The tragedy that occurred above D.C. last night is one we must do everything possible to prevent going forward. But our leaders are not only ill-equipped, they are focused on politics as a priority over safety. My write-up: open.substack.com/pub/statusku…
Hey fellow COVID-aware folks in the US, Armbrust is unloading these duckbill-style ACI N95 respirators for cheap since they are approaching their expiration date.
We use these (along with 3M Auras and Redimasks). The ACIs are a bit lighter weight and work well for when it's hot or you're going to be exerting and breathing heavier.
Why the Latest Executive Orders Threaten Blind Americans—And How We Can Fight Back
If you’ve been paying attention to the news, you might be feeling frustrated, uncertain, or even afraid about recent executive actions coming from Washington. You’re not alone.
New executive orders are putting accessibility programs for blind Americans at risk. Learn why this matters and how you can take action to protect our independence.
A former Air Force pilot was so disappointed with Windows 95's aquarium screensaver that he established a 25-year dynasty of digital fish that continues to this day pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/a-…
"[...] representatives of this group of hackers, commonly referred to as "ethical hackers", though theft and home invasion have nothing to do with ethics—but well, I understand, ethical hackers, because that's what they call themselves [...]" (a certain Polish MP)
"Hacker", as we in the bizz know well, carries different meanings for different people, and this can cause hilarious misunderstandings. Yesterday, the Polish TV network TVN aired the second part of an ongoing documentary about issues in NEWAG trains that were analyzed by Dragon Sector. Near the end, the documentary featured a recording from the November 2024 meeting of the Parliamentary Infrastructure Committee, which was meant to discuss the matter. During the meeting, one of the Members of Parliament took issue with the Dragon Sector team being referred to as "hackers"—the quote above is from him (translated from Polish).
This, of course, is nothing new—just another example of someone knowing the colloquial meaning of the word but not its specialized one. This disconnect has existed for at least the past 40 years.
This raises an interesting question—should we use the word "hacker" in formal settings (court, parliamentary committees, etc.), or would we be better understood if we opted for "cybersecurity specialist" or a similar term, as we often do on LinkedIn and other professional platforms?
Or perhaps we should continue using the word "hacker," as it serves as a great litmus test for whether the person we're discussing these topics with is truly familiar with the computer security industry and its terminology. It’s an unexpected but useful canary—or perhaps a reminder—that not everyone speaks "computer."
Returning to the original quote, and on a rather amusing note—or perhaps to balance things out—multiple departments of the Polish government are actively seeking to hire individuals with the "Certified Ethical Hacker" certification. In some cases, you can even get grants to earn it! Additionally, one can find information on government websites about how Dragon Sector was invited to the National Security Bureau to receive a commemorative letter of congratulations and symbolic gifts after winning the 2014 CTF season.
So, do we continue advocating for our specialized meaning of the word "hacker" in official settings? Or should we revert to something more neutral instead?
As a Polish person, I think the word "hacker" (when not refering to a cybercriminal) is a lot less popular here than it is in English-language spaces, and hence should not be preferred.
I personally prefer "ekspert cyberbezpieczenstwa" (cybersecurity expert) to describe people doing ethical security research, haker (hacker) for the "bad guys", and "majsterkowicz" (tinkerer) for people who like to play with tech, but have nothing to do with cybersecurity.
Following a suggestion from Eva Town (on Bluesky), I've just added my "thumbs down" to the PR to remove inclusive design info from the US Web Design System: github.com/uswds/uswds-site/pu…
Summary
Removed report link and introduction. Removed content related to the January 20, 2025 Executive Order, "Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing".
This...
New NIKI album 'Buzz' out August 9th, 2024. Pre-order/pre-save: https://niki.lnk.to/BuzzNIKI tour dates & tickets: https://nikizefanya.comNicole Tour dates &...
How can we evolve and deploy web apps without allowing developers or operators to become a “billionaire in the middle”? There are many ways to try to address this challenge and some involve the tec...
