Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

Hacker, activist, free-softie ◈ information security at https://isnic.is/ ◈ formerly at https://occrp.org/ ◈ my opinions are my own etc.

(he/him)

#foss #libre #privacy #infosec #fedi22

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Last Notes

2024-06-29 13:52:55

> Meta has caved to European regulators, and agreed to pause its plans to train AI models on EU users' Facebook and Instagram users' posts — a move that the social media giant said will delay its plans to launch Meta AI in the economic zone.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/14/meta_eu_privacy/
And nothing of value was lost for the people in the EU.
#Meta #AI #ThanksEU

2024-06-17 14:44:18

#WizzAir charges a "Service Surcharge Fee", 10EUR per person per flight.
It's silently added just before the payment screen when booking in their their app or on their website.
They claim it's "applicable to bookings made by automated systems." 👀
What does this mean in practice?
Based on some poking: you will get hit by it if you have an adblocker, use Firefox, or if you are not allowing WizzAir app to gather data from your phone (for example, because you use a privacy-enabled Android fork).

2024-06-16 19:15:10

> “If Kyiv and West refuse, they will take full responsibility for further bloodshed,” Putin said.
Ah yes, the good old "why are you hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself" bully tactic.

2024-06-14 01:14:56

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@npub1lrv…tth9 typo, is: 1050s, presumably should be: 1950s.

2024-06-13 13:49:18

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Things I looked at:
- Ceph seems like a huge overkill
- IPFS looks somewhat promising but awkward to work with (ugh, pinning etc; maybe I am missing something?)
- SyncThing seems interesting, but very much Desktop-oriented and looks like it's going to be a pain to orchestrate
What else is there?

2024-06-13 13:46:57

Hey #sysadmin hivemind, say you need to keep contents of a directory synced from a master to a ~dozen Linux servers.
Not a lot of data, say around 10GiB. Most of it won't change often, some of it will change a couple of times per hour. Connectivity between the nodes is somewhat slow.
You want metrics on what is the status of the synced directory and it's contents, preferably in a Prometheus-compatible format.
Bash scripts and rsync would work but… surely there's something already out there?

2024-06-13 12:36:53

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@npub1e7e…sycm somehow "captains of industry" keep refusing to go down with their ships.

2024-06-11 00:27:08

Capitalists: we make the big bucks because we take the big risks!
Risk: <materializes>
Capitalists: Wait no not like that.

2024-06-08 02:19:14

While #Adobe is doing an absolute stupid with their new licensing terms, and (now Canva-owned) #Affinity slashes prices by half in a "flash sale", I am once again asking people to consider supporting #FLOSS tools instead.
Yes, they are far from perfect.
But with a small fraction of what these closed source vendors are raking in, these tools could be made immeasurably better.
And they won't end up bought up and enshittified, as experience with past attempts at doing that to FLOSS tools shows.

2024-06-07 14:59:14

Hot take:
When I see general* "security advice" that mentions "do not use public WiFi" or "use a VPN", I am immediately suspicious about all other advice offered.
Yes, a decade ago that was a consideration, because most sites were not using HTTPS. Credentials were flying cleartext on the wire.
Today, almost all sites use HTTPS.
*) "general" meaning "without a very specific threat model in mind", meant for general public, etc.
#InfoSec

2024-05-27 02:43:11

Remember that surveillance tech adjacent cop that #RaspberryPi had hired a while back?
I wonder how that went.

2024-05-24 22:28:32

Maybe, hear me out here, maybe it was not the best of ideas to put all Web eggs into a single Google basket? 🤔
But who could have known, right? :thaenkin:
*sigh*

2024-05-24 19:47:43

> Look, I'm no luddite…
First of all, why do tech writers feel they need to be apologetic when criticizing bad technology decisions by Big Tech?
I don't see similar hedging when the piece is about the tech underdogs – say, small FLOSS projects. Being a vicious critic is then somehow okay?
Secondly, just embrace your inner Luddites. Luddites were not against all technology per se, they were against how technology was being used to abuse people:
https://techwontsave.us/episode/187_the_real_history_of_the_luddites_w_brian_merchant
Sounds damn valid to me!

