Most VOA headquarters staff, who were emailed Reduction-in-Force notices a week ago, are being informed today the RIF notification is rescinded, but USAGM warns them the agency will be "running another RIF in the near future."
As one of my colleagues puts it: "Our chain is being yanked again."
They're deporting people for kicking dogs now.
@cassidyclown @sun but they're lying about the vet bills. That's all I'm saying. There's no goddamn way it cost that much.
source: I've paid tens of thousands of dollars in vet bills
I am slowly oxidizing my unix CLI. A lot of people have made rust based versions of common unix utilities and some of them are REALLY good.
Like fd-find for doing essentially find . -name blah. And rg (ripgrep) which does grep -R but it's aware of git, files like pyc or .bak files, and it excludes them by default.
Now I have sd which is hopefully replacing the last thing I used perl for. I write perl -pi -e s/x/y/g a lot. Just doing a quick string replace inside a file. So sd can start doing that.
I'm also trying to get used to zellij instead of tmux and starship for modern prompt decorations like the kids do.
These kids, my friends, are welcome on my lawn.
Ich hab dann jetzt auch mal ne Meinung zu der Anregung gepostet, ob auf der #GPN23 ein Raum für Körperlichkeiten nice gewesen wäre.
Na gut, hauptsächlich hab ich ne Meinung dazu, wie man seine Opposition dazu nicht vorbringen sollte. Mit Queerfeindlichkeit zum Beispiel, oder Klassismus.
An ner anderen Ecke in dem Thread gab's ne Empfehlung für diesen Talk hier von der #GPN22:
media.ccc.de/v/gpn22-250-warum…
Ich hab da erst dran vorbeigescrollt, aber ihn mir jetzt doch angeschaut. Und wow, der hat sehr gute Argumente dafür, warum Kink gut zum Chaos passt, und der Vortragende ist auch einfach super sympathisch. Find ich. Empfehlung!
Die Grenzen von Diversity: Ist Kink noch Diversity oder nur eine persönliche Vorliebe? Warum sind eigentlich auf Hackerveranstaltungen s...media.ccc.de
How easy is it to move to Windows 11, version 25H2? As easy as a quick restart if you're on version 24H2! Today, Windows 11, version 25H2 became available to the Windows Insider community, in advance of broader availability planned for the secon…Jason_Leznek (TECHCOMMUNITY.MICROSOFT.COM)
Khronos reshared this.
Google’s “ambition-based” carbon emissions grew 51 percent when compared to 2019, putting it further away from its goal of slashing planet-heating pollution.Emma Roth (The Verge)
It's my pleasure to announce storyseedlibrary.org/ - a #library of #solarpunk #art and story seeds to help you imagine a better #climate future!
Huge thanks to all the artists who shared their art under various #creativeCommons licenses, including @the_lemonaut , @NiwlCraft and @jacobcoffin ! No AI will replace handcrafted art!
If you liked our @SolarpunkPrompts #podcast , the Story Seeds are expanding its concept - soon with more, unpublished ones!
#climateChange #illustration #writing
A library of Solarpunk art and story seeds helping you imagine a better climate future!Story Seed Library
Who says you can’t have #privacy and #security in an OS? Meet PureOS — the #Linux OS that respects you.
No ads
No trackers
No #surveillance
No terms of service traps
PureOS supports Purism’s Librem 5 & Liberty Phone.
More Info: puri.sm/posts/what-is-pureos-a…
Purism makes premium phones, laptops, mini PCs and servers running free software on PureOS. Purism products respect people's privacy and freedom while protecting their security.Purism SPC
My week: lists.haxx.se/pipermail/daniel…
Vacation, rc1, NETRC, TLS libs, Joy of Coding, forks, security
A new issue of #ThisWeekInGNOME is now online!
#206 Hot Days
thisweek.gnome.org/posts/2025/…
Hurray! Another San Francisco bookstore is following Booksmith's example and pulling Harry Potter books.
From the SF Chronicle:
Fabulosa Books followed suit on Wednesday, June 25.
The queer Castro bookstore shared a picture of a whiteboard to its Instagram account with the message, “We are no longer buying + selling books by J.K. Rowling as she is devoting her life to nastiness.”
