Today’s instalment of ‘living in the future is actually pretty neat’:

When I was small, the first step in decorating a Christmas tree was sorting out the lights. Lights used incandescent bulbs, on a long string, wired in parallel. At least one would have blown in storage during the year, and you had to lay out the string, find the blown ones, and replace them (and then discover you’d run out of spare bulbs and needed to go to a shop). If you didn’t, the rest would get more current and would be more likely to blow. If enough blew, the others would get so hot (they were too hot to touch in normal operation anyway) that they would set fire to the tree and burn the house down.

Now, we have LED strips, which consume a fraction of the power, don’t burn out, and are not a fire risk. They also seem to not tangle as easily, but that’s probably unrelated.

# Pachli 3.2.0 is released

## New features

- Apply filters to search results, bookmarks, and favourites
- Display account pronouns
- #quoteposts

## Fixes

- Make "Load newest notifications" work
- Load images from sites using LetsEncrypt certificates on older devices
- Show emojis in author names in bylines
- Translate boosted posts correctly
- Improve display of error causes
- Show display names with some RTL characters correctly

pachli.app/pachli/2025/11/30/3…

#MastoDev #AndroidDev

I don't know what's better -- Monero users not running their own nodes which makes them identifiable, or this blog post being a victim of Markdown Hell and every numbered point being "1." because they had the audacity of putting bullet points between the numbered points

darkwebinformer.com/chainalysi…

«in a series of deleted X posts, Grok boasted that Musk had the “potential to drink piss better than any human in history,” that he was “the ultimate throat goat” whose “blowjob prowess edges out Trump’s,” and that he should have won a 2016 porn industry award instead of porn star Riley Reid.»

😂😂😂 I'm dying. It's juvenile AF, but still.

Elon Musk's AI Assistant Grok Goes Haywire Again
mediaite.com/media/tech/elon-m…

Používám GrapheneOS už několik let a je super vidět, jak komunita pořád roste.
Mám proto otázku na ostatní:
Jak řešíte profily a Google služby?

– jedete jeden hlavní profil + sandboxed Google Play,
– používáte více profilů (např. hlavní bez Googlu, druhý pro appky),
– spoléháte na Private Spaces (soukromé prostory),
– nebo jste úplně bez Googlu a stačí vám Aurora Store?

Vyzkoušel jsem všechny varianty, ale zajímají mě vaše reálné zkušenosti.
Co vám dlouhodobě funguje nejlíp?
Já se přiznám, že jedu jeden hlavní profil se sandboxed Google Play.
Důvod je jednoduchý:
– v práci mi volají přes WhatsApp,
– jedna pracovní appka přes Auroru nefungovala,
– a několikrát denně používám navigaci v autě.

Přepínání profilů mě po čase prostě přestalo bavit.

#grapheneos

  • Hlavní profil + sandboxed Google Play (40%, 6 votes)
  • Více profilů (26%, 4 votes)
  • Private Spaces (0%, 0 votes)
  • Bez Googlu, jen Aurora a F-droid (33%, 5 votes)
15 voters. Poll end: 3 weeks ago

Petition in Germany to recognize unpaid contribution to free and open source software projects as 'society-beneficial volunteering' (ehrenamt)!

This will give volunteering for e.g. @postmarketOS , @freifunk , @kde , @nextcloud , @Mastodon and other libre projects the same legal status as taking care of an elderly family member, which provides tax benefits and relaxes requirements for receiving unemployment benefits.

openpetition.de/petition/onlin…

English language version (only sign one version): openpetition.de/petition/onlin…

If you're not a resident of Germany, go ahead and use this thread to organize similar initiatives in your country of residence.

#deutchland #foss #floss #volunteer #ehrenamt #freiwilligkeit #openSource #freeSoftware

reshared this

Here is a picture taken this morning showing off how snowy it is around here. I am putting the description in the actual post, as I think it is too big for the image description part.

The image shows a quiet residential area blanketed by a fresh layer of snow, creating a calm and wintry atmosphere. The landscape is primarily white, as the snow covers the road, rooftops, and yards in a thick, undisturbed layer. The overcast sky is a pale, uniform gray, indicating continued cloudy weather, adding a subdued tone to the scene.

On both sides of the road are mobile homes, each painted in various muted colors like white, gray, and pale yellow. The homes have small front porches or steps leading up to their entrances, some of which are partially buried in snow. A few homes have lights on inside, casting a warm yellow glow through the windows that contrasts with the cold outdoor environment. Small trees and bushes surround some of the homes, their branches heavy with freshly settled snow.

A single light gray Jeep is parked on the left side of the image near a home, with a light dusting of snow on its roof, windshield, and hood. Tire marks and footprints are visible in the snow-covered street, leading away from the direction of the camera, showing that someone has already walked and driven on this quiet path recently. These tracks carve through the smooth surface of the snow, suggesting minimal traffic and a peaceful, early moment after the snowfall.

In the background, a red stop sign stands out vividly against the snow near the center right, placed at a street intersection within the mobile home park. The visibility of the stop sign and its bright color provides a striking contrast to the monotonous whiteness of the rest of the area. Spruce and bare-branched trees can also be seen further back, some leaning slightly and covered in a delicate coating of snow.

Overall, the image captures a serene and picturesque winter morning in a modest neighborhood. The footprints and vehicle tracks hint at the beginning of daily routines in a community gently waking up amidst a snowy landscape. The quiet stillness suggests the snow may have only recently stopped falling, leaving everything wrapped in a pristine, soft layer.

in reply to Andre Louis

@FreakyFwoof @ke7zum I am going to try to answer what I think you are asking. if I am wrong, please clairify. normally here you take your kids down to where the office is, and that is where the bus picks up the kids. with may and I both being totally blind, plus at least one of our boys having ADHD, it makes it really hard for us to try to keep them under control, and hear where things are that we need to hear, so there bus actually stops right across the street from our trailor, for us only. so when I say we wait for them, we are waiting for them to get to across from our trailor. they don't show up the same exact time every day, so we go out a few minutes early just in case.