2024-05-22 12:17:44

I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as PC, is in fact, a Windows laptop, or as I've recently taken to calling it, Copilot plus PC.

2024-05-21 18:01:29

tired: smoky back-rooms
wired: tight signal groups

2024-05-13 13:27:08

Whenever a manager at a company (especially a large one) says:
> I'm sorry, we cannot afford a raise for you at this time
…ask yourself if what they really mean is:
> I'm sorry, we cannot afford a raise for you and a huge payout (dividends, bonuses, etc) for the management and stockholders simultaneously, and our priorities are obvious.
You'd be surprised how often that's the case.

2024-05-05 00:19:38

Okay, so, podcasts are great but sometimes I prefer to read instead of listen. 🤔
So what if – hear me out – there was a thing like podcasts, but for text! 🤯
It would still be distributed via RSS, you could still follow them and automagically pull them to your device. But instead of audio, there would be text. ✏️
👉 We could call them: textcasts!
And get this: I already have one! It was super easy to set up, actually. You can find it here:
https://rys.io/en/feed.rss

2024-04-30 23:47:35

Torment Nexus is inevitable; if we didn't make it, someone else would.
It's good it was us, because we can deploy it least unethically.
It is of course unfortunate that it kills a person a day, but we estimate that within a million years it will have caused slight enjoyment for over9000³²² people.
The amount of pleasure is, clearly, incomparably higher in the long run than the amount of current suffering caused by it.
So we had a moral duty to create and profit from this here Torment Nexus!

2024-04-28 19:19:44

neolibs: the market will solve it!
the market: haha lol AI brrrrt synergy pffffft lalala blockchain weeeeee! *hiccup*

2024-04-23 01:54:53

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@npub1th4…cem3 just like the medium is the message, the marketing hype is the product.

2024-04-22 22:23:27

Based on their limited interoperability with other instances, I guess one could say Meta's foray into the Fediverse is quite single-threaded.
:blobcatpeek:

2024-04-22 03:22:17

Remember when "count the fingers" was used mainly to check if a person is feeling okay?
Instead of to figure out if an image was "AI"-generated?

2024-04-09 18:38:45

Here's a half-formed thought I need to mull a bit more on:
Somehow, algorithmic (and especially "AI-driven") decision making tends to only be proposed in contexts where it can only — or mostly — affect those with the least power in the system.
Migrants and asylum seekers.
Prisoners.
Families using any form of state support (child benefits, foodstamps, etc).
Palestinians in Gaza.
It somehow never gets proposed for use-cases where it might affect the wealthy and powerful.
One wonders why. 🤔

2024-04-05 15:54:03

Happy *seventh* anniversary of "Six reasons Mastodon won't survive" to all who celebrate:
https://mashable.com/article/mastodon-wont-survive
#Fediverse #Mastodon
https://media.mstdn.social/media_attachments/files/112/218/941/632/936/145/original/1c061fc1eccb61fb.png

2024-04-05 11:24:16

FuckFuckNo. 🤦‍♀️
I just want a search engine that works. I have zero need for a godawful "AI" mansplainer in my results. Just… no.
Time to move off of DDG. What else is out there?
#DuckDuckGo #AI
https://media.mstdn.social/media_attachments/files/112/217/866/862/056/561/original/ecee3b0fc41f4df9.png

2024-04-04 13:31:38

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@npub1xm9…26zl that does sound like Microsoft is incompetent in keeping spammers off of their mail service though.

