Sure, it’s a moon I captured on a slightly hazy night, but I wanted to really test out my tripod and telephoto lens and capture something my cell phone would just repeatedly fail at. Ended up going with a one-second shutter after a two-second timer so my hand wouldn’t mess with the tripod balance, and with ISO 100, I had a long enough window to capture good detail on the moon, at least as much as my 75-300m f/4-5.6 telephoto lens would allow. There’s bigger lenses that do more daring stuff, but this one is mine.

Thanks for seeing some really big sky cheese!

I created a 5-week degoogling plan PDF based on the steps in my book DISENGAGE: Escape the Leash of Big Tech, Scams and Surveillance—Everyday Resistance for the Digital Underdog.

Before I finalize and post it to my site, I'd love some feedback from people who have degoogled or are in the process of doing so.

The final package will be a single PDF, and I've pasted images of the pages below. The final infographic has a link for each product. Please don't worry about formatting issues, I'll get those fixed. But in general, I'm wondering.

• Does this seem motivational/doable?
• Are the tips clear?
• Is there anything that is now incorrect? I wrote the book originally two years ago and updated it in February, so some of my suggestions may already be out of date.
• At the bottom I mention that full instructions for each step are available in DISENGAGE, which is a free book. Is that enough? Or should I instead either note which chapter/page to look at for each step, or directly include links to instructions/tools online?
• The infographic at the end...is it weird to be sideways? I created it a while ago and don't want to have to redo it to fit the orientation. I could offer that separately, OR I could redo the whole PDF to be landscape instead of portrait (which I don't love).
• I'm thinking of turning this into a group challenge (also no cost). If there's enough interest, it could be the checklist, the book, and a Signal group (maybe with a weekly call). I don't know nearly everything about the topic, but I did degoogle myself, and everyone in the group/on the call can share questions and suggestions. What do you think of this idea?

Thanks!

By targeting design rather than content, lawmakers hope to regulate social media without constitutional roadblocks. Here’s why that’s a problem.

https://notesfrompoland.com/2025/06/16/leaked-surveillance-of-tusk-phone-call-published-by-opposition-linked-polish-media/

For occasional torrent creation, qBittorrent has Tools > Torrent Creator, but suppose one has hundreds of folders from which to create individual torrents. A quick internet search yields forum posts from more than ten years ago mentioning dead projects. For example, this Reddit post from 2013 mentions qMakeTorrent, which is no longer maintained.

How are people doing this in 2025? I reckon one could write a bash or python script for this, but are there any user friendly tools out there that are built for this purpose and still actively maintained?

GitHub - kz26/qMakeTorrent: an advanced torrent file creator with batch functionality, powered by libtorrent-rasterbar

an advanced torrent file creator with batch functionality, powered by libtorrent-rasterbar - kz26/qMakeTorrent

^GitHub

cross-posted from: midwest.social/post/29979054

can't understand why they keep needing more power. like trying to smash through a wall or something.

Apple Researchers Just Released a Damning Paper That Pours Cold Water on the Entire AI Industry

Researchers at Apple have released a damning paper that throws cold water on the "reasoning" capabilities of modern AIs.

^{Victor Tangermann (Futurism)}

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/06/16/mass-protests-across-europe-demand-just-peace-for-palestine/

By targeting design rather than content, lawmakers hope to regulate social media without constitutional roadblocks. Here’s why that’s a problem.

The website failed, went to an error page, and then charged my credit card the wrong amount of $64.70. I received a confirmation email saying I’ll receive a confirmation when my order has been shipped, but I haven’t provided a shipping address or paid the full $499 price tag. It is the worst experience I’ve ever faced buying a consumer electronic product and I have no idea whether or how I’ll receive the phone.

I look forward to learning more about how terrible these phones turn out.

I Tried Pre-Ordering the Trump Phone. The Page Failed and It Charged My Credit Card the Wrong Amount

I got a confirmation email saying I'll get another confirmation when it's shipped. But I haven't provided a shipping address.

^{Joseph Cox (404 Media)}

The Johnsons claim that the RNC sent Samantha 17 messages from 16 different phone numbers, nine of the messages after she demanded the messages stop 12 times. Cari received 27 messages from 25 numbers, they claim, and she sent 20 stop requests.

I know my phone gets blasted to hell every election season.

RNC Sued Over WinRed's Constant 'ALL HELL JUST BROKE LOOSE!' Fundraising Texts

The RNC and other Republican groups are violating Utah telecommunications law by continuing to text people incessantly after they've asked them to stop, a new complaint alleges.