- F-Droid Client & Basic 1.22.0 are out (dare to update!) - #webxdc is spreading its tentacles - #dolphinemulator has a huge update - #newpipe brings one fix, one still missing - Catshare unifies device-to-device sharing
This Week in F-DroidTWIF curated on Thursday, 30 Jan 2025, Week 5F-Droid coreF-Droid and F-Droid Basic were updated to 1.22.0 stable, but not yet ‘suggested’...
Report: DeepSeek’s chat histories and internal data were publicly exposed Wiz researchers found many similarities to OpenAI with their escalated access. arstechnica.com/security/2025/…
In case you missed it, acting ICE head Tom Homan was up yesterday complaining that ICE is having a hard time meeting the quotas they're setting because of campaigns telling people their rights and how to resist raids.
In case you're wondering if the little things you do could possibly make a difference, know that they already are.
Tor Project X/Twitter account has been compromised. Efforts are underway to regain access. Do not trust or interact with any posts, DMs, or links from the account until further notice. Stay updated on the project's other socials 🦋/🐘 @torproject and blog: blog.torproject.org/
The US Web Design System has deleted it's info on inclusive design, in response to the 2025-01-20 Executive order "Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing". github.com/uswds/uswds-site/pu…
If you know anyone who used those resources, let them know about the Inclusive Design principles: inclusivedesignprinciples.info…
Summary
Removed report link and introduction. Removed content related to the January 20, 2025 Executive Order, "Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing".
This...
No como el resto de IAs que están alojados en el país que amenaza con invadir Groenlandia, México, Panamá y Canada y cuyas autoridades son conocidas desde hace 30 años por exigir backdoors en todos los productos informáticos
Que lo mismo yo soy viejo, pero recuerdo cuando se demostró que el gobierno americano espiaba a empresas europeas para darle ventajas a sus competidoras americanas y nos tuvimos que callar todos porque libertad y democracia
"#Music clubs were plentiful in #Nairobi and attracted artists from the region. The clubs were full, with artists playing four days a week. Bands, like the Mangelepa, would come from the #Congo to play and surround themselves with Kenyan musicians to accompany them. Some never left." #Kenya #Africa #Vinyl cc: @lemondelemonde.fr/en/le-monde-africa/…
Unsere Demokratie lebt von Engagement! Daher muss die Zivilgesellschaft geschützt & nachhaltig und gezielt gefördert werden. Bildung und Open-Source können dabei helfen, digitale Innovation zugänglicher zu machen und das zivilgesellschaftliche Engagement zu stärken. Benachteiligte Gruppen brauchen außerdem eine gezielte Förderung – der Zugang zu Bildungsmaterialien darf nicht vom sozioökonomischen Status abhängen.
Unsere Forderungen zur Bundestagswahl 2025 gruppieren sich um drei Kernaspekte, deren Umsetzung für eine demokratische, nachhaltige und resiliente Zukunft unabdingbar sind. Dies ist der dritte von …
🚀0 A.D. Alpha 27: "Agni" is here! 🔥 The final alpha of our free, open-source RTS, named after the Hindu god of fire. Play on Windows & macOS—no ads, no paywalls! Should be on Linux in the coming weeks.
0 A.D. is a free, open-source, historical Real Time Strategy (RTS) game currently under development by Wildfire Games, a global group of volunteer game developers.
Horrible to blame this flight accident on the prospect that disability hiring caused it, and even indirectly that hiring a less white workforce contributed to it. Just wow. I don't claim I'd be good at the job right now being blind, nor to have knowledge whether tools exist to allow for any success since the job is so visual, but to have deaf or autistic folks participate equally if they can, sure, why not. So this is merit-based, isn't it. You have a disability means you have bad work merit. Even if it comes out that the air-traffic-controller in this situation has a disability, I wouldn't judge their performance on that, and even if I did, I would first want to know whether barriers or other factors made them less efficient at their job. But not in this country anymore. Upset. Update: It was nice to see some outlets cover this one: bbc.com/news/articles/cpvmdm1m… less good for dancing around it a bit: cnn.com/2025/01/30/politics/do…
@gibbs002 my only consolation is that I'm not the only one critiquing the idea, that regardless of diverse hiring or not, the actual standards are still high and can't be substandard. So part of our country recognizes that and wants to be decent.