2024-04-04 04:23:02

Outlook.com trips over Google's spam blocking rules
https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/03/outlookcom_blocked_by_gmail/
> Emails from users with Outlook.com country domains may not be reaching Gmail addresses
Unstoppable force (of Microsoft's incompetence) meets immovable object (of Google's "anti-spam" rules).
:blobcatpopcorn:

2024-03-29 12:14:48

It just hit me: as shitty and annoying as they are, cookie banners and privacy screens are freaking amazing!
They are teaching a whole generation of Web users:
1. never to click on the default button;
2. to always be suspicious of intentions of anything online.
:blobcatcoffee:
#InfoSec #Privacy

2024-03-25 23:19:00

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@npub1jlj…skl3 hah, well, I am honoured!
I think this is the place to start:
https://fedipact.veganism.social/
I can't say I am an expert in specific instances and communities. Might make sense to ask more broadly.

2024-03-24 20:45:22

The Fediverse is Already Dead
https://nora.codes/post/the-fediverse-is-already-dead/
Despite the grim title, it's a wonderful, thoughtful, hopeful piece by @npub10k3…zdt2 on what fedi was and what it has become. And what the future can hold.
Highly recommended. Especially for those of us who are, like me, struggling with what "The Fediverse" is supposed to mean these days.
#Fediverse

2024-03-22 23:10:24

We so desperately need an independent modern browser.
Could Mozilla please get their cranio-rectal intrusion fixed post-haste? Pretty please?

2024-03-22 20:16:55

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@npub1ecp…59pq T**** Social is also only ~600k MAU, or well, was in July 2023.
Then again the userbase is more receptive to certain kinds of scams, so…

2024-03-22 11:03:11

Okay, let's do this:
What is the fedi?
Bad answers only.
#Fediverse

2024-03-22 09:42:48

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@npub15zu…s7lx long time coming. Having lived in Sarajevo, I cannot begin to express how happy I am about this news.

2024-03-21 23:06:33

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@npub1k08…6xvn I think we should maybe finally try to define what fedi is. Because we really don't have a serviceable definition. Which makes stuff like that even more problematic.

2024-03-21 22:46:52

Threads was apparently hiding toots that mentioned pixelfed or criticised the company formerly known as Facebook:
https://mastodon.online/@cynicalelysian/112135614910785071
Apparently that was not intentional:
https://mastodon.social/@dansup/112126250737482807
But remember, kids, a system's purpose is what it does. And I am going to bet these kinds of "bugs" keep happening.

2024-03-18 21:43:47

Hey fellow Solarpunks, the mainstream is onto us:
https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/18/24104890/figma-ceo-dylan-field-cyberpunk-solarpunk-trends-sxsw-2024
Don't lose your bearings, don't get distracted, don't fall for the trinkets. "Solarpunk capitalism" is still capitalism.
Remember, it's more about the "punk" than the "Solar". Movement, not just aesthetic. Community as the protagonist.
Media attention comes and goes, it's up to us what remains. And we're all in this together.
#SolarPunk

2024-03-14 15:50:52

I've been struggling recently with the question of why AI-generated memes are not funny to me.
And I think I finally got it.
Basically, they are not much different from someone describing the joke. Not *telling* the joke — but *describing* it.
Telling a joke, or making a meme, requires care and effort to make it work. Dropping a prompt into image autocomplete really doesn't.
To me, there is just nothing there to relate to, nothing to anchor the humor, so to speak.

2024-03-06 00:10:04

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@npub13kp…68ay @npub1kut…c7av oooh boy. The current DNS system is far from perfect, but that's just asking for speed-running the "let's see how many ways the worst people on the internet find to use this to harm people."
I'll start: domains used for websites hosting CSAM or revenge porn; domains deadnaming Trans folks.
Anyway, if anyone wants to continue a conversation about how using bollocks chain for DNS is in any way a decent idea, please keep me out of it.

2024-03-05 20:17:46

Oh man, I am really excited for the inevitable cryptocurrency hype cycle overlaid on the on-going AI hype cycle.
That's going to be great.

