UK Prime Minister Starmer seeks support for international X ban

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is in talks with Canada and Australia in an effort to muster support for a potential international ban on social media X. It comes after the platform’s integrated AI assistant, Grok, was used to generate sexualised deepfakes of women and children.

euractiv.com/news/uk-prime-min…

UK Prime Minister Starmer seeks support for international X ban

Canada already ruled out a potential ban but Australia's prime minister was sterner in his rebuke of Grok, calling the AI-generated sexualised images "completely abhorrent"

^{Claudie Moreau (Euractiv)}

I put my mouse in the microwave !!

Seriously. I have a bluetooth mouse that wouldn't enter pairing mode. It was connecting to *something*... maybe a smart switch or whatever. This cheap mouse has no way to enter pairing mode if it's connected to something.

So anyway, a microwave oven is a faraday cage. I turned the mouse on, tossed it in, shut the door and waited. It entered pairing mode quickly, and boom, connected to my tablet.

A+++ life hack by yours truly. Just don't start the nuker or magic smoke will come out 😆

#lifehack #bluetooth

"…muss ich bekennen, dass wir alle […] nicht ein Hundertstel, nicht ein Tausendstel dessen für möglich gehalten haben, was dann immer wenige Wochen später hereinbrechen sollte."

- Stefan Zweig, Die Welt von Gestern

Ein autobiografisches Werk Stefan Zweigs.

Das Buch entstand kurz vor Zweigs Tod in den letzten Jahren (von 1939 bis 1941) seines Exils und erschien postum 1942 in Stockholm.

archive.org/details/StefanZwei…

Diejenigen, die wollen, dass wir bis 70 arbeiten und diejenigen, die uns mit 50 nicht mehr einstellen, sind dieselben Leute.

Ein gehirnfressender Wurm würde in deren Kopf elendiglich verhungern.

Mal by som otázku/prosbu na mieste osadenstvo. Vždy som chcel vedieť programovať, ale nikdy mi to veľmi nešlo. Naposledy som to skúšal pred 13 rokmi, kedy som sa skúšal naučiť PHP (konkrétne Laravel).

Chcel by som to znova vyskúšať, a tak otázka znie, či by mi niekto vedel poradiť, ako na to, resp. nejaké tipy na návody a pod. Potreboval by som to vysvetľovať asi čo najprimitívnejšie ako to len pôjde, a ideálne aby to bolo v slovenčine/češtine. Taktiež aby to bolo zadarmo, keďže nemám peniaze na nejaké platené kurzy. Mohla by mi v učení pomôcť aj AI? Aj keď viem, že tu nie sú jej priaznivci, no ja osobne nie som jej zarytý kritik.

A aby som nezabudol, prioritne by som sa chcel asi naučiť to PHP (aby som vedel naprogramovať webstránky, nejaké redakčné systémy a pod.), prípadne ešte C++ (keďže by som chcel vedieť programovať Arduino).

Vopred ďakujem za rady/pomoc.

Das letzte mal als ich versucht habe #NINA auf #GrapheneOS ohne Google Play Services zum Laufen zu bringen, habe ich es leider nicht hinbekommen (ist aber schon ein paar Jahre her). Wenn jemand passend zum #did #dut nach Alternativen sucht: #fosswarn

Mit FOSSwarn bekommt ihr offizielle Warnmeldungen für eure Orte direkt aufs Handy. Push-Benachrichtigungen funktionieren ebenfalls zuverlässig über UnifiedPush, ich nutze dazu die App #Sunup

#didit #dutgemacht

f-droid.org/packages/de.nucleu…

How… why… argh… T_T

(if you don't see it: there's a tiiiiiiiiny difference… 60nm tiny to be exact… and these 2 interfaces are in a LAG and actually work, the other side is even more insidious since it just says 1310nm but the SFPs *are* different)

We will be participating at #fosdem in Bruxelles (31.1. / 1.2.). 🚀 Well, at least kind of...

Our @bene64 will join the Free Android World stand together with @BlissLabs and @shiftphones as part of the @IzzyOnDroid team.

His focus there will be primarily the IoD project, but he will be happy to discuss #BrewMemo as well ;)

Please come by and drop a hello, when you're also visiting.

“Code is not an infinitely reproducible machine that requires no labor inputs to operate. Rather, it is a brittle machine that requires increasingly heroic measures to keep it in good working order, and which eventually does "wear out" (in the sense of needing a top-to-bottom refactoring).”

— @pluralistic, pluralistic.net/2026/01/06/100…

The myth that "old code doesn't rust" persists because it justifies moving fast, breaking things, and leaving it for someone else to clean up the mess.

👇🏽

Had a look at "multi-agent coding" today.

Apparently, the first step is signing up for the premium plans from OpenAI, Anthropic AND Google. So that's £50 to £500 a month. Then installing a massive pile of NodeJS to coordinate it all.

A few years ago, we were all celebrating how computing had gotten cheap: RasPi Zeros for a tenner, old HP workstations or ThinkPads on eBay for £100.

Having to pay three different landlords to build software seems like an incredibly shit vision of the future.

This is racism. (And also, the World Cross-Country Championships this year are clearly being rigged.)

"According to a report from LetsRun.com, only four of the 18 Ethiopian U20 athletes had their U.S. visa applications accepted"

(That's the national team with the 44-year winning streak. Other countries, including Eritrea, are also excluded due to Trump's racist travel bans.)

runningmagazine.ca/the-scene/u…

U.S. denies entry to 14 Ethiopian athletes ahead of World XC Championships - Canadian Running Magazine

^{Marley Dickinson (Canadian Running Magazine)}

Hi folks,
So my sister is a zookeeper and takes care of the birds. She often sends pictures.

This is Baked Beans. He is a baby screech owl and is being raised for the zoo's ambassador bird program.
I would die for Beans.

#BakedBeansOwl #owls #screechowls #zoo

SSD thumb drives could be better than cheap USB flash drives

“Instead of getting a cheap but very sluggish flash drive, consider buying a USB SSD that looks like a regular thumb drive but is way faster and only slightly more expensive.”

I haven’t bought a cheap flash drive for quite a while, so did not rea ...continues

See gadgeteer.co.za/ssd-thumb-driv…

#storage #technology

SSD thumb drives could be better than cheap USB flash drives

^{Danie (GadgeteerZA)}

• I regularly click video or song links (9%, 8 votes)
• Only if the person indicated what the link was (40%, 33 votes)
• Only if it's from specific people (23%, 19 votes)
• I rarely or never click video or song links (21%, 17 votes)
• Something else, put in replies (4%, 4 votes)

Watching someone explain to a FOSS developer that they've never donated to their project "because it's FOSS" and that, unless the developer implements features X, Y, and Z *immediately*, they will continue not to donate in the future.

Yeah, really convincing.

And this is part of why we can't always have nice things.

#FOSS

#fosdem preparation list:

* Noise cancellation headphones
* Public transport app
* Add the hotel and the campus to favorites
* FOSDEM schedule app
* Bookmark the sessions of interest

Still open: what to take for a snack, to avoid the crowd at the food court.

Also, do I need EUR cash for the merchandise? Or everyone's accepting cards and Paypal?

#fosdem2026