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I’ve published my article on the Impact Hero SDK (as used by at least 16 browser extensions) and the refoorest extension. The company behind these is the France-based Colibri Hero, also known as allcolibri: palant.info/2024/10/01/lies-da…

Trust me, the article title is justified. I couldn’t believe it when I saw how everything they claim turns out to be a lie. Their line of business is commonly called “affiliate fraud,” so they carefully avoid this topic and instead make the impression of being supported by altruistic companies that genuinely care for our planet.

They promise to plant trees if people use their extensions but their numbers are all fake. The numbers displayed by the extension don’t add up to the numbers shown on their web page. Maybe they should have implemented access control if they didn’t want anybody to figure that out. And the numbers on the web page – well, these have been increasing at a constant rate of 20 trees per hour for the past four years, completely ignoring what their extension users did or didn’t.

Do they actually donate any money? Probably, I don’t know. They don’t disclose their finances, and if they did these would probably turn out fake as well. Should anyone trust them? No, not from what I saw. Should these extensions be nuked from orbit (or at least from the add-on stores)? Yes, absolutely.

There is more “fun” stuff going on here, so feel free to read the article.

This entry was edited (1 year ago)

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T-Mobile reaches $31.5 million settlement with FCC over past data breaches

Apparently, T-mobile is now mandated to implement better cybersecurity controls, such as properly segmenting networks and using phishing resistant #MFA.

This settlement covers the breaches in 2021, 2022, and 2023. Will we get a 2024 special? 💀

#cybersecurity #infosec #databreach

cyberscoop.com/t-mobile-fcc-se…

#infosec #cybersecurity #mfa #databreach

mastodon - Link to source

Jimmy Carter turns 100 today. He is proof that decency and goodness can exist in public service.

Did you know that Jimmy Carter heroically saved Canada from a nuclear meltdown when he was a naval officer?

It's true!

The world’s first nuclear reactor meltdown occurred in the Ottawa Valley — and a young U.S. naval officer was brought in to contain the disaster — 72 years ago.

Leading a team of two dozen men, 28-year old Lieutenant Carter had himself lowered into the damaged reactor.

A picture of a young Jimmy Carter in his naval uniform
This entry was edited (1 year ago)

reshared this

in reply to fluffy 💜

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fluffy 💜

As much as I keep on armchair-architecting about how Cohost “could” have been an indieweb player, they were very specifically against interop in any meaningful way because they felt that centralized silos were the way to go for community building and moderation

so of course they shot themselves in the foot, repeatedly, regarding moderation, which I’m sure was a major contributor to their eventual burnout

mastodon - Link to source

Is the fedi for losers? « La question est provocante et intelligente : le Fediverse semble être un repère d’écologistes, libristes, défenseurs des droits sociaux, féministes et cyclistes. Bref la liste de tous ceux qui ne sont pas mis en avant, qui semblent « perdre ».

Je n’avais jamais vu les choses sous cet angle. Pour moi, le point commun est surtout une volonté de changer les choses. Or, par définition, si on veut changer les choses, c’est qu’on n’est pas satisfait avec la situation actuelle. On est donc « perdant ». En fait, tout révolutionnaire est, par définition, un·e perdant·e. Dès qu’iel gagne, ce n’est plus un·e révolutionnaire, mais une personne au pouvoir !»