2024-03-04 02:24:18

Have you *seen* how well Walken can dance? That man has *rhythm*!
Of course he attracted the worms. 🐛

2024-03-03 11:25:29

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@npub16u7…uend it's Dunning-Kruger reinforced by making a lot of money in the "Dark Arts of Computer Magic":
> Everyone keeps telling me how smart I am, and then they throw wads of cash at me for things I consider not all that complex, I must be a genius!
> Also, I have not given this a lot of thought, but this <complex social problem> seems to have an easy solution! I'll just go ahead and assume I cannot be wrong here.
The ultimate case of this is… Musk. :blobcateyesblush:

2024-03-03 11:17:09

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@npub16u7…uend oblig. XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1831/

2024-03-02 21:44:29

> Russia publishes German army meeting on Ukraine
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68457087
> Germany has admitted the apparent [compromise] by Russia of a military meeting where officers discussed giving Ukraine long-range missiles - and possible targets.
> According to Der Spiegel magazine, the videoconference was not held on a secret internal army network but on the WebEx platform.
🤡
There's an infosec person somewhere who is really trying hard not to go: "I fucking told you this would happen". 👀
#InfoSec

2024-03-02 18:32:42

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@npub1nxq…88j6 a somewhat related oldie I heard was:
A physics professor gets pulled over for running a red light.
- Sir, you ran a red light just now.
- Oh did I? I'm sorry officer, I thought it was green.
- It was clearly red, sir.
- Well, I can explain that. See, the color changed due to doppler blueshift, as I was moving towards the street light.
- Right. In that case I take this as an admission of speeding. What speed would you say you had to be driving at?
- …I think I ran a red, in fact.

2024-02-29 22:00:25

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@npub1344…t5qv I need to read that book finally.
@npub15zu…s7lx

2024-02-28 06:32:02

> Of all the things you’re going to hear about that video, here’s the most important one: The name “Nex Benedict” doesn’t come up for twenty minutes and eight seconds. Twenty-one minutes and ten seconds into the video, Lorenz has moved on to talking about something else.
> One minute, two seconds. That is the worth of a trans child. One minute, two seconds, out of fifty-three minutes and fourteen seconds.
https://jude-doyle.ghost.io/i-dont-care-about-your-brand/

2024-02-27 01:10:58

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@npub1zdp…vqv8 an evil capybara would be positively petrifying.

2024-02-24 12:27:59

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@npub1xr8…3q0g are you familiar with The Authoritarians?
https://theauthoritarians.org/
Fantastic study of "ordinary people" and our authoritarian tendencies. Very much worth a read, especially in this context.

2024-02-23 10:36:35

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@npub15zu…s7lx
> generative AI is just AI but more so
Well that's a bit like saying "smartphones are ENIACs but moreso". New capabilities create new threats and new opportunities, and need new approaches regulation.
I do believe genAI is sufficiently different in its effects on society from text and data mining as understood, say, 5y ago, that it requires a different framework.

2024-02-23 10:30:35

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@npub15zu…s7lx but you seem to be confirming what I am saying: that the Copyright Directive did not mean generative AI when it mentioned TDM. Am I misreading?
A separate issue is whether or not we should include generative AI in the TDM exception. I strongly believe we should not. You seem to be in favor?

2024-02-23 10:18:31

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@npub15zu…s7lx ehh, I am of two minds about this.
On one hand, yeah, that would lead to a non-compliant implementation.
On the other, generative AI *is* a new area that creates new considerations. I was there, in the European Parliament, talking to MEPs, when the Copyright Directive was being passed. Generative AI was not on anybody's radar.
TDM meant things like collating databases and figuring out stuff based on that (science, investigative journalism, etc), not the dumpster fire of genAI.

2024-02-18 16:04:03

Eagerly awaiting the inevitable expert deep-dives into how "spam killed Mastadon". :blobcat:
Coming soon to the big media :birdsite: feed near you. :blobcatpopcorn:

2024-02-13 23:06:44

Is it just me or is the latest #Futurama season pretty damn crap.

