base of Gayatri mantra describes Dharma extensively. It has 18000 shlokas. It also mentions the story of Vritrasur.

In Narad Puran, which has twenty five thousand shlokas, is a sermon on Dharma by Narad based in Brihad Kalp.

Markandeya Puran has nine thousand shlokas and here it is through the birds that Dharma is described.
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sriram \U0001f1ee\U0001f1f3
sriram 🇮🇳...
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Don't be too excited about the Khel Ratna award being renamed. There is a lot more to do. If have patience, go through this list.
1. Rajiv Gandhi Gold Cup Kabaddi Tournament
2. Rajiv Gandhi Sadbhavana Run
3. Rajiv Gandhi Federation Cup boxing championship

4. Rajiv Gandhi International tournament (football)
5. NSCI – Rajiv Gandhi road races, New Delhi
6. Rajiv Gandhi Boat Race, Kerala
7. Rajiv Gandhi International Artistic Gymnastic Tournament
8. Rajiv Gandhi Kabbadi Meet

9. Rajiv Gandhi Memorial Roller Skating Championship
10. Rajiv Gandhi memorial marathon race, New Delhi
11. Rajiv Gandhi International Judo Championship, Chandigarh
12. Rajiv Gandhi Memorial Trophy for the Best College, Calicut

13. Rajiv Gandhi Rural Cricket Tournament, Initiated by Rahul Gandhi in Amethi
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15. Rajiv Gandhi Trophy (football)
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Janmajit Sinha
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#Thread - 1/21

A story of a brave woman who let her "breast" cut to protect the life of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose!

Neera Arya was born on March 5 1902 in Khekra Nagar, Uttar Pradesh in a distinguished & eminent businessman Seth Chhajumal's family. Since her childhood,


2/21
She was a true nationalist & always had a vision of becoming a part of the freedom fighter movement. She was also reportedly accused as an undercover by the British Govt.

That was the time when her father's business was flourishing in Calcutta, though his business was..

3/21
spread across the country but Calcutta was the center of his business and that was one of the reasons why her education was done in Calcutta. During that period of time, she had learned quite a few languages along with Bengali, Hindi, English.

4/21
Her father got her married to a CID Inspector "Shrikant Jairanjan Das" in British India but they were two different individuals, Neera Arya was a true nationalist but her husband was a true British servant. She was highly motivated & she had an urge of getting us freedom..

5/21
so she ended up joining the Jhansi Regiment in Azad Hind Fauz after the marriage. It was the regiment that the British always accused them of spying on British Govt.

It was the time when Neera's husband Jairanjan Das was given the responsibility to spy on Netaji Subhash..
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Priyanka (Astrology Gu...
@AstroAmigo
1

From today, we will memorize the names of 27 Nakshatras in Vedic Jyotish to never forget in life.

I will write 4 names. Repeat them in SAME sequence twice in morning, noon, evening. Each day, revise new names + recall all previously learnt names.

Pls RT if you are in.

2

Today's Nakshatras are:-

1. Ashwini - अश्विनी

2. Bharani - भरणी

3. Krittika - कृत्तिका

4. Rohini - रोहिणी

Ashwini - अश्विनी is the FIRST Nakshatra.

Repeat these names TWICE now, tomorrow morning, noon and evening. Like this tweet if you have revised 8 times as told.

3

Today's Nakshatras are:-

5. Mrigashira - मृगशिरा

6. Ardra - आर्द्रा

7. Punarvasu - पुनर्वसु

8. Pushya - पुष्य

First recall previously learnt Nakshatras twice. Then recite these TWICE now, tomorrow morning, noon & evening in SAME order. Like this tweet only after doing so.

4

Today's Nakshatras are:-

9. Ashlesha - अश्लेषा

10. Magha - मघा

11. Purvaphalguni - पूर्वाफाल्गुनी

12. Uttaraphalguni - उत्तराफाल्गुनी

Purva means that comes before (P se Purva, P se pehele), and Uttara comes later.

Read next tweet too.

5

Purva, Uttara prefixes come in other Nakshatras too. Purva= pehele wala. Remember.

First recall previously learnt 8 Nakshatras twice. Then recite those in Tweet #4 TWICE now, tomorrow morning, noon & evening in SAME order. Like this tweet if you have read Tweets #4 & 5, both.
VEDICNAKSHATRA
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“Why are Tumblr and Facebook cracking down on sex so much? And why is Facebook in so over zealous about it? It’s all Apples fault!” Etc etc

I can explain all. It is largely the fault of a set of US laws called SESTA and FOSTA.
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