The caption thanks Booksmith for “setting a good example.”
sfchronicle.com/entertainment/… or archive.vn/Udyth
#LGBTQ #trans #books #SanFrancisco #JKRowling #HarryPotter
Two popular independent bookstores in San Francisco have stopped selling the “Harry Potter” series after J.K. Rowling’s fund opposing transgender rights.Aidin Vaziri (San Francisco Chronicle)
Website/device age verification is a privacy and security nightmare and everyone who tells you that this is a solved problem is lying to you.
gizmodo.com/supreme-court-says…
Nineteen states have age verification laws.Matt Novak (Gizmodo)
The Senate version of the bill forces the FCC to sell off as much as half of the unlicensed spectrum used by the 6GHz Wi-Fi band.Jennifer Pattison Tuohy (The Verge)
two years ago today:
BEGIN TRANSMISSION: THE TRANS ALLEGORIES OF THE MATRIX was released into the world, and the response has been overwhelming 🥹
the 'zon is so problematic, and yet reviews there matter A LOT
if we could get just two more and finally break 100, that would help so much 🩷🩷🩷
Transmitting data via ultrasound without any special equipment
halcy.de/blog/2025/06/27/trans…
#HackerNews #Transmitting #data #ultrasound #technology #innovation #special #equipment #hackernews
reshared this
#AndroidAppRain at apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid today brings you 6 updated and 1 added apps:
* PaperWise: quickly convert images from your camera or gallery into high-quality PDF files 🛡️
RB status: 631 apps (47.9%)
Enjoy your #free #Android #apps with the #IzzyOnDroid repo 
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).IzzyOnDroid App Repo
Earlier this week, we as #RustWeek organizers came together for a dinner party to celebrate the success of RustWeek 2025 and make the first plans for RustWeek 2026! 🤩
We have some ideas, but what would *you* like to see at #RustWeek2026? What should we keep the same and what should we add or change? ✨
Really looking forward to see you all again next year. 💛
The Honor 400 is a well-built device that balances performance, design, and accessibility. With Android 15 out of the box, 6 myears of Android upgrades andSemih Güven (Accessible Android)
Reading in Servo’s latest weekly report that it’s now passing 1.7 million Web Platform Subtests, I started wondering: How much investment would it build it into a competitive, independent browser, in the context of all this talk on digital sovereignty?
Servo is an experimental web browser engine written in Rust, originally developed by Mozilla Research as a memory-safe, parallel alternative to traditional browser engines like Gecko and WebKit. After Mozilla laid off the entire Servo team in 2020, the project was transferred to Linux Foundation Europe, where it continues to be developed with minimal funding from individual donors and Igalia, a team of just five engineers. Servo’s progress demonstrates what’s possible with intentional investment in independent browser projects.
As initiatives like EuroStack propose €300 billion investments in digital infrastructure and researchers proposing comprehensive roadmaps for “reclaiming digital sovereignty” through democratic, public-led digital stacks, browsers are an ideal test case to ground these ambitious visions in reality.
The current browser landscape reveals how concentrated digital control has become. Roughly 75% of global web traffic flows through browsers based on Google’s Chromium engine; not just Chrome, but Microsoft Edge, Samsung, and dozens of others. Apple’s Safari dominates iOS but remains locked to their ecosystem. Firefox, once a genuine alternative, has declined to under 5% market share globally. This means American companies control how billions of users worldwide access the web. Every search, transaction, and digital service flows through infrastructure ultimately controlled by Silicon Valley. For societies valuing their independence and sovereignty, this represents a fundamental vulnerability that recent geopolitical events have made impossible to ignore.
Digital infrastructure is as important as energy or transportation networks. Unlike physical infrastructure, however, digital systems can be controlled remotely, updated unilaterally, and modified to serve the interests of their controllers rather than their users. Browsers exemplify this challenge because they’re both critical and seemingly replaceable. In theory, anyone can build a browser. The web standards are open, and rendering engines like Servo prove it’s technically feasible.
In practice, building browsers requires sustained investment, institutional coordination, and overcoming network effects that entrench existing players. If democratic societies can successfully coordinate to build and maintain competitive browser alternatives, it demonstrates their capacity for more complex digital sovereignty goals. If they cannot, it reveals the institutional gaps that need addressing.
