Google have apparently automated getting rid of negative reviews resulting from their decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico. The only sensible thing to do is to try to stop using the products of billionaire owned American companies, who are *all* demonstrating that they were willing to at the very least bend for fascists, if not actively support fascism.

This came up as part of my continuing process of removing everything which benefits American billionaires from my phone.

I'm now using #organicMaps instead on my phone. It's about 1000 times faster because it doesn't waste time in continuously trying to show you ads.

organicmaps.app/
openstreetmap.org

#GulfOfMexico #google #BillionaireTaxDodgers #OligarchUSA #DeGooglization #DeAmericanisation

“Me? Well, I told you, I'm from Galactic.”

“Galactic went out of business twenty years ago.”

“I wondered why I hadn't been paid.”

“That's not good enough.”

“That's what I thought.”

— The Doctor and Rigg, in “Nightmare of Eden”

#DoctorWho #quote #quotation

Say hello to security, productivity, and ease of use! 😍 🎉

What has been released and what's coming soon?

⭐ Single-Click Email Export
⭐ Email Import
⭐ Faster PQ roll out

Coming soon:

📆 Improved Calendar Rules
📧 Better Email Organization

Check out our latest article to learn more: tuta.com/blog/tuta-release-upd…

Got a software product idea that I'm looking to name. It's primairly going to be an analytics tool for small businesses on social media, wanting to go Fediverse first.

Getting it out of my head, and letting you all vote on my favorites so far.

Here are my options I've come up with:

• Thrang (0 votes)
• Soka (0 votes)
• Menge (0 votes)
• Weft (0 votes)

The promise: Star Trek computers.

The reality: whispering to my phone to turn on the lights, terrified my computer will overhear and tell me it can’t unless I unlock it.

6 books this week, although one was a very short fanfiction prequel and its successor, called Rise of the Wizards was rather venal.

Outstanding read this week has to go to Dan Frey's Dreambound, which I've already mentioned.
I also reread the Heinlein classic Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, and an interesting twist on the murder mystery front with Memory Blank by John Stith.

#bookstodon

1/2 Microsoft Patch Tuesday:

* 55 zranitelností, 4 zero days z toho 2 aktivně zneužívané
* jedna z aktivně zneužívaných zranitelností umožňuje mazat soubory, druhá získat oprávnění na úrovni SYSTEM
* critical RCE v Excelu, DHCP klientovi a LDAPu (není jasné jestli klientech nebo serverech)
* opravy různých memory leaků

#kybez #windows

As JD Vance delivered his speech about “European overregulation” and criticized “endless compliance costs imposed on the US companies by GDPR” I have seen some voices from Europe who said something to the effect “I don‘t know a single EU company happy about #GDPR either”.

Well, it’s kind of obvious companies aren’t happy because GDPR was not made to make companies happy but to protect the privacy of consumers 😄

This regulation is based on fundamental differences between US and EU legal systems. In EU, you own and control your personal data. In US it’s owned by whoever managed to extort it from you, and then aggregate, personalise and resell to any other entity anywhere.

For example, if you want to pay higher insurance premium because you have genetic tendencies to diabetes or obesity - well, that’s the US way of doing business, but it’s not the only one, nor it’s somehow axiomatically “better”. And yes, high insurance premiums also have the effect of increasing overall country’s GDP, just as a house burnt and rebuilt also does this magic, yet somehow few people celebrate it 😉

Then someone asked me if I really “feel that my data is better protected thanks to GDPR”. And yes, as a matter of fact the most invasive behavioural profiling aren’t being rolled out by companies like Twitter or Facebook to EU specifically because of GDPR, while in US they just roll them out without asking anyone.

Anyone… of course except for the states which have regulations very similar or even more restrictive than GDPR, such as California. Yet, because California is “their”, these companies and their CEOs with high media presence simply shut up and make their apps compliant with CCPA without all this barking about “how GDPR kills out business”.

It’s the same with EU VAT, about which Vance also whined, whereas US sales tax accounting rules are not even harmonized across states. But hey, you know what? An US business that has to emply a tax consulting company to get multi-state accounting right also increases overall GDP! 😄

So effectively what in US is perceived as each state’s fundamental right, sign of their diversity and key part of their autonomy, in the EU is portrayed as something equivalent to Soviet Union style central planning. And when they post all the memes about “bottle caps” in EU, they of course never mention a gazillion of state-level archaic or absurd regulations which are nonetheless binding, especially if someone likes to build a class lawsuit around them.

And now as Tesla opened a new factory in #China, I’ve never seen Musk make a single critical remark about the overregulation in China, even though it’s even more complex than EU and US taken together due to its vast geographic and administrative diversity.

🚀 Exciting news! We’ve just launched our brand-new website!
🎉Explore a fresh design, improved navigation, and everything you need to know about GNOME.

Check it out now: gnome.org/

A huge thank you to everyone who worked hard to make this happen! 🙌

GNOME

An easy and elegant way to use your computer

^{www.gnome.org}

I only noticed it just now, but Google has collapsed almost all varieties of European voices in its GCP TTS library last month into just one voice per gender.

If any of your apps or services has been using its English (British) voices, they won't sound anything like they used to.

And if you used multiple voices (e.g. using different female voices for different female characters), they will now all sound like the same person.

services.google.com/fh/files/e…

the Heritage Foundation just got all its sites blacklisted (= spam filter) from English Wikipedia, and probably deprecated (can't be used as a source)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedi…

Apple's 2025 is about to get busy with impending product launches, and new leaked info suggests some news big and small will be shared over the next week, which culminates in the iPhone SE 4 launch.

appleinsider.com/articles/25/0…

Apple Vision Pro, iPhone SE 4, & smaller announcements in coming days

Apple's 2025 is about to get busy with impending product launches, and new leaked info suggests some news big and small will be shared over the next week, which culminates in the iPhone SE 4 launch.

^{Wesley Hilliard (AppleInsider)}

Databroker Files: Im Dschungel der Datenhändler
netzpolitik.org/2025/databroke…

Wie #Apps uns ausspionieren, und "Datenreichtum" geschaffen wird (halt nicht bei uns)

#privacy

Databroker Files: Im Dschungel der Datenhändler

In Massen verkaufen Databroker Handy-Daten von Millionen Menschen, darunter genaue Standorte. Warum sprudeln die Daten immer weiter? Mit internationalen Recherche-Partnern decken wir ein raffiniertes System auf, in dem die Beteiligten die Verantwortu…

^{netzpolitik.org}