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I’ve just gotten culture shock.

Those of you keeping track will know that I did a Christmas market tour early December last year. I ended up downloading the Karlsruhe transit authority’s (KVV) app and buying a day ticket or two off them.

These days I’m more familiar with German transit ticketing, so I haven’t used the KVV app since then.

And today I have received this SMS, telling me they’re going to delete my account soon.

…

⁃ A company that is systematically deleting accounts after a year?
⁃ That takes their data protection responsibilities seriously?
⁃ That proactively informs their data subjects with plenty of time to cope?
⁃ That doesn’t do so using dark marketing patterns that try to guilt me into staying?
⁃ Or upsell me?
⁃ Or trick me into clicking somewhere as the only way to exercise my rights?

I am agog. My flabber is truly ghasted.

Genuinely, this sort of attitude needs to be praised. It’s been 10 years since GDPR, and this sort of thing is still that rare.

KVV easy Text Message • SMS Today 05:53 Your account with Karlsruher Verkehrsverbund GmbH (KVV) will be deleted in 20 days due to inactivity
in reply to Moof!

mastodon - Link to source

Moof!

Sorry, a little more gushing on this message:

⁃ It was sent by SMS to my Spanish number. They don’t care that the number is not German. Their systems will allow this.
⁃ It was sent by SMS, not WhatsApp, which is annoyingly increasingly becoming the default messaging platform for this sort of thing, thus making an American company the mediator of all your messages.
⁃ It was sent in English, my language of choice on their website and app, their processes are capable of checking my language preferences
⁃ No link was included. Nor instructions. If you care about this, it’s obvious what to do. No need to send something that can be turned into a Phishing vector
⁃ My name wasn’t mentioned, no need to attempt to gender me by giving me a title

None of these things are standard yet, and they should be. If you work for a consumer-facing company, can you say that your customer data will be treated this way?

Almost makes me want to keep my account with them, just for the respect they’ve shown

mastodon - Link to source
Resident Says She Can't Open Windows Anymore Because of 'Rotten' Smell from Living Near Elon Musk's Giant Data Center
people.com/resident-living-nea…

Resident Says She Can't Open Windows Anymore Because of 'Rotten' Smell from Living Near Elon Musk's Giant Data Center

Memphis residents say they're already grappling for clean air after Elon Musk’s AI company began pumping out plumes of pollution to power its gargantuan data center.
Sam Gillette (PEOPLE)

mastodon - Link to source

You might not notice it in your peer group, when you are not their age, but my daughter showed me that many 20-30yr olds are switching to dumb phones, are cancelling their Facebook/tiktok/twitter accounts and are discovering libraries and printed books. As a conscious decision. Not all of them, but quite a lot and it's growing.

1/3

This entry was edited (2 days ago)
in reply to nickapos

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ArcaneChat

another nice thing you can do with delta chat is having in-chat tools like shopping lists in the family chat where anyone can add or mark an item as done and is marked for everyone, collaborative text pad, to-do lists, split bills, mini-games etc. you can even write your own small utility apps and share it in the chats and your contacts will be able to use them in all platforms

the speed is of chatting is realtime if you use the optimized chatmail relays instead of classic email

mastodon - Link to source
Iran may be on the verge of Internet shutdowns again. If you have friends or family in #Iran, now is the time to let them onboard for example with tiiiz.ir -- because using in-country servers helps to stay connected. If you need support for setting up a relay in or for Iran, send us a DM and we'll see to connect you with other knowledgeable operators.
با آرزوی فردایی بهتر...

tiiiz.ir home

tiiiz.ir
#iran

feld reshared this.

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Please remember the 6-2-1 rule:

6 hours of sleep
2 warm meals
1 shower

Per day.
Not per Congress.

Please don't overwork yourself. If you feel exhausted, please take a break. Pease don't hesitate to call us via DECT 1023 at any time to sign out of a shift if you can't make it or feel uncomfortable for any reason.

P.S.: Drink more water!

#39C3

#39c3
This entry was edited (3 days ago)

mastodon - Link to source

26 years ago, on December 28 1999, we migrated the main #curl source code from self-hosted to Sourceforge.

It was the new hot thing. Imagine the idea of a dedicated service devoted to nothing but hosting code!

We then kept the code there for ten years (on CVS). A period when the distributed version control systems really exploded.

