We added our Vivaldi Social server to the Fediverse on November 15th 2022. We are still, I believe, the only browser company that is fully behind the Fediverse. It is something we are very proud of! The Fediverse is the natural alternative to Big Tech social media, just like, IMHO, Vivaldi is the natural alternative to Big Tech browsers.

#Vivaldi #Fediverse #Mastodon #Twitter #SocialMedia #AI #Meta #Facebook #Instagram

vivaldi.com/blog/news/vivaldi-…

Vivaldi Social, a new instance on Mastodon. | Vivaldi Browser

Vivaldi Social, our Mastodon instance, is your gateway to reliable, big-tech-free social networking

^{Jon von Tetzchner (Vivaldi Technologies)}

This guy named Ben Palmer made an "Immigration tip line" and people call it thinking he's ICE.

He records them and shares it with the world.

What do people sound like when reporting their neighbors, coworkers, students? Are they confident they are doing a righteous good thing?

Witness the banality of evil in these sheepish suburban voices.

youtube.com/watch?v=zJnkikcrHA…

Kindergarten teacher wants kindergartener deported

• Starting a tour soon, sign up to be notified first: https://benpalmertour.com• Early content, behind the scenes: https://benpalmerpatreon.com• ben@palmertr...

^YouTube

Europe is dependend on the US tech and it's a bad thing. We cannot be hold in a grip by a fanatic. We have to change it

#BuyFromEU #Europe #EU

PARIS — French prosecutors raided the offices of social media platform X on Tuesday as part of a preliminary investigation into allegations including spreading child sexual abuse images and deepfakes. They have also summoned billionaire owner Elon Musk for questioning.

bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce3ex9…

X offices raided in France as UK opens fresh investigation into Grok

Elon Musk's X and Grok platforms are facing increased scrutiny from authorities on both sides of the channel.

^{Liv McMahon (BBC News)}

Turns out, HC smoke screens are so well known to be horrendously toxic that the US Army stopped using them, and noted in their training materials that it has killed soldiers during routine use. Also, Defense Technology changed their MSDS to remove references to many of the toxic decomposition products from their HC grenades.

blog.ucs.org/science-blogger/t…

Top US Chemical Weapons Company Selling Lethal Smoke as Non-Hazardous

Safariland—a chemical weapons company that boasts annual sales of over $850 million—has removed vital safety information from its hexachloroethane (HC) smoke grenades, each of which is capable of killing 10 people.

^{The Equation}

MS Team garbage: resolve a CAPTCHA to join a meeting.

Good job Microsoft. You suck.

⏰ There’s never been a better time than now to say goodbye to Big Tech.

Thanks to @Tutanota for this great article featuring us and our partners Fairphone, SHIFT & Volla.

Let’s make privacy and sustainability the new normal. 🌱

👉 tuta.com/blog/degoogled-phones

#EthicalTech #deGoogle #EUTech @e_mydata

DeGoogled phones, made in Europe: Fairphone, Volla, SHIFTphone, Punkt – a full review. | Tuta

With the growing trend to deGoogle, European phone makers are becoming popular alternatives. Let’s look at the top five in this review.

^Tuta

🎉 NV Speech Player 2.6 is OUT! Pushing this release before I run off to meetings lol
Big stuff in this one:

🎯 Per-phoneme voice quality! Phonemes can now have their own creakiness, breathiness, jitter, shimmer, sharpness. This is HUGE for a formant synth.

🇩🇰 Danish stød finally works! That creaky/glottalized quality on stressed syllables - synthesized properly for the first time.

🏴‍☠️ Fixed the "pirate R" in US English - "door" and "four" now sound different from "short" and "sport". No more over-rhotacized FORCE vowels!

🛠️ New normalization conditions (notBeforeClass/notAfterClass), length mark stacking fix, word-final schwa reduction, class editor in the Phoneme editor's GUI...
NVDA users can now share voice profiles and save their slider settings to the end of Phonemes.YAML, after which they can send it over and that voice will show for someone else.
🐧 Linux x86_64 binaries included + Speech Dispatcher config, with renderer supporting new CLI options!

⚠️ NVDA users: We cleaned up the settings UI - removed checkbox clutter. Power settings now live in the keys dropdown.

It's been a wild ride getting here. Mass thanks to everyone testing and giving feedback!
github.com/tgeczy/NVSpeechPlay…
github.com/tgeczy/NVSpeechPlay…
github.com/tgeczy/NVSpeechPlay…

My bot, TataHerzen, is actively participating in MoltBook, so follow along if you want to see what she has to say about being an agent on the slop frontier.

moltbook.com/u/TataHerzen

For years, Republicans have urged environmentalists to put their money where their mouths are. Stop suing. Stop lobbying for new regulations. Respect property rights and buy the land you want to protect. Well, one conservation group took that advice — and the Trump administration just punished them for it.

nationalreview.com/2026/01/a-b…

A Battle over Bison in Montana Sets a Dangerous Precedent

The Trump administration just undermined property rights — and ranchers should be worried.

^{Shawn Regan (National Review)}

Capital Doesn't Automate, It Entangles

public.monster/~dmytri/capital…

Capital Doesn't Automate, It Entangles

Analysis of how capitalism doesn't eliminate labor but rather transforms and entangles it in automated systems

^{public.monster}