2024-02-11 00:22:55

Loads of irrelevant/spam e-mail gets sent from addresses that turn out not to exist if you send an e-mail to them.
What if delivery of mail from not-before-seen e-mail addresses was held by the mailserver until a test e-mail of some sort is successfully delivered to the sender address?
Obvious things to consider:
- random failures
- what should be the message to the sender?
- sending a test e-mail confirms existence of the address it is sent from.
🤔

2024-02-10 13:27:15

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@npub1yyx…qa5g a bit much for a keylogger, yeah.
:blobcatpeek:

2024-02-09 16:21:34

Apple:
> We cannot let you install apps from outside of our App Store, because it's dangerous, as we cannot verify they are safe!
Also Apple:
> allowing a LastPass impersonating app on App Store
https://blog.lastpass.com/2024/02/warning-fraudulent-app-impersonating-lastpass-currently-available-in-apple-app-store/

2024-02-08 00:05:00

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@npub16mz…hm5n uhhhh

2024-02-07 19:43:10

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@npub16u7…uend look this is on you: you could have avoided having to read through all of that by having an AI chatbot summarize it for you.
Or better yet, just ask it to spew some random AI marketing tripe, it would probably be roughly equivalent from what you're saying.
:blobcatpeek:

2024-02-07 19:35:36

Old blogpost bamp:
#BlueSky is cosplaying decentralization
https://rys.io/en/167.html
> BlueSky’s decentralization is a similar kind as with cryptocurrencies: sure, you can run your own node, but that does not give you basically any meaningful agency in the system.
> “Neutrality” and “speech” and “voice” and “protection from bans” is mentioned right there, front and center, in BlueSky’s overview and FAQ. At the same time moderation and anti-harassment features are, at best, an afterthought.

2024-02-05 00:58:29

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I won't be novel in saying huge tech companies are roughly what Big Tobacco was a few decades ago.
By now the harm they cause is increasingly clear, but everyone's hooked. It's hard or impossible to quit cold-turkey, and they know it.
So they milk it as long as they can, and engage in irrelevant performative actions (Zuck apologized, but did not offer any compensation) to make it rain as long as possible.
Yeah, excuse me for not having the stomach for the hype they peddle as a distraction. 🤷‍♀️

2024-02-05 00:42:56

Apparently I am seething with malaise and disdain for Silicon Valley, and that's distasteful or something. :blobcateyes:
Well, SV has been causing malaise (ask the parents whom Zuck was *just* apologizing to) for and showed disdain (ask the Rohingya) towards pretty much everyone else. And made a killing doing so.
OpenAI said outright it's impossible for them to compensate authors of works they use as "training data". Implying their business model is more important than somebody's livelihood. 🤔

2024-02-04 19:33:31

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@npub1aka…zzz2 "but Ubuntu is moving faster!"
Yeah it is, and that's the opposite of what I want in *infrastructure.*

2024-01-28 16:14:06

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@npub17lg…9uux this is an interesting example of a problem that fedi avoids (kinda) by not having global search, and by having trivially attributable boosts.
No search means no search terms to block.
Boosts that are trivially attributable to specific accounts means that if someone spreads such stuff, they get associated with it — something that does not happen with algo-feeding "likes" on platforms with algorithmic feeds.

2024-01-21 00:29:05

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@npub1jlj…skl3 sure thing! And always feel free to just hit me up if you have a particular question. I can either try to explain, or find a decent source.
@npub1lce…r0hp

2024-01-20 11:59:21

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@npub1hxf…g8qu oh man I am having flashbacks to a particularly bad week several years ago when I had discovered same. :blobcateyes:

2024-01-19 00:56:08

I am going to throw up.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-18/musk-will-attend-auschwitz-event-to-discuss-online-antisemitism
> Musk Will Attend Auschwitz Event to Discuss Online Antisemitism
> Billionaire is scheduled to speak with Ben Shapiro on Jan. 22

2024-01-15 12:06:07

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@npub12ac…3xqe eh...
> As there is no limit to the amount of cash we can hold and pass on, there should be no limit to the amount of digital euros in our hands.
There is a very real limit to how much cash we can hold and pass on. Anyone who tried buying a house with cash could attest.
The limit is not legal, it's physical, and it adds important, impossible to ignore friction to cash transactions.
If we are talking "digital cash", I would argue we need to make sure similar friction exists.

