Missionaries using secret audio devices to evangelise Brazil’s isolated peoples
Solar-powered units reciting biblical passages have appeared in the Javari valley, despite strict laws protecting Indigenous groups
Archived version: archive.is/20250727103226/theg…
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
Commission pushes to partially suspend Israel from EU research fund
The block would affect funding of Israeli tech by the EU startup scheme.
Archived version: archive.is/20250728212139/poli…
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
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Saudi Arabia says no normalization with Israel without establishing Palestinian state
Saudi Arabia will not normalize relations with Israel unless a Palestinian state is established and the war in Gaza ends, the kingdom’s foreign minister said Monday, signaling Riyadh’s clearest stance yet linking recognition to progress on a two-state solution, Anadolu reports.
Archived version: archive.is/newest/middleeastmo…
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
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Ghislaine Maxwell asks US supreme court to overturn conviction
Maxwell, sentenced to 20 years for sex trafficking, says 2007 plea deal negotiated by Epstein should have protected her
Case file: s3.documentcloud.org/documents…
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Israel and U.S. boycott long-awaited UN summit in support of two-state solution
Foreign ministers from co-chairs, Saudi Arabia and France, urged support for the establishment of a Palestinian state, while the Palestinian PM called for Hamas to disarm and release the Israeli hostages it is holding in Gaza
Archived version: archive.is/20250728222248/haar…
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
Robot Hand Could Harvest Blackberries Better Than Humans
Robot Hand Could Harvest Blackberries Better Than Humans
The soft robotic gripper developed at the U of A received a U.S. patent.Todd Price (University of Arkansas)
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Robot Hand Could Harvest Blackberries Better Than Humans
Robot Hand Could Harvest Blackberries Better Than Humans
The soft robotic gripper developed at the U of A received a U.S. patent.Todd Price (University of Arkansas)
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Another Google Pixel 6a catches fire after battery-nerfing update
Another Google Pixel 6a catches fire after battery-nerfing update
Google’s Battery Performance Program update was supposed to stop this.Ryan Whitwam (Ars Technica)
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Well that's just great.
Here's the website to see if your PIxel6a is an "impacted device". Mine isn't, not sure why... zero transparency on this.
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Thanks for the link. I put my phone's info in and it told me I'm eligible. But the color of the phone was completely wrong.
I'm done with Pixels. The first one was amazing. But the quality has been going gradually downhill for both the main series and the A series phones.
I love how they just make things worse indiscriminately now. Like you'd expect that if a company turns evil, they make things worse for profit, but google often doesn't even care about that and makes everything worse randomly.
The clearest example I have is the maps app, which used to let you tap once to clear the search and directions bars off the screen. They removed that in one update for absolutely no fucking reason, so now a third+ of the screen is blocked at all times. If that space displayed ads or something at least I'd get that they were making an app shittier for profit, but nowadays more often than not everything just seems to be shitty because they don't give a fuck anymore.
Due to the risk of battery fires, Google said that devices with more than 400 charge cycles could see their capacity and charging speed drastically reduced.
Apparently they design phones that'll last just over a year before self-igniting.
Does 400 charge cycles really amount to just over a year of use for most people? I’m assuming one cycle means a full power cycle, not just a top up.
For reference (and I understand it’s a bit apples to oranges) I’ve had my iPhone 15 since Dec 2023 and charge it every night and it’s currently showing 125 charge cycles.
Oh well they were forced to acknowledge a problem that needed a fix and what they did was they asked Gemini how do we fix this which Gemini had zero problems at all, not even an inconvenience, in giving them it's fix so that's what they went with without a single further thought employed in the matter
They really liked it when the response started with it's super easy
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I want a fairphone 4 with either e/OS or Ubuntu touch. It's still a little out of my price range though.
I would love to run grapheneOS on my phone, but I'm not willing to pay Google to not use Android.
Xiaomi Poco X3 NFC / X3 • Ubuntu Touch • Linux Phone
Flash your Xiaomi Poco X3 NFC / X3 with the latest version of the Ubuntu Touch operating system, a privacy focused OS developed by hundreds of people.devices.ubuntu-touch.io
And then you indirectly pay google as you fund the people who buy google phones every time a new one comes out.
Yes it is the best way to buy a google phone, but you are still supporting google in most cases.
Arguably, 2nd hand private sellers would have bought it anyway and you are just saving e-waste at that point
You can donate to GrapheneOS and I highly doubt that the hardware of the Fairphone is open
e/OS is a joke btw
Of course: discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24134…
Edit: this one as well grapheneos.org/faq#device-supp…
Yo, from one type 1 to another, get yourself some xdrip to replace the dexcom app, its miles ahead and more configurable.
github.com/NightscoutFoundatio…
And depending on which omnipod you got, and how technical you are, check out AndroidAPS if you want an open source closed-loop solution.
androidaps.readthedocs.io/en/l…
If you got the omnipod dash you can use it directly with AndroidAPS via Bluetooth.
I use both of these with dexcom G6 and an accu-chek Bluetooth insulin pump, and its amazing vs the commercial solutions.
GitHub - NightscoutFoundation/xDrip: Nightscout version of xDrip+
Nightscout version of xDrip+. Contribute to NightscoutFoundation/xDrip development by creating an account on GitHub.GitHub
Sometimes in the darkness of the internet where all our worst sides come out and I get trampled by the evil of governments, corporations, and people in general...a small beam of light shines through illuminating the beauty of this world.
Today, your comment is that beam of light. You didn't mean it to be, but sometimes little things have bigger impacts. Thank you. Have a great day.
I just got rid of my Pixel 6a because it had one of the bad batteries. Tip to anyone taking advantage of the trade in rebate, DO NOT get the $150 Google Store credit and be like me thinking you can use it on the Google Fi Store to purchase a new Pixel. The $150 store credit is only towards the purchase of a Pixel phone via the Google Store. Take the $100 cash rebate option instead because it tells you once you choose either option, you cannot change it.
My hope was to get the Pixel 9a on my account for $249 (activation discount) on my account and then use the $150 store credit... nope.
It's all well and good being oh so principled like you're making yourself out to be, but phones are expensive, and the above user is being completely rational for wanting to settle on a Pixel 9a for $250, especially when the other OEMs have plenty of their own problems.
Get off your moral high horse.
I too don't understand why you would be responsible for THEM breaking the screen.
Imagine your mechanic breaks a part while changing your oil then says you're responsible for the cost of it.
If the carmaker has a recall on the airbags, and the dealer breaks the instrument cluster in the process of replacing the airbag assembly, you're goddamn right I'm not paying for the instrument cluster. I don't care if the car is ten years old. It's a recall, which means it's bad design and always was. That is 100% on the mechanic, the manufacturer, and the engineer that designed the instrument cluster to break if the airbag is replaced.
They can fuck right off with that shit
Didn't HMD make a couple of those too?
Yes, the HMD Skyline has an easily removable backplate and battery.
Samsung locks the bootloader, even for carrier unlocked versions traight from samsung's website. (At least for those sold in the US, not sure about other places)
If you don't intend to use a custom RON like Lineage OS, you wouldn't notice a difference. But if you do, then it might be a dealbreaker. As for the Xcover series in particularx the specs are worse for the amount you're paying. Camera is worse, SoC is slower, assuming if you are conparing the price of a brand new mainstream S or A series phones to a brand new Xcover series. But if you don't care about worse specs for the swappable battery, then sure, go ahead. I personally wouldn't get the Xcover series, doesn't seem like a good deal, the screen is LCD and I'm way too used to OLED/AMOLED of the more mainstream phones.
The EU will require all smartphones to have replaceable batteries by 2027
The decision could have a global impact.Cecily Mauran (Mashable)
That's for "easily replaceable" batteries, not necessarily swappable, as in pop off the cover and insert new battery.
The new Fairphone 6, for example, requires a screw driver to open up the phone, and that would meet the legal requirements of the EU law.
The battery of my Pixel 6 started to bloat and leak last week. I contacted support. After a bit of back and forth where they asked me to provide proof of purchase and pictures of the phone, they sent me a brand new Pixel 6 and told me to just recycle the old one.
I reported the issue on Tuesday, received the new phone on Friday. That's not bad support for a 4 year old device that's long out of warranty. I fully expected them to tell me to go F my self.
Old? I have a 7a and i just bought it from Google…
Checks notes
Two years ago.
Shit. I guess that is old in phone years
Next you'll be saying people born in the eighties are old
I think, but 100% on this, that not all 6a's were affected.
Patch it to the latest update. If you get a notification about your battery then it's probably fucked.
Oh, was it $452? They didn't email a confirmation and I forgot to screenshot it.
Can someone screenshot it? That would be great.
People in this thread mentions setting the phone to only charge to 80%, it will hell extend battery life.
Settings -> Battery -> Charging Optimization
I put my IMEI in and it said I was eligible. But then it gets stuck in an infinite loop of support links with no option out (at least when I selected to get a replacement battery). Edit: I got free of the loop, but the nearest place to take my phone into to get the battery replaced is 100 miles away!
I think I'm just going to get a new phone and move on. Not a Pixel though. Fuck this noise. My wife had a Pixel 5a and the motherboard fried itself after a couple of years. Google sent her a Pixel 6a replacement about 2 months later (long after we'd found her a non-Pixel replacement). So I upgraded to that replacement for in a 4a. But now this battery/fire bullshit? I'm done with their shitty products and their shitty support!
I have owned 3 pixels.
5a - bricked randomly
8 - screen failed within 6 months
6a - stuck in a bootloop, gave up on fixing it just before the battery issue made headlines
I gave them a fair shake. Never again.
Before the pixel existed I owned a Google Nexus ~~5~~ 4 which was manufactured by LG and to date that was the worst phone I've ever owned. I guess my point is it doesn't matter who is manufacturing the hardware; if Google is involved it's gonna be junk.
Edit: it was a 4 not a 5 but either way it was such an awful experience I've never bought another piece of Google hardware since
I had a Nexus 5 (also LG) and it was the best I'd had for years. Ran lineageOS on it (maybe it was CyanogenMod still I can't remember) but that thing was the shit.
I left it on top of my car once and ended up destroying it. Swapped the modem into an EU model (the modem and GPS module survived, all other components failed) and had basically a brand new phone afterwards.
The Nexus 4 was a great phone in my opinion.
Had it rooted and everything for about 6 years.
The 8 had known screen issues, and they were fixed even out of warranty. After six months it would have been within warranty, so you definitely should have been able to get that fixed. I know, I had to have mine replaced too.
I've had a 4, 6, and 8. No issues. But I know that if I do have hardware issues, Google will address them like these screen and battery issues.
Cool. I'm not going to do that another three times when I can spend less money on phones that don't break.
Not to mention Google doesn't do stores where I live.
I went to the nearest Google stor
A "Google Store" doesn't even exist in my country lol
Honestly, I got the 6a because it was going to be supported for a long time compared to other phones. This rubs me the wrong way.
That took me about a week to get my money.
Got a fairphone now instead 😎
Considering it is a Google phone their long term support is still crap compared to things like Fairphone or even iPhone.
But it sucks that this happens and I hope they contact you for a trade in. Rules are also changing so all phones need to have a minimum lifespan of 5 years or so
Considering it is a Google phone their long term support is still crap compared to things like Fairphone or even iPhone.
At least it beats Samsung, I'm not buying any product from them ever again
Oh shit I didn't hear about the 6a also being fucked.
I lost my 4a to their shenanigans, couldn't get it repaired and have now a Xcover 6 pro which I bought refurbished.
Best modern phone: swappable battery, headphone jack, long software support, micro sd
I got an extra 30% battery life after switching to GrapheneOS. I'm guessing whatever is saving my battery, would also bring down the load on the system.
I did notice my phone heats up much less after switching to GrapheneOS.
I've been runnnng GrapheneOS with charge capped at 80%. Phone has not emulated thermite.
I haven't found any discussion about the battery issues at GrapheneOS yet.
Yep. It's the capacity.
Anyone can cap the charging speed by using a garbage $2 700mA charger from 2008.
I have no recommendations for versions. Depends in your case.
Although I'll mention that some people don't like that Pixel by default doesn't include the bottom menu on the screen, and uses other swiping features on the screen to do the same thing.
However in your system settings you can change the UI to gave the navigation menu at the bottom of the screen similar to Samsung.
UK Government responded to the "Repeal the Online Safety Act" Petition.
::: spoiler Long Response
I would like to thank all those who signed the petition. It is right that the regulatory regime for in scope online services takes a proportionate approach, balancing the protection of users from online harm with the ability for low-risk services to operate effectively and provide benefits to users.The Government has no plans to repeal the Online Safety Act, and is working closely with Ofcom to implement the Act as quickly and effectively as possible to enable UK users to benefit from its protections.
Proportionality is a core principle of the Act and is in-built into its duties. As regulator for the online safety regime, Ofcom must consider the size and risk level of different types and kinds of services when recommending steps providers can take to comply with requirements. Duties in the Communications Act 2003 require Ofcom to act with proportionality and target action only where it is needed.
Some duties apply to all user-to-user and search services in scope of the Act. This includes risk assessments, including determining if children are likely to access the service and, if so, assessing the risks of harm to children. While many services carry low risks of harm, the risk assessment duties are key to ensuring that risky services of all sizes do not slip through the net of regulation. For example, the Government is very concerned about small platforms that host harmful content, such as forums dedicated to encouraging suicide or self-harm. Exempting small services from the Act would mean that services like these forums would not be subject to the Act’s enforcement powers. Even forums that might seem harmless carry potential risks, such as where adults come into contact with child users.
Once providers have carried out their duties to conduct risk assessments, they must protect the users of their service from the identified risks of harm. Ofcom’s illegal content Codes of Practice set out recommended measures to help providers comply with these obligations, measures that are tailored in relation to both size and risk. If a provider’s risk assessment accurately determines that the risks faced by users are low across all harms, Ofcom’s Codes specify that they only need some basic measures, including:
- easy-to-find, understandable terms and conditions;
- a complaints tool that allows users to report illegal material when they see it, backed up by a process to deal with those complaints;
- the ability to review content and take it down if it is illegal (or breaches their terms of service);
- a specific individual responsible for compliance, who Ofcom can contact if needed.
Where a children's access assessment indicates a platform is likely to be accessed by children, a subsequent risk assessment must be conducted to identify measures for mitigating risks. Like the Codes of Practice on illegal content, Ofcom’s recently issued child safety Codes also tailor recommendations based on risk level. For example, highly effective age assurance is recommended for services likely accessed by children that do not already prohibit and remove harmful content such as pornography and suicide promotion. Providers of services likely to be accessed by UK children were required to complete their assessment, which Ofcom may request, by 24 July.
On 8 July, Ofcom’s CEO wrote to the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology noting Ofcom’s responsibility for regulating a wide range of highly diverse services, including those run by businesses, but also charities, community and voluntary groups, individuals, and many services that have not been regulated before.
The letter notes that the Act’s aim is not to penalise small, low-risk services trying to comply in good faith. Ofcom – and the Government – recognise that many small services are dynamic small businesses supporting innovation and offer significant value to their communities. Ofcom will take a sensible approach to enforcement with smaller services that present low risk to UK users, only taking action where it is proportionate and appropriate, and will focus on cases where the risk and impact of harm is highest.
Ofcom has developed an extensive programme of work designed to support a smoother journey to compliance, particularly for smaller firms. This has been underpinned by interviews, workshops and research with a diverse range of online services to ensure the tools meet the needs of different types of services. Ofcom’s letter notes its ‘guide for services’ guidance and tools hub, and its participation in events run by other organisations and networks including those for people running small services, as well as its commitment to review and improve materials and tools to help support services to create a safer life online.
The Government will continue to work with Ofcom towards the full implementation of the Online Safety Act 2023, including monitoring proportionate implementation.
Department for Science, Innovation and Technology
:::
Petition: Repeal the Online Safety Act
We want the Government to repeal the Online Safety act.Petitions - UK Government and Parliament
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Well we all saw that coming.
The parental and elderly voting bloc is very hard to ignore, and those groups tend to be less privacy conscious (as well as pro-anything "protect the children").
The only way it's getting repealed is if enough labour voters raise a fuss. Given Reform's messaging (i.e. repeal it) and how worried Labour are over Reform's polling, that is likely the only lever that'll work. However, that's a long game - one that will take years to play out.
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- These people, probably
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Russian here; good fucking luck banning VPNs
First, they evolve very rapidly and are able to evade even the most sensitive detection methods Russia and China are using
Second, people in power never want to apply the same restrictions to themselves, so, ironically, they themselves are often VPN users and as such they undermine themselves
"Benefit"
This word you keep using. I do not think it means what you think it means
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For example, the Government is very
concerned about small platforms that host
harmful content, such as forums dedicated to
encouraging suicide or self-harm.
So they've identified a problem with this type of content, and the answer is to put it behind an age wall. So is it a-ok for anyone over 18 to be encouraged to self harm or commit suicide according to the government?
Even forums that might seem harmless carry potential risks, such as where adults come into contact with child users.
Wait until the government finds out they're gonna have to age-restrict playing outside. What a genuine bone-dead stupid take.
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Dead Kennedys - Kinky sex makes the world go round
Even better are the moans from the PM
Dead Kennedys - Kinky Sex Makes the World Go 'Round Lyrics | Lyrics.com
Kinky Sex Makes the World Go 'Round Lyrics by Dead Kennedys from the Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death album- including song video, artist biography, translations and more: Greetings:This is the Secretary of War at the State Department Of the Un…www.lyrics.com
When the regime ignores petitions by the public for the redress of grievances, you petition harder.
Demonstrations, Public Disobedience, Mischief, Sabotage, Terrorism.
Censorship always expands and encroaches on things important to the public. Obscenity and indecency protections eventually turn into queer erasure. Security concerns are always followed by carve-outs of civil rights.
Hit hard early.
Simple Sabotage Field Manual by United States. Office of Strategic Services
Free kindle book and epub digitized and proofread by volunteers.Project Gutenberg
I'm surprised their response wasn't, "you're all on the side of predators; it's as simple as that".
theguardian.com/politics/2025/…
Peter Kyle says Nigel Farage is on side of ‘people like Jimmy Savile’ in online safety row
Technology secretary doubles down after Reform UK pledges to scrap Online Safety Act if it wins powerJamie Grierson (The Guardian)
The TL;DR of it is "we're not repealing it, get fucked."
The technology minister said on Sky News that if you was to repeal the act, you're on the side of Jimmy Savile.
That's where we are in all this, support this or you're a nonce.
if you was to repeal the act, you’re on the side of Jimmy Savile.
flipping through my Big Book of Politicians and Celebrities appearing beside Jimmy Savile
Do they really want to go there?
That’s where we are in all this, support this or you’re a nonce.
That's been the Tory approach to politics for decades. No surprise New Labour has adopted it, since they seem keen on all their other platforms.
🦶🏻💥🔫
Remember this moment when Nigel Farage sweeps to power in 2028 on a wave of youth votes, brings back the porn and sells the NHS.
Time to start a global strategy to stop reliance on government and corporate equipment, to switch to open source, no intellectual property, decentralized infrastructure.
The key weakpoint to our entire global society is reliance on outside forces that can influence and manipulate us.