^{Samantha Cole (404 Media)}

Hi,

i want to explore the various way we can highlight content.

Currently, on the threadiverse, we use vote to show our approval, discontent...and we can couple it with a bot for moderation. Or hide post below a certain score...

Some instance completly removed downvote as Beehaw. Piefed is experimenting private vote. On other fediverse software, mastodon, iceshrimp, there is no downvote and we use emojis to express our feelings.

You also have website as slashdot.org/ where you can tell that comment was insightfull or a troll, or funny...

There is also also website that compare software or video as tournesol.app/

• Do you think vote sould be private ? Public ? And why ?
• Are you sastified with the current voting system ? And why ?
• What other interesting software/website that tried something different do you know ?
• What way do you imagine to highlight content and improve search, discoverability ?

Tournesol

Compare online content and contribute to the development of responsible content recommendations.

^Tournesol

A return to vernacular buildings, which maintain interiors at a comfortable temperature through architectural design rather than energy-intensive technical installations, could significantly reduce energy consumption for heating and cooling. However, it’s not a short-term solution: it would require a large amount of time, money, and energy to replace the existing building stock.

Fortunately, history offers an alternative solution that can be deployed more quickly and with fewer resources: textiles. Before the Industrial Revolution, people added a temporary layer of textile insulation to either the interior or the exterior of a building, depending on the climate and the season. In cold weather, walls, floors, roofs, windows, doors, and furniture were insulated with drapery and carpetry. In hot weather, windows, doors, facades, roofs, courtyards, and streets were shaded by awnings and toldos.

Removable insulation can achieve significant energy savings with much more flexibility than permanently enclosed insulation materials. Because modern insulation methods require construction permits and structural interventions to a building, they are expensive, time-consuming, and only accessible to home owners. Furthermore, modern insulation methods are ill-suited for older buildings, in which case they are often not financially and energetically sustainable.

How to Dress and Undress your Home

Before the large-scale use of fossil fuels, removable textile layers kept homes warm in winter and cool in summer.

^{LOW←TECH MAGAZINE}

Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” that the House passed is objectionable for many reasons, most obviously because it is the most regressive economic bill of my lifetime, the class war condensed into in legislative form. Its tax policies and spending cuts will erode the well being of Americans slowly for decades to come. Its most immediate destabilizing impact, however—the one that has the potential to push our democracy to the brink—is its vast expansion of the Homeland Security budget, which will be used to build ICE into a huge national army of loyalists under Trump’s control. The money to build America’s brownshirts is in the pipeline. Whereas our military-industrial complex is a threat to the rest of the world, this force will be a direct threat to all of us in the USA. This is the Proud Boys, at national scale, with badges. It is a very dangerous prospect.

Everything I am writing about here has been previously reported in the past few weeks since the House sent the bill to the Senate. But, from my vantage point, the public has not quite grasped just how horrifying a precipice we are on. When you consider the scale of protest already unleashed by the ICE raids in LA; Trump and Stephen Miller’s clear intent to double and triple and quadruple down on the ICE raids and crush the protests with military force; Trump’s unhinged declaration yesterday that “we must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York” to achieve “the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History”; and then connect this deep well of poisonous intent with the staggering expansion of ICE’s size and scope that will occur if this bill’s funding comes through, what you will see is the setup for not just a mass deportation program, but a violent national clash between a militarized, government-sanctioned army of Trump loyalists and everyone else.

How much does ICE stand to grow if this bill’s funding comes through? A lot. The all-in costs of deportation over the next decade could reach a trillion fucking dollars, according to this Cato analysis. That includes the border wall and a huge expansion of prisons for immigrants, to a size nearly on par with the federal prison system.

Building the American Brownshirts

New funding will make ICE an unaccountable army of Trump loyalists.

^{Hamilton Nolan (How Things Work)}

cross-posted from: lemmy.sdf.org/post/36828953

Archived

The Apple and Google app stores continue to offer private browsing apps that are surreptitiously owned by Chinese companies, more than six weeks after they were identified in a Tech Transparency Project report. Apple and Google may also be profiting from these apps, which put Americans’ privacy and U.S. national security at risk, TTP found.

[...]

After the Financial Times asked Apple for comment on these findings, two of the apps linked to Qihoo 360—Thunder VPN and Snap VPN—were pulled from its app store. When TTP checked again in early May, another Qihoo 360-connected app called Signal Secure VPN had been quietly removed. But two other apps linked to Qihoo 360—Turbo VPN and VPN Proxy Master—remained available in the U.S. Apple App Store, along with 11 other Chinese-owned apps identified in TTP’s report.