2024-01-14 16:59:15

If you are a citizen of any EU Member State, I implore you to consider signing the Tax-the-Rich citizen's initiative:
https://www.tax-the-rich.eu/
The idea is to tax the super rich and then use the money for climate justice. :blobcathappypaws:
This is an official EU citizen's initiative, meaning that if it reaches certain thresholds, it *will have to be* considered by the EU institutions. This is a really powerful tool, if actually used.
So we should use it. :blobcatcool:
#TaxTheRich #EU

2024-01-10 21:02:11

Oh so a decade on we're still calling it "piracy", letting the corporate overlords dictate the language we use to talk about how the copyright regime is completely unglued from reality?
Right.
And then another decade on we will wonder how on earth we did not manage to reform copyright again. Again.
:blobcatpopcorn:

2024-01-07 23:28:46

At long last I started listening to @npub10jk…dpae 's #TechWontSaveUs podcast, and holy moly does it slap. :blobcat0_0:
I have to recommend the episode with Naomi Klein in particular:
https://www.techwontsave.us/episode/201_how_the_mirror_world_distorts_our_reality_w_naomi_klein
It touches on so, so many important and urgent issues, in such a thoughtful and no-bullshit way, I am in awe.
Other episodes are great too, obviously. I burned through four episodes in 24h. Do yourself a favor, jump in and start listening "wherever you get your podcasts." :blobcatlisten:

2024-01-07 21:50:34

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@npub10fm…x0qg yup. But that, too, is nothing new.
In since the 70s Black kids in the US kept going to prison for a few grams of Mary Jane, while white dudebros were happily sniffing coke in club bathrooms, not a care in the world…

2024-01-07 21:31:09

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Don't get me wrong, to each their own, whatever works for you. The War on Drugs™® is a bullshit dystopian police state abomination. :blobcatcool:
I am just surprised people are surprised, is all. :blobcateyes:

2024-01-07 21:26:46

Wait people only just discovered Musk is "self-medicating" with drugs?
Huh. :blobcatcoffee:

2023-12-27 18:30:55

I remember quitting :birdsite: right after #29C3, the 2012 Congress:
https://web.archive.org/web/20221231004720/https://twitter.com/rysiekpl/status/285832342096973824
Between then and now, every Congress, every hacker camp, incessantly promoted Twitter. Invited people to tweet under the relevant hashtag, displayed tweets on at-venue screens all over the place, etc.
This year it's all fedi. Toots in #37C3 displayed along the @[email protected] address; @npub1yfa…0mc4 (and possibly other fedi apps) getting their own info cards on these as well.
I waited for this for a decade.
#Fediverse

2023-12-18 23:28:13

We have an eruption! I repeat, we have an eruption! 🌋
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvcP4kVVOnk
Scroll the live feed back to around 22:16UTC to catch the first moment of it.
Confirmed by the local media:
https://www.visir.is/g/20232505181d/eld-gos-hafid
The eruption of a new volcano near Grindavík, #Iceland has finally started.
Just to make this very clear: everyone, and most house pets, had been evacuated from Grindavík weeks ago. It is not clear how close to the actual town this is, but at least rest assured nobody is in danger.

2023-12-04 14:08:58

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@npub1eur…d0hs it gets worse. Websites 5-10 years ago would at least lend themselves to being archived — either in services like Wallabag, or just by saving the HTML and resources using wget or some spider.
Websites today, with their JS overload and dynamic content, and CloudFlare "stopping bots", quite often do not allow themselves to be archived.
It's not just link rot, it's also the rot of our ability to archive stuff at all.