Anyone who's played plague.inc knows already what to do. Once people have their own food, energy, shelter, and software, they will not be pleased to let them be taken unjustly by a conquering force, creating a natural buffer.
You literally don't have to do anything illegal, you can easily go under the radar for quite a while.
UK Government responded to the "Repeal the Online Safety Act" Petition.
::: spoiler Long Response
I would like to thank all those who signed the petition. It is right that the regulatory regime for in scope online services takes a proportionate approach, balancing the protection of users from online harm with the ability for low-risk services to operate effectively and provide benefits to users.The Government has no plans to repeal the Online Safety Act, and is working closely with Ofcom to implement the Act as quickly and effectively as possible to enable UK users to benefit from its protections.
Proportionality is a core principle of the Act and is in-built into its duties. As regulator for the online safety regime, Ofcom must consider the size and risk level of different types and kinds of services when recommending steps providers can take to comply with requirements. Duties in the Communications Act 2003 require Ofcom to act with proportionality and target action only where it is needed.
Some duties apply to all user-to-user and search services in scope of the Act. This includes risk assessments, including determining if children are likely to access the service and, if so, assessing the risks of harm to children. While many services carry low risks of harm, the risk assessment duties are key to ensuring that risky services of all sizes do not slip through the net of regulation. For example, the Government is very concerned about small platforms that host harmful content, such as forums dedicated to encouraging suicide or self-harm. Exempting small services from the Act would mean that services like these forums would not be subject to the Act’s enforcement powers. Even forums that might seem harmless carry potential risks, such as where adults come into contact with child users.
Once providers have carried out their duties to conduct risk assessments, they must protect the users of their service from the identified risks of harm. Ofcom’s illegal content Codes of Practice set out recommended measures to help providers comply with these obligations, measures that are tailored in relation to both size and risk. If a provider’s risk assessment accurately determines that the risks faced by users are low across all harms, Ofcom’s Codes specify that they only need some basic measures, including:
- easy-to-find, understandable terms and conditions;
- a complaints tool that allows users to report illegal material when they see it, backed up by a process to deal with those complaints;
- the ability to review content and take it down if it is illegal (or breaches their terms of service);
- a specific individual responsible for compliance, who Ofcom can contact if needed.
Where a children's access assessment indicates a platform is likely to be accessed by children, a subsequent risk assessment must be conducted to identify measures for mitigating risks. Like the Codes of Practice on illegal content, Ofcom’s recently issued child safety Codes also tailor recommendations based on risk level. For example, highly effective age assurance is recommended for services likely accessed by children that do not already prohibit and remove harmful content such as pornography and suicide promotion. Providers of services likely to be accessed by UK children were required to complete their assessment, which Ofcom may request, by 24 July.
On 8 July, Ofcom’s CEO wrote to the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology noting Ofcom’s responsibility for regulating a wide range of highly diverse services, including those run by businesses, but also charities, community and voluntary groups, individuals, and many services that have not been regulated before.
The letter notes that the Act’s aim is not to penalise small, low-risk services trying to comply in good faith. Ofcom – and the Government – recognise that many small services are dynamic small businesses supporting innovation and offer significant value to their communities. Ofcom will take a sensible approach to enforcement with smaller services that present low risk to UK users, only taking action where it is proportionate and appropriate, and will focus on cases where the risk and impact of harm is highest.
Ofcom has developed an extensive programme of work designed to support a smoother journey to compliance, particularly for smaller firms. This has been underpinned by interviews, workshops and research with a diverse range of online services to ensure the tools meet the needs of different types of services. Ofcom’s letter notes its ‘guide for services’ guidance and tools hub, and its participation in events run by other organisations and networks including those for people running small services, as well as its commitment to review and improve materials and tools to help support services to create a safer life online.
The Government will continue to work with Ofcom towards the full implementation of the Online Safety Act 2023, including monitoring proportionate implementation.
Department for Science, Innovation and Technology
:::
Petition: Repeal the Online Safety Act
We want the Government to repeal the Online Safety act.Petitions - UK Government and Parliament
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Mastercard and Visa face backlash after hundreds of adult games removed from online stores Steam and Itch.io
Mastercard and Visa face backlash after hundreds of adult games removed from online stores Steam and Itch.io
Payment platforms demand services remove NSFW content after open letter from Australian anti-porn group Collective Shout, triggering accusations of censorshipJosh Taylor (The Guardian)
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Feels like we're going back to the 90s/00s "Christian parents against video games" moral panic era. But this time, they're being appeased more heavily.
I despise conservatism. It destroys everything it touches.
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Ugh... This shit again....
The fucking Bible is FULL OF FUCKING HATE. Hate for women, hate for blacks, hate for gays, hate for the "other".
I'm really sick of people trotting out two lines from that book of fairytales and doing a pikachu face "how could people read this and be evil?!?"
Easily, because the Bible is filled with vile shit. Because it's made up bullshit that let's you argue every side of every point because it's a amalgam of garbage written by idiots with the occasional line of wisdom sprinkled in.
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Remember that Discover is self-banked (unlike Visa/Mastercard that banks sign up with). This means that every credit line needs to be backed by... well ... A bank.
Bigger banks mean more credit opportunities, better interest rates (etc. etc). Deeper credit lines.
How hard can you throw?
Amex gift cards. Cashapp uses Block(Square) for their payment processing, which is easier to use because you can transfer funds to that from your bank.
You can in Japan apparently. They have a system where you can go to convenience store and pay by scanning a code
You can also sorta use zelle, but the technical integration is not great. It's a very manual process as it is
Ultimately, the problem is we let two companies dominate commerce itself. We just need to let the governmet do payment processing, and require compatibility
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They had to leave empty-handed.
Discover and Diners Club merged a few years ago btw. Discover also has an alliance with JCB.
So Discover network is actually really, really big.
In Italy, there's a debit card circuit called PagoBancomat.
Italy also has a digital-only payment system called Satispay. Denmark and Finland have MobilePay (which is way better than Satispay). Sweden has Swish.
Your country may have something similar, look it up. And then you can always pay with PayPal by connecting your bank account directly, with no cards involved (at least in Europe).
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Ledger Crypto Wallet - Security for DeFi & Web3
Secure your crypto assets such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Monero, and more. Give yourself peace of mind by knowing that your cryptocurrencies are safeLedger
How is an even more niche process that involves having to go to an exchange to buy crypto then safe guard it and it being a taxable event when buying goods with it in some countries a solution?
People are wanting a mainstream alternative that the companies that they buy from use, and if the companies don't care to use it then it doesn't matter for the average person.
Even people actually into crypto are less interested in spending it because it exposes their balance if they aren't using coin mixers or monero which can make them a target. Not to mention most just see it as stock they hope goes to the moon as opposed to going through the cumbersome process of buying for the purpose of spending it like a depreciating asset.
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Unfortunately crypto is already complicated as is. And as the other user said bitcoin isn't the best choice. Monero would be as close to the overall goal as it is possible.
Now using monero would be more anonymous than credit/debit cards making it a better option - but not many vendors support it, and cash is just simpler than any other option.
In Canada, I'd like to see Interac develop into one. Hopefully more prominence wouldn't ruin it
Edit:
Following several aborted merger attempts which were either blocked by the Competition Bureau or by some of the co-owners between 2008 and 2013, Interac and Acxsys were combined into a single for-profit organization, Interac Corporation, on 1 February 2018.
Never mind. It would be inevitable.
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Keep the pressure on.
Collective Shout got them to change their position and they're a small group. We are legion, as the kids say
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I'm not saying there is illegal content. Read my comment.
I'm saying the possibility of there being illegal content only exists if they allow the reintroduction of those titles. They'd need trust in the store moderation, in the lack of bad faith actors, in a lot of things.
And it would be an absolutely stupid business decision for them.
I am NOT condoning what they did, nor what they are doing. I am explaining, from their business perspective, why allowing potentially illegal content back on the platform is a non-argument and you cannot convince them otherwise.
I'm saying the possibility of there being illegal content only exists if they allow the reintroduction of those titles.
Again, no. If there were illegal content before then it's already breaking the rules. If you're breaking rules once, why would adding more rules change anything?
They'd need trust in the store moderation, in the lack of bad faith actors, in a lot of things.
What? Yeah, the store moderators have to enforce the rules. I don't know what this has to do with anything. Illegal or just banned, they have to be removed by the moderators. What difference does it make? This doesn't make any sense. Adding more rules doesn't magically remove the content. Moderators still have to do it. If they weren't doing it for illegal content, why would they do it for only banned but legal content?
The reason they did it is because they were pressured by a weird group who has a lot of influence. It wasn't because they were worried about illegal content, which is obvious because that's not the rule they applied. If the rule was "you're not allowed to sell illegal content" (which is obviously always true) then it'd be fine. Instead they made a rule for not allowing specific types of legal content.
You're not great at risk assessment, are you?
They have a risky move, which in 1/10000 cases leads to an illegal game being paid for through their payment platform.
And they have a safe move, where this never happens. Literally.
If the expected risk is positive in case 1, they will opt for case 2.
You must at least be able to understand this simple logic, right? If not, then I'm afraid this conversation is over because you're not even remotely trying to understand their logic, and you're just looking for a reason to be mad. Your irrationality makes me nauseous.
We are legion, as the kids say
God I'm old lmao
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Batman and Robin are a way better duo.
I mean, they actually try to do good and oppose nazis instead of be them.
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Maybe it’s just because I’m so focused on my own issues as a US citizen… But how the hell did some Australian Christofascist group get this powerful? Like, the RIAA and MPAA combined couldn’t get the United States government to make this much movement on “objectionable content” (piracy at the time, and also now, and all of the time between then and now), but even the crypto fascists of yesterday year couldn’t get this much traction. Probably because people like Frank Zappa and Fred Rogers came forth to criticize the ridiculousness and the consequences of such a position and search policies.
May 1, 1969: Fred Rogers testifies before the Senate Subcommittee on Communications
And 16 years later:
Frank Zappa at PMRC Senate Hearing on Rock Lyrics
STAND UP!!! FIGHT BACK!! Citizen complacency is the most powerful weapon the fascist have – – relying on that you will be paralyzed with fear and do nothing to stop them.
RISE UP! RESIST! REVOLT!!
And show us the fucking Epstein files already, you fucking rapist, con man, felon, pedo, traitor!
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They got together enough people to mass email, that is all it took.
Companies tend to multiply received responses to represent the total number of people who were to lazy to complain, so Visa and MasterCard saw 1,000 emails as 10,000,000 in their risk averse actions.
Now 4chan is pissed and have started their own mass email and phonecall campaign, so we shall see where this goes...
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Visa also have a fairly well documented history of kowtowing to Christian groups. The CEO of their Asian division is a right-wing religious fanatic who hates, well he's a religious fanatic so you know what he hates, but it's basically everything and everybody.
They don't like Japanese anime very much as well, probably because they think it's all pornography (anime does tend to have that bent, but it's not all pornography).
The thing is on their website they claim not to make moral judgements about purchasers, they claim to authorise anything that isn't actually illegal, so they should be totally fine with pornography and anime. If they are going to be right-wing religious fundamentalists at least they could be honest about it on their website.
Mass emailed didn’t exist in 1969 nor in 1985.
Wherever you went to school, those teachers should be shot.
Maybe read those two comments again, then read your response.
Your reading skills are not what you think they are.
I think you should take your own advice. Just because you lack the intelligence to understand my comment doesn’t mean I’m the one to blame.
Blocked for having shit for brains
But how the hell did some Australian Christofascist group get this powerful?
It's Australia, we only laugh when China does it, otherwise it must be good if we're doing it.
Want to have backdoors to chat apps, done, allow the siezure and forced unlocking of computers and phones at the border, done. Inter refigees in our own offshore concentrarion camps for decades until they suicide and make it illegal to report on, done. Regularly kill our first nations peoples amd have the jailed ? Done. We're a fucken' embarrassment!
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Yeah there doesn't seem to be any alternatives in my country other than cash which doesn't work for online purchases.
Apparently there is a complicated thing I can do where I have to go to the post office and then I can send money directly to a company. But that's really inconvenient (it's like a 30-second walk from my house, I'm not doing that) and I don't think steam accepts that payment method anyway. In fact I've never heard of anyone except that payment method so I don't really understand why it exists.
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What's even the argument here? Steam already has parental control options, age gates, and content filters... if you don't want your kids seeing that shit on steam, then, like, don't let em?
...meanwhile, let's just continue shoving blatant gambling down minors' throats in the form of lootboxes.
And the reason sexual things had to be filtered was that they are harmful and skew kids' perception of healthy sexuality.
Gambling wasn't considered healthy even where and when marrying a toddler was normal. After all, a traumatized person with unhealthy sexuality does generally understand they are traumatized, a person taught that addiction is normal - not.
This group isn't interested in protecting children they're just interested in pushing their own beliefs on everybody else. The easiest way they can do that is to pretend that they're interested in children. Which I'm sure some of them are, but not in the capacity that anyone wants them to be.
It's a classic right-wing tactic. Because nobody wants to be against a law that protects children.
Which I'm sure some of them are, but not in the capacity that anyone wants them to be.
I laughed, then I cried :_(
People like them used to go after books, now games.
“ All dem queer books are hurtin our kids, makin em all gay and shit! “
Says the man standing in front of his trailer with a deep five o’clock shadow spanning his double chin, a permanently stained wife-beating tank top and a prominent beer gut, who has five scrawny & bruised kids, and a wife that bears an eerie resemblance to himself but can’t quite look anyone in the eye.
That's their goal for sure, what I mean is how are they pretending to justify it?
There's usually some on-paper benevolent veneer to wrap their hateful bullshit up with.
For example, they hate trans people, but they don't campaign on that out loud - they justify that hated under the guise of shit like protecting bathrooms.
But this is fucking Steam - access to that bathroom is already under lock and key behind an armed guard. They can't just pull the "think of the children!" card when the children already have a myriad of protections.
...or maybe they can, considering what just happened. We live in stupid times.
"[Elon Musk] said he wanted to get his own X payments platform «going soon»".
Surely that's going to solve the problem. There's absolutely no censorship on Twitter. /s
When there are enough competing parties, the argument of "I live in country A and I don't care about B's special services reading my messages", where A and B are in a state of adversity, starts working.
By competing parties I mean not just A and B, but a plethora of snakes in that pit.
So - do it Elon. It's fine.
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That's their goal for sure, what I mean is how are they pretending to justify it?
The same way they always do: "WONT SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN!?!?!?!1111"
An alternative to PayPal, called WERO is currently in it's rollout process in Germany, Belgium and France. In October the next step will be activated, allowing payments in e-commerce. Later down the road, you'll be able to pay in real shops. Luxembourg and Netherlands are to join in next. More and more banks start to adopt WERO.
I urge everyone to use WERO as much as you can. It's flying a bit under the radar at the moment and this must be a success. Hopefully more EU members will join soon.
Sounds great, but as with so many of these projects, they sound overly complicated for the masses. Wero is already a thing and it's straight forward. Even that is too complicated for many people, but it's gaining traction at least.
Anywho, I'm rooting for both!
shiiiit I wouldn't count on that anymore. With the age verification and ID stuff they would honestly at this point probably make it worse.
I used to be an advocate for European alternatives for US based tech companies but now? no way, started self hosting everything. it sucks.
Do you mean digital euro?
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digita…
This would be the only thing that could break visa mastercard duopol. Hopefully 2028
Parola filtrata: nsfw
While Collective Shout solely targeted games it said violated policies held by payment platforms, Itch.io's move to temporarily remove all NSFW content resulted in games with LGBTQ+ themes being removed.One petition signer who is a member of the LGBTQ+ community said they were concerned that banning sexual-based games would be the start of cracking down on LGBTQ+ content.
There it is.
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Yeah but Jesus definitely preached love thy neighbor, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and also, ew gay people not in my back yard.
I'm pretty confident on two of those anyway
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I'm sorry, but that is just a blatant misunderstanding of how economics work. It wouldn't combat blatant consumerism, it would literally destroy the economy. Not to be replaced by something better, but just destroy it. There would be no reason to invest in literally anything, including people, no reason to repair your house or feed the poor, because the money it would cost, would be worth more tomorrow.
Why would I buy a car, or bike, or proper nutritional food, if I could save that money for tomorrow, and buy more? Only tomorrow it's the same thing, so I'll live like shit until the next day, then the next day, and then the next....
The only people who would have any quality of life, would be the rich cunts. They'd live like the do now, because they don't actually need more money.
Deflation is never a good thing, I'm saying this as a socialist.
They're not misunderstanding; you're using Keynesian economics. "The economy" as described today is rich people's wealth, not the wellbeing of the poor.
If people saved instead of building up credit scores, it would be much easier to strike. We don't need to be forced to invest somehow or become even poorer (which is what actually happened). You'll repair your house because you need a house and buy food because you need food. You're more likely to participate in mutual aid with savings than with credit.
I would be for a state owned chain, does not have to be completely decentralized, it's just good tech that can make the payment processors of today obselete.
Basically require each bank to run nodes, while letting the central bank of the country hold the keys to mint new coins.
I mean one could also have verifying nodes run independent.
The tech is there, doesn't have to mean use anarchy moneys, it just means an overhaul of our ways of transferring value around.
“The internet has no borders. Women and girls everywhere are impacted by male violence against women and misogyny in general which we believed these games perpetuated,” she said.
Yet the fictional violence against men and boys is A-Ok!
everything you don’t like
On issues like these, conservatives will discover the magic of actual reasons. It's only "things you don't like" when we're talking about banning hate speech or something.
Governments and some religious nutjobs.
They only pretend to care about children. It is about power and control. Always has been, always will.
"Face backlash" = about 160,000 people signed a petition saying they disagreed with it, then went about their daily lives and totally, 100% without a doubt continued using their Visa or Mastercard credit cards.
They don't care, there are no alternatives. They can do whatever they want.
Are people actually complying with Age Verification laws?
Are there people really whipping out their ID prior to scrolling Reddit or masturbating?
This Is a joke right? Pretend VPNs don't exist. How are citizens in these areas responding and navigating these laws in Texas or the UK?
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Poll: Which abandoned Android phone features do you miss the most?
Poll: Which abandoned Android phone features do you miss? - Android Authority
While our phones have gotten more advanced, many compromises had to made along the way. Which one was the most difficult for you to forget?Tushar Mehta (Android Authority)
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Google Assistant Is Basically on Life Support and Things Just Got Worse
Google Assistant Is Basically on Life Support and Things Just Got Worse
Lots of Google Home users say they can't even turn their lights on or off right now.James Pero (Gizmodo)
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So Google half baked a product, pushed it to the public whether they wanted it or not, and now it's giving up on it replacing it with another half baked product nobody asked for...
Seems par for the course for Google
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Technology reshared this.
As has Siri.
It used to have all kinds of plugins, like Wolfram|Alpha, that let you do fun and silly things with it.
It's simply gone downhill ever since.
The new Apple intelligence siri is arguably even worse. I tried asking it what the date would be next Tuesday, all I got back was "I don't understand".
Unintelligent Siri managed to crack that one without fault.
I put them back up a few months ago and it sure seems worse to me. Always triggering on random conversations, or to dialog on TV. Anyway they are permanent residents of the closet now. They suck.
Killed by Google
Killed by Google is the open source list of dead Google products, services, and devices. It serves as a tribute and memorial of beloved services and products killed by Google.Killed by Google
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IIRC it's supposed to be getting better rapidly, as it's an active focus of development for Home Assistant.
That said, I thought seemed like a good guide on how to set it up as of 8 months ago. (I'm not necessarily a fan of that guy's bombastic over-enthusiasm, but the info seems good.)
- YouTube
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.www.youtube.com
Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition
Bring choice to voice - the best way to get started with voiceHome Assistant
It does! I have my bedroom one controlled through it and even showing up as a play target for Spotify Connect. I've got my speakers I was plugging into my phone to play music before, or into a Raspi briefly, plugged into the 3.5mm jack on that one.
My kitchen one I just leave as-is. I DID modify the ESPHome firmware on each, extending to add an OLED (I think) clock display that also shows remaining time for timers in numbers. I do really like the LED ring animation for timers built-in though, it's pretty slick!
I wish I could get Home Assistant working with my nest minis.
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Get an ESP32, a temperature sensor, and 4x relay board and build your own with esphome!
If you pull the instructions for your thermostat, the wiring guide should tell you what each wire is for (because you can't trust wire colors). From there it's just wiring up the relays properly, getting the config built in esphome, and setting up a generic thermostat.
It sounds kinda daunting, but it's really not super complex. The only gotchas too look out for are any of the relays that can't be on when another relay is on. There's a way to prevent that in esphome. I'm sure someone has made a guide on it by now. I would have made one if I had gotten my enclosure figured out before my 3D printer took a hiatus.
I bought a Honeywell Z-Wave thermostat because I have a more complicated HVAC setup than the typical American home. It was one of the few I could find that was compliant with a home automation protocol that didn't require something that announced its existence to the Internet. It's been solidly reliable, replacing my dead Nest thermostat.
The thermostat:
Cool, I've come across this before. I have been looking for a more open thermostat, preferably esp32 based, that I can have good local control over. I have started to do the board layout for one with some air quality sensors built in.
If you don't mind me asking whats more complicated about your hvac setup? Multistage? Heat pump? Multizone?
TEMP-1 Temperature Sensor For Home Assistant | Apollo Automation
TEMP-1 is a ESP32 controller with a 1.5m waterproof flat temperature probe that can be used with your Home Assistant. Check the specs here.Apollo Automation
I ended up picking up two of the Home Assistant Voice PE devices and I've been fairly happy with them. I even extended their firmware so I have a clock display on each with one being my bedroom alarm clock even. But even out of the box functionality, as long as you can either run faster-whisper on Home Assistant (or another box), or don't mind their lighter device-control-only route, is totally solid.
Plus music streaming to them (with an external speaker attached via the 3.5mm jack) is pretty good!
GitHub - justLV/onju-voice: A hackable AI home assistant platform
A hackable AI home assistant platform. Contribute to justLV/onju-voice development by creating an account on GitHub.GitHub
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As I understand it, Google mostly ships new stuff that they let die because it's one of the only ways to get a promotion at Google - to ship a product.
Once shipped, the newly promoted staff moves on to something else, and the business people take a look and see if the product actually makes any sense from a financial perspective, which is rarely the case.
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You got to love the author of that article. If you want the lights to turn off and on normally, maybe people should use light switches. Those aren't going to break due to software downgrades, those don't require Gemini or internet connections.
And I understand, there are rare situations when throwing the internet at your home appliances can make sense for solving niche problems. Those situations definitely exist, but for almost everyone almost all of the time, but it's pretty fucking easy to turn lights off and on.
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These just dont need to be online. 90% of the use I have seen is timers and lights, like a half step above hello world.
There is a market for voice assistants that are local.
I did see something recently about local LLMs and voice input layers. The post made it seem very Jarvis like, think it may have been the voice used or the name.
Knowing nothing about tech other than I want my privacy I am hoping it is feasible for the common man
There's a mode for voice control that is even friendly to a Raspi 4 or 5, but it's very simplistic in control, basically a super lightweight speech to text trained only on device names and aliases. Think the speech to text in late 2000s through early 2010s non-smart phones.
Small models for faster-whisper will run on even my little Dell Micro i5-6500T that I have Home Assistant running on, it's just a little bit slow, but it absolutely works and is usable speed! I run a larger model currently offloaded to my server, which has an RTX 2070 Super in it, but that's to make it perform more like how Google used to a long time ago, and it's unused power most of the time.
They're trying to make it as accessible as possible for sure. There's even options to use cloud STT and TTS (they even include it in the Home Assistant Cloud optional feature), but it's definitely cool as hell to be able to talk to an open-source-design speaker and get a reply and control any switches or lights or even my thermostat and robo vacuum without needing the Internet to work. As long as my Wi-Fi and HA box are up, I've got options!
It has several modes. The most basic is speech to text, pattern match, then implement. It also has text to speak for feedback. No actual AI in the loop.
It's also capable of tying to AI models in various ways. It's mainly intended for question answering. Either general, or about your data.
I personally don't trust a non-deterministic AI having direct control of my house, so the split is useful.
We have leak sensors in the basement brewery and sockets that help the hubs ADHD and anxiety (did i forget to turn X off? I shall check my phone), all running through a HA server. A mate has literally programmed in migraine protocols.
Automation ain't bad. Capitalism is what the haters are angry at. Wish they'd go shit on that instead of stupid commentary about laziness.
You can get socket extensions where the bulb goes into it and then each extension is connected to a wall mount remote switch. No wifi needed and then you have a wall switch for each bulb.
Doesn't fit into every light fixture though depends on the design.
Edit:
Long time google assistant user, but them putting Gemini in it is what I'm afraid of, not the solution.
This is yet another "google released a product, didn't know what to do with it, and made zero updates over the last decade, so now they're killing it." I don't think they've ever fixed the bugs that existed the first day I bought mine. The speaker is handy for casting to, but also cast is a shitty non-open protocol.
Kinda just agree with the "everything in this space sucks" unfortunately.
My how things have changed over the years! Why, when I was a young girl, we didn't have the internet. When we wanted to turn a light on, we had to write a letter to Ford Motor Co. (They were the tech of the day.) I'd write, "Dear Mr. Ford, please give us permission to turn on our light in the dining room." Of course then we'd have to find a stamp, then walk the letter down to the nearest post office. (That was faster than waiting for the mailman to pick it up from the neighborhood mail box.) Sure enough, 6 weeks later we'd receive a reply saying, "Fine, turn on the light in the dining room." The postman delivered mail in the morning, so we had to wait until dark to all gather around in the dining room and turn on the light with great ceremony.
We never understood why we needed to get permission from a company far away to turn on a light switch, but we were patriotic Americans, so we knew better than to question the process.
Enshitification...
Killed by Google
Killed by Google is the open source list of dead Google products, services, and devices. It serves as a tribute and memorial of beloved services and products killed by Google.Killed by Google
Women’s ‘red flag’ app Tea is a privacy nightmare
Women’s ‘red flag’ app Tea is a privacy nightmare
Selfies were hacked and posted on 4chan. Now, private messages were breached.Tanya Tianyi Chen (The Verge)
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it seems its an app that helps women flag potential dating candidates as being dangerous or red flags.
there is the potential for doxxing that comes with that, but I can absolutely understand its use and need when not abused in that manner.
i wonder if there's the potential for a different app with more encryption and a way to prevent doxxing and abuse.
There's definitely a use case, but there's an inherent power imbalance to these products that makes sure they will always be misused. The submitters are anonymous, and it's up to the person being reported on to prove the accusations are false.
Or, they're supposed to be anonymous.
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it’s up to the person being reported on to prove the accusations are false.
The person doesn't even know they're mentioned in the app.
Which is even worse, because unless someone tells them, they're blissfully unaware.
With most forms of Libel, at least the victim will see it in a timely manner.
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I have the solution. Nobody's gonna like it, everybody here is gonna scream at me about it, but I have the solution.
Stop dating strangers on the internet.
The entire personals site/dating app experiment we've been running for the last quarter century is obviously a categorical failure. Humans just don't work like this.
Things have gotten so much worse since I was in high school. When I was in high school, the community of girls available to me to ask out were pretty much all girls I'd known since we were 5. A lot of them, I didn't have to wonder about their character, their intentions, their capacity to do harm, I was there when all that was written. I remember how much of a bully Chelsea was in middle school, I remember how nice Ashley was to everyone, I remember how Justine seemed weirdly infatuated with me in the 4th grade. They'd all remember stuff about me and the other boys. We graduated high school, I never saw 80% of them ever again, and within 5 years that figure climbed to at least 95%. Four years of college with mostly abject strangers who you're weirdly fast to form and break deceptively deep bonds with, all of whom I've also lost track of, and then the adult world in which everyone including you is an NPC.
I happen to be the exact age where, I got out of college in 2007, I disappeared into work, like I went to the airport and I went home for two years. In 2009, I looked back up and everything had CHANGED. Instant messaging was on smart phones now, and you WERE NOT TO approach women in person, only through phone-based dating apps and you had BETTER FUCKING NOT already be acquainted.
Don't talk to women at the grocery store. Don't talk to women at the gym. Don't talk to women at the library. Don't talk to women at your work. Don't talk to women at their work. Don't talk to women at the coffee shop. Don't talk to women at the bar. Don't talk to women at the club. Don't talk to women. No woman, only app.
How do you meet more women? Oh that's categorically the wrong question because having the goal of meeting women in the first place is creepy. Stop wanting to meet women and instead organically decide you want to do things that women happen to like, and then accidentally meet women in the course of doing those things. You know, at those meetups that are always happening on a recurring basis, that aren't advertised to happen at a place and time and then no one shows up and the listing is never re-posted. Probably just install more apps.
It's been women driving this, men vastly prefer asking women out from within their social circle. The pressure to make the first move is still on men, and he'd rather ask out women he already thinks he might like. Women on the other hand vastly prefer to be cold approached by a charming stranger.
I think it's gone far enough when we've got women saying dumb shit like "Systematically doxxing and libeling men is a risk we're just going to have to take."
Good lord, please tell me you did not just use ted bundy to describe what you think women like in men?
also did you just lore dump to a complete stranger? we're having a casual conversation.
i never said anything as insane as "Systematically doxxing and libeling men is a risk we're just going to have to take". i said doxxing should be avoided, if you'd read any of my comments.
who is this long winded comment for, exactly?
please tell me you did not just use ted bundy to describe what you think women like in men?
I did, because he was. Two different ways.
- Bundy's modus operandi was to approach women in public as a handsome, charming stranger. I'm pretty sure women like handsome, charming strangers; the entire female dating strategy seems to be geared toward attracting handsome, charming strangers. Ted Bundy was able to attract dozens of victims like that. There's an inherent danger in attracting strangers, because sometimes strangers are psychopaths.
- Ted Bundy got a LOT of fan mail from women while he was in prison. Love letters, marriage proposals, nude photos. A shocking number of women saw his picture on the news alongside words like "murder trial" and "death sentence" and said "That's the man for me." He pulled some weird stunt to "get married" and he fathered a child from prison. This isn't unique to Ted Bundy, lots of mass murderers and serial killers have groupies, from Charles Manson to Dylan Klebold.
i said doxxing should be avoided, if you’d read any of my comments.
You came across as pretty lukewarm to me. "Yeah doxxing is a problem I guess." You can't have a Don't Date Him Girl website without doxxing. Doxxing is how they work.
skipped everything about ted bundy cause wtf you're obsessed, man. maybe join a bundy dating app?
also let me make it clear since you missed it last time (even though you quoted it). I think doxxing is bad and should be avoided. fuck's sake man. i am a commenter, not a politician. i read this stuff over breakfast. take it easy ffs.
not everything has to be a huge debate.
i wonder if there’s the potential for a different app with more encryption and a way to prevent doxxing and abuse.
Encryption, sure.
Preventing doxxing? I highly doubt it. But hey, it's women doing it so it's ok and anyone who criticizes that is an incel.
i wonder if there's the potential for a different app with more encryption and a way to prevent doxxing and abuse.
You would have to have everyone take a polygraph or something (not that they actually work but a lot of people don't know that so maybe it would prevent them from lying in the first place). There's no way to prevent people from lying for whatever reason they have and there's no way to detect whether or not the thing they have posted is truthful.
The truth is as much benefit as the app may have when used properly the risk of abuse is far too high for it to ever be workable.
If you have a smoke alarm in your house that occasionally explodes and sets your house on fire, but the rest of the time actually works as a fire alarm, then it's not a useful product, as even if the chance of it exploding was less than 1% it would still eventually blow up your house, whereas if you never installed the alarm there was every possibility your house will never catch fire. So game theory suggests that you are better off without it.
Same with this app, sure it might prevent you experiencing a bad date but there's every possibility that it will also cause you not to date somebody who's actually a nice person. You are far better off just making that judgement yourself as you always did. And to be clear given human nature, the likelihood of the "fire alarm exploding" is probably a lot higher than 1%
Yeah, the entire point of the app is that you go there and talk about the bad things a person has done.
That seems pretty hard to identify them without posting their image without their consent and discussing private details of their life so others can identify them. It is creepy as hell, at a minimum.
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off the top of my head, I don't know. i just feel the concept is intriguing and that the idea is a nice one.
just the abuse potential is far too high I suppose. but it would be nice to know if someone had stalked someone else, may have spoken or behaved in a violent manner, etc.
but I suppose at that point you might as well fingerprint and process any potential suitors lol. 😅
the sentiment is great, however.
I am going to say with even the downsides I think the idea is worth it.
My friend sucks to her creeps and maybe she could have saved herself from at least two abused cases.
Maybe like light system based around how often and how a users submits. This person submits a lot of negative responses red light.
This person submits rarely green light?
The problem is also how much data do we really want to keep? How little can we keep?
Meowmeowbeans social pressure where people will refuse to meet or associate with people who have not been vetted and verified by meowmeowbeans members. So people who want to meet meowmeowbeans users would have to join to get screened otherwise they can get lost.
Solves the issue of people who never signed up to the social media site having strangers uploading personal photos, videos, names, and stories to a profile page they never consented to. Which is reminiscent of doxing in its current state.
So meowmeowbeans certification among consenting members would be the better route to go and socially making those not in meowmeowbeans outcasts. At least there is choice now for people to not be part of the community driven database of people.
You could easily convince me that it was a brilliantly executed honeypot. It's just too damn poetic.
"It's a women's safety app" No it wasn't. This app was about women's safety as much as the recent payment processor porn game censorship bullshit was about child safety. This was about slandering men for fun because women love gossip. The app's name was "Tea."
Not a single woman who signed up for this app stopped to think, "Here's a brand new app, just came out, has no track record, no reputation. I don't know who runs this. I don't know how they secure their database. I know what they're asking, they want a picture of my government-issued ID. We've spent the last two decades reading news headlines of the pattern "tech company was hacked, 2.2 million users compromised including emails, home addresses and SSNs" on a weekly basis. There hasn't been a week gone by since Dubya was president that hasn't happened."
The women who uploaded pictures of their IDs to some app really had their own safety in mind. Turns out you can short circuit that whole process with hilarious ease if you say things like "women only" and "slander your exes."
I don't think I could have constructed a better example as to why all the recent "prove your identity" shit is comprehensively retarded.
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Change the target to any other group and the outrage would be 100-10000 fold bigger.
Try it out, instead of Women rating men, try subbing in various minority groups or races.
Bonus points for the most offensive combinations.....
e.g. Russians rating Ukrainians in your area....it can get pretty bad...I can think of many worse combos.
Russians rating Ukrainians
Interesting analogy. You realize you have it backwards, right? Women are the Ukrainians on this scenario.
I think the key reason this was seen as not being terribly offensive was the fact that women are disproportionately more likely than men to be on the receiving end of tons of different negative consequences when dating, thus to a degree justifying them having more of a safe space where their comfort and safety is prioritized.
However I think a lot of people are also recognizing now that such an app has lots of downsides that come as a result of that kind of structure, like false allegations being given too much legitimacy, high amounts of sensitive data storage, negative interactions being blown out of proportion, etc. I also think that this is yet another signature case of "private market solution to systemic problem" that only kind of addresses the symptoms, but not the actual causes of these issues that are rooted more in our societal standards and expectations of the genders, upbringing, depictions in media, etc.
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I was making the point, that despite the fact that this is mildly ok. The test for anything that gives one group power over another, is to switch the groups.
If it's still reasonable, than it is probably OK to keep it. If however it seems wrong after the switch, the bar to keep the power imbalance should be very high.
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That's a very superficial test that deliberately omits the social and historical context that makes sense of these categories. You can't just insert one party for another in statements about a relationship where one side has more power and privilege than the other, and look at your feelings about the result to evaluate the statements. White people have historically mistreated everyone else and robbed them of freedom and power. Men have historically abused women. To say "let's swap the words and see how we feel then" is not a reasonable way of evaluating statements about the relationships between these groups.
What this article says about the importance of entrenched power structures in racism also holds true about the relations between men and women:
aclrc.com/issues/anti-racism/c…
Myth of Reverse Racism | Unpacking the Realities
Reverse racism is a myth that ignores systemic power dynamics. Explore why racial prejudice towards white people isn't true racism.Alberta Civil Liberties Research Centre (ACLRC)
You can, and do.
It helps set the bar, it is a tool for determining how to assess what level of imbalance is reasonable.
It's not the only tool, nor an I arguing for it to be.
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I’m always reminded of the fact that women on dating sites rate 80% of the men as below average….
And the dating advisors who have written numerous articles about how women don’t really know or aren’t really honest with themselves about what they are looking for in a partner….
That was ONE OKCupid survey from years ago, and it also showed that women were more likely than men to message people they didn't rate as attractive.
In reality, women and men rate male facial attractiveness about the same. datepsychology.com/can-women-i…
Can Women Identify An Average Face? - Date Psychology
People often confuse average with "neither attractive nor unattractive," but an average face may also be unattractive. How well can people identify the average?https://datepsychology.com/author/alexander/#author (Date Psychology)
Stats depend on perception. Where a woman reports abuse, a man often spends an evening drinking or something similar. Not reporting abuse.
Expectations of men are too somewhat cruel. You should be grenadier-tall (or gorilla-wide, point being, you should look fit), with facial features like those of Kianu Reeves, with voice like that of Orlando Bloom, confident like some CEO, honorable like a samurai from some movie, yet able to override that honor at her whim and do any atrocity to make the world better for her. Like some picture of 1930s' propaganda.
If you don't deliver, then she silently pities herself and silently looks down at you for that. But God forbid you seem like that picture in some regard and then inevitably turn out to be more human, that deceit she won't forgive.
It was a problem a century ago that women were mostly right-wing and chauvinist and traditionalist. Most of that has been undone, but not how women in average see gender relations.
OK, so about the app - I won't be surprised if it was an intentional honeypot, honestly, to expose those who will use it. And it's a bad idea, there's no way to verify anonymous accusations, which means it's a tool for defamation of any man, and a way to discredit things of the kind written there at the same time.
I agree. High standards and common ideas of "right" are generally present among people insecure and easily gaslighted.
Such as those that would use this app. Point?
Nothing about gender wars here.
Just because Facebook is shit, doesn't make this any better.
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I'm sorry but I'll just say it out right: new feminists are the absolute worst
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for equality where possible. Where isn't equality possible? Well I'd like to conceive a child, but the plumbing isn't exactly useful for that. That sort of thing. Beyond that, were all the same, and IDGAF about your skin color, sexual preferences or whatever. I live by live and Let live, don't be an asshole, it's not that hard to be respectful
New feminists though are the ones coming up with ideas like this website. On the surface, anyone could say that it's not a bad thing to have a place for women to talk about how to protect themselves. In reality though, it's a place where men, innocent or not, get doxxed and made to be rapists.
There are some subs here on Lemmy as well that were very sad to see this shitshow of a website go, lamenting the fact that now they need a different place to dex people. Try not to tell them that doxxing is bad, it gets you banned.
Tea was storing its users’ sensitive information on Firebase, a Google-owned backend cloud storage and computing service.
Every time. With startups, it's always an unsecured Firebase or S3 bucket.
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A lot of people have speculated that.
According to their statement their code was written in Feb/2024 and predates "vibe coding"
Official statement from Tea on their data leak
Tea is a dating safety app for women that lets them share notes about potential dates. The other day it was subject to a truly egregious data leak caused by …Simon Willison’s Weblog
What intrigue me is this:
I'm confident vibe coding was not to blame in this particular case,
So they used vibe coding, they are only saying that they think/hope that it is not the cause of the break (and maybe also of the second one)
And if vvibe coding is not caused then they are even more incompetent.
It's a little more complex than that. If you want the app on the user device to be able to dump data directly into your online database, you have to give it access in some way. Encrypting the transmission doesn't do much if every app installation contains access credentials that can be extracted or sniffed.
Obviously there are ways around this too, but it's not just "use TLS".
Encrypting the transmission doesn't do much if every app installation contains access credentials that can be extracted or sniffed.
Encrypt the credentials then? Or OAUTH pipeline, perhaps? Automated temporary private key generation for each upload (that sounds unrealistic, to be fair)? Can credentialing be used for intermediary storage that encrypts the data on that server and then decrypted on the database host?
Clearly my utter "noobishness" is showing, but at least it's triggering a slight urge to casually peruse modern WebSec production workflows. I am a DNN researcher. Thus, I am far removed from customer-facing production environments, and it shows.
Any recommendations on literature or articles on how engineers solve these problems in a "best practices" way that you can recommend? I suppose I could just look it up, but I thought I'd ask.
Edit: I don't know why I'm down-voted. My questions were sincere.
You've got the right ideas. Noone should ever be storing any password in plaintext. It should always be hashed and only the hash stored. That's like WEBDEV99 (remedial course, not even 101).
Really. Despite your stated "noobishness", you basically landed in the territory of best practices right of the bat.
If you're looking for a good source of best practices, the CIS benchmarks are great. cisecurity.org/
CIS Center for Internet Security
CIS is a forward-thinking nonprofit that harnesses the power of a global IT community to safeguard public and private organizations against cyber threats.Center for Internet Security
Brother, I need the "remedial" lessons since I self-host a lot of my experimental DNN solutions on a GPU cluster served via CasaOS/Ubuntu-Server LTS.
I've followed basic tutorials about nginx, end-to-end encryption, and DNS, but I need more knowledge and training about the theory behind modern security best practices. I think I'm doing okay but I have this ever-present anxiety that I've overlooked something and my ass (i.e., sensitive data) is really just hanging out in the wind.
Thank you for your recommendation.
Wouldn't some sort of proxy in between the bucket and the client app solve this problem? I feel like you could even set up an endpoint on your backend that manages the upload. In other words, why is it necessary for the client app to connect directly with the bucket?
Maybe I'm not understanding the gist of the problem
SSL is not the tool you need in this case, although you should obviously already be running exclusively on encrypted traffic.
The problem here is one of access rights - you should not make files default-available for anyone that can figure out the file name to the particular file in the bucket. At the very least, you need to be using signed URLs with a reasonably short expiration, and default all other access to be blocked.
As I mentioned in other comments, I am a noob when it comes to web-sec; please forgive what may be dumb questions.
Is it really just permission rights "over-exposure" issue? Or does one need to also encrypt and then decrypt the data itself that must be sent to a database?
Also, if you have time, recommend any links to web/cloud/SaaS security best practices "for dummies"?
My hey we’re probably using Firestore as their database without authenticating their api calls to firebase functions. Basically leaving their api endpoints open to the public Internet.
They could have connected service account and used some kind of auth handshake between that and generate a temporary login token based on user credentials and the service account oauth credentials to access the api. but they probably just had everything set to unauthenticated
I get doing that in Dev for testing before launch, but in production? that’s insane.
Like it has to either be a junior developer playing the role of lead or some serious lack of web dev fundamentals haha
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It was defamation the entire time just because somebody made it an app rather than a Facebook group doesn't make any difference. It was always a crap thing to do.
Of course Tea took it to an entirely new level of stupid.
Considering even the mere accusation can ruin someone's life? Yes.
The problem isn't women don't deserve to be safe, the problem is we cannot just give people powerful weapons with no oversight or burden of proof to be deployed simply because a date didn't go well.
Facebook or App, the danger is too great
Wow just two days ago I see a post about how Lemmy is dominated by men and how that could become a problem, and today I see a comment section where all the incels come out of the woodwork.
"waaa somebody wants to solve a problem that has never affected me I'm the victim"
"omg what if people talk behind my back they might find out I'm an asshole? literally 1984"
"wadabout if this app was racist?!? checkmate"
I'm not saying this app is good or bad (I can definitely see the problems) but if an article about cybersecurity gets posted and this is our first reaction, makes me lose hope in Lemmy.
Edit: Responses have made very good points and I think I was off, thanks guys. I still think some of the early comments I encountered were rather reactionary
“waaa somebody wants to solve a problem that has never affected me I’m the victim”
Everyone has the problem that they'd want to discuss others behind their back. It's not accepted because it doesn't work to any good end.
“omg what if people talk behind my back they might find out I’m an asshole? literally 1984”
You won't find out anything from this. People sometimes lie, especially in such situations.
but if an article about cybersecurity gets posted and this is our first reaction, makes me lose hope in Lemmy.
Human adequacy is a big part of cybersecurity.
i mean...an app directly copying a black mirror episode (but almost exclusively targeting a specific demographic) does ring some very, VERY loud alarm bells...
like, this is literally the plot of nosedive.
it's a social credit system.
and none of the people even know they HAVE a score, so it's somehow even worse than the fictional scenario.
this will, absolutely, hurt innocents and it will do so by design.
"fuck them innocents!"...just because they happen to be men?
how is that anything other than misandrist?
how is that defensible?
how is doxxing, mass libel, and targeted harassment a solution to sexism and rape culture?
I'd be really interested in hearing anything about how this is supposed to help women, because i struggle to see how sowing massive, unearned distrust between men and women is going to make anyone any safer...
I'm really, REALLY glad that the GDPR would nuke this sort of nonsense from orbit...uploading pictures of strangers, for the explicit purpose of gossiping about them behind their backs, spreading awful rumors?
what. the. actual. fuck. is wrong with you people?
and i don't mean women, or men: i mean americans and their total disregard for privacy and digital safety. what the hell...
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You make a valid point, this platform absolutely shits on anyone without technical knowledge, just look at the hundred or so smug replies telling you what flavor of Linux they run if you mention a problem with Windows. So, no surprise everyone is focusing on that, and not the human aspect here.
Having said that, there is a power imbalance to this that I really don't like, the accuser gets to hide behind a veil of anonymity, and the accused has their name published, and is forced to defend themselves.
So, no surprise everyone is focusing on that, and not the human aspect here.
This is a technology community and the article is specifically about a security breach that exposed massive amounts of sensitive user data.
It's an antisocial surveillance system for antisocial people, and creates a(n even more) antagonistic relationship between men and women.
Dating apps have been a disaster for dating, and this is perhaps the worst among them.
Citation of course needed with that one.
The only people who will be listed on the app are people who are either deserving they've been on there or people who don't deserve to be on there but some woman in their lives has decided to inact some vengeance justified or otherwise.
It can be both.
So many problems are caused because society assumes cisgender women are always victims and anything that looks like a man if you look at it long enough is an abuser.
I feel that the app filled a need of women we should not ignore. But the app, both this specific app and also the overall concept, is just too rife with downsides to be workable.
So we, as men and as society need to reevaluate why women feel the need for such an app, and reinvest in the criminal justice system to hold victimizers more accountable.
It’s okay to call this app and similar Facebook groups unacceptable. But that’s not enough, we must also call for stronger protections for victims of criminal behavior.
It would be interesting to see something similar that required accusations to be backed up with evidence. Police reports, court proceedings and results, news articles etc.
It would also be a lot safer, legally speaking, for the service provider.
Something like Megan’s law but for domestic violence. I’m still not thrilled with the potential for abuse, but at least it wouldn’t be hearsay.
I’m sure the police unions would object, for obvious reasons.
The criminal justice system... At this point any more investment is just a waste.
That said, we're being shortsighted. The criminal justice system is far too corrupted and easy to pervert. It has way too many levers the powerful can exploit to get away with almost anything. The powerful want it that way, so the government wants it that way, and so thats the way it is. We need to burn it ALL down. And relying on naive public satiating actions like useless protest, or the belief that this can be all be fixed though voting, when shit is this far-gone, is counterproductive.
I think of the "bad" dates I would want to be able to warn other women of that didn't rise to the level of calling the cops. The guy who ordered triple the food and drinks I did and skipped out on the bill. The guy who flat out lied about multiple things and then got irate when I politely excused myself from the date. The MAGA weirdo who went on an unhinged rant about how I needed to submit to him because God said so. I imagine some men have comparable experiences with some anti-social women. The experiences coming to mind were not illegal, but were absolutely things I want to spare my fellow humans from.
I would prefer the dating apps themselves have some mechanism for disincentivizing anti-social behaviors. It would have to be more than a simple 5-star rating.
I wonder how it would work IRL to offer the ability to write a few sentences in response to prompts about a date. The written review is not published as-is, but is used in grouping of many reviews to give a summary about a person. Like the summary product reviews on Amazon now. "Bill's dates found he was prompt and polite. Some dates expressed discomfort at some of his political views" and "Bob's dates warn he is often late and is quick to use foul language to describe women. Multiple dates report no intention to communicate with Bob further". "Ben's dates report he has skipped out on the bill repeatedly, and sends unsolicited dick pics. Multiple dates have blocked him".
The group summary gives a buffer so the person reviewed doesn't know which specific date said what. And ensures the summary doesn't include negative comments about a person unless multiple dates of theirs independently report similar experiences.
Of course a bad actor could ditch their dating profile and start fresh any time they build up enough negative reviews to make their summary look bad. And of course the reviews and the summaries would have to be secured tighter than "Tea" is.
The experiences coming to mind were not illegal, but were absolutely things I want to spare my fellow humans from.
What about a guy who had a panic attack in the very beginning and couldn't stop talking about his deceased dad, then about aunts and uncles, then about the dog, then about architecture, then didn't get the hint because of all the shaking, got petrified when hinted at an alcohol element in the continuation of the meeting and in the end didn't even understand a very direct hints at "only silence can save this" and having at least a sleepover?.. Who only became kinda normal after taking a sedative next morning, still shaking.
Just describing one negative experience I have provided in the past, and that while yeah, it wasn't too cool - maybe lifelong shame is not what I deserve for that ...
(Yes, I know that girl was a hero)
The group summary gives a buffer so the person reviewed doesn’t know which specific date said what. And ensures the summary doesn’t include negative comments about a person unless multiple dates of theirs independently report similar experiences.
That can't be done without somehow verifying identities of all the people involved. Unless the review app is the same as the dating app. Then there are various technical variants, like some cryptographic connection between the reviewed person's identity, the token representing one date, and a temporary identity for the reviewer, used to sign the review message. Something like that.
But that only for the entity doing the summary, which will have to be trusted with the original reviews. And that "buffer" will remove any kind of verification, unless it's something egghead-smart like a smart contract forming the review on every client, which means every client can also see the original reviews. So I dunno.
Of course a bad actor could ditch their dating profile and start fresh any time they build up enough negative reviews to make their summary look bad. And of course the reviews and the summaries would have to be secured tighter than “Tea” is.
Honestly things like this should work like some hybrid of Briar and Freenet. Just entrusting it to a centralized service is as stupid as using Facebook. And in this specific case Briar model is kinda fine - if you synchronize with everyone using the application. You don't need to have the reviews from everyone about everyone, just about people roaming the same general area.
Billionaire Peter Thiel backing first privately developed US uranium enrichment facility in Paducah
A California-based company with ties to billionaire investor and Trump ally Peter Thiel announced plans Friday to build America’s first U.S.-owned, privately developed facility to enrich uranium in far western Kentucky.In an email sent to WKMS, General Matter said that the company intends to make a “historic investment in American nuclear infrastructure” by restoring a shuttered facility in Paducah. The gaseous diffusion plant in McCracken County, which ceased operations in 2013, was built by the U.S. government in the 1950s to bolster national defense efforts – and later to generate fuel for nuclear power plants.
Oh wow, good to see California and Kentucky working so closely together these days on so many important things.
Massie, Khanna hammer Republican leadership for thwarting Epstein transparency push
It just goes to show that no matter who you are, Republican or Democrat, Conservative or Liberal, we can all come together over as ~~recipients of Thiel money~~ Americans.
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Why do all y'all jump to nukes with this story!? He clearly wants more power for his AI schemes. No conspiracy, the motivation is simple.
U235 enrichment:
Power plant: 3-5%.
Weapons grade: 90%+
Even a bugfuck administration like Trump's isn't going to allow private enterprise to produce weapons-grade fissile material without serious fucking oversight and total control over every step. Why would any government give up their most powerful weapons?
On top of that, it takes hella tech to assemble a thermonuclear weapon. Every government that has a solid intelligence apparatus tracks the tools, scientists and materials involved. An atom bomb is not a hydrogen bomb, not by an order of magnitude, and you can't exactly hide the means for rolling your own Little Boy.
Not trying to bag on you OP, just feel like I'm taking crazy pills when we think a billionaire could get access to nukes.
Ever read Clancy's The Sum of all Fears? Even having obfuscated some facts, building a nuke is simply impossible without every intelligence agency on Earth knowing about it.
Terrorists dropping a "fizzle" on the Super Bowl required many narrative acrobatics. 1,532 things had to go wrong for them to slip that through. And it still fizzled.
Are we still talking about nuclear?
epa.gov/superfund/what-superfu…
What is Superfund? | US EPA
Learn about Superfund, EPA's nationwide program to identify, clean up, and return contaminated sites to productive use.US EPA
WTF I Hate X Now
WTF I Hate X Now is a phrasal template expressing a sudden distaste for something or someone, which is often sarcastically used in various discussions on 4chan’s /pol/ (politically incorrect), /int/ (international) and /tv/ (television and film) boar…Essence (Know Your Meme)
Martyr for what? You have to deeply stand for something very popular (amongst a group of people with beliefs) that is very unpopular with another group. Of all the people in the world, Peter is not running the risc of becoming a martyr - dead or alive.
I see this mistake as a comment more and more often. I'm not saying anything on him remaining alive or not; that's a completely different set of questions.
I just mean victimhood is usually the go to for far right assholes, and all assholes really. Especially the ultra wealthy ones who have the money and influence to spin the truth into whatever they want. Like you leave them no choice but to be even more evil the next time.
I could totally see whoever comes in his footsteps saying some shit like, "You saw what they did to Thiel. I had to crack down early on to protect myself."
Thiel is all-in an AI. AI requires monstrous amounts of power. Nothing to see here.
I can't stop these animals from pursuing AI, but I'm happy they're going all out for nuclear power. Anything but fossil fuels is a win in my book.
Pizza e jazz a Vasanello
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Pre-Wikimania 2025 – #319
wikipediapodden.se/wp-content/…
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:25 — 14.3MB) | Embed
This is a special episode where we meet Joris Quarshie who is the Lead for Online Participation from the local team, and Butch Bustria who is a Wikimania committee liaison having organized Wikimania in Singapore.
Calendar tool mentioned in this episode: wfc.toolforge.org/
All episodes in English (podcast feed)
Credits
The music are from Surf Shimmy Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) [CC BY 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.
Image: Matatu bus illustration.svg by Francis Akuka for the Wikimedia Foundation, CC0.
Discuss the episode on the project’s talk page.
The episode is also available on Wikimedia Commons.
Oh My God, TAKE IT DOWN Kills Parody
Oh My God, TAKE IT DOWN Kills Parody
Donald Trump is a notorious media bully. He uses lawsuits, executive power, and political pressure to punish critics and bend institutions to his will. Disney, Meta, and Paramount have since paid o…Techdirt
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While this article is technically correct on some things, it's somewhat missing the entire point of what Matt and Trey did very intentionally. They want Trump to try and sue them.
Trump has inappropriately promoted and used various AI depictions of some seriously fucked up shit, and therefore would immediately lose in court if trying to sure based on the existing laws. In fact, they never showed Trump's dick. They just alluded to it being his dick...with AI.
I would FUCKING LOVE for Trump to try and sue them, because Matt and Trey will make it the circus it deserves to be, get some amazing stuff in discovery, and they can fucking afford not only defending themselves and their content from frivolous lawsuits, but then countersue and fuck Trump and all of his cronies up when it comes out who has been pulling the strings with the absolutely batshit insane stuff that gets posted on his accounts, and government accounts being misused in an official capacity to push dogshit.
I look forward to this with a shwaybone.
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Matt and Trey really don't give a fuck. They tried to show Muhammed in multiple cartoons, and when the network vociferously shouted them down about it (because it might get them killed or their offices attacked), they snuck him in anyway in multiple places and just didn't tell anyone. When one of the foundational members of their cast didn't want them to trash Scientology, they trashed it ten times harder and told him not to let the door hit him on the ass on the way out. They made out with each other for a long time in "Baseketball."
However valuable or not you feel like their message / their humor is, they are among the very few voices in mainstream media who are simply unafraid and doing their own thing, completely without reservation.
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Agreed, except Isaac Hayes never wanted to quit. The fucking Scientologists did it “for him” while he was incapacitated in the hospital. Reportedly, Hayes loved doing the show and wouldn’t have quit on his own.
Trey and Matt have simply said that they miss their friend.
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Jesus Christ, I didn't know that. That's worse.
I highly recommend watching the Joe Rogan interview with David Miscavige's dad, it's just wild and weird.
Also, where's Shelly? Where did she go?
Trump has inappropriately promoted and used various AI depictions of some seriously fucked up shit, and therefore would immediately lose in court if trying to sure based on the existing laws.
Yeah, that makes zero sense.
- The Supreme Court has ruled that the President can't be charged from crimes committed while in office. That's why he's walking free today instead of rotting in a fucking jail cell where he belongs.
- The commission of a crime does not suddenly excuse everyone else from committing said crime.
Are you out of the loop?
Trump had posted to his own Truth account a week ago an AI generated video of Obama being arrested in the White House.
Are you a fucking bot, or just ignorant?
The way this works in a legal sense is that Trump would be fucking foolish to try and sue a CABLE show (not under FCC purview) that did what he did. Present an obviously fake depiction of something as fact.
Not only will he lose in court because Trump set the precedent for doing so, he will be open to countersuit just because of that fact.
Your post does not cover CIVIL SUITS, which is where this all would lie in the courts.
Trump will lose, open himself up to discovery, and allow an entire binge by legal process into every little part of what is going on right now, which his lawyers will not allow.
I think you're commenting on something you don't understand, no offense.
Your post does not cover CIVIL SUITS
You're the one who's referring to criminal law:
would immediately lose in court if trying to sure based on the existing laws
The defense of "nuh-uh, he did it first" will simply not hold water in a court of law.
Discovery does not work the way you think it does.
I think you're commenting on something you don't understand, no offense.
Of course they do. That was my point. You're the one acting like the law doesn't apply to civil suits.
Next.
What do you mean? The article just points out that the show’s demographic may somewhat overlap with, for example, Rogan’s demographic:
The show’s core demographic—predominantly men aged 18 to 49—overlaps meaningfully with the audiences of figures like Joe Rogan and, to a lesser extent, Andrew Tate.
They are not saying that Rogan listeners also watch South Park, or that South Park is republican. The article is just pointing out that this demographic of men aged between 18 and 49 overlaps with “Joe Rogan[’s] and, to a lesser extent, Andrew Tate[’s demographic].”
They even frame this as a potential advantage, saying that
South Park holds a rare cultural position in that it can potentially speak directly to groups adjacent to the MAGA movement without preaching, pandering, or being immediately dismissed [emphasis added].
I don’t know about you, but it didn’t feel like it was calling South Park fans like us Joe Rogan listeners. It felt more like the article was pointing out that some, maybe even a majority, of fans could also be Rogan fans, which would make the audiences that South Park reaches with this anti-Trump episode especially influential.
Idk; I certainly didn’t feel offended or anything like that, but I might be misunderstanding you here.
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I have a feeling they're going to be fine moneywise whatever happens. Their personal safety is probably fine. Maybe not, but probably they don't have to worry too much.
It's still courage that they're doing it.
To qualify, the depiction must appear, in the eyes of a reasonable person, indistinguishable from a real image.
So if the act is used to criminalize this depiction, in doing so it acknowledges that tiny pecker is indistinguishable from Trump's penis?
Peter Thiel Just Accidentally Made a Chilling Admission. Five Decades Ago, One Man Saw It Coming.
The question was posed in a safe environment. Douthat, one of the Times’ most reliable conservatives, offered Thiel sufficient context to escape with an easy answer. Douthat prefaced his question by saying: “a number of people deeply involved in artificial intelligence see it as a mechanism for transhumanism—for transcendence of our mortal flesh—and either some kind of creation of a successor species or some kind of merger of mind and machine.” He was referencing the movement to radically enhance and evolve humans to achieve immortality. Transhumanist adherents advocate for a range of innovations, from genetic biohacking to uploading our consciousness to a computer to merge with A.I., freezing ourselves through cryonics, and robotically adapting our bodies through expansive bionics that reach the level of cyborgs.Douthat clearly thought that Thiel would choose human over machine. But Thiel responded with a long hesitation. In a video of the exchange, Douthat—to his credit—is clearly taken aback.
Thiel has long been cagey and ambiguous about his beliefs—likely a strategic play for his career as an investor—but he has clearly been fascinated with transhumanism for a long time. This recent interview, though, seems more direct and dangerous. Thiel seems unwilling to answer the question: Does he eventually want to be a literal, honest-to-god brain in a jar wired to a Macbook Pro?
Yes... That's been the plan the whole fucking time. I thought we all knew this already?
There is just something about watching the slow, but inevitable collapse of the U.S. and eventually humanity as we know it, due to the very deliberate actions of one billionaire who was born in another country and who has been playing both sides against each other, while all other silicon valley billionaires have just accepted this as inevitable and are holding brainstorming sessions about what they can do following the collapse, rather than just stopping the guy who is orchestrating the whole thing.
Transhumanism is our inevitable fate, but this was all kicked off by a movement thar coerced Americans into believing they had to organize against secular humanism before things got anymore out of hand.
Thank God (can I still say God or do I have to say Thank Thiel?) we didn't let that happen.
He Was Laughed Out of Academia for This Take About Technology. Turns Out He Was Right.
He was laughed out of academia for this take about the internet. Turns out he was right.Nick Ripatrazone (Slate)
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Thiel is a piece of shit...
But so is this author for writing an article about a pause proceeding and answer, and never saying the answer
Yeah totally, now is not the time to bring this up. Just like Trump saying "you'll never need to vote again." Or that Nazi salute that Musk did that wasn't really a Nazi salute when he did it, but now we all can acknowledge it was.
Once our Lord and Savior Peter Thiel has ascended after sacrificing us all for our mortal sins, then we can acknowledge this.
Simping is the least we can do for our Lord and savior, who has never done anything else to indicate his ultimate goal in life is to achieve immortality no matter the cost, other than hesitate when asked directly during this specific interview if he was rooting for survival of humanity.
Perspective: A future for me and not for thee — the hubris of transhumanism (2023)
If we simp our hardest we might have the privilege of being frozen and placed in his space coffin with him in order to serve him into the next life, or chosen to be ground up in order to serve as his personal biofuel as he travels through space. 🚀
It's like that old saying, ~~shoot~~ simp for the 🌝
Even if you miss, you'll still land among the ✨
Perspective: A future for me and not for thee — the hubris of transhumanism
Billionaires like Peter Thiel and Jeff Bezos are investing in companies that are trying to slow or stop aging.Scott Raines (Deseret News)
i for one appreciated your well intended farce
clap clap
the art is not dead.
Good job spooking the ground show.
Plausibly, I would deny you.
Thanks! Just calls em like I sees em. Not defending or criticizing a sports team, or anything else I could see somebody might reasonably take personal.
Just the facts about an evil piece of shit psychotic billionaire who would rather use you and me for biofuel before he would bother to spend a penny or lift a finger to do anything positive for humanity if it didn't also benefit him in some way.
The host asked Thiel ‘You would prefer the human race to endure, right?’Thiel hesitated, doing some umm-ing and ahh-ing, even at one point saying ‘I don’t know’.
The billionaire went on to clarify and said: “Yes [I would like us to endure] but I also would like us to radically solve these problems.
unilad.com/news/us-news/peter-…
Billionaire Peter Thiel gives ‘sociopathic’ response about humanities future
People on Reddit have been creeped out by how he answered a simple question about humanity and the futureGerrard Kaonga (unilad)
You're right. The link below is not the only place I've seen the quote cited, just the first I found in a hurry.
The host asked Thiel ‘You would prefer the human race to endure, right?’Thiel hesitated, doing some umm-ing and ahh-ing, even at one point saying ‘I don’t know’.
The billionaire went on to clarify and said: “Yes [I would like us to endure] but I also would like us to radically solve these problems.
Billionaire Peter Thiel gives ‘sociopathic’ response about humanities future
People on Reddit have been creeped out by how he answered a simple question about humanity and the futureGerrard Kaonga (unilad)
christianpost.com/news/we-aske…
The 53-year-old Tesla and SpaceX CEO told Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson in an interview last July that the decision to build a supercomputer in Memphis evoked references, at least in part, to the Memphis of ancient Egypt and its pantheon of gods.“Perhaps that’s where our new god will come from,” Musk said.
We asked Elon Musk's Grok whether its new logo is a broken cross. Here’s what the AI chatbot told us
What happens when the world s richest man introduces a new AI tool that some users say has a satanic symbol When asked why its new logo resembles a broken cross, the Grok chatbot told CP Thursday theIan M. Giatti (The Christian Post)
Yeah, an oracle for the masses is something very convenient.
Just remind me, who had the power - Alexander or his fortunetellers? Caesar or his fortunetellers? Or whether Delphi oracle ever managed to turn the religious part into power?
BTW - I understand how such ideas can be out of sincere desire to help humanity. Magic thinking is natural, and some perception of the world is natural, and evolution is just not fast enough for the technical developments we have.
And what I'd want in the future to account for that (sort of a panopticon, not because I'm an exhibitionist, but because you can't make a subset of society always tracked and visible without making everyone always tracked and visible ; and lack of banking privacy, for example, in Scandinavian countries doesn't seem to hurt them that much) might well be worse than what they want. A bit like Zamyatin's book.
It's just that "might" doesn't negate the fact that they are already doing a few very bad things, like genocide. Perhaps their mitigation is just not worth such sacrifices. Perhaps mine is better then.
I just want to make this very clear.
What began as right wing fear mongering in the 1970s under the message of protecting traditional family values against secular humanism, and involved a film literally called "Whatever happened to the human race?" might very well end with the extinction of the human race, at the hands of an evil gay villain who has funded hateful racist and anti LGBTQ policy, while spreading all kinds of nonsense about population decline, reducing overall quality of life in America, replacing jobs with AI, making healthcare and birth control inaccessible to many Americans, preventing gay couples from adopting (while also quietly raising his own adopted children with his husband, and let's be honest, likely murdering his kept boyfriend on the side when he started speaking out about Thiel's hypocrisy), and is intentionally trying to collapse the entire economy bc he knows that once that happens, he will control the majority of resources and power. Following human extinction, he (or at least his name) will live on eternally via transhumanism as the one representative of all humankind and all it's earthly achievements. Just really let that all sink in.
Congrassions! Ya Done It!
I know what you mean. At least that would make Thiel's evil bullshit all for naught. Just Thiel's stupid ugly fucking face floating through an empty void for all eternity. How fitting.
He's bringing us closer and closer to destruction in order to make this a reality. In the meantime to reach that point, two of the leaders of Epstein's sex trafficking ring are about to be subpoenaed by Congress while they continuing to make money from Epstein's investments in Thiel's companies.
For some reason, the media keeps giving them the euphemism of "Epstein's estate" rather than alerting the public that these are the indispensable captains of his trafficking network.
Government contracts keep providing Thiel's company with money in exchange for use of his technology to round up families and separate parents from their children. Often the children become lost in the system...
The money Thiel makes through these contracts goes into the pockets of the captains of Epstein's network and members of the White House administration via their investments, or the pockets of democratic and Republican congressmen via donations for their campaign or state projects, and for some reason America just keeps pretending they don't see this happening right in front of them, on their streets, with their tax dollars.
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That's why I feel like people need to be aware of this, and understand there are Republicans and Democrats taking Thiel's money.
It doesn't matter how he gets there, this is his ultimate goal. He would prefer the far right Nazi way, but if he has to hide behind a moderate Democrat he'll do that too.
Ro Kahnna is definitely setting himself up to run for president in 2028. Either that or possibly vice president to Gavin Newsome. Newsome also has taken Thiel money in the past.
Thiel's private Uranium mine just happens to be in the home state of Thomas Massie, the Republican who is partnering with Kahnna to take on the Trump Epstein files in a bipartisan tag team.
I'm glad they're exposing rich pedophiles, but don't give them fucking brownie points when it's clear they've been sitting on this shit the whole fucking time. The same with Vance going to Rupert Murdoch before all of this dropped.
They definitely could have exposed Trump before he even ran for president the second time, but they didn't bc this is just part of their evil bullshit plans. This is just a game to them, and the people who have been hurt and exploited mean nothing. Fuck these evil pieces of shit. All of them.
I'm surprised to see someone so supportive of Peter Thiel on Lemmy.
I feel like you're so lovestruck you've somehow confused Thiel and his money with the technology he's attached his name to, but I will loop you in on this hot take and very well kept secret: You can oppose Peter Thiel and the broligarchy trying to control the technology most of them played no role in creating, and not be opposed to technology.
Especially when you realize that the rush to this is bc Thiel just wants to attach his name to a very lackluster final product before anyone else can improve it out make it their own.
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I'm not necessarily supportive of Thiel - he does some things that I oppose, and also some things that I think are silly. He's not a very likeable man overall. I'm supportive of transhumanism. The substance of this article is merely that:
Peter Thiel hesitated when asked if he “would prefer the human race to endure.”
The article doesn't even say what his reply ultimately was, but the implication is that even considering that a transhuman future would be better is somehow horrifying, and that's the implication I'm surprised to see supported here.
You can find the video interview. I'll spoil it for you: He didn't say he would prefer the human race endure following that very concerning pregnant pause. Rather, he hemmed and hawed.
Thiel isn't just a transhumanist, he's an accelerationist, and he has a fuckton of money.
Technology is a great thing that can assist us, when it changes who we are it goes too far.
I love chocolate. I don't eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Nuance is indeed a thing.
There's a difference between the want for convergence with tech for all, if they want
Vs.
We're going to transfer your consciousness into a virtual world and use you for biofuel while we, the powerful enjoy the wealth of your sacrifice.
lemmy.ca/post/34658048/1329082…
It’s called the dark enlightenment.
This article warns from way back in 2017 qz.com/1007144/the-neo-fascist…
They also want to use you for biofuel.
No, I’m not fucking kidding. These people are pure evil
“The trouble with the biodiesel solution is that no one would want to live in a city whose public transportation was fueled, even just partly, by the distilled remains of its late underclass. However, it helps us describe the problem we are trying to solve. Our goal, in short, is a humane alternative to genocide.”
newrepublic.com/article/183971…
Transhumanism—if it happens at all—is not happening anytime soon. Like, not for thousands of years if ever.
Listening to people talk about transhumanism today is like seeing people imagine flying cars in the 1950s. “Oh we’ve got this cool technology surely it means this wild extrapolation is right around the corner.”
Give me a break.
Not it. People are worried about what their brand of authoritarin capitalism will do with transhumnism.
Whenever you see technoligical skepticism, it's almost always about its effects on the working class as used by the ruling class of the time. If for example you opened up a new public research agency for AI (like NASA but NAIA) with the short term goal of developing open source AI and the long term promise to reduce the work week for all through AI productivity advancement, I think you'd get broad support.
Today however we hear private execs left front and centre salivating over the layoffs they'd be able to achieve thanks to AI, or over the new profit growth they're gonna achieve. Most people know they ain't getting any of that profit and would instead be stuck with the layoffs and inequality, among other negative effects. And history tells us this is a well founded concern.
This breed of trans humanists are simple garbage because they are not about trans humanism - they are about staying oligarchs forever.
Let them upload themselves into an iridium and unobtainum machine with nuclear fusion batteries and then we drop it into the Mariana Trench and let them watch the spectacle from inside.
They imagine themselves as the Titans from the Dune universe.
Is any of our current AI tech even making significant strides towards achieving this? I really don't think the current crop or billionaires will live to see this being viable even if they live another 100 years.
It's always fascinating to me how depictions of cyberpunk-style implants have evolved since the 80's.
The 80's stuff certainly has corporate spyware and such, but modern reimaginings has it an ever-present and practically undefeatable threat.
How can you beat it, after all? They make the implants.
He really does just look so much more relaxed and carefree. Like one picture says 1000 words and tells the story of the life that could have been had he followed his heart rather than becoming a murderous dictator.
Theil looks roughly the same, but with a fun captains hat.
The world would probably be a better more peaceful place if he could find a pair of heels that fit, and the right place to rock them at.
Even if he's not into that, there's still more lifestyle options he may have missed.
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Rich parents can afford nannies who force the children to interact with them.
Poor parents use TVs and smart phones to amuse their kids.
Also, free range kids are likely to be reported by 'concerned' neighbors.
Pretty soon, 'Stand By Me' and 'The Goonies' are going to be classified as dangerous propaganda.
Non-paywall: archive.ph
An electorate that has lost the capacity for long-form thought will be more tribal, less rational, largely uninterested in facts or even matters of historical record, moved more by vibes than cogent argument and open to fantastical ideas and bizarre conspiracy theories. If that sounds familiar, it may be a sign of how far down this path the West has already traveled.For canny operators, such a public affords new opportunities for corruption. Oligarchs attempting to shape policy to their advantage will benefit from the fact that few will have the attention span to track or challenge policies in dull, technical fields; what a majority now wants is not forensic investigation but a new video short “owning” the other tribe. We can expect the governing class to adapt pragmatically to the electorate’s collective decline in rational capacity, for example, by retaining the rituals associated with mass democracy, while quietly shifting key policy areas beyond the reach of a capricious and easily manipulated citizenry. I do not celebrate this, but our net-native youth seem unfazed: International polls show waning support for democracy among Gen Z.
Lest you mistake me, there is no reason the opportunity to sideline the electorate or to arbitrage the gap between vibes and policy should especially favor either the red team or the blue team. This post-literate world favors demagogues skilled at code-switching between the elite language of policy and the populist one of meme-slop. It favors oligarchs with good social media game and those with more self-assurance than integrity. It does not favor those with little money, little political power and no one to speak up for them.
Tldr: New tech (audiovisual media) bad, old tech (reading) good.
They even say that good reading skills lead to liberal democracy. Which is ironic because there is no government on this planet (that i know of) that is democratic (or liberal).
Personally i think we would live in a utopia if people consumed cave-art and stories by storytellers rather than this book-slop which is easy to mass produce and distribute.
I think this is all very person-dependent. I have found 3d printing resources/tips/experiences from others. I have gotten into building my own antennas after learning about VNAs via social media. I have gotten into SDRs, ham radio, electronics thanks to shtuff on social media. I have learned a few new 3d modeling tricks via social media. I have found a few suggestions for go packages, etc. I could keep going for years about what I have run into online.
I have found the world's knowledge available at my fingertips. Others are finding tiktok dances. I think this is a matter of who you are and what you prefer to do than "the bad tech" making people somehow bad. You will find that people through history have fit a similar distribution of people who are into learning and people who just want to be entertained.
I agree on all of this, but were books different (except for surveillance)?
- Back then those authors that wrote books with messaging supporting the owner class received loads of coverage from their media andtherefore spread their propaganda far and wide. While the average Joe could write whatever they want, nobody was able to see it (until now with social media), because printing is timeconsuming and expensive, and marketing even more so.
- Back then fascists spread their ideas in books, today they do on social media. In both cases supported by the money of the 1%.
- Back then only politically active people were surveilled, now it is everyone. This is a big change.
- Back then entertainment was inexpensive, now it is basically free.
Also that's not really the point the article is making. They say that simply reading books makes you smarter. As if people read physics books in their freetime back then. No, they just read entertaining stories, and now they stream entertaining stories. Nothing has fundamentally changed. Back then Oil made you part of the owner class, now it's IT and the owning of marketplaces.
Personally i think we would live in a utopia if people consumed cave-art and stories by storytellers rather than this book-slop which is easy to mass produce and distribute.
That's sarcasm. Don't worry.
Democracy
There is no democracy on this planet because all democracies are representative democracies. In representative democracies the politicians are not representative of the people, but they promise to do things a certain way, and if people elect them for it, that's like indirect representation.
However this breaks down as soon as secrecy laws are put in place, because if the government or private companies can decide which knowledge will reach the people, and which will not, they will simply declare information that will upset their voters to be secret. This breaks all representative democracies.
Then there is the issue of corruption, which is generally legal under the guise of lobbying.
And because all democracies that i know of have secrecy laws, they can't be considered democratic.
Liberty
With the liberal part: A person can only be free if they feel safe. But in all countries (that i know) there is a large part of the population that works most/all of their day because they are (rigtfully) afraid they can't pay for their daily needs if they don't. And they don't like their job.
So how can any society claim to be free, if a (large) part of their population is not controlled by their ambitions, but by their fears? If you dislike your job, but do it anyways because if you don't you die, that's not freedom. That's the definition of slavery.
Am i OK?
Absolutely not. Here a list of problems that could (all) be solved by diverting some funds from the world's militaries:
1. Startvation
2. Malnutrition
3. Homelessness
4. Climate Change
5. Wage Slavery fixed by UBI/Scary Communism
And here a list of things that can be fixed literally for a negative cost. People would be richer while fixing the following problems:
1. Mass animal torture fixed by Veganism.
2. War
3. Any disease, physiological or mental including aging fixed by Antinatalism
And these are just a few of the worst problems. All of them fixable. Many for free.
Knowing that all of the problems are easily fixable, and the people around me are not only not working on them, but actually making things worse by dedicating their live to emitting CO2 (SUVs, Meat-Eating), supporting (Wage-)Slavery (Being against UBI), and making more babies so they may suffer under these manufactured conditions makes me sad (and angry).
I would say the first step in fixing these problems is realizing that things are absolutely not OK. That earth is closer to hell than to paradise. The next step is realizing that no sane person can (or should be) OK under these conditions. And the final step is implementing a solution, ideally with the help of others.
Is it a representative democracy with secrecy laws? Then no.
There is no democracy on this planet because all democracies are representative democracies. In representative democracies the politicians are not representative of the people, but they promise to do things a certain way, and if people elect them for it, that’s like indirect representation.
However this breaks down as soon as secrecy laws are put in place, because if the government or private companies can decide which knowledge will reach the people, and which will not, they will simply declare information that will upset their voters to be secret. This breaks all representative democracies.
People are voted here for the person there are or for their idea's on certain subject or whatever somebody chooses to make their vote. Everybody can enlist themselves to be voted on different levels on the politic spectrum. Heck, it is even is a spectrum instead of a 2 or 3 party system.
A lot of what is done in the government is transparent and open for the public to read/see, a lot of our justice system is publicly available as well (except certain cases regarding children).
Most companies have to be transparent at least on a financial level and most of the bigger once also on other levels.
Our politic system is far from ideal though: democratiemonitor.nl/wp-conten…
Let's say i put myself out there and say people should vote for me if they want world peace.
Let's assume the people vote for me, because they want world peace.
Now that i am elected, a lobbyist from a arms company visits me and asks me to grant them an export license to sell weapons to an agressor (let's assume i have the right to sign such deals).
Are there laws in place that allow me to prevent my voters from finding out that i granted that export license, like a law that says i don't need to report publicly that i signed this? Or maybe even a law that prevents journalists from reporting on this even if they find out, because the contract (or it's contents) are considered secret and publishing it would be illegal?
We have a lot of registers and depending on the licence the company or person receives it will be made public. Things like building changes, export of live animals etc. You can look some up over here: nvwa.nl/onderwerpen/erkenninge…
Weapon licences go through the police instead of the government itself justis.nl/producten/wet-wapens… the office of justice needs to sign it off it seems.
So it just works differently, if you would want to pass a law that changes how those licences are signed, it would be known, and you wouldn't be the person signing it. The office of justice would be, and probably it is checked multiple times before it even gets there that it isn't financing terrorism or something which is illegal according to the WWFT and some other laws.
Pretty sure a journalist is allowed to write about anything and everything rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/m… there are probably some exceptions on things like kids etc, but a public spokesperson doesn't have that anyway.
This law goes on about the open government: wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0045754…
And there are multiple parties who try and keep businesses somewhat in check (like accountants, the fiod, etc.)
So if you would try and pull this off in The Netherlands you would have a hard time doing it and I doubt you can do it without somebody being a whistleblower.
Zoek bedrijven met een erkenning, registratie of vergunning
Benieuwd welke bedrijven welke erkenning, registratie of vergunning hebben? En wat hun erkennings- of registratienummer is? Of hebt u een nummer en bent u op zoek naar het bedrijf dat erbij hoort? U zoekt het eenvoudig op met de online zoekhulp of be…www.nvwa.nl
Representative democracy is a type of democracy. You're not doing anyone any favors by conflating "direct democracy" and "democracy".
Though somehow, I feel like you know exactly what you're doing...
Of course you can define words as you want, and say that only direct democracy is rule of the people, while representative democracy can be oligarchy dressed as democracy, but for me using such a definition makes the word democracy meaningless and undesirable.
The new age verifying app for the EU will only accept Google Play integrity for Android, de-facto banning any aftermarket OS like GrapheneOS
Taken from the readme of the app on github:
The current release provides only basic functionality, with several key features to be introduced in future versions, including:App and device verification based on Google Play Integrity API and Apple App Attestation
Additional issuance methods beyond the currently implemented eID based method.
These planned features align with the requirements and methods described in the Age Verification Profile.
There is an issue opened to remove this as it's basically telling us that to verify our age in the EU an American corporation has the last word, making it not only a privacy nightmare but a de-facto monopoly on the phone market that will leave out of the verification checks even the fairphone (european) with /e/os.
GitHub - eu-digital-identity-wallet/av-app-android-wallet-ui
Contribute to eu-digital-identity-wallet/av-app-android-wallet-ui development by creating an account on GitHub.GitHub
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I'm 48 and I'm happy that I will be 16THEEN FOR EVER !!
#GrapheneOS
#FUCKtheDigitalidentityWallet #BOYCOTTDigitalIdentityWallet
#16THEEN4EVER
A Second Tea Breach Reveals Users’ DMs About Abortions and Cheating
A Second Tea Breach Reveals Users’ DMs About Abortions and Cheating
The more than one million messages obtained by 404 Media are as recent as last week, discuss incredibly sensitive topics, and make it trivial to unmask some anonymous Tea users.Emanuel Maiberg (404 Media)
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Arriva “Io sono Farah”: perché le serie turche piacciono
Nasce GEECO, energia dal tetto dell'Acquario per il centro storico di Genova
Presentata la nuova Comunità Energetica Rinnovabile Solidale per energia pulita e locale, inclusione sociale e sostenibilità
GEECO è un progetto partito dal basso, che ha coinvolto diverse realtà del terzo settore e del mondo cooperativo. Le risorse generate dalla condivisione dell’energia verranno reimpiegate in progetti a impatto sociale e ambientale
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ByteDance AI IDE Trae telemetry continues even after opt-out
Report: Trae AI IDE quietly beams data to ByteDance, even with tracking turned off
: Investigators detail persistent background connections and file transmissions despite telemetry opt-outTim Anderson (The Register)
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Former Moderator Sues Chaturbate for 'Psychological Trauma'
In May, a woman in Kansas sued Chaturbate, claiming that it was the site’s fault that her teenage son found her old laptop unlocked in a closet and used it to access porn without age verification in place.
Sounds like a parenting problem to me, but go ahead and blame porn. People like this should have to pay the legal fees of the defendants. Would anti-slapp (or whatever it’s called) apply here?
Former Moderator Sues Chaturbate for 'Psychological Trauma'
“Without these safeguards, Mr. Barber eventually developed full-blown PTSD, which he is currently still being treated for,” the former mod's lawyer said.Samantha Cole (404 Media)
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"Neal Barber, who was hired by Bayside Support Services and Multi Media LLC—the parent company of Chaturbate—in 2020"
Holy crap, moderators get PAID??!?!?
People like this should have to pay the legal fees of the defendants.
iirc, in the US at least, you can sue the people suing you to recomp lawyer fees.
I mean, by that same logic, we shouldn't offer mental health counseling to first responders because they knew what they were getting into when they signed up for it. You can say there's a difference between naiveté and stupidity, but it's entirely arbitrary.
Idk man, I feel like you're really missing the point here. If you're going to hire people to do a job that involves exposure to traumatic material, you need to provide resources for them to process and recover from it.
I had a friend who was a firefighter who 100% agreed with that. He said if you don't want to see nasty shit like limbs torn apart in car accidents then go flip burgers.
If you're going to hire people to do a job that involves exposure to traumatic material, you need to provide resources for them to process and recover from it.
I don't agree. The person in question knew what they were getting int, if not they'd have left at the first incident and noped out. They're just teying to make coin of this.
Well, I've been a paramedic for a long time, a paramedic instructor for half as long, and a firefighter longer than either of the other two. Your friend sounds like a pompous dipshit, and his attitude is the reason we keep killing ourselves.
The ones who think they're coping just fine are usually taking it out on their body or their family, in my experience. If you are exposed to shit like that at work, it always catches up with you eventually. Some people last years, some last decades, and some last one call. It's the nature of the work.
Which is why you should always provide those resources. It saves lives. I really don't see anything to suggest that the plaintiff is lying about having PTSD or is just trying to make money; I think that's just the social stigma of PTSD providing you with rationalizations for your own problematic beliefs.
I'm Canadian, I can just go get help...
Again though I'd say this guy knew what he was gonna be seeing, and if he didn't he's a dumbass.
Kenya’s protests are not a symptom of failed democracy. They are democracy
Kenya’s protests are not a symptom of failed democracy. They are democracy
The youth leading the protests must not repeat the mistakes of previous generations. They must demand real change.Patrick Gathara (Al Jazeera)
Microsoft admits it would have to let Trump spy on EU data if demanded
Microsoft admits it would have to let Trump spy on EU data if demanded
Microsoft says it can't promise data sovereignty for EU firmsCraig Hale (TechRadar)
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Check out Hetzner, a German cloud provider. Established, reliable and way cheaper than AWS.
I know migrating is nigh impossible for most large apps, but creating a new one on AWS/GCP/Azure is so shortsighted.
More people need to know about alternatives.
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Open Telekom Cloud – THE European Cloud
Book the Open Telekom Cloud from German data centers. We offer cloud services for computing, storage, network & security.Home
Hetzner is really trashy though. They seem to suspend or permanently ban folks for no good reason.
tenforward.blog/hetzner-consid…
news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3…
Hetzner Considered Hostile: A PSA - Ten Forward's Blog
On 8 October 2024 I received an email from Hetzner. This was a forwarded abuse report. As is standard practice in the web hosting business Hetzner forwarded this to me so I could take action on it. This was no ordinary abuse report.guinan (Ten Forward\'s Blog)
Hetzner and reliable do not belong in the same sentence.
Cheap yes, reliable no.
I've been using them for my company a lot because of how cheap they are, but compared to other European competitors (like OVH) they are complete garbage. Their pricing is the only redeeming factor.
The Schwartz Group (parent company of Lidl) is currently building a German cloud platform, which sounds a lot more promising.
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Does this also mean Microsoft would allow China to spy on the US if asked?
Reference: arstechnica.com/security/2025/…
Microsoft to stop using China-based teams to support Department of Defense
The tech giant has relied on global workforce to support federal clients.ProPublica (Ars Technica)
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The first sentence and the first paragraph of the article:
even if that data is stored overseas
There are provisions. I don't remember the exact name of it, but basically, the US says "yah, these business are legit ok, you see?" and the EU is like "oh, ok, deal". This includes the big providers and a handful of others, obviously.
And yes, it is a farce.
So we all agree that "if demanded" ANYONE'S data can be spied on. Doesn't matter where.
At least it's finally admitted to out in the open.
I haven't used a Microsoft product in my personal life in twenty years. One of the primary reasons for that is that I don't trust them with my privacy. People (gestures broadly at the tech space) have been expressing similar sentiment for decades.
We are not a monolith, and some people have cared about these things while others have not.
For those who only just began caring, I find it entirely reasonable that when the top of the pyramid wasn't Trump, someone who there are a great many reasons to distrust, they weren't as worried about it.
If you didn't care about it until recently, only you can answer the question you have asked.
All of which is far more of an answer than the sheer whataboutism merited.
I think my point is kinda that the whataboutism poster I blocked might have needed a reminder that the idea that "no one cared until it was Trump" is just another pro-Trump attempt to rewrite history, and untrue on the face of it, because it has never been difficult in the age of MS dominance to find knowledgeable people expressing these concerns.
However, and going back to my original comment and my underlying frustration that I've entertained this whataboutism for this long, like all examples of whataboutism it's nothing but a waste of time where we all circlejerk about how of course we all cared about it even before Trump while simultaneously failing to call out the original statement of "no one cared until Trump" as the obvious bullshit that it is, on top of being whataboutism.
So now I get to walk away smugly congratulating myself for how thoroughly I've exposed the whataboutism and the bullshit, meanwhile all the time you and I spent thinking about and typing this could have been spent thinking up creative methods of civil disobedience, or otherwise doing something more valuable than impotently demonstrating what an inane point was made in the first place.
So next time, I'm just stopping at Goodbye, and the downvoters can fuck themselves.
Edit - typo or two corrected.
Only if they aren't using customer provided encryption keys (is using blob/bucket storage) or an equivalent approach to encryption at rest, and make sure they're doing standard TLS for encryption in flight.
It's absolutely possible, and standard for any decent organization, to build their cloud architectures to fully account for the cloud provider potentially accessing your data without authorization. I've personally had such design conversations multiple times.
It is possible to do things correctly. The question is, is it done often, and is it done on hardware you can trust. I'm somewhat confident if I run my services on bare metal, the provider would have a hard time getting my encryption keys, although it's not impossible even in this situation. How many people do so with VPS and managed instances, where snooping around the runtime and exfiltrating data unbeknownst to the user is trivial?
Also, beyond that, how many fall for the convenience of things like SSE, whether it's with customer provided keys or not? That should be a red flag, but people find it oh so convenient.
We're bound to see stuff bubble out where "we did all the right things" boils down to clicking a checkbox in some web UI and be done with it in the future.
Years
Bruv, the United States government could get any information they wanted if it was stored on US Soil since the dawn of the US. The only thing stopping them was effort.
Until this abomination of a law
The "patriot" act would like to have a word with you...
One is Chinese (bad, stinky) one is American (good, freedom).
Both are authoritarian shitholes that violate the freedoms of its citizens.
Time to listen to this banger again
ADAM FREELAND - WE WANT YOUR SOUL
(unofficial video)Lyrics:Your cellphone, your wallet, your time, your ideas.No bar-code, no party, no ID, no beers.Your bankcard, your license, your thoughts...YouTube
I have been saying this for more than a decade. Shit like this is why privacy laws and stuff regarding warrants and other stuff need to be expanded to private entities as much, if not more so, than government agencies. In the past the idea of a company having that much access to people's information was unthinkable, and in almost everyone's mind it was governments we needed to be worried about.
But that hasn't been true since the 90s at least with credit cards being used for most stuff and internet purchases being the norm for almost everything.
Governments in the past needed something to ask for permission to look into you... but companies never did, and since the only thing governments need to do is either buy it or ask nicely it makes many protections kinda moot. The fact that many countries want a strict surveillance state over everyone means even the classic protections we had for a brief while are disappearing, too.
If there ever is a 2nd enlightenment with protections for people it needs to make the stuff written in the 18th and 19th century look like children's toys in comparison.
If you say 'but what about terrorism and bad people?' Look around you. They still exist and still rarely get caught unless they fuck up badly. Most of the time it still due to informants and people talking to authorities. In the US the murder rate resolution is only 50% (and that is just arrested and charged, not convicted) and this is because there is a massive distrust of the police. In other countries people are more likely to assist the police and/or they take their jobs far more seriously in terms of forensics... and on top of that they usually have a far lower murder rate which allows more time and resources to be funneled into solving major crimes.
Better to let 100 guilty men go than 1 innocent person convicted is the usual motto, but they don't believe that in practice. In reality they are very much kill them all and let God sort out his own. And we can't keep allowing that shit to happen.
Can EU please make an open source phone?
We have linux for computers, but we need a "linux" for phones (yes I know Android uses Linux Kernel, I'm talking about like a Libre Non-Google OS)
Linux phone exist but without an appstore it s useless
I don't think it would happen, it's cheaper for banks to lobby against it than do a bare minimum, lobbying is cheaper than anything, but still, neat idea.
It only works on Google Pixel phones.
There are other operating systems, and some more open (but more expensive) manufacturers like Fairphone and PinePhone.
Because the one in the US is working out so well for humanity right?
Fuck Silicon Valleys. Use and support open standards and software.
It's SO funny how apparently for almost 20 years we (as in the west outside the USA) decided that using Chinese cloud platforms or networking hardware was dangerous and to be avoided, but private US companies? Nothing to see here!
Silver lining of the orange man is that maybe countries will wake up and smell the digital sovereignty that we sorely lack.
We have installed EASY UPLOAD3R!
Demo: streamable.com/5kn0tz
Im excited to announce EASY UPLOAD3R, a new drag-and-drop upload feature that provides a new way you can upload content!
What Is It?
EASY UPLOAD3R is a powerful client-side tool that processes your media files directly in your browser using WebAssembly (WASM) technology:
100% Client-Side Processing: Your files never leave your computer during analysis - everything happens locally in your browser
High-Performance: Leverages WebAssembly for near-native speed processing
Privacy: No server uploads required for metadata extraction
Streamlined Workflow: A complete drag-and-drop solution that handles the entire upload preparation process
How It Works?
Simply drag your media file onto the EASY UPLOAD3R drop area, and it will automatically:
Generate a properly formatted torrent file
Extract comprehensive MediaInfo data
Create multiple high-quality screenshots at random timestamps
Upload screenshots to ImgBB with direct linking
Format everything into a professional BBCode description
Populate all relevant form fields
Content Compatibility?
EASY UPLOAD3R currently works best with:
Remuxes
WEB-DL
Encodes
Blu-ray disc support is actively being developed and will be available in a future update.
Technical Details?
EASY UPLOAD3R uses several WebAssembly modules:
FFmpeg: For media processing, screenshot generation, and format detection
MediaInfo: For extracting comprehensive technical metadata
Cryptographic Libraries: For secure torrent hash generation and verification
OpenCV: For intelligent scene detection when generating screenshots
We Want Your Feedback!
EASY UPLOAD3R is currently in Early Access, and we'd love to hear from you:
Are you experiencing any bugs or issues?
Which additional features would you like to see?
How has it improved your uploading workflow?
Are there specific file formats or media types you'd like better support for?
Please share your thoughts. Your feedback is needed as we continue to enhance this feature. The traditional uploading methods manually and via API are still available of course. EASY UPLOAD3R more so targets home users and not so much seedbox users that can use one of many upload scripts that interacts with UNiT3Ds {JSON} API.
Watch Screen Recording 2025-06-30 at 10.26.20 PM | Streamable
Watch "Screen Recording 2025-06-30 at 10.26.20 PM" on Streamable.Streamable
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Discover a Great Tech Forum!
Hello everyone!
I wanted to share an amazing tech forum that I recently discovered, specifically tailored for users in India: TechEnclave! This forum is packed with fantastic tech topics and features a marketplace that is an absolute banger!
I've been a member for a few months now, and I can honestly say that the community is incredibly engaging and helpful. One of the best parts? There are no spammers or bots cluttering the discussions, which makes for a much more enjoyable experience.
If you're looking to connect with others, share knowledge, or solve your tech queries, this is definitely the right place for you!
Here’s the my invite link to join: Join the forum
A quick note: The marketplace is specifically for users in India, so keep that in mind if you're considering participating.
Happy posting and engaging! Looking forward to seeing you all there!
TechEnclave
India’s top tech forum for PC builds, gadgets, gaming, and hardware discussions. Join TechEnclave to connect with a passionate tech community.TechEnclave
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Sui dazi ci siamo consegnati con le mani in alto - Il Post
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Hemispheres Can’t Stop Us (Planet Dyne S2025-E06)
Seasons are just Earth’s way of reminding us it’s always someone’s turn to hibernate or spontaneously combust with ideas.
[v1.8.3] Federation improvements, lots of progress
Release v1.8.3 · MbinOrg/mbin
This is our release v1.8.3. We did a lot of changes to our activity pub code and started to add testing of it. We did a lot of improvements on the UI and added more options for the user. We also im...GitHub
Meta (ri)cambia le regole del gioco: pubblicità o abbonamento per Facebook e Instagram
crosspostato da: mastodon.uno/users/francal/sta…
Meta (ri)cambia le regole del gioco: pubblicità o abbonamento per Facebook e Instagramlentepubblica.it/cittadini-e-i…
La formula del “paga o acconsenti” non è un’esclusiva dell’universo #Meta.
Un approccio che sta attirando l’attenzione delle autorità europee.
La Commissione UE multò Meta per 200 milioni di euro (ritenendo che il sistema violasse il #DMA ), con un ordine di modifica del modello #takeitorleaveit , con l’obbligo di garantire scelte realmente libere agli utenti.
Mastodon Uno Social - Italia
Mastodon.Uno è la principale comunità mastodon italiana. Con 77.000 iscritti è il più grande nodo Mastodon italiano: anima ambientalista a supporto della privacy e del mondo Open Source.Mastodon ospitato su mastodon.uno
Meta (ri)cambia le regole del gioco: pubblicità o abbonamento per Facebook e Instagramlentepubblica.it/cittadini-e-i…
La formula del “paga o acconsenti” non è un’esclusiva dell’universo #Meta.
Un approccio che sta attirando l’attenzione delle autorità europee.
La Commissione UE multò Meta per 200 milioni di euro (ritenendo che il sistema violasse il #DMA ), con un ordine di modifica del modello #takeitorleaveit , con l’obbligo di garantire scelte realmente libere agli utenti.Meta cambia: pubblicità o abbonamento su Facebook e Instagram
Meta introduce un abbonamento per evitare la pubblicità su Facebook e Instagram. Scopri di più su questo cambiamento.Gianluca Lucarelli (lentepubblica.it)
La pietra nella scarpa del Führer: perché Hitler non invase Gibilterra
L'idea sembrava semplice: attraversare la Spagna con le proprie truppe con il benestare di Franco, conquistare Gibilterra con un assalto lampo e poi consegnare il promontorio al dittatore spagnolo. L'Operazione Félix, come fu chiamata, sembrava favorire entrambi.
Tuttavia, Hitler si imbatté nell'inaspettato rifiuto del suo presunto alleato. Sebbene Franco simpatizzasse con l'Asse e avesse inviato truppe volontarie sul fronte russo, la Spagna era appena uscita da una devastante guerra civile e non era in condizioni di entrare in una guerra mondiale: il suo esercito era debole e il dittatore temeva le ritorsioni britanniche se avesse abbandonato la neutralità.
La pietra nella scarpa del Führer: perché Hitler non invase Gibilterra
A metà del 1940, con la Francia appena sconfitta e il Regno Unito che resisteva da solo, Hitler vide un'occasione unica per dare il colpo di grazia ai suoi nemici: chiudere il Mediterraneo conquistando Gibilterra , l'enclave britannica a sud della pe…Abel G.M. (National Geographic Storica)
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digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/…
The EU approach to age verification
The European Commission is working towards an EU-harmonised approach to age verification.Shaping Europe’s digital future
At least the EU is somewhat privacy friendly here (excluding the Google tie in) compared to whatever data sharing and privacy mess the UK has obligated people to do with sharing ID pictures or selfies.
Proving you are 18+ through zero knowledge proof (i.e. other party gets no more information than being 18+) where the proof is generated on your own device locally based on a government signed date of birth (government only issues an ID, doesn't see what you do exactly) is probably the least privacy intrusive way to do this, barring not checking anything at all.
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And nothing of value was lost.
Sure, if privacy is worth nothing to you but I wouldn't speak for the rest of the UK and EU.
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Estimates is better it can be easily bypassed:
windowscentral.com/gaming/game…
How Death Stranding helps bypass UK age verification: A game-changer?
A new UK law requires age verification for adult content, but Discord’s face scan check can be fooled with a video game selfie.Sean Endicott (Windows Central)
Is there other platforms that are out there estimating our ages?
I know the whole age gate thing - being in the UK, believe me, I know. I've just never had a service go "we can't show you content. No, don't tell us your age, we'll work it out from the data we've collected from you".
That's a whole new one for me, I must admit.
Gli astronomi svelano il mistero di Betelgeuse, vecchio di 1.000 anni, con il primo avvistamento in assoluto di un compagno segreto
Dopo una lunga attesa, gli astronomi hanno finalmente visto la compagna stellare della famosa stella Betelgeuse. Questa stella compagna orbita attorno a Betelgeuse in un'orbita incredibilmente stretta, il che potrebbe spiegare uno dei misteri di lunga data di Betelgeuse. La stella, tuttavia, è condannata e il team dietro questa scoperta prevede che Betelgeuse la cannibalizzerà tra poche migliaia di anni.
Il fatto che Betelgeuse sia una delle stelle più luminose del cielo sulla Terra, visibile ad occhio nudo, ne ha fatto uno dei corpi celesti più noti. E da quando i primi astronomi hanno iniziato a ispezionare questo apparecchio nel cielo notturno, sono rimasti sconcertati dal fatto che la sua luminosità varia per periodi di sei anni.
Ora forse questo mistero è risolto.
Astronomers crack 1,000-year-old Betelgeuse mystery with 1st-ever sighting of secret companion (photo, video)
"Papers that predicted Betelgeuse's companion believed that no one would likely ever be able to image it."Robert Lea (Space)
La stella che ha sfidato per due volte un buco nero - L'impresa testimoniata da brillamenti ripetuti nel tempo
Scoperto il primo caso di una stella che è sopravvissuta all'incontro ravvicinato con un buco nero supermassiccio ed è poi tornata a sfidarlo una seconda volta: la sua impresa è testimoniata da due brillamenti osservati nello stesso punto dello spazio profondo a distanza di quasi due anni, come riportato su The Astrophysical Journal Letters da un gruppo internazionale di astronomi guidato dall'Università di Tel Aviv.
Nel cuore di ogni grande galassia si nasconde un buco nero supermassiccio che ha una massa pari a milioni o miliardi di volte quella del Sole.
ansa.it/canale_scienza/notizie…
La stella che ha sfidato per due volte un buco nero - Spazio e Astronomia - Ansa.it
L'impresa testimoniata da brillamenti ripetuti nel tempo (ANSA)Agenzia ANSA
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SPAZIALITÀ SONORE: Palazzo Milzetti a Faenza (Ra) da settembre a ottobre si trasforma in un teatro di suoni, corpi e visioni
Da settembre a ottobre 2025 lo splendido Palazzo Milzetti – Museo Nazionale dell’Età Neoclassica in Romagna – ospita SPAZIALITÀ SONORE, rassegna che unisce musica, danza e performance dal vivo in un’esperienza immersiva e multisensoriale.
Il progetto, nato dalla collaborazione tra Compagnia IRIS, WAM! Festival e Conservatorio “Giuseppe Verdi” di Ravenna, con il sostegno della Direzione Generale Spettacolo del Ministero della Cultura, porta a Faenza un dialogo tra arti contemporanee e patrimonio storico.
Settembre è dedicato alla musica con “Suoni a Palazzo”, quattro concerti curati dal Conservatorio: 6 settembre Saxofono Ensemble, 13 clavicembali e flauto, 20 chitarre, 27 quartetto d’archi con flauto. Ogni concerto sarà arricchito da improvvisazioni di danza di Anna Clara Conti, in dialogo con gli ambienti del palazzo.
Ottobre è il mese della danza contemporanea, con spettacoli e incontri di Compagnia IRIS e WAM! Festival. Tra i titoli: 4 ottobre Vier Letzte Lieder (Compagnia Iris), 5 ottobre That’s all (Artemis Danza), 11 ottobre laboratorio “La danza della Fortuna”, 18 ottobre Unusual Suite (Club Alieno/Centro 21) e Double Bill (DNA), 19 ottobre chiusura con Harleking (Panzetti-Ticconi).
Il cartellone comprende anche i talk “Le radici e le ali” del critico Michele Pascarella, dedicati ai legami tra danza, arte e letteratura.
“Vogliamo abitare luoghi che diventino case delle arti, creando partecipazione e connessioni” sottolinea Valentina Caggio di Compagnia IRIS.
Gli eventi sono compresi nel biglietto d’ingresso al museo (5 euro, ridotto 2; gratuito la prima domenica del mese). Prenotazione consigliata: iristeatrodanza@gmail.com – tel. 349 2500963.
Programma completo su: palazzomilzetti.cultura.gov.it – wamfestival.com.
Palazzo Milzetti, Via Tonducci 15, Faenza (RA). Tel. 0546 26493.
SPAZIALITÀ SONORE: Palazzo Milzetti a Faenza (Ra) da settembre a ottobre si trasforma in un teatro di suoni, corpi e visioni - ViaggieMiraggi
Per due mesi, da settembre a ottobre 2025, lo splendido Palazzo Milzetti – Museo Nazionale dell’Età Neoclassica in Romagna – si trasforma in un crocevia di musica, danza e performance dal vivo con SPAZIALITÀ SONORE, una rassegna che fonde arti...Redazione (ViaggieMiraggi)
The Bard and The Shell
A lot of introductions to using a shell — whether it’s Linux, one of the BSDs, the Mac (or even Windows using WSL!) — show examples that are a bit on the light side (looking at you, cowsay 😅) or dump cryptical command sequences on the unwary newbie that make an inscription in hieroglyphs on an Egyptian temple column look easy. Both approaches make sense. The first one tries not to scare people when they use the command line, while the second one shows how powerful it is compared to clicking around in a GUI. But they don’t really explain the advantages of a shell or the UNIX idea of “do one thing and do it well“.
An introduction should be easy to understand and follow, show a real-world use case, and ideally require more effort when trying to do the same task in a graphical environment. A few years back, I was planning a weekend workshop about using the command line for data analysis, and I came up with an idea for a example called “The Bard and The Shell” that I’d like to share. I hope it’s useful when someone asks why so many of us prefer the command line for certain tasks.
It shows some common commands (not too many to make it easy to follow), the advantages of the idea of pipelining, and iteratively solving a problem. We’re going to find out the 25 most-used words in Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing“. If you’re working with a GUI, you’ll quickly see that it’s not as simple as it seems. It’s not easy to log the steps you need to take to get the results you’re looking for.
First, we need the text of the Bard. You can find it online, but you can also download the text file containing “Much Ado About Nothing” from: arminhanisch.de/data/muchado.z…. Just unzip the file and put the muchado.txt file in a directory of your choice. Now let’s get this show on the road. I’m using bash for this example, but this should work with other shells too (we will keep the fact that there are different shells, each with its own dedicated following, for a later post 😉). Open a terminal window and change to the directory where you put the muchado.txt file (using the cd command).
The first step when analyzing the text to find the most frequent words is to convert it so that each word is on its own line. We’ll be using the tr command for this. tr stands for “translate“. Like the name says, it’s a command-line utility for translating or deleting characters. It supports a bunch of different transformations. You can change text to uppercase or lowercase, squeeze repeating characters, delete specific characters, and do basic find and replace. You can also use it with UNIX pipes to support more complex translations.
Let’s turn the Bard’s work into a long list of words, one per line.
cat muchado.txt | tr '[:blank:]' '\n'
This finds any instance of whitespace (the :blank: class) and replaces it with a newline character. The output will be a very long list of over 22,000 lines of text, so you might want to just read along for the time being or wait until your terminal window finishes displaying the words.
The next step is to take out all the punctuation, quotes, and other stuff. So, we just send the output of the last command to a new call to tr and then another. The backslash is great for making our command line more readable by continuing it to the next line.
cat muchado.txt | tr '[:blank:]' '\n' \ | tr -d '[:punct:]' \ | tr -d "'"
We don’t want to distinguish between a “You” and a “you” because they’re the same word, so we’re going to convert everything to lowercase, again using the mighty tr command. tr also gives us character classes for this, so we don’t have to specify every letter of the alphabet and its lowercase counterpart.
cat muchado.txt | tr '[:blank:]' '\n' \ | tr -d '[:punct:]' \ | tr -d "'" \ | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
I don’t want to bore you with tr over and over, so for our next task of removing empty lines (no word, no need to check), we’ll switch to another command named grep. grep stands for Global Regular Expression Print. If you will continue using the shell, you’ll learn the meaning of a lot of these cryptic abbreviations. 😎 Anyway, how to get rid of empty lines with grep? Like so:
cat muchado.txt | tr '[:blank:]' '\n' \ | tr -d '[:punct:]' \ | tr -d "'" \ | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' \ | grep -e '^$' -v
Now, let’s sort all these words alphabetically. You’ve got to do this step first because the next step, which is to remove all the duplicates and count them, needs its input to be sorted.
cat muchado.txt | tr '[:blank:]' '\n' \ | tr -d '[:punct:]' \ | tr -d "'" \ | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' \ | grep -e '^$' -v \ | sort
Now that looks a lot more orderly. Here’s a fun fact: the last word is “zeal” and it only appears once in the whole text. Maybe you weren’t too zealous William? 😂 Alright, let’s go ahead and remove all the duplicates while we’re counting them.
cat muchado.txt | tr '[:blank:]' '\n' \ | tr -d '[:punct:]' \ | tr -d "'" \ | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' \ | grep -e '^$' -v \ | sort \ | uniq -c
There are less than 3,000 words in the output. Looks like you can read Shakespeare even if you don’t speak English perfectly. How do I know that? Just as an aside, I’m using the wc command (word count) to do all the counting. Want to know how many lines your output has? Just add wc with the -l option (for lines) to the command. Yes, wc can also count words and characters.
cat muchado.txt | tr '[:blank:]' '\n' \ | tr -d '[:punct:]' \ | tr -d "'" \ | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' \ | grep -e '^$' -v \ | sort \ | uniq -c \ | wc -l
This will not output the long list of words, but just the number 2978. OK, back to our task…
We want this list sorted by count in reverse order. There’s a command for this, and it’s called sort (what a surprise 😁). It also has a bunch of options, but we’ll only use two: n for numericical sorting and r for reverse.
cat muchado.txt | tr '[:blank:]' '\n' \ | tr -d '[:punct:]' \ | tr -d "'" \ | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' \ | grep -e '^$' -v \ | sort \ | uniq -c \ | sort -nr
We’re getting closer. We just need to make sure we’re outputting only the first 25 lines. The command to filter out only the start of a stream of lines is called head and it takes the number of lines as an option. And yes, you got it right: if you want to get the last part of a list of lines, you’d use the command tail. 😉
cat muchado.txt | tr '[:blank:]' '\n' \ | tr -d '[:punct:]' \ | tr -d "'" \ | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' \ | grep -e '^$' -v \ | sort \ | uniq -c \ | sort -nr \ | head -n 25
And there you have it—the most frequently used 25 words from “Much Ado About Nothing“:
694 i 628 and 581 the 491 you 485 a 428 to 360 of 311 in 302 is 291 that 281 my 256 it 250 not 223 her 220 for 219 me 212 don 200 he 199 with 199 will 198 benedick 196 claudio 182 your 182 be 173 but
IMHO that’s a great way to get started with “data science on the command line” and see how flexible and useful the command line tools and the concept of pipelines can be to solve a specific task. Taking a look at Shakespeare through the lens of a one-liner…
Orrida è la notte, quando parassiti alieni oscurano lo sguardo dei pipistrelli - Il blog di Jacopo Ranieri
Orrida è la notte, quando parassiti alieni oscurano lo sguardo dei pipistrelli - Il blog di Jacopo Ranieri
Da un lato all’altro delle società distopiche illustrate da generazioni di narratori, ricorrono domande pregne di significati sostanziali: chi controlla i controllori? Chi potrà impedire a coloro che hanno ricevuto il mandato del comando, di ottenere…Jacopo (Il blog di Jacopo Ranieri)
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Woman says faecal transplant saved her and could help many more like her
The couple took Alex's faeces, blended it with saline, passed it through a sieve, put the slurry into an enema bottle and "then head down, bum up, squeeze it in"Woman meets frog, frog leads woman to man, man and woman fall in love," she says.
"Man cures woman's incurable illness with his magic poo, thus breaking the curse.
I volunteered to donante my poop to my parter... Different outcome 🙁
ABC News
ABC News provides the latest news and headlines in Australia and around the world.Leisa Scott (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
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Scientists study how people would react to a neurotic robot personality in real life
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See, there are a few ways this could go.
- Age verification is as secure and private as promised, and it's left at that. I like to call this "the miracle", and we all know those don't happen.
- Age verification is as secure and private as promised, but a government asks for "access to data to prevent crime" - things degenerate from there. This is the "systemic failure" scenario.
- Age verification is as secure and private as promised, but new scams evolve around it to make it dangerous. This would be the "criminal element" scenario.
- Age verification is not as secure and private as promised, and a leak occurs destroying lives and careers. This is the "system failure" scenario.
- Age verification is as secure and private as promised, but a few companies start scraping and selling data, leading to widespread harms. This is the "unethical merchant" scenario, and the most likely outcome.
All in all, there is only one "ok" scenario, and a lot of horrific ones. The math says we're entirely boned \^_\^
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In theory, it isn't hard to make it work, give everybody born on the same day a specific UUID and use that to authenticate with a database if it is true or false. Store the ID somewhere where the person has access to (ID/Passport/Digital passport etc) and it should be enough.
Get IT persons and accountants to regularly audit it for security and if they keep logs/don't have UUID's per person etc.
But that's not how it seems to work for the UK at this time
If it makes you feel better, this isn't the first time and it won't be the last.
Because these regulations never do.
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It is not age verification.
It is privacy invading, morality policing, de-anonymizing, state surveillance.
Nothing less.
PS. If you want to download a video from a site that doesn't have a download button, use the Inspect feature (right click on the page, not the video, and click inspect)
*On the Network tab - Sort by size. Reload page. Find the video. Open the video in new tab. It will be just the video. Right click and save as, or click the download button, or click the 3 dot menu button and select download.
On Firefox you can often bypass this entirely by shift + right click. And should see a save video as option. If not, the inspect feature works the same.
For hls/TS videos (m3u8 streams), if you reallllly want, you can copy the link for the stream and use VLC to convert the stream to a file.
This also often lets you download at higher resolution than they offer to download.
Yes, I porn.
*forgot Network tab
And thanks for all the suggestions. I'd rather not install browser plugins if I can do it without. CLI tools are cool though. The less I need to install the better.
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Seal | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository
Video/Audio downloader designed and themed with Material Youf-droid.org
Chromium based browsers have an option that lets you view the source code by putting "view-source:" before the URL to see embedded videos
So
website.com/pagewithvideo
becomes
view-source:website.com/pagewithvideo
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Its easier to just sail the torrential high seas and get that 4k h265 quality shit that sites keep for paying members only. Once you know the models name its easy to get their entire collection.
I professionally pron too.
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to convert from hls (m3u8 streams) to mp4, you can also use ffmpeg:
ffmpeg -i https://y.com/path/to/stream.m3u8 -c copy output.mp4
-i <input>specifies the input file-c copyspecifies that the contents should not be re-encoded (which would take a lot of time and computing power)output.mp4is the output file
Since the earliest days of the internet, governments have been scheming to gain control over the dissemination of content - to have authority over what people can and cannot see.
Autocracies like Russia, China and North Korea simply established censorships regimes, but the best that western governments have generally been able to do is ban content that is illegal in and of itself, like child porn. Their goal, all along, has been to establish systems by which to censor content that is not in and of itself illegal.
This is the most success they've had yet.
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Of course there is no public evidence. It's just a very probable speculation that governments want to control the internet.
Back in the days of newspapers/radio/tv, governments had control as they could easily go after news outlets.
However, with internet, they lost this power. They have been trying hard to regain the power of controlling information. The latest success was masking moderation as child protection.
There is a long history of proposed bills, and other legal maneuvers, to require ID for things like age verification, and other purposes, from around the world, dating back to the 90s. When COPPA was in the proposal state there was tons of discussion about ID requirements, it was ultimately struck down, but the conversation was being had.
I can remember this being discussed on CSPAN back when I was in high school, in the 90s.
The people technologically competent enough to pull it off are usually not stupid enough to want to pull it off and make their lives harder.
They also generally make more money not working for the government.
That's likely true.
But that's not going to stop governments from trying, and mostly succeeding, since beating their censorship will require both the will and the ability to break the law. Granted that their systems will certainly be flawed, it will still require at least some minimal technical ability to beat them, which will put it out of reach of many.
And it will also provide the governments with a handy fallback charge to bring against pretty much anyone they deem troublesome enough, since they'll almost certainly be among those who are breaking the law by beating the system.
a global wave of age-check laws threatens to chill speechYou’ve read your last free article.
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Regardless, there is a contrast between how I have interpreted the article and how I feel about the page as a whole.
The Supreme Court of the United States has recognized several categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment and has recognized that governments may enact reasonable time, place, or manner restrictions on speech.
All the big adult sites will probably just die or at least shrivel in popularity. Most Europeans simply will not use whatever "tell Brussels or London where or what what you are watching" option is. In the place of the big sites there will be a billion shady and likely virus-lottery proxy sites whose only selling point is that they do not do age checking or require registration. Those then get occasionally smacked down by Brussels, just to be replaced with 10 more clones the by the next week. On the side piracy and vpns will thrive. Kids will not be protected nor will people's privacy, quality will be worse.
I would also bet that when the landscape decentralizes there will be a lot more cp, revenge and peep-videos and other illegal shit in the mix that will get through through the cracks since massive established sites had to actually fear shutdown and losing all revenue unless they had robust gatekeeping mechanisms. If Brussels wants your 2 month life-expectancy site dead anyway, because of it's only selling point of having to show id, then why really bother with the quality control of the material. Especially if site holder has no personal qualms about that stuff.
I would also bet that when the landscape decentralizes there will be a lot more cp, revenge and peep-videos and other illegal shit in the mix that will get through through the cracks since massive established sites had to actually fear shutdown and losing all revenue unless they had robust gatekeeping mechanisms.
There are technical solutions for p2p sharing with moderation. Not to prevent bad people from sharing their stuff, but to keep spaces clean for those who don't want to see it.
This is also true for communication, which is why Fediverse is not good enough. Hosted servers should be an optional part of the infrastructure, and the data (users, communities, posts ...) shouldn't be connected to them. Like with torrents you can host a torrent tracker, and you can host a BTDHT node, and you can automatically download and seed rare torrents, and none of this is connected to whatever people hosting major trackers decide.
NOSTR gets that part right, but the user experience its authors imagine is not for me.
EDIT: Forgot my main point - my main point is that you might find yourself in a whitelisted Internet where such decentralized solutions won't be available. They'll be detected, they'll be illegal and punishable by fines.
I would also bet that when the landscape decentralizes there will be a lot more cp, revenge and peep-videos and other illegal shit in the mix
Oh, count on it. I remember the early days of the internet and file sharing. There was no validation or accountability and you really could stumble on some of the most terrible stuff without meaning to.
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I legitimately dont understand who supports this. Who are these parents that can't parent their kids properly? It's so incredibly easy these days.
So instead of handling shitty parenting we restrict adults and with surveillance. Make it make sense.
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It's not "support", it's already been done in practice.
What they are finishing right now is the convenient way. To surveil 97% instead of 94%. And to make it official to reduce expenses.
And sorry, but "moderate leftists" are those who made it happen, first dreaming how on big centrally moderated platforms the "bad" speech and people will be censored (how irritating it was that in the free Web those people could write whatever they wanted) and theirs won't be, and propaganda won't flourish, and after that dreaming how they can demand loudly enough that the platforms would work for them and not for themselves.
I perfectly remember how people loving Steinbeck and expressing anarchist views would look at me like at an enemy for saying that Facebook, Twitter etc are bad and a trap, and such hierarchical systems can't be good. That arrogant obnoxious "see, in the real society we collectively press for our rights and the rules are made and obeyed", yes, I've met fools who told me things like that. Where's your society now, bitch.
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It's the parents that wont face the fact that it's them paying for their kids internet access.
Parents intentionally and deliberately pay for their kids to access this shit. But none of them want to accept that when it can all be someone elses fault.
Age verification has it's place online, but not for porn. That is just gonna push peopel to worse sites.
For gambling and stock market sites and the like I can understand it, but I would prefer if we wouldn't need to send our ID to those sites. Heck if Valve would implement it I could actually gamble on steam again cause currently I cannot open a Tf2 crate ...
We're at or reaching a tipping point where I'm not sure that's true anymore.
Most people with kids now are (roughly) in their 20s-40s. At the older end of that range, you have some gen-xers who might have missed the boat on computer literacy, but by and large we're talking about millennials and older gen-z at this point. Kids who grew up with the internet, probably very clearly remember their family getting their first computer if they didn't already have one when they were born, had computer classes in school, etc.
And we're running into an issue where younger Gen z and alpha in many cases are less computer literate in many ways. A lot of them aren't really learning to use a computer so much as they are smartphones and tablets, and I'm not knocking how useful those devices can be, I do damn-near everything I need to do on my phone, but they are limited compared to a PC and don't really offer as much of an opportunity to learn how computers work.
There's a ton of exceptions to that of course, some of my millennial friends are still clueless about how to do basic things on a computer, and some children today are of course learning how to do anything and everything on a computer or even on a phone.
But overall, I don't think there's as much disparity in technological literacy between the children and parents of today as there was in previous generations, and in some ways that trend may have even reversed.
It's more like who supports this in theory vs. who supports this how it's written and implemented.
Realistically, no one should love how easy it is for anyone of any age to go to any search engine and search for (Edit) "sex" and just get a million images of genitals and porn. I'm not a parent, but I know my parents when I was a teenager would have loved something like this. Kids are sneaky and smart, and this is a blanket thing parents think will once again put porn behind a barrier.
In a perfect world, a system could very easily exist that would 1) allow for a super-secure government owned digital ID system that isn't a surveillance nightmare, 2) that system use a hash to verify over 18 age anonymously in real time. That's how it's supposed to work with digital IDs - only the data you need to verify is displayed to a vendor. Over 18 is a binary yes/no - a full DOB or name isn't even needed.
The government ID wallet or site would use a no-log system to generate a hash value for you when you ask for one. You ask your ID app or site for an age verification hash. You get one that's valid for about 2 minutes. Copy, paste as needed. The site uses the hash to only know "is this person over 18 or not?" and nothing else. The ID system shouldn't keep the logs of which site asked back to confirm "is this hash valid?" This is exactly as secure as going to a liquor store with your passport or ID card and having tape over the name, address, and doc number. It's even better because your face is not displayed, and your actual DOB should not be displayed either.
However, in our present shitty reality, companies who are trying to get contracts for these systems can't help but feed their existing, and lucrative, addiction to selling our data and using poor security to store that data. So they want your Google/Apple/Samsung wallets connected to a government system that is actually ran by a 3rd party vendor with questionable security practices, and to provide far more information because no one has set an international standard for neither digital ID checks, nor IDs in general, enough to make it anything less than the surveillance state nightmare that is holding a government ID with all your info, while you move your face around and give them a 3D face scan that the platform doesn't keep, but the verification company does.
Realistically, no one should love how easy it is for anyone of any age to go to any search engine and search for “boobs” and just get a million images of boobs.
First. let's not pretend the idea of a kid seeing "boobs" is in any way shape or form actually harmful. Pushing that taboo is why there is any issue in the first place.
Second: This is always a slippery slope. Even if we gave the benefit of the doubt that these things are done in with honest intentions, someone will abuse the system eventually. At least in the US the fascists have already laid out intention to classify LGBTQ people as "porn" in an effort to both silence us online and ban us in public. And what of the countless queer kids in an abusive home?
And even without someone explicitly exploiting it, there had already been instances where kids who were being actively sexually abused by the adults in their life were blocked from resources that could get them help because of content blocking like this.
Thirdly: People can take responsibility for their crotch spawn and be a fucking parent.
Saying "boobs" was trying to be subtle about it - any child of any age is at all times, unless their parents filter their device, 3 clicks and 3 letters (autocomplete could even oopsie that for them) away from seeing very explicit images. It's absurd to think that it's "puritanical" to have nothing in between 10 years olds (or younger) being able to so easily access pull on porn. This isn't about what you personally want or care about, this is also about the fact that every country in the world has this same issue. Taboos are cultural, but you don't set the culture of Honduras, or Gabon, or France, or India. So each cultural context needs to be respected, not only your personal cultural context.
It shouldn't need to be a slippery slope is the thing. In technical terms, this isn't even a heavy lift. To my original point, it's the in theory part of this I support because, in a perfect world, giving everyone the tools to effectively accomplish this isn't hard. But it's a lot of work that is actually fairly technical or fairly terrible from a privacy standpoint to place adult content filters on a child's devices. Not every parent has the skills to do this, and so when a blanket option is available that is sold as a solution like this, of course they'll go for it. But, as I said before, in our current shitty reality, we only have the worst of all worlds - a system that exists to exploit trying to limit a system that exists to exploit, all baked into a system that exists to exploit, and kids still able to see porn online easily.
I'm very much a staunch privacy advocate, and I won't fucking touch a digital ID system because it's nothing but a surveillance state level at this point to persecute specifically trans people and brown people - for now. I see the writing on the wall with this, and it's terrifying. And no one is going to force this into the working system category, so it's just going to be the shitpile system designed to victimize added to the systems of exploitation.
SMH
Fine, changed the search term to "sex." Fewer letters in fact. I was trying to just provide a subtle example, I didn't expect people to need to be hit over the head with it.
So you love the idea of young children seeing porn? Because studies and surveys routinely find that kids as young as 7 are seeing porn online, and many under age 12. Really? You think that's perfectly fine for a 12, 10, or 7 year old with granma's iPad doing an image search and getting even accidental porn?
And hey, I spent my teen years scouring the earth for playboys and staying up until 3 am to catch boobs in R rated movies. I get it. I'm not saying that any system or method will prevent anyome from seeing all adult content their whole life short of being Amish. But as a tender 13 year old, did I need to see all the porn in the universe? Probably not. Adding friction (pun not intended) to general access, without violating privacy, is all I'm saying might be a good idea.
Nah 7 year olds should not be using any internet without parental controls either way so the protection is absolutely moot here. Also your "sex" example returns absolutely zero sexual content on google, Bing or duckduckgo images while boob does.
Also tbh I'm not particularly convinced that seeing porn is all that damaging. Doing quick research it seems that there are no proven damages or development impacts and real actual danger of porn is teaching teens and young adults distorted views of sex and gender roles. Seems like kids in your example aren't even capable of such frameworks to begin with.
So despite how nasty it sounds there's no convincing evidence that its even a real danger. In fact, it seems like exposure to violent images like gore and freak accidents thats having real damage.
If you have some oposing evidence I'd gladly take a look but I'm really unconvinced here that googling boob could be in any way detrimental.
OK.... So, the initial question was "how could anyone support this?" right?
I'm simply explaining how some people see the argument. I never said I see it like this.
So I'm by no means defending any of this other than it being technically possible, and at that, this falls far short of anything resembling acceptable in my book.
Parents who vote and would support this would do so based on limited technical knowledge and a total ideological investment in "preventing" any exposure. Which, we agree, is idiotic.
Y'all really need to chill out with your pitchforks.
a lot of people. The other day I saw a post on mastodon by some politician or someone in the UK stating that if people find any site that is geoblocking the UK because of the age verification to report it to some link he provided. it was boosted A LOT with a lot of replies in support.
bootlickers.
It plays quite well with the “I think about things for two seconds, and mostly think with my lower intestine” crowd.
They hear “kids shouldn’t be able to access porn” and they think yeah what’s wrong with that. Then they hear “Democrats want your kids to get porn” and they hit share.
And if I can't, I'll just stop using the internet for anything I don't absolutely have to.
I don't really need my smartphone. A laptop will do.
Anything you can do on a smartphone that would require Internet would also require Internet on a laptop no?
I suppose you could download offline installers to a thumb drive at the library or smth
Fuck it, let's get back to something like the way it was.
Anonymous, amateur, just slightly hard to access to keep the mouth breathers out.
If I'm opening a stock market account, I'm trusting them with generating my tax receipts! If I don't feel comfortable trusting them to hold my personal data directly, I probably should choose a different brokerage...
Edit: Anyways, I'm annoyed enough that everyone has gone to phone based 2 factor that requires me to buy a phone and keep it on a cell network, so you can imagine how much I despise even an easier version of this.
After making the comment, I realised that stockbrokers need full KYC anyway.
You can use OTP codes without a phone, since you can buy OTP keychains. Which don't require any form of internet connection, same with the physical Passkey's.
I think that's the tech side windfall, the age checking is entirely to put road blocks infront of boobies. They it will force places to just not service those regions because of the hurdles of convincing enough people to give their ID, some will, and more over time.
And it now gives I people a reason to actually create fake IDs or just more identity theft uses. Raise the value of obtaining people's ID is the windfall for the data rapers
Exactly this.
Governments have a rock hard boner for detailed face scans of every person.
Because they want to privatize all aspects of living so that a handful of exorbitantly wealthy people can build larger hoards. There's no end to it; it's a mental disease, enabled by Capitalism and the death of real Labor laws and rights.
Every industry should have unions that actively work to dismantle owner authoritarianism, but for 40 years Boomers have been paving the way for every awful piece of shit "business owner" to have some idolized place at the top of our society. And of course, the knock-on effect of that over time is that the pieces of shit have carved into the legislative and political arenas that provided even a modicum of worker/commoner protections. The digital divide is just a coefficient on the slippery slope.
“Coniglietto sfacciato passeggia sullo schermo”
Oggi Windows (e si, ormai la mia vita è al così basso punto in cui finisco necessariamente per prendere da esso questi spunti, tra l’altro per niente interessanti), sulla schermata di blocco, propone qualcosa di tanto semplice a dirsi quanto insolito: “Coniglietto sfacciato passeggia sullo schermo“, perché a quanto pare oggi è l’ottantacinquesimo (85°) anniversario […]
octospacc.altervista.org/2025/…
“Coniglietto sfacciato passeggia sullo schermo”
Oggi Windows (e si, ormai la mia vita è al così basso punto in cui finisco necessariamente per prendere da esso questi spunti, tra l’altro per niente interessanti), sulla schermata di blocco, propone qualcosa di tanto semplice a dirsi quanto insolito: “Coniglietto sfacciato passeggia sullo schermo“, perché a quanto pare oggi è l’ottantacinquesimo (85°) anniversario di Bugs Bunny… numero anche questo a dir poco strano per festeggiare, ma magari a qualcuno in Microsoft piaceva, va bene così.
In pieno stile consigli di Bing, cliccando sulla scheda si apre pagina una ricerca dove a primo impatto query, sottotitolo e corpo non sembrano centrare, anche se in realtà guardando bene si… Il fatto però è che sono rimasta di sasso a leggere questa descrizione, perché, a pensarci bene, è più vera di quanto sembra. Veramente Bugs Bunny è un coniglietto sfacciato… con quel fare fiero, o come si mangia la carota e nei momenti peggiori dice “che succede amico?“… è eccessivamente irriverente. Se fosse un utente di Internet, i giornalisti lo appellerebbero come “l’hacker troll noto come 4chan“, secondo me… che roba oh.una lepre selvatica - Bing
Grazie alla ricerca intelligente di Bing puoi trovare ciò che cerchi in modo semplice e rapido accumulando punti.Bing
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Please don't link to Reddit. Context below:
The EU is currently developing a whitelabel app to perform privacy-preserving (at least in theory) age verification to be adopted and personalized in the coming months by member states. The app is open source and available here: github.com/eu-digital-identity….
Problem is, the app is planning to include remote attestation feature to verify the integrity of the app: github.com/eu-digital-identity…. This is supposed to provide assurance to the age verification service that the app being used is authentic and running on a genuine operating system. Genuine in the case of Android means:
- The operating system was licensed by Google
- The app was downloaded from the Play Store (thus requiring a Google account)
- Device security checks have passed
While there is value to verify device security, this strongly ties the app to many Google properties and services, because those checks won't pass on an aftermarket Android OS, even those which increase security significantly like GrapheneOS, because the app plans to use Google "Play Integrity", which only allows Google licensed systems instead of the standard Android attestation feature to verify systems.
This also means that even though you can compile the app, you won't be able to use it, because it won't come from the Play Store and thus the age verification service will reject it.
The issue has been raised here github.com/eu-digital-identity… but no response from team members as of now.
GitHub - eu-digital-identity-wallet/av-app-android-wallet-ui
Contribute to eu-digital-identity-wallet/av-app-android-wallet-ui development by creating an account on GitHub.GitHub
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I do feel like that’s a precarious state to leave this in, especially if they’re developing the backend for it.
Is there even enough momentum for a SKG-style wave of coverage? It would need to be justified properly by citing things like the Tea app data leak, to make a strong case (to political pencil pushers) for the danger of tying personal information to profiles or even to platforms. Otherwise the only thing they’ll see is “gamers want to make porn accessible to children”.
I don’t know. This whole situation boils my blood because I really care about online anonymity, and this is kind of nightmare scenario shit for me. I’m not even in the UK or EU.
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To avoid people from simply copying the "age proof