my mother died four years ago, and her cel phone has been sitting, locked, on my dresser ever since. i made four bad pin attempts at it years ago then decided not to push my luck any further.

this morning, while making coffee, it suddenly dawned on me what it would be and, behold, it was.

here is the lesson: write down your important passwords. put them in a sealed envelope and give them to someone you trust, or the executor of your will or your lawyer. do it today.

If any developer of any software I use to write/review code announced they were going to put logic in that software to extract/send/train on my code - **even if it was opt-in/disabled by default** - that software would be uninstalled and that developer blacklisted from any system I had any control over for the rest of time.

Without hesitation or delay. Even with the best of intentions and security practice I could simply never trust that piece of software again.

Hello Masto-peeps who use screen readers!

I just learned that I need to put alt text on URLs for more accessible PDFs, but -- what should it say?

I am formatting academic citations that include a URL, so all the information about where that link will take you is in the text. I don't want it to read the URL to you and I don't want to just repeat the same information you just heard. What do you find most helpful in this situation?

Pls boost for reach!

#accessibility #AltText #ScreenReader

Anyone using the Blade Player for Spotify, Deezer, SoundCloud?

apt.izzysoft.de/packages/v.bla…

It wasn't updated since 12/2023, but still sees more than 100 installs per month here. In its issue tracker, there are reports of crashes, and Spotify being broken. Does it still work for you? Or should we rather remove it?

EDIT: as it seems entirely broken, it has now been removed. Thanks to all who checked!

#serviceToot #FollowerPower #IzzyOnDroid

„Blade Player“ – IzzyOnDroid F-Droid Repository

music player that plays from local library, Spotify, Deezer or SoundCloud

^{IzzyOnDroid Repo Browser}

Need some #Ceph advisory for my private cluster on #proxmox:

3 nodes with 2x 18 TB HDD each.

According to some docs I found, WAL/DB size should be 1-4% of the disk size, so a SSD should be between 180 to 720 GB for each disk or 360 to 1.44 TB for the two disks in each node.

Is this still be true or is it nowadays more relaxed and - let's say - 200 GB for each HDD will be sufficient?

#followerpower #ceph #proxmox

Looking at the *at family of functions and I just realized that I viewed them as part of the capsicum security framework and not as part of allowing a threaded program to access relative paths from each thread's own working directory.

This explains why absolute paths are allowed and ignores the directory fd.

FreeBSD's openat man page explains this.

#FreeBSD

"Don't Forget: Remote MCP Servers are Just #cURL Calls"

joshbeckman.org/blog/practicin…

Don't Forget: Remote MCP Servers are Just cURL Calls

You can call any streamable-http transport MCP (Model Context Protocol) server tool with any HTTP client - even cURL! And lots of things take cURL as example configuration (like Shopify Flow!), so it’s a good starting point for building things....

^{Josh Beckman}

#FAQ: “What do you do with #FreeBSD ?" "Operating in the financial markets" 😀 #ThePowerToInvest 😆

#Investing 📊 #Trading 📈 #Stocks 📉 #ETFs #Bonds #Commodities #Derivatives #Forex 💹 #Crypto 🪙 #NASDAQ #SP500 #DOWJONES #WallStreet 🗽 #Bull 🐂 #Bear 🐻 #TechFinance

#FreeBSD #Unix #OpenSource

Prime Day returns on October 7th, and this is the hottest deal yet: save 100% of the price of any item on Amazon BY NOT BUYING IT.

Follow me for more money-saving shopping tips!

Fette Lücke in der #GameEngine #Unity mit Schadcodeausführung, teilweise auch aus dem Internet: heise.de/news/Spiele-Engine-Un…

Die Liste erscheint mir, auch mit der Einschränkung "in Unity Gaming Engine Editor Version 2017.1 oder neuer" erstellt etwas kurz, wenn man bedenkt wie krass verbreitet Unity doch ist. Und ob da noch alles gepatcht wird, darf bezweifelt werden - da sind ja so seinige Legacy-Titel bei.