#curl
This entry was edited (14 hours ago)

mastodon - Link to source
Můj zlozvyk číslo 1:
V rámci úspory času a nachozených kroků jsem začal strategicky přemýšlet, co všechno můžu při jedné cestě z jedné místnosti do druhé udělat nebo vzít. Nejdřív mi to dávalo smysl, ale posléze jsem toto začal praktikovat i v práci, což se trochu začínalo zvrtávat. Typickým příkladem je vaření kafe ráno po příchodu do práce. Do toho si ještě nosím vodu z automatu a někdy i talíř na snídani. Kávovar je ráno potřeba zapnout, vyhodit logr, doplnit vodu. Někdy si během toho ještě strategicky odběhnu na záchod. I když jsem si všechno strategicky plánoval, pak jsem na jednotlivé podúkoly začal zapomínat. Výsledkem bylo, že když jsem se na stejnou trasu vrátil za 20 minut, viděl jsem nachystaný talíř k odnesení, uvařené kafe nebo někde na mě ještě číhala lžička. Cítil jsem se zoufale.

mastodon - Link to source

Die #DB_Bahn sollte sich lieber mal fragen, wieso Menschen mit Rollstuhl 'verladen' werden müssen - wär sie nämlich #barrierefei gäbs das Problem nämlich nicht.

fr.de/panorama/maximal-respekt…

Mal abgesehen davon, dass Menschen mit Hilfebedarf aufgrund fehlender #Barrierefreiheit ja nicht mal spontan reisen können sondern sich vorher erstmal beim Mobilitätservice anmelden müssen.

Der nach meinem letzten Kenntnisstand eine kostenpflichtige Rufnummer hat.

#Inklusion ist ein Menschenrecht


„Maximal respektlos“: DB-Durchsage enthüllt grundlegendes Problem in Deutschland

Eine Durchsage der Deutschen Bahn zur Verspätung eines ICEs sorgt für Empörung im Netz. Nicht wegen der Verzögerung – sondern wegen der Begründung.
www.fr.de
#inklusion #barrierefreiheit #DB_Bahn #barrierefei
in reply to Frau P. 🚲🚶‍♀️👵

mastodon - Link to source

Seitansbraten

manchmal? Ein bisschen? Vielleicht solltest du mal @HoernchenCecile folgen...

Und ja klar gibt's nette, freundliche & bemühte Mitarbeitende, das hab ich nicht in Frage gestellt. Die Tatsache, dass diese aber 2025 immer noch notwendig sind, taugt aber halt genauso wenig wie Menschen im Rollstuhl nur als 'Rollstuhl' zu bezeichnen.

Ist ja nicht das erste Mal, dass so eine Durchsage die Runde macht - allein der (mediale) Aufschrei fehlt - im Zug hat's ja auch niemanden interessiert

@parahörnchen 👩‍🦽
in reply to Seitansbraten

mastodon - Link to source

parahörnchen 👩‍🦽

Die Bahn begründet oft Verspätung mit dem Einladen eines Rollstuhls oder - etwas besser formuliert trotzdem diskriminierend - wegen Unterstützung beim Ein- und Ausstieg.

Der Grund ist die nicht vorhandene #Barrierefreiheit! #BarriereBahn

ich wurde schon mal ausführlich per Lautsprecherdurchsage beschimpft.
Bei einem Halt wartete der Mobilitätsservice, ich sagte aber ich wolle nicht aussteigen, ich wolle beim nächsten Halt aussteigen, wegen der Verspätung komme ich so schneller an mein Ziel.

Der Mobilitätsservice verhielt sich als sei es ein "Service" und ich war die böse die absagt. Obwohl es Grundrecht ist mitfahren zu können und den "Service" gibts nur wegen der Barrieren. Aber die Auseiunandersetzung ging hin und her es wurde dirskutiert weil die wollten dass ich da aussteige und nicht beim nächsten Halt und ich was so, ich entscheide selbst.

Dann der Knaller mit der Durchsage als der Zug weiter fuhr. Man habe Verspätung weil ein Rollstuhlfahrer (sic!) - immerhin nicht nur der Rollstuhl - sich geweigert habe ausszusteigen.