Firefox offers important lessons about the challenges facing independent browsers. Mozilla has indeed faced difficulties: declining market share, organizational challenges, and ongoing technical issues. The organization has also alienated its most dedicated supporters by pivoting toward advertising, AI initiatives and cutting their impactful public advocacy programs.
However, Firefox remains the only major browser engine not controlled by Apple or Google, serving hundreds of millions of users worldwide. Its struggles reflect structural challenges that any alternative browser would face: the enormous engineering effort required to maintain web compatibility, the network effects favouring dominant platforms, and the difficulty of sustaining long-term technical projects through diverse funding sources.
Servo’s recent progress illustrates both the potential and the resource constraints of independent browser development. Since 2023, Igalia’s team of just five engineers has increased Servo’s Web Platform Test pass rate from 40.8% to 62.0%, added Android support, and made the engine embeddable in other applications, even demonstrating better performance than Chromium on Raspberry Pi. This progress on a shoestring budget shows what focused investment could achieve, while also highlighting how resource-constrained independent browser development remains.
Yet, building a competitive alternative browser infrastructure would require substantial but manageable investment. Here is a ballpark estimation I made based on existing browsers: Annual operating costs would include:
At this point I would just round up to around 50-70 million annually, which I’m sure would comfortably cover everything I missed. The proposed EuroStack initiative already envisions €300 billion over multiple years. Browsers represent a tiny fraction of what democratic societies already spend on strategic infrastructure. This calculation proves that the cost isn’t the primary barrier: the European Space Agency for example has had a budget of €7.8 billion in 2024. Europe can afford to build a browser.
It would probably take around 3-4 years to fully build an alternative browser from scratch, less so if it’s a fork of one of the existing ones. Forking Chromium/Gecko or building upon Servo’s foundation could reduce this timeline to 18-24 months for basic functionality, though achieving full web compatibility and market readiness would still require several additional years of refinement. The initial development sprint needs to be followed by a sustained engineering effort needed afterward, for maintaining compatibility with evolving web standards, fixing security vulnerabilities, and keeping pace with performance improvements.
The core challenge isn’t technical; it’s institutional. How do you sustain long-term technical projects through democratic processes that span multiple countries with different priorities, resources, and political systems? Successful models exist. The European Space Agency coordinates complex multi-national technical projects. CERN manages cutting-edge research infrastructure across dozens of countries. The Internet Engineering Task Force maintains critical internet standards through voluntary coordination among global stakeholders. The “Reclaiming Digital Sovereignity” proposal specifically addresses this challenge by advocating for “new public institutions with state and civil society representation” to govern universal digital platforms, alongside “multilateral agreements on principles and rules for the internet” as safeguards for autonomous, democratically governed solutions.
Browser development could follow similar patterns: international frameworks that respect national sovereignty while enabling coordinated action, governance structures that balance technical expertise with democratic accountability, and funding mechanisms that provide stability across political cycles. The Reclaiming Digital Sovereignity’s report’s emphasis on “democratic international consortia” and “public knowledge networks led by a new public international research agency” provides concrete institutional models that could be adapted for browser development. Germany’s Sovereign Tech Agency represents another model for public investment in digital infrastructure for the public interest.
With all that being said, browsers represent one of the more achievable digital sovereignty goals. They’re built on open standards, rely heavily on open source components, and face fewer network effects than platform-based services. Other areas of the technology stack would be far more challenging, and far less open.
Success here would demonstrate that democratic societies can coordinate effectively on complex technical infrastructure and pass the first hurdle. Failure would reveal institutional gaps that need addressing before attempting more ambitious digital sovereignty goals. Democratic digital sovereignty is challenging but feasible, if societies are willing to think institutionally, invest sustainably, and build incrementally rather than trying to recreate Silicon Valley with different ownership structures.
Ultimately, the real question isn’t whether democratic societies can build alternative technologies, but whether they can build the democratic institutions necessary to govern them effectively across the complex realities of international coordination, competing priorities, and long-term sustainability. I believe browsers offer an ideal place to start testing these institutional innovations. The technical challenges are surmountable. The institutional ones remain to be proven.
Views expressed are personal and do not represent any organization.
#digitalSovereignity #funding #internetStandards #openSource #publicInterest
The European Space Agency budget will increase this year by 10% to €7.8B ($8.5B), the agency announced at its annual press briefing yesterday.Jack Kuhr (Payload)
How does Substance Designer + Inkscape sound?