Ohje ohje... 🙈

#Gaming #Security

Spiele-Engine Unity: Lücke bedroht Android, Linux, macOS und Windows

Unity steckt in zahlreichen populären Spielen für Mobilgeräte und Desktop. Eine gravierende Lücke ermöglicht Angreifern, Schadcode auszuführen.

^{Dirk Knop (heise online)}

We appreciate that certain politicians have recently admitted their naivete in entrusting the voices of their governments to corporate / for-profit social media.

To these politicians, we say: joinmastodon.org/hosting

Managed Mastodon

^{joinmastodon.org}

Die #Pixum #Software zur #Gestaltung von #Foto #Drucksachen gibt es auch für den #Linux #Desktop:

pixum.de/fotobuch/software
Finde ich gut.

#Design

Pixum Fotowelt Software kostenlos herunterladen | Pixum

Gestalte dein Pixum Fotobuch mit der kostenlosen Fotowelt Software ♥ Download für Windows, Linux oder Mac ✓ Einfach und vielseitig ✓

^Pixum

Rush Tour 2026: Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson Return to Road

rollingstone.com/music/music-n…

Without Neal Peart.

Edit: I trust it will be an awesome tour with Anika Nilles

Rush Tour 2026: Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson Return to Road

Drummer Anika Nilles will join Lee and Lifeson for a 50th anniversary tour dedicated to the memory of the late Neil Peart

^{Brian Hiatt (Rolling Stone)}

***** An Open Letter to the CEOs of #Apple and #Google: Would you have supported the Nazis during WWII? *****

Dear Tim and Sundar,

Hi. I'd normally start a letter like this asking how you were doing, but since you're both billionaires who have been palling around with Donald Trump, I think we can dispense with that formality this time.

I've got a question for you guys. I don't really expect an answer, but I feel that it needs to be asked anyway. Here we go ...

"If Apple, Google, and apps had been around during WWII, would you have supported the Nazis, either explicitly or implicitly?"

As you probably know, IBM has been raked over the coals for decades for the technological assistance they provided the Third Reich, helping them tabulate "undesirables" for a "final solution."

Which brings us to you two! Yeah, you knew this was coming. I have to assume that your dramatic decisions to remove apps that helped the public legally determine the location of ICE operations was approved at your level. If not, you're still ultimately responsible, of course.

Word is that DOJ requested Apple to pull the apps, and that Google pulled them proactively without waiting around for a request. These of course were completely legal apps, breaking no laws that I'm aware of. Banning them from your apps stores effectively bans them virtually completely in a practical sense. Sideloading in iOS has always been difficult, and Google has announced upcoming restrictions that would make sideloading much more difficult for Android as well.

The parallels between your decisions regarding those apps and what went on during WWII in Nazi Germany are very troubling indeed. The Nazis legally (under then current laws) rounded up their target populations: Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and a range of other "undesirables", then "disappeared" them with minimal or no due process, whisking them off to concentration camps. This included cripples, mothers, children -- an enormous range. Many were never heard from again. Millions were exterminated.

I don't need to spell out the parallels with what Trump's ICE is now doing -- they're obvious on the daily news. And before you protest that you're not killing anyone by banning those apps, I'd argue that you indeed are very likely contributing to deaths.

The large majority of people being deported via these ICE raids have no criminal record and their only "crime" is being in this country illegally -- sometimes for decades raising families of U.S. citizens. Many are being deported to countries where they face the high likelihood of horrific treatment including torture and death.

I don't really need to go on any further, do I boys? You're both intelligent and informed. You both know exactly what you're doing. So I come back to the original question. If your firms had been around during WWII, would you have supported the Nazis? If not, your apparently enthusiastic embrace of the current administration's fascist behaviors seems inexplicable.

But hey, perhaps you have logical explanations that aren't obvious to those of us in the non-billionaire class. If so, we'd love to hear them!

Sincerely,

L

Welcome #FreeBSD 16.0 on my laptop! Smooth, fast, and running perfectly with Xfce.

FreeBSD #Unix #OpenSource #BSD #FreeBSD16 #Xfce #DesktopUnix #Tech #FreeBSDCommunity #FreeBSDLaptop