Dann kam die Schaffnerin persönlich zu mir um mir auch noch vor den Fahrgästen eine Lektion zu erteilen. Die Fahrgäste solidaridierten sich zum Glück (das ist nicht immer der Fall) mit mir und die Schaffnerin war sauer, ging aber weg.

#barrierefreiheit #BarriereBahn
This entry was edited (16 hours ago)

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sarcasm

Sensitive content

mastodon - Link to source
Today is not the first time an agentic coding agent has unblocked me. It turns out that the Winlibs package currently ships a version of CMake using libcurl without a valid SSL cert. As such, trying to build anything that requires an HTTPS download will fail, while working everywhere else. This stumped both me and one of my most talented debugger friends yesterday, claude figured it out in 5 minutes this morning.

mastodon - Link to source

Ich habe die letzte Woche viel mit #Perplexity experimentiert. jetzt habe ich noch fast ein Jahr einen gratis Pro-Zugang und absolut keinen Bedarf daran. Es gab in der Zeit nur eine einzige Konversation, in der mir kein Fehler aufgefallen ist, der zu Fehlkäufen bzw. Fehlentscheidungen geführt hätte. Was das für die erstellung von Code bedeutet, mag ich mir ehrlich gesagt nicht ausmalen.

Es kann menschliche Sprache glaubwürdig nachbilden. Wenn es um korrekte Informationen geht, selbst im Mainstream, versagt diese Technologie krachend. Ja, vermutlich bleiben LLM. Aber dieser Hype und die Anwendungsfälle, die immer wieder skizziert werden, sind wirklich albern und gefährlich.

#perplexity

mastodon - Link to source

I did a quick unscientific comparison. AI generated drums and bass for a snippet of a cover version versus me hobbling through those parts with software instruments, playing from memory of hearing it recently.

I invested a similar amount of time in total to reach the second verse of the song. With the generative engine, I only started paying attention to time spent *after* figuring out enough of the horrible UI accessibility to be able to get anything done with it, so although that will inevitably cloud my judgment of whether I enjoyed the UX, it shouldn't impact the comparison of musicality/usefulness.

In both cases, the original song was playing for reference with its rhythm section removed. I've turned the original down pretty quiet in these examples, loud enough to be recognisable but hopefully balanced in a way that makes it easy to focus on the differences in drums and bass.

Audio coming up. 1/4

in reply to Scott

mastodon - Link to source

Scott

I played the drums and bass in this version on keys here, using software instruments, so a totally silent recording setup that I could make at 4AM with a sleeping partner in the same room. I'm not much of a keys player and I don't have absolute pitch or a good enough memory to recall parts note for note, hit for hit, this was just a gut instinct jam-along.

Drums were recorded in two passes, I played the kicks snares and toms first, then overdubbed hats and cymbals. In both cases I did some light tweaking of the MIDI to get a few stray velocities and timing gufties straightened out. 3/4


in reply to Chi Kim

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Scott

@chikim There wasn't any mixing. I did a small amount of tweaking of the starting presets in each instrument just so they sounded a bit closer to what I was imagining, nothing drastic enough to make or break whether they'd sound workable though. Then I turned the volume of the original down before I rendered, which wouldn't have been a necessary step at all outside of this comparison context. That's all. Do those choices need democratising? Who for?
@Chi Kim
in reply to Scott

mastodon - Link to source

Chi Kim

As a side note, there’s a guy who generates AI music, uploads it to streaming services as a side gig, and makes a few hundred bucks a month. I wonder what percentage of musicians actually make a few hundred dollars a month from streaming service? AI music has even hit the top of the Billboard charts. I’m not advocating for Suno or anything, just pointing out the sad reality.
in reply to Chi Kim

mastodon - Link to source

Scott

@chikim Last week I had a session helping someone remake a beat that was from Suno. I've heard plenty of examples now where the generative part coming first then humans doing their thing after/on it can turn out good. In part that's why I'm surprised this gave me such a shit result. I didn't think the order of events being flipped around would make the result so different.
@Chi Kim
in reply to Scott

mastodon - Link to source

Chi Kim

I don't use Suno enough to say for sure. I just generate bunch of stupid songs when my kids ask. lol My guess is they focus more on mass use, where you generate from text prompts, rather than professional workflows where you feed in audio and augment it. Also is this from v4.5-all or v5? Have you looked at the Suno Studio? It looks very interesting workflow. youtube.com/watch?v=qR4BefPvSi…