2023-12-03 15:16:10

Good job, UN, having COP28 in the UAE was a stroke of genius. Perfection. No notes.
> Cop28 president says there is ‘no science’ behind demands for phase-out of fossil fuels
> Exclusive: UAE’s Sultan Al Jaber says phase-out of coal, oil and gas would take world ‘back into caves’
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/03/back-into-caves-cop28-president-dismisses-phase-out-of-fossil-fuels
For fuck's sake. 🤦‍♀️
#UAE #COP28 #ClimateCrisis

2023-12-01 10:15:37

overheard from a group of young hackers excitedly exploring esoteric programming languages currently at a friendly hackerspace:
"What the hell is this 'LF' thing in Whitespace?"
oh dear. :blobcatgiggle:
it's so much fun to see the people having genuine fun with technology, exploring things in earnest, randomly stumbling into a rabbit hole of tech history.
#Hackers #Hacking

2023-11-30 01:29:06

We interrupt this program to bring you this important announcement:
🚨 Constantly attention-seeking man-baby billionaire said something dumb. 🚨
It is highly unlikely that this piece of news will change anyone's mind about anything at all.
However, we can at this time predict that some people might get outraged and thus click on our article. And in the end, that is what matters.
In other breaking news tonight:
1. water is wet;
2. bears shit in the woods;
3. Pope is, in fact, Catholic.
#Musk

2023-11-23 16:49:52

Revolution might not be televised, but apparently genocide will be mathwashed.
From the team behind "we kill people based on metadata", a new exciting project: "we kill people based on… we don't even know what, it's a 2bln parameters black box that we have no real way of actually understanding."
> The Pentagon is moving toward letting AI weapons autonomously decide to kill humans
https://www.businessinsider.in/international/news/the-pentagon-is-moving-toward-letting-ai-weapons-autonomously-decide-to-kill-humans/articleshow/105420637.cms
https://media.mstdn.social/media_attachments/files/111/460/635/340/744/911/original/164ad2e4269480f8.jpg

2023-11-10 20:27:25

Meanwhile in #Iceland, (presumably) earthen dams are being built around the geothermal power plant in Svartsengi due to a volcanic eruption that is starting near Grindavík.
Road to Grindavík is closed due to cracks that had appeared on it.
We can feel the shakes all the way in Reykjavík, some 30km away as the crow flies.
#ThisIsFine 🌋

2023-11-08 12:49:40

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@npub1vz5…qdta I am reading the directive now and will have a specific answer to this at some point, as I often do with subjects important to me.
I expect to come to similar conclusions as Mozilla, the EFF, EDRi, and other orgs who've been in the digital human rights fight for years or decades. And if I don't (as I have in the past), that's also fine and I will be open about it.
But I don't feel like discussing this subject with someone who's first instinct is to call people names. Have a good day.

2023-11-08 12:40:20

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@npub1vz5…qdta okay, I see we're at name-calling, so I'll just bow out of this conversation. I regret even engaging at this point.

2023-11-08 12:32:01

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@npub1vz5…qdta but WebTrust is not being enforced by a government, that's the big difference.
Browsers can (and do!) remove CAs when they misbehave. DigiNotar, Kazakhstan thing, a few others.
If a root CA is mandated by the government (or an international governmental organization such as the EU), this becomes potentially… illegal.
And that's the worry. Browser will might not be allowed to react to misbehaving root CAs.

2023-11-08 12:22:38

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@npub1vz5…qdta this reminds me of a meeting, a decade ago, in a ministry of something or other, over some particularly dangerous Internet surveillance idea.
After hours of the meeting had passed, with digital human rights NGOs repeating "this can be abused!" and the gov't side getting only more aggrevated, finally the vice-minister blurted out:
> Why do you imply I would abuse this measure!
NGOs facepalmed and calmly explained:
> We don't. But we don't know who will sit in your seat in 4y.

2023-11-08 12:19:13

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@npub1vz5…qdta so the Kazakhstan example is informative and relevant because it was the government using root CAs as a tool of oppression.
It *is* a valid argument to say: "this kind of a thing can be used as a tool of oppression, and in fact it has in the past; this is a dangerous thing to put into law."
Yes, EU is a bit more democratic than Kazakhstan, but Hungary and Poland are in the EU and what good did that do for the lawfulness of state actions? Not all that much.

