DEpol, told you so

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"The cloud is down, all of it"
"But the AI that was supposed to keep it running ?"
"Had a debug log file that expanded to use all the storage and took the cloud down"
"Get the robots to reboot it ?"
"They are controlled from the cloud"
"and the access doors ?"
"Cloud"
"If the robots are down can we just force our way inside ?"
"No.. the automatic defence system runs on its own servers at your insistence so it's still working"

#fiction

Politicians have now discovered that people are using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to protect their privacy and bypass invasive laws.
Their solution?
Entirely ban the use of VPNs.
Yes, really.
As of this writing, Wisconsin lawmakers are escalating their war on privacy
by targeting VPNs in the name of “protecting children”
in A.B. 105/S.B. 130.
It’s an age verification bill
that requires all websites distributing material that could conceivably be deemed “sexual content”
to both implement an age verification system
and also to block the access of users connected via VPN.
The bill seeks to broadly expand the definition of materials that are “harmful to minors”
beyond the type of speech that states can prohibit minors from accessing
—potentially encompassing things like depictions and discussions of human anatomy, sexuality, and reproduction.
eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/lawm…

Tried to open #Discord on web. Login. Enter your email and password. Okay, click login.
"Wait, are you human?" and a #HateCaptcha widget.
I check the checkbox that I'm human (discrimination to us, other sentient beings, but okay).
Login. enter your login and password.
Wait, are you human? check the box.
Login. Enter your login and password…
Maybe it's only me, but I've never ever ever managed to cope with Discord, although this interesting loop appears for the first time.

Andre Louis reshared this.

In 2021, I’ve tabled amendments to the @EUCommission’s proposal of the Digital Markets Act, one of which introduced mandatory messaging interoperability for the gatekeepers. Now, more than 4 years later, real effects on the market are starting to appear. about.fb.com/news/2025/11/mess…

reshared this

in reply to Jiří Eischmann

@Jiří Eischmann @Marcel Kolaja @European Commission This is a joke isn't it?
First third party supported chat services are BirdyChat and Haiket. Does anyone have friends over there?
This sounds similar to how apple has opened their apps ecosystem that no meaningfull competion is viable.
Meta is not seeing their users seriously. Why we can't bridge whatsapp chats with FB messenger chats? These are running on similar if not the same backends.

"...detailed how the company would use AI to speed up licensing. In [Microsoft’s] conception, existing nuclear licensing documents and data about nuclear sites data would be used to train an LLM that’s then used to generate documents to speed up the process."

JESUS MOTHERFUCKING CHRIST

404media.co/power-companies-ar…

This entry was edited (6 days ago)

New from 404 Media: Microsoft and nuclear power company Westinghouse Nuclear want to use AI to speed up the construction of new nuclear power plants in the United States.

"may lead [..] to catastrophic nuclear consequences" and distrust of nuclear tech

404media.co/power-companies-ar…

In the "filesystems and I/O" portion of my Operating Systems course in college today. Brought some floppy disks in to help understanding storage system history and the archaic methods for data organization: tracks, sectors, partitions, etc.

I was surprised at how much the disks were investigated and examined by the students and how much curiosity was expressed. We almost had to suppress questions to get to the course material.

I think this is instructive. I'll try and incorporate some kind of tactile thing this spring when I'm teaching.

#retrocomputing #teaching

#Facebook v posledních dnech zaplavila masivní vlna hejtů na vedení pražské radnice a hlavně na náměstka Hřiba. Že prý zavinil dopravní zácpy v Praze. Nevím, jestli je to organizovaná kampaň, nebo jestli jen někdo začal a ostatní se jako stádo přidali. Každopádně fakt dává logiku hejtit (a posílat do Slavičína) někoho, kdo ve funkci za pár týdnů končí 😁

#hate #hejt #Praha #doprava

in reply to Lukáš Jelínek

@bogo And I would like to say that mandatory interoperability in the EU can possibly solve this problem soon 😎

about.fb.com/news/2025/11/mess…

It seems like yesterday we released Thunderbird for Android. See how fast our first mobile app is growing up.

