The most radical act in tech isn’t building something new. It’s keeping the old ideals alive: that people should control their tools, not the other way around.
Right! Been a while since I did a #fedidreams. So: last night, I dreamed that my work created a new security policy. All employees must use bloodlock on any device that contains work related data. What's bloodlock? Glad you asked! Obviously, it's a feature that requires you to prick your finger and deposit a drop of blood on the sensor every time you want to unlock your device. In the meeting this was announced, we were told that we would be supplied 60 needles and bandages a month for this purpose, and if we needed more, we'd have to pay for them ourselves. Also, the "auto-lock" policy would be reduced from 60 seconds to 15 seconds. Lastly, Microsoft, Apple, and Google would all use our DNA (as collected from our blood) for AI training purposes. So I did this on my work device. However, I got a meeting scheduled with our HR team. They told me that "Your first and last name are work related data. Any device that contains your first and last name must comply with the bloodlock policy." So then I had to put it on all my personal devices, too. The dream ended with me trying to log into my work device for a critical meeting, but it wasn't working! I had pricked my finger so many times to unlock my devices that no blood would come out! I woke up to find my left hand had fallen asleep. Obviously that was the trigger for...all of this nonsense. LOL
Happy Petrov Day to those who celebrate. On September 26, 1983, Stanislav Petrov made the correct decision to not trust a computer.
The early warning system at command center Serpukhov-15, loudly alerting of a nuclear attack from the United States, was of course modern and up-to-date. Stanislav Petrov was in charge, working his second shift in place of a colleague who was ill.
Many officers facing the same situation would have called their superiors to alert them of the need for a counter-attack. Especially as fellow officers were shouting at him to retaliate quickly before it was too late. Petrov did not succumb.
I've attached a short clip from a reenactment of the situation in the documentary The Man Who Saved the World.
The computer was indeed wrong about the imminent attack and Petrov likely saved the world from nuclear disaster in those impossibly stressful minutes, by daring to wait for ground confirmation. For context one must also be aware that this was at a time when US-Soviet relations were extremely tense.
I've previously written about three lessons to take away from Petrov's actions:
1. Embrace multiple perspectives
The fact that it was not Stanislov Petrov's own choice to pursue an army career speaks to me of how important it is to welcome a broad range of experiences and perspectives. Petrov received an education as an engineer rather than a military man. He knew the unpredictability of machine behavior.
2. Look for multiple confirmation points
Stanislav Petrov understood what he was looking for. While he has admitted he could not be 100% sure the attack wasn't real, there were several factors he has mentioned that played into his decision:
- He had been told a US attack would be all-out. An attack with only 5 missiles did not make sense to him. - Ground radar failed to pick up supporting evidence of an attack, even after minutes of waiting. - The message passed too quickly through the 30 layers of verification he himself had devised.
On top of this: The launch detection system was new (and hence he did not fully trust it).
3. Reward exposure of faulty systems
If we keep praising our tools for their excellence and efficiency it's hard to later accept their defects. When shortcomings are found, this needs to be communicated just as clearly and widely as successes. Maintaining an illusion of perfect, neutral and flawless systems will keep people from questioning the systems when the systems need to be questioned.
We need to stop punishing when failure helps us understand something that can be improved.
Hi Brian, hope you are doing well. I really need WhatsApp for my work as I was told today, and I'm super mega frustrated about the current situation. Is there a way of becoming a beta tester for the scripts? Thanks.
@menelion Thank you for your message. Not all users have access to the new version of WhatsApp as yet, but when they do, we already have an excellent group of extremely seasoned WhatsApp and JAWS users who can provide the feedback. But thank you for your interest.
My problem is that whatever I do (I tried reinstalling multiple times), I get the electron thing already. also, when developing scripts, please add two aliases to confignames.ini, one for stable and one for beta, much like FS did for VS code and VS Code Insiders. Thanks!
All of us are selective sinners. We choose the sin we are comfortable with, and judge others that commit the ones we're not comfortable with. -Shams Tabrizi #Persian #Quotes
I've finally managed to cut Chrome out of my life on PC, and I've switched to WaterFox exclusively. Next on the docket is to try Libre Wolf and determine which is better, though I doubt there will be too much of a difference, considering the fact that they're both Firefox forks. After I have my PC Browser of choice, it's time to switch on Android. Has anyone else tried WaterFox or Libre Wolf on Android yet?