If you are one of those transphobic motherfuckers who won't use someone's correct pronouns, you do NOT fucking get to say you are "in a relationship" with a chatbot.

You won't acknowledge the humanity of a trans woman, but you will build an emotional connection with a computer simulation you assigned a gender to?

Fuck ALL THE WAY OFF with that shit.

There's a song by Bad Religion called I Love My Computer, whose interpretation I will not attempt to make, but the lyrics speak of an obsession with a computer, as if it were a rather masoginestic sexual relationship with a powerless woman with the man dictating all, and in full control.
I haven't gotten all philisophical about it, but I enjoy it for its surface-level lyrics, in the computer sense of the words, not the sexual parts, and simply because not many even try to sing about anything to do with computers, couched in metaphor or not.
So its a unique niche genre topic, amongst the ranks of Its All About The Pentiums by Weird Al, and not really too many others.

So with all that preample out of the way, part of the lyrics of the above discussed song, 64 characters of them, to be exact, became my very first WiFi password, using the WEP encryption scheme. For individual end users, this was the best on offer at the time. You either had an open network, or you had a WEP encrypted network with a textual password with a hard limit of 64 characters. The password from the lyrics of that song, and my very first WiFi password was:
ILovemycomputeryoumakemefeelallrighteverywakinghourandeverylone
Of course, I became quickly aware that RC4 had been broken, and WEP was essentially at best an annoyance, quickly overcome, by anyone really wanting to listen to your network, so after I reprogrammed my mind for the acronym WEP standing for Wired Equivalent Privacy to Wire-exposed Privacy, I moved to WPA enterprise and set up a RADIUS server, and had MAC authentication going there for a while.
But with the prolipheration of devices, rapid upgrades and swaps, that became untennable. So I went back to WPA2 Personal and now WPA 3 Personal. I may investigate the enterprise modes a bit further, but authenticating devices is simply unwieldy, most especially with MAC randomization, its just impossible now.
But I'm really not all that worried about my network being hacked. Not to say it can't or won't ever happen, but its not something that keeps me up at night anymore. I just rock the latest protocols and schemes, latest firmware, and roll with it.
So that's a bit of a story on my first use of WiFi encryption and what locked it down. Until it didn't. LOL.

in reply to Adam MacLeod

I am still (unfortunately) using WPA2/WPA3 mixed mode, which is probably no better than just WPA2 by itself, because of a couple of stupid devices that don't support WPA3. There are workarounds, such as putting said devices on their own VLAN/SSID, smashing them with hammers, or just not using them, but all those options have different sets of pros and cons.

I did briefly mess with WPA3 Enterprise, and, yes, getting keys on devices is annoying. That being said, if it were just me and no one else in the house, I'd probably do it anyway.

Also, if it were just me in the house, there'd be a lot less WiFi. Most of my stuff doesn't use it as-is.

This entry was edited (4 weeks ago)
in reply to Baldur Bjarnason

More and more, generative models are looking like productivity tobacco. Promoted by biased research, it’s addictive, harmful, and the little benefit it has (nicotine is a somewhat effective ADHD drug, for example) cannot outweigh the fact that it’s hurting us all, directly and indirectly.

This shit is already turning out to be one of the most harmful tech innovations of the 21st century. It needs to be regulated at least as much as tobacco, if not banned outright from most economic spheres

The Australian government has announced on November 3 that, beginning next year in much of the country and spreading to the rest by 2027, all residents will get three free hours of electricity every afternoon.

That’s right: 3 hours of free electricity. This possible because Australia has built enough solar power that in the middle of the day the sun is generating so much electricity that wholesale electric prices often go negative few those few hours. So, they’re giving it away. electrek.co/2025/11/04/austral…

How’s that for a political platform plank? “Vote for us and we’ll build out so much solar power generation that we’ll give electricity away for free in the middle of the day.”

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in reply to Jeff Spencer

Bill McKibben offers the bottom line: “Australia has enough solar power, and that solar power is so cheap, that now people who live there will get to have it for free. They will be, every afternoon, energy-rich. With just a little bit of care, they’ll be able to get done most of what needs doing for free.”

Meanwhile, Bill writes, “Trump and the corrupt fossil fuel cronies that surround him have done everything they can to make sure Americans will never get to share in this kind of bounty.”

You can read all of Bill’s comments at billmckibben.substack.com/p/fr…

2/2

This entry was edited (1 month ago)
in reply to HOAXILLA®

Für die zweite OP alles gute! Und kurioserweise ist mir im Oktober dasselbe passiert: Mitte Oktober gegen Influenca und CoVid impfen lassen, eine Woche später ein RSV- oder sonstiger Erkältungsvirus, der sich bei mir breit machte, und wo der Husten erst jetzt richtig abgeklungen ist.

Zum Thema lesen: Ihr kennt das meiste aus den letzten Jahren vermutlich schon, aber ihr könnt euch auf viele Arten Texte auch vorlesen lassen, wenn die Augen nicht mehr können. Bei Fragen gern DM.

The #dragons may have all been adopted, but, in the true spirit of #FLOSS, we give you the instructions on how to make your own!

Grab the instructions as a PDF document from the "thank you" page you see after donating:

kde.org/fundraisers/yearend202…

or directly download them from here:

kde.org/fundraisers/yearend202…

And get knitting!

#fundraiser #freeSoftware #amigurumi