#Thunderbird #OpenSource #Android

blog.thunderbird.net/2025/11/v…

We want everyone to benefit from digital sovereignty. 🤲

That’s why Nextcloud will invest €250 million by 2030 in open source solutions that put people back in control of their data.

Get the full story 👉 nextcloud.com/blog/nextcloud-c…

Steam Hardware Thoughts

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reshared this

Steve Ramirez, a neuroscientist who studies the creation (and manipulation) of memory, a truly sci-fi level of neuroscience, has written a book! I can only imagine this may be of interest to the type of folks who follow me:

press.princeton.edu/books/hard…

The matrix.org room dir is ready for business; the future of room lists in Element Web; opening rooms more quickly in EX Android - all this and more happened This Week in Matrix!

Grab the report and learn how to start your local Matrix S̵t̵a̵m̵m̵t̵i̵s̵c̵h̵ user group! matrix.org/blog/2025/11/14/thi…

Do you have 2 minutes?

Please consider nominating GrapheneOS and Accrescent (submit the form once for each) for the 2025 Proton Lifetime Fundraiser.

Direct link to form: form.typeform.com/to/XixQrG8Q

Learn more about the fundraiser: proton.me/blog/lifetime-fundra…

#grapheneOS #opensource #accrescent #android

Peter Vágner reshared this.

New: Google has chosen a side in Trump's mass deportation campaign. Google is hosting a CBP facial recognition app to hunt immigrants; no indication Google will remove. At same time Google takes down apps for reporting ICE sightings

“Big tech has made their choice”

404media.co/google-has-chosen-…

Suggestions for SSD erasure/destruction?

The tiny local credit union had to replace their Windows 10 PCs. Their local IT provider got acquired by a regional IT company and no longer offers disk wiping/destruction.

What are the best options to wipe or destroy (if required) about 5 SSDs that would satisfy a bank auditor?

I don't know if these are self encrypting drives. If they were spinning disks, I've used DBAN in the past, but SSDs have additional logic for wear leveling and trimming, so I don't know what additional steps are needed to ensure the data is all gone.

A quick check for physical disk destruction devices seems a bit pricey at this low volume, but a handy sledge hammer might not be enough for an auditor.

In the past, a disk random write/wipe plus drilling a hole through the platters was accepable for spinning drives.

in reply to Phillip Vuchetich

ATA secure erase should be supported by the SSD and should be understood by the drive firmware to write zeroes to EVERYTHING including the bits you can't reach, but also even if you did a DBAN and are worried about the wear leveling the amount of extra storage dedicated to handle failing flash is pretty small that I doubt anything of value could be found. Who knows though!

🇪🇺 "I am surprised and concerned that the GDPR is being reopened and weakened at its core […]"

💬 Read the full article, including comments from Max Schrems and Markéta Gregorová, who is a European Parliament negotiator on the issue 👉 brusselstimes.com/1835654/secr…

So last night, I tried Fedora 43. Fedora-Workstation-Live-43-1.6.x86_64.iso. The installer is now web based, making it really nice to use, even with just Tab and Shift + Tab. I was able to install it with no problem.

Now, first time setup had just one big issue, the timezone selector. It's keyboard accessible, and works like this: you start typing a city name, like Chicago, and then down arrow through suggestions and press Enter on the one you want. But Orca doesn't speak that there are suggestions available, and does not read which suggestion you select until you press Enter.

Other than that, Gnome desktop looks pretty good these days! The settings are much better, and that's about all I had time to test so far. Orca starts if you hit Alt Windows S at the installer and first setup, then starts after first setup is complete. The overview panel where you type to search doesn't read when it opens, but basically you just hit the Windows key and start typing what you want, and Orca reads what you hand on, and you can arrow through results. Notifications read too, and I'm thankful Gnome supports notifications.

#accessibility #blind #fedora #linux #foss @fedora

Mozilla announces more AI in Firefox, still failing to understand that at this point their market share is made of tech savvy people who do not want that.

Mozilla, please. Stop chasing the fads. Get your own values.

People use Firefox to get access to an open web, use a sturdy browser, and not to be tracked. Build in that direction and that direction only.

Nobody from your current user base will recommend Firefox with AI to their friends.

blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/ai…

#firefox #ai #privacy