Ode aux perdants, @ploum@mamot.fr, 1 octobre 2024 : ploum.net/2024-10-01-ode-aux-p…

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Jetzt geht es in der SPD doch noch rund um den aktuellen Eskalationskurs in der Asyl- und Sicherheitspolitik. Erst der offene Brief, der Scholz, Faeser und die SPD-Fraktion warnt, Terror mit Migration zu vermischen und die Rhetorik der Rechten zu übernehmen. Jetzt kommt weitere Unterstützung aus dem Bundestag: „Auch wir halten den Kurs, der gerade in der SPD in der Migrations- und Asylpolitik eingeschlagen wird, für falsch.“

#Sicherheitspaket #Unsicherheitspaket #SPD

netzpolitik.org/2024/antwort-a…

#SPD #sicherheitspaket #unsicherheitspaket
This entry was edited (1 year ago)

mastodon - Link to source

After analyzing more than 1k contracts, the verdict is in and it is clear:
"Our analysis demonstrates that research institutions seem to be 'trapped' in transformative agreements. Instead of being a bridge towards a fully #OpenAccess world, academia is stuck in the hybrid system. This endows the legacy (non-Open Access) publishing houses with substantial market power. It raises entry barriers, lowers competition, and increases costs for libraries and universities."

arxiv.org/abs/2409.20224

#oa

#openaccess #oa

mastodon - Link to source

Independent test of #OpenAI’s o1-preview model achieved near-perfect performance on a national #math exam (landing in the top .1% of the nation’s students).

o1 also outperformed 4o on the math test, but took about 3 times longer to do so (10 minutes vs. 3 minutes).

Preprint: researchgate.net/publication/3…

#teaching #assessment #AI #LLM #edu #higherEd

#AI #math #llm #openai #teaching #edu #highered #assessment

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🤖 XR Accessibility: for people with hearing disabilities by @JoeLamyman

"Extended Reality (XR) experiences tend to focus on providing immersive sounds and directional audio to convey information. But we need to consider how we convey the information in these experiences to people who can’t hear them."

#XR #VR #accessibility

tetralogical.com/blog/2024/10/…

#Accessibility #VR #xr @JoeLamyman

mastodon - Link to source
My website hosting came up for renewal, so I’ve taken the decision to take the site down. Visitor traffic doesn’t warrant the cost of keeping it going, and all my books are on Amazon anyway.
But you can expect to see more posts here promoting my books.
If you like #Historical fiction, please do take a look at them. I’ve written stories set in Roman times, as well as a few on WW1 aviation. Do check out the Amazon reviews.
#Books #Novels
Cover of World’s End, showing a Roman Eagle standard against a background of rugged hills and a river.
cover of bloody april, a novel set in WW1, showing many war graves intersected by a blood red river.
cover of dido's revenge, the 1st book in my Sempronius Scipio series which is set in the 3rd Century. The cover shows the ruins of an ancient temple.
#books #Historical #novels

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Ab nächstem Jahr möchte die Bundesregierung 12,4 Mrd. Euro in die #Aktienrente investieren. Ein Lieblingsprojekt von #Linder (ja, genau der von der #FDP, der sonst immer sagt, es sei kein Geld da, weil Kreditverbot alias #Schuldenbremse).

Zur Einordnung, das wären:

2x soviel, wie der Bund für Forschung & Entwicklung ausgibt,
1,8x soviel, wie der Bund in Maßnahmen zum Wohnungsbau stecken möchte,
12,5x jährlicher Bundes-Zuschuss zum #Deutschlandticket

(1/2)

spiegel.de/wirtschaft/bundesha…

#fdp #Deutschlandticket #schuldenbremse #Aktienrente #linder
in reply to Stefan Karstens

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Stefan Karstens

Zur Erinnerung: Bei der #Aktienrente geht es nicht darum, dass jetzt oder in Zukunft Rentner:innen was davon haben. Sondern darum, dass der Bund Aktien kauft. Um vielleicht (ganz vielleicht) mit eingenommenen Dividenden ab 2035 den Rentenbeitrag um 0,1 - 0,5% weniger ansteigen lassen zu müssen.

Oder kurz: Es ist eine gewaltige Verschiebung öffentlicher Mittel, unserer Steuergelder, an den #Kapitalmarkt. Mit entsprechenden Verlustrisiken. Völliger Blödsinn.

(2/2)

taz.de/Anlage-von-Steuergelder…

#Aktienrente #kapitalmarkt
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