The Canada Revenue Agency is doing a public consultation on automatic tax filing (which they should have implemented …several decades ago!). Fill it out and let the CRA know that it’s a good idea! canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/co… via @lisafast #cdnpoli #GCdigital
my short version is 1. I use Linux 2. the requirement to pay a tax to the Intuit monopoly to fullfill obligations with the government is unacceptable and is not compatible with 1 3. The cost is too high (I have to use a professional)
@hub WealthSimple's online format works quite well, including Firefox / Linux. Also "pay what you want", there is no specific obligation to pay anything for basic submission.
@tim_lavoie still a third-party, that can not be trusted, because it's a third party. Also what is "basic submission"? I'm 100% sure I don't qualify for that.
@tim_lavoie also filing your taxes shoulld start with "here is what we know for this year" ie, they amount of the various tax form the tax office received should be pre-filled. This is what civilized countries do.
The majority of tax filings do not require changes in the listed requirements, and approval of these requirements could be done on a simple online or physical form annually. Handling tax submissions on an exception basis would simplify this annual task, which would be a tangible benefit to many citizens for whom the current system does not serve well. Additionally, the current system lends itself to abuse by the tax preparation industry, which exists solely to profit from the current process. If this industry were 100% owned and operated by Canadian companies, with the profits benefiting Canadians, it would still represent an implicit tax on citizens of dubious value. Given that many tax industry companies have foreign ownership, the current system represents a completely unnecessary subsidy of foreign interests. I strongly support changes to this system that disrupt the tax industry.
@McsaMatt I too was disappointed in the consultation design. The questions were like “automatic filing will be so very hard for us(whining sound), so make sure to answer in a way that supports us”. Nope, select other and tell them what you really think.
For any Canadians who want to pressure the government to force Canada Post to the table, NOT to force postal workers back to work, you can follow these steps!
If you wish to send something to Patty Hajdu directly:
If you are in Thunder Bay-Superior North, she's your MP! Write patty.hajdu@parl.gc.ca
If not, you can try writing the Ministry of Jobs and Families directly at edsc.min.ef-jf.min.esdc@hrsdc-rhdcc.gc.ca
You can call (819) 654-5546 as well.
This is what I wrote in my email (and I said something similar on the phone).
The pastebin is to provide alt text (since it breaks the 3000 alt-text limit) - you CAN use it as a template, but I encourage you to write it in your own words, especially if she's your MP!
This is a repository of apps to be used with your F-Droid client. Applications in this repository are official binaries built by the original application developers, taken from their resp. repositories (mostly Github, GitLab, Codeberg).
Was ich mich noch Frage ist, ist es eigentlich sicher neue Apps zu installieren? Oder sollte man besser warten bis gewisse Erfahrungen gemacht wurden? Sprich: wird der gesamte Code auf Bösartigkeit überprüft?
@Joghan Den gesamten Code jeder App bei jedem Update prüfen – dafür fehlt uns die Kapazität. Das schafft Google aber auch nicht 😉 Im Gegensatz zum Playstore, wurde bislang aber weder bei F-Droid noch bei uns je eine bösartige App gefunden.
Eines meiner Lieblingszitate kommt von Joachim Ringelnatz: "Sicher ist nur, dass nichts sicher ist. Und selbst das ist nicht sicher…"
100% Sicherheit gibt es nicht. Wir geben aber unser Bestes, es so sicher wie möglich zu machen: apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/i…
Schön zu lesen, dass noch nie schadhafte Software identifiziert wurde. Mir ging es dabei vor allem um Risikominimierung. Eine neue App, mit der noch keiner Erfahrung hat, sollte meinen Verständnis nach das größte Risiko darstellen.
@Joghan Das ist relativ. Wenn die neue App zum Beispiel von einem Entwickler kommt, der als vertrauenswürdig bekannt ist, sollte das Risiko eigentlich überschaubar sein. Nicht "weg", 💩 happens to the best, aber doch recht gering.