I haven’t heard that disability argument. You are the first person to suggest that it was disability related. Also, last time I checked, I had to have Merritt, and a hell of a lot of luck to get a job. No officer to ease my intake to the company. Just saying.
They are still controlling the narrative with it. It hasn’t fully come out yet. I think it is odd that they would hire someone with imperfect vision to do that job though. I don’t think it’s their fault it happened, it’s the fault of the company for making a stupid decision. I mean if it’s true.
(not recent) railway accident, deaths, mention of terrorism
Sensitive content
So in November 2015 there was this huge derailment in France during one of the final test rides on then soon-to-be-opened LGV Est that killed 11 people and left 42 people injured, which was one of the worst railway accident in France in decades
And barely anyone even heard about it because it happened THE NEXT DAY after November 2015 Paris terrorist attacks and the eyes of everyone were focused on that
(not recent) railway accident, deaths, mention of terrorism
Sensitive content
This is pretty normal, though.
There was a huge scandal here back when I was in primary school, a group of students went to a swimming pool and one of them, a classmate of mine, drowned because the teachers and lifeguards were busy chatting. Normally, that would have been all over the news, but it happened right when we were hosting the European football championship (june 2012), so it was barely even mentioned.
new work: W3C has approved the charter of the GPU for the Web Working Group.
The mission of the GPU for the Web Working Group is to provide an interface between the Web Platform and modern 3D graphics and computation capabilities present on native system platforms.
A massive data leak from AI startup DeepSeek has raised alarms about the security of sensitive user data in the rapidly evolving AI industry. appleinsider.com/articles/25/0…
This marks my very first technical blog post, Interning at @servo has been an absolute joy—I’ve learned so much about browsers, Rust, and the open source community, and I’m beyond grateful!
Browsers are simply so much cooler than I ever gave them credit for. It is about halfway through my Outreachy internship, and I have still not fully processed how mind blowing it is that these thin…
Een van de heikele thema's bij het starten als organisatie met opensourcewerken... Welke publicatieplatform kies je? Daniël Vos schreef er een stuk over dat je kunt gebruiken ter inspiratie: opensourcewerken.nl/blog/view/…
Als je aan de slag gaat met opensourcewerken zul je op een gegeven moment een keuze maken voor een sourcecodemanagementsysteem (SCM). Welke scenario's zijn er? Waar…
We've added some bluer skies to our social media platforms. (Don't worry, we're very much staying here on Mastodon!) If you're on #BlueSky and would like to give us a follow, we're at: bsky.app/profile/thunderbird.n…
I would have followed you on identi.ca and Jaiku before that if the chance had come up. Following on Bluesky doesn't mean I'm convinced. Bluesky has vc funding and we have two decades of experience. We see how things go once VCs join a project. I prefer projects while they're idealistic. Even Flickr has done well. I'm following on bluesky but as "acte de présence".
!["[...] representatives of this group of hackers, commonly referred to as "ethical hackers", though theft and home invasion have nothing to do with ethics—but well, I understand, ethical hackers, because that's what they call themselves [...]" (a certain Polish MP)](https://fedi.ml/photo/preview/640/633484 "\"[...] representatives of this group of hackers, commonly referred to as \"ethical hackers\", though theft and home invasion have nothing to do with ethics—but well, I understand, ethical hackers, because that's what they call themselves [...]\" (a certain Polish MP)")
miki
in reply to Gynvael Coldwind 🐈 • • •As a Polish person, I think the word "hacker" (when not refering to a cybercriminal) is a lot less popular here than it is in English-language spaces, and hence should not be preferred.
I personally prefer "ekspert cyberbezpieczenstwa" (cybersecurity expert) to describe people doing ethical security research, haker (hacker) for the "bad guys", and "majsterkowicz" (tinkerer) for people who like to play with tech, but have nothing to do with cybersecurity.