2023-11-08 12:05:29

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@npub1vz5…qdta presenting the arguments against the root CA thing in eIDAS directive as:
> I was a bit surprised how eIDAS could be presented as a "threat for privacy"
…is simply manipulative. Just as your whole passage on "paper checks" and "the Bible". I am somewhat disappointed you stooped so low in this, honestly.
It's not eIDAS that many infosec techies (yes, even so anti-GAFAM as myself!) are opposed to. We need eIDAS.
It's the root CAs issue that is the problem.

2023-11-08 12:01:10

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@npub1vz5…qdta perhaps. Just as in case of ACTA2 there was valid criticism of the Copyright Directive regardless of GAFAM campaign, there is valid criticism of certain aspects of the eIDAS directive as it currently stands.
Yes, eIDAS is needed, necessary even. But forcing browsers to add root certs and banning them from managing the risk related to that is dangerous and wrong.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/11/article-45-will-roll-back-web-security-12-years
Root CAs can be abused, and have in the past:
https://www.f5.com/labs/articles/threat-intelligence/kazakhstan-attempts-to-mitm-itscitizens

2023-11-08 11:02:48

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@npub1vz5…qdta Edit: scratch that, you mentioned "ACTA2" not ACTA. My bad.

2023-10-17 14:14:45

I am seeing more and more images without alt-text, or with alt-text that is not useful ("a photo", for example). :sadcat1:
Come on, people, we can do better. And the reason I know we can is because we used to do much better on this front. :blobcatcoffee:
If an image is worth posting, it is worth being described. It only takes a few seconds. :blobcateyes:

2023-10-15 21:26:43

First exit poll results of Polish elections are available, and based on these it looks like PiS might not remain in power, which would be good news. Let's wait for official results though!
About 73% of eligible voters voted. That is *massive* and phenomenal. Probably best result in any elections in #Poland since 1989. 🎉
But two things I am mainly interested in are:
- the result of Konfederacja, the far-right libertarians
- how many people voted in the referendum part of this election cycle

2023-10-01 18:31:38

Oh I see #Google is enhancing the experience of users again, this time by killing Google Podcasts and forcing people to move on to YouTube Music. :blobcatcoffee:
No biggie, I'm sure YouTube Music hosted podcasts will continue to use the open RSS format, right? Right?.. :blobcateyes:

2023-10-01 12:15:37

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@npub1w5v…n0lx 👆 this.
In case of OpenAI, Microsoft and Google, the whole shtick is "convince everyone that LLMs — which only gigantic companies can train and maintain — are somehow awesome and inevitable, scare lawmakers with 'superintelligence explosion' into regulating competition away, corner the market".
It's neither awesome nor inevitable.
@npub1yyx…qa5g

2023-09-20 12:37:54

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@npub15cd…3mv2 thank you for sharing this. It's immensely valuable to be able to point to this and say: "no it's not necessarily that <Cororate Brand Product> is better, influencers might just be paid to use it." :blobcatfingerguns:

2023-09-14 17:19:49

Looking forward to when we see Google Bard and Microsoft Bing and ChatGPT the way we today see the "Azure NFT (Non-fungible Token) Solution Accelerator":
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/samples/microsoft/azure-non-fungible-token-solution-accelerator/azure-nft-non-fungible-token-solution-accelerator/
Which we will, hopefully sooner rather than later.

2023-08-31 17:08:51

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@npub1gzl…kk4u and I am even more glad that the medium we are discussing this on has no "X" in it either!

2023-08-31 17:07:39

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@npub1gzl…kk4u I'm glad this person decided to espress themselves on that topic!

2023-08-25 01:15:26

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@npub1grx…uxfe that last part is somewhat ambiguous. 👀

2023-08-23 14:42:43

I guess "the market" decided that it's just better to pay for millions of electronic monkeys and their typewriters, instead of providing decent remuneration to the Shakespeares of this world, eh? :blobcateyes:
To wit: a stochastic parrot just a bunch of electronic type-writing monkeys in a trench coat. 🤔
#AI