Klar wäre es toll, hätten wir ein großes Team von "Code Checkern", das den Quellcode aller Apps "skrutiniert" und die Ergebnisse passend veröffentlicht – haben wir aber leider nicht…
@mdvhimself Magisk modules have their own "experimental" repo here, yupp. I say "experimental" not because it's flaky or something, but because it doesn't get "scrutinized" the same way as our app repo does – so no additional screening, no reproducible builds, etc. It's more for your convenience, to make it easier to find FOSS modules.
Folks who rooted their devices should know about the risks, and will take special care I hope 😉
fsync(2) is an example of a poor interface resulting from the design decisions that went into Unix, and thus POSIX.
Why do I say this? Glad you asked. `fsync(fd);` will block its caller until dirty in-memory data associated with the file referred to by the given file descriptor (both file data and metadata) are written to "a permanent storage device", or an error occurs. And that's all well and good, but often, you want to sync multiple files: with `fsync`, you have to either serialize this, or farm multiple `fsync` calls out to separate (OS-managed) threads.
Consider that these days, data is _usually_ written to a storage device asynchronously: a block write request means filling in some data structure understood by the storage device (or its controller) and sending that to the device. The device will fetch the data from the host via DMA, write it, and set a status bit or generate an interrupt or something when it's done.
Typical devices these days can support multiple (indeed, many) outstanding IO requests, internally handle scatter gather IO, etc; so in theory, multiple fsync's could be proceeding in parallel. But the highly synchronous nature of the POSIX interface prevents us from doing this effectively, and AIO support is often buggy and incomplete.
If we had a system interface that let you initiate synchronization, but didn't block and instead immediately returned a completion token of some kind, coupled with another interface that could take a list of such tokens and block until they all completed, you could kick off all of the sync requests at once, and then barrier on their completion.
I believe on FreeBSD the trick is to use kqueue/kevent which can handle notification that the write is complete and issue the fsync without blocking the main thread, so that and FreeBSD's pretty good aio implementation give you some tools to work around this
Canada's Communication Security Establishment's (CSE) Centre for Cyber Security joined its international counterparts urging organizations to take immediate action to patch up vulnerabilities following a widespread hit on the technology security company #Cisco... cbc.ca/news/politics/cisco-cyb… #cdnpoli #polcan #technology #CSE #FAIL
Oh right ... now I remember why I never set up @thunderbird to work with my email - Microsoft does everything in its own proprietary way. So I can get email up and running but only if I'm happy without my contacts or calendar.
You know maybe it's time for a change ... I just have to figure out if I can do forwarding away from Outlook without continuing to pay for it.
We have info about the latest Exchange updates coming in next month's Thunderbird 144. While initial support will only include email, adding address books and calendar are very much on our roadmaps. You can ready about it in our latest development digest! blog.thunderbird.net/2025/09/t…
I ordered an Adafruit Fruit Jam RP2350-based single-board computer (adafruit.com/products/6200) last weekend, and it arrived yesterday. Unlike most microcontroller boards, this one includes HDMI, USB, and analog audio output, so it can be used as a stand-alone personal computer. At least, a retro-style personal computer; the processor has no MMU after all.
We were catching up on a recent hackaday hackchat with eben upton and learned some fun facts: such as the DVI hack for the RP2040 was inspired by a device called the IchigoJam. we ...
For the stand-alone use case, Adafruit has a project called Fruit Jam OS which is basically an application launcher and some demo apps (including games, an editor, and an IRC client) on top of their CircuitPython environment. No accessibility for blind users, of course. I'll have to see if I can get some text-to-speech running on this board.
@MahmoudGaza Fair question. For me, the main benefit is that I can learn to program in a much more constrained environment. There have been such hobbyist microcontroller boards for a long time, of course; what I like about this one specifically is that it has audio output.
@MahmoudGaza As for what purpose(s) the designers had in mind, I know that emulation of old computers was one purpose. But to some extent, I think companies like Adafruit just design a board with whatever hardware they can fit in a particular size and budget, then see what the hobbyist and educational communities will do with it.
The Quebec government is lifting a ban on the sale of gas-powered cars that would have taken effect in 2035. Environment Minister Bernard Drainville says the decision will give the industry a break and Quebecers more choice.