That's pretty much exactly what Graphite is. A new free, open source, procedural vector graphics application.
gamefromscratch.com/graphite-f…
Graphite is a free and open source Vector graphics application build on a graph node system enabling procedural creation animation and moreMike (GameFromScratch)
We have an exciting job opening available at Moog to join my team in Asheville, NC: Application Software Engineer - Synth Editors.
You'll find a link with all details below, we're all looking forward to making great and inspiring synths with you!
inmusicbrands.pinpointhq.com/e…
39 years today since Jim Henson's cult classic 'Labyrinth' was released on June 27th 1986, with George Lucas as executive producer, starring Jennifer Connelly as Sarah Williams and David Bowie as Jareth the Goblin King.
(Original illustration by Kevin M Wilson apemeetsgirl.com)
#Labyrinth #OTD #Movies #Cinemastodon #FilmMastodon #80s #JimHenson #OnThisDay #Art #Artwork #Illustration
Have you ever wondered what funding models exist, or what might be the best option for your project?
Then this is for you:
The Open Source Observatory is hosting an online workshop on 30 June 2025 dedicated to exploring funding strategies for open source projects.
@mechko, Head of the Sovereign Tech Fund, will speak about our approach to investing in open digital infrastructure in the public interest.
📅 30 June 2025
🕙 10:00–12:30 CEST
Register now: ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/9…
EUSurvey is an online survey-management system built for the creation and publishing of globally accessible forms, such as user satisfaction surveys and public consultations.ec.europa.eu
what was once a cornerstone of the #milwaukee burger scene, bombers has since lost its way. food quality has diminished over the years and there are far better places to grab a burger (oscars and archies to name a couple).
although i've never been a fan, thanks for pioneering the modern burger scene in our city!
milwaukeerecord.com/food-drink…
“AJ Bombers has been a cornerstone in the Milwaukee community for the past 16 years, and it’s beloved by so many, including myself.”Matt Wild (Milwaukee Record)
Mal.was erfrischendes aus der Verwaltungswelt: Offizielle Kommunikation mit Behörden via @matrix und #MLS!
Der #ITPlanungsrat hat heute die Fortführung des Vorhabens zur „Zielarchitektur Postfach- und Kommunikationslösungen” beschlossen. Jetzt geht es in die nächste Phase der Transitionsplanung & Validierung.
@cwo berichtet: heise.de/news/Wie-Buerger-kuen…
Alle Details unter gitlab.opencode.de/it-planungs… (natürlich alles CC-BY 🙂)
#fitko #itplr #zapuk #matrix #bundid #mjp #elster #muk #egvp #egov #ozg
Bund und Länder planen ein Bürgerpostfach, wohl mit dem Messaging-Standard Matrix. Ein Durchbruch für die Digitalisierung oder ein neues De-Mail-Fiasko?Christian Wölbert (heise online)
Oh, wow! The German IT Planning Council decided yesterday to consolidate a bunch of disparate communication tools into a unified system based on Matrix and MLS.
Here's the record of their decision and the other options they considered: gitlab.opencode.de/it-planungs…
#Matrix #OpenSource #FOSS #ProtocolsNotPlatforms #DPI #DPG
Informationen zur Umsetzung von Beschluss 2024/28 des IT-Planungsrates.GitLab
Valgrind is an instrumentation framework for dynamic analysis tools. It translates your program into an intermediate representation (VEX). Valgrind tools (like memcheck) transform/instrument the VEX representation. Valgrind then uses classic compiler optimizations on that internediate representation. And finally the VEX is translated back to machine code.
Florian Krohm made a list of missing constant folding operations: bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5…
Take a peek if you would like to hack on Valgrind!
Well, I received my Lumina Probiotic and used it. There are many brow beating nerds on Orange Site that were convinced it would hurt people because... ~reasons~
Preorder now - bring balance to your oral microbiomeLumina Probiotic
Bcachefs may be headed out of the kernel
lwn.net/Articles/1027289/ #LWN
The history of the bcachefs filesystem in the kernel has been turbulent, most recently with Li [...]LWN.net
victor tsaran
in reply to Steve Herman • • •bstow
in reply to victor tsaran • • •