Suno Studio Tutorial: A Complete Beginner's Guide (2025)

Start creating in Suno Studio here: https://suno.com?utm_source=Social&utm_medium=YTSFReady to master Suno Studio? This is the official, complete beginner's ...
YouTube
in reply to Scott

mastodon - Link to source

Chi Kim

Also, when I said AI is often about democratizing, I meant it in a general sense too. I know you already understand this, and I am generalizing, but Deaf people might use AI to generate speech transcription, blind people might use AI to generate image descriptions or even create a cover art for their albums, and I have even heard of people who cannot afford a lawyer successfully using AI to fight insurance companies. In each case, it lowers the barrier to access.
in reply to Chi Kim

mastodon - Link to source

Scott

@chikim Well sure, I understand what democratizing is and in many cases I'm in favour of it. TBH I can't really say I'm against it in this scenario either. It's more like... I dunno... I'm surprised that even as a barely function keys player and probably less than 5 minutes of tweaking sounds, I could throw together something that's more usable than this thing that some people are paying money for.
@Chi Kim
in reply to Scott

mastodon - Link to source

Michael Johann

Why are you using generative ai when you have focused so much of your time on making reaper accessible and do your own music? Also, now that you have uploaded music that you made to I am guessing suno or udio, now they have your music and can train there ai off of what you made. You basically just gave them free work and they don't have to pay you for your time and they can just steal your music so someone else can make money off of it.
in reply to Michael Johann

mastodon - Link to source

Scott

@michaeljohann_ That wasn't my music, it was a cover of a hugely established band that will have already been scraped for training if that's how they're doing it. This was a quick experiment to see what generative AI provides in this context. As someone who teaches a lot of folks coming into making music for the first time it makes sense for me to be at least broadly informed about what's out there.
@Michael Johann
in reply to Scott

mastodon - Link to source

Michael Johann

Fare enough as a musician I really don't like to see people using there own music for AI for the reasons I mentioned earlier I understand wanting to learn it to educate people about it. I just tell people to stay away from it and spend the time you would to use ai to learn a daw or an instrument. You will get better results and actually learn something rather then typing in prompts to a computer, but maybe I shouldn't be so harsh.

mastodon - Link to source

Keine Lust auf das neue Jahr und alles? Dann ist vielleicht der Nope-Fuchs der richtige Begleiter 🦊. Ihr könnt ihn bei Supergeek adoptieren✨.

supergeek.de/de/designer/fuchs…

#FuchskindWerbung

Screenshot aus de Supergeek Shop: der Nopefuchs auf einem roten T-Shirt.
Screenshot aus de Supergeek Shop: der Nopefuchs auf einer weißen Tasse

Die besten Nerd T-Shirts kaufen im Shop von Supergeek.de

Die besten T-Shirts für Nerds, Geeks & Gamer! ✓ Hochwertigste Shirts ✓ Haltbarster Druck ✓ Portofrei ab 100€. ♥ Supergeek.de
www.supergeek.de
#fuchskindwerbung

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RE: wetdry.world/@micr0/1158046481…

NO NO NO

#WarAgainstAltbot

"the vision stuff"

#blind

Micr0byte (@micr0@wetdry.world)

**altbot v2.5 is out!** fixed non-english support! switched to a two model setup: gemma3:1b handles translations while qwen3-vl does the image processing stuff. gemma3:1b is surprisingly good at translations for such a tiny model?? now running 23.
Micr0byte (Wet-Dry World)
#blind #waragainstaltbot
in reply to Nelson Lopez

mastodon - Link to source

#BlindAltBot

I am blind. Seeing people who think I'm not worth the effort fill my timeline with AltBot generated AI stuff that isn't even accurate in lots of cases.

Human alt text is always better, because it doesn´t focus on ocular seeing. Seeing people think, and AltBot was designed around that notion, that blind people must compensate for missing "eye-seeing", but that's not the case. I am interested in the meaning of an image to you, its maker or publisher.

Again, human alt text is better, also because it strengthens reciprocity between seeing and blind people. AltBot doesn't but it makes seeing people believe they have done their bit for accessibility. In actuality, the reverse is often true.