The service road on Décarie Blvd. north was closed Thursday morning as Montreal Police (SPVM) investigated a collision that left a cyclist in critical condition. Calls to 911 came in at around 4:15 a.m.
i'm aware this problem is caused by me existing outside of the typical use profile of Youtube viewers, but it drives me insane when people use Youtube's advance release feature because it only shows up in my RSS reader when they make the announcement, not when the video releases
@thunderbird Where can I file bugs on Thunderbird for Android?
The "Thunderbird" component on Bugzilla is explicitly only for the Desktop client.
I noticed that mails with attachments (photos) are only sent when the phone is connected to external power supply, and I trigger sending messages while it is.
Ugh, we're sorry you're dealing with this bug, and thanks for wanting to open a report! Our Android app bugs live on GitHub, and you can open one here: github.com/thunderbird/thunder…
Thanks for writing the bug report, even if it fixed itself! If this happens again please write another bug report and our team and community will investigate this!
Checklist I have used the search function to see if someone else has already submitted the same bug report. I will describe the problem with as much detail as possible. App Thunderbird for Android ...
просто поразительно. английские нейтив спикеры не уловили НИ ОДНОГО важного заявления биби. ни. сука. одного. видимо, ивритский акцент им помешал, а мне помог.
именно ТАК работают сейчас геббельс-медиа. ты можешь кричать с трибуны оон но тебя ни кто не услышит просто потому что смотреть онлайн видео сложно - надо ссылку найти и время потратить.
это сука лютый пиздец. если честно мне немного не по себе…
Life’s Work: A Retrospective, the career-spanning collection from 8x GRAMMY Award winning icon Doc Watson, now available digitally and as a CD Box Set. The n...
Buy at Amazon: http://smarturl.it/SMSCREBlivecd-dvdClip from Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers featuring Edie Brickell Live. The entire concert is at...
Я поняла. Раз переселить всех в счастливое будущее не удаётся, нас возвращают в счастливое детство. Так, в детстве нельзя было говорить слово "жопа". А если очень хотелось, надлежало зайти в комнату, проверить, что рядом никого нет, быстро и полушёпотом крикнуть и тут же выбежать, пока ничего не случилось. Сейчас то же самое, только слова другие.
@OttovonWenkoff @piratzbrna Já to hlavně nechápu. Jedna věc je mít to jako oficiální příjem, který jim pomůže se získáním hypotéky apod. s tím bych neměl problém, ale je to příjem jako každý jiný, tak ať z toho platí i daně jako všichni ostatní. Ostatně to, že se to dneska nikam nepřiznává je právě snaha z toho daně neplatit...
@tritol128 @OttovonWenkoff @piratzbrna Ale o tom to vubec neni. Kdyby zamestnanec chtel mit to dysko oficialne, tak by to kazdy zamestnavatel uvital. Mel by oficialne vetsi naklady => platil mensi dane.
Problem je bariera mezi:
1. Jednoduchosti to nepriznat. Ty penize nejsou na zadnem danovem dokladu => neexistuji. 2. Cenou za to to priznat a dat to do vyplaty => zamestnanec prijde o 45% te castky s minimalnimi benefity.
S (1) objektivne hnout nejde. Tak se proste musi posunout (2).
@mwenisch @OttovonWenkoff @piratzbrna Měli by to mít stejně jako všichni ostatní, ti taky přijdou o podobná procenta. Jinak je to stejné zmrdství jako tiché víno...
@tritol128 @OttovonWenkoff @piratzbrna O tom nepochybuju. Ale je dulezite pochopit ten problem a pochopit, jak velka dira tam ted je. To proste v zadnym scenari nejde jen tak preskocit a zacit platit 45% statu. Minimalne ne plosne.
Ze vsech reseni jak tu propast preklenout je "docasne" posunout (2) smerem k (1) celkem dobre. Pak se muze ten benefit ruzne zastropovat a postupne zmizi (priklad tohohle postupu je ruseni stravenek v Britanii).
@mwenisch @OttovonWenkoff @piratzbrna Měli by to začít narovnávat tihle majitelé restaurací, kteří své zaměstnance léta dřou z kůže a vydělali tak na několik provozoven, takže můžou rozdělit rizika a nehrozí výkyv jako u jednoho podniku.
André Polykanine
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