The Google Play Store, meanwhile, offered four Qihoo 360-connected apps—Turbo VPN, VPN Proxy Master, Snap VPN, and Signal Secure VPN—as well as seven other Chinese-owned VPNs identified in TTP’s initial report.

The linked article lists several China-owned VPN apps identified by the Tech Transparency Project (TTP).

[...]

TTP - Spot Check: Apple and Google Still Have a Chinese VPN Problem

The Apple and Google app stores offer VPNs without revealing they’re owned by Chinese companies. That keeps Americans in the dark about privacy and national security risks.

^{www.techtransparencyproject.org}

Martedì 17 luglio verso metà mattinata verrà aggiornato Lemmy alla versione 0.19.12.

È stato fatto l'aggiornamento oggi nel server di test e non ci sono stati problemi di alcun tipo.

Tutte le novità della nuova release le trovate qui: join-lemmy.org/news/2025-06-13…

Israel’s onslaught on Iran, which began Friday night, entered a new phase on Sunday. Having destroyed large portions of Iran’s air defenses, attacked military and nuclear facilities, Israel has now shifted its targets to civilian infrastructure, including water treatment facilities and energy infrastructure.

The Israeli military reported striking more than 80 targets in Iran overnight Saturday and Sunday. “Tehran residents reported the heaviest wave of attacks yet on Sunday afternoon, with explosions ringing out every half hour,” the Washington Post reported.

Among the targets were water treatment facilities in northern Iran, whose destruction sent waves of sewage flowing in Tehran’s streets. On Saturday, Israel attacked the main oil refinery in Tehran and South Pars, the world’s largest natural gas field.

On Sunday, Israel expanded its strikes to airports, manufacturing plants and police stations.

Commenting on the shift, the Post wrote, “The targets appear to indicate an expansion of Israel’s war aims… By striking Iranian industry and infrastructure, Israel is aiming to degrade the Iranian state, further damage the country’s already-reeling economy, and possibly trigger regime change, according to analysts and former officials.”

Richard Nephew, a former State Department and White House official, told the Washington Post, “It sure does feel like this is a regime change ending, rather than taking out the nuclear program.” He added, “Israel may have decided that the best way to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon was to topple the Iranian regime.”

In an interview with Fox News Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was asked whether “regime change” in Iran was a goal of his government. Netanyahu replied that it “could certainly be the result because the Iranian regime is very weak.”...

Israel attacks civilian infrastructure in Iran as Netanyahu calls for regime change

Israel's onslaught on Iran appeared to enter a new phase Sunday in what has been described as the heaviest period of attacks yet.

^{World Socialist Web Site}

The psychological defense mechanisms liberal zionists use to block out reality. The coping is real ya'll.

In February, a Bluesky post caught the eye of Alex Winter. The result is a coalition of environmentalists, anti-Trump advocates, and federal workers that’s been hyping Tesla’s stock slide ever since.

Archived copy of the article

https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-takedown-definitive-story/

https://cointelegraph.com/news/kidnappers-release-crypto-trader-because-insufficient-funds

The text of a budget reconciliation bill released by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) last week calls for the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation, known as AST, to begin charging licensing fees to space companies next year. The fees would phase in over eight years, after which the FAA would adjust them to keep pace with inflation. The money would go into a trust fund to help pay for the operating costs of the FAA's commercial space office.

While the FAA's commercial space office receives more federal funding today, the budget hasn't grown to keep up with the cadence of commercial spaceflight. SpaceX officials urged the FAA to double its licensing staff in 2023 after the company experienced delays in securing launch licenses.

Cruz's section of the Senate reconciliation bill calls for the FAA to charge commercial space companies per pound of payload mass, beginning with 25 cents per pound in 2026 and increasing to $1.50 per pound in 2033. Subsequent fee rates would change based on inflation. The overall fee per launch or entry would be capped at $30,000 in 2026, increasing to $200,000 in 2033, and then adjusted to keep pace with inflation.

Companies may soon pay a fee for their rockets to share the skies with airplanes

Some space companies aren’t necessarily against this idea, but SpaceX hasn’t spoken.

^{Stephen Clark (Ars Technica)}

cross-posted from: freefree.ps/users/faab64/statu…

The US House of representatives is preparing to vote next week on a resolution that would deem “Free Palestine” to be “an antisemitic slogan.”

If anybody votes against this, they’ll say they voted to support Colorado terrorist attack.

#USpol #FreePalestine #Genocide #Israel #Antisemitism #Fascism
#Palestine @palestine@lemmy.ml @palestine@a.gup.pe