!!!!!!!!!

mastodon - Link to source
What's the good in having this apartment with it's fancy amenities (pool, barbecue) if nobody ever shows up to visit? They all said oh yeah we'll come see your place. Half of them haven't. Half of them aren't getting the fucking hint when I post on facebook. So I'm done.
This entry was edited (17 hours ago)

mastodon - Link to source

The amount of discussions I have to hold because #Laravel devs don't want to write a read-only DTO somewhere, but instead add a dynamic property on some ActiveRecord contraption.

It's so exhausting, and it could be so simple, if it wasn't that the framework promotes terrifyingly bad software practices everywhere. #php

#php #laravel

mastodon - Link to source

The most interesting finding from using EVs in winter is not that they consume more energy (which they do), but that charging is really slow if you don't have battery preheating. Yesterday, I arrived at a 240 kW charger with 33% SoC, the outside temperature was 0°C, and the charging power was only 35 kW (the maximum charging power of the car is 118 kW). With this charging power, it would take 40 minutes to charge to 80% SoC. We don't mind too much because we primarily use the car as a city car and do 95% of our charging at home, but if you want to have an EV as your only car and drive long distances with it even in winter, definitely get one that has battery preheating.

#EV #electricVehicles #emobility #electricCars

#electriccars #ev #ElectricVehicles #emobility
in reply to Thomas

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Jiří Eischmann

@tpheine yes, it is still limiting, my brother-in-law drives to customers spread across the whole country and time is of essence. He says he still cannot afford an EV because of this, so he has a diesel Škoda Superb. I think this will be pretty much solved with the 800V architecture which is slowly getting into this segment. A good example of this is the new BMW iX3. Its drive range is over 500km even in winter, the maximum charging rate is 400 kW and can charge for 350km in 10 minutes. Once EVs with such parameters are more widespread, most of the opposition will disappear. It's already a completely different world than my 3-year-old Audi with 35kW charging in winter. 🙂
@Thomas

mastodon - Link to source
Ten paciencia cuando se confunde.
No la apresures cuando tarda en recordar.
No le quites valor a sus palabras cuando repite una historia que ya conoces.
Porque antes que nada…
sigue siendo tu madre.
La misma que respondió tus preguntas una y otra vez sin cansancio.
La que secó tus lágrimas, incluso cuando no había motivo.
La que veló tu sueño cuando el cuerpo te ardía de fiebre
y el mundo parecía demasiado grande para ti.
Hoy sus pasos son más lentos,
su memoria a veces se dispersa
y su cuerpo se fatiga con facilidad.
Pero su amor no ha cambiado.
Ese amor sigue firme, atento, completo… como siempre lo fue.
Hazla sentir importante.
Hazle saber que su presencia cuenta,
que su risa sigue teniendo lugar
y que su vida no es una carga, sino un regalo.
Abrázala sin prisa.
Escúchala aunque repita.
Quédate un poco más.
Porque llegará un día en que ese lugar quedará vacío,
y darías cualquier cosa
por escucharla contar su historia
una vez más.
Ama hoy.
Cuida hoy.
Porque el amor que se posterga mañana pesa más de lo que imaginas. 🤍

mastodon - Link to source

The greatest piece of advice I was ever given was this: when you stop work for the day, never stop at a 'clean' break point; stop in the middle of something you can finish easily.

That way the next morning you're not confronted with a a dauntingly blank page or an empty function to write, but a half-finished one you can get back into without difficulty.

I can't remember who gave me that advice, but I've stuck to it dogmatically whenever I can.

This entry was edited (1 day ago)

mastodon - Link to source

I was recently reminded of this.

A couple decades ago, I wrote a short paper that described how the basic approaches of cryptography and computer security lead to an efficient and practical privilege escalation attack against master-keyed mechanical locks, which I published in IEEE Security and Privacy (a nerdy computing technical journal).

mattblaze.org/papers/mk.pdf

TL;dr: Master-keyed locks have fundamental, exploitable weaknesses.

But I wasn't ready for what happened next.

1/

This entry was edited (2 days ago)
in reply to Matt Blaze

mastodon - Link to source

Matt Blaze

It occurs to me that people outside the security field might find it odd that we openly publish stuff like this. Why help people who might use the knowledge to do bad things?

There are a number of reasons. The first is that only through open discussion are we able to identify and fix problems. Another, which is what motivated my work, is educational: you can't learn to defend systems unless you understand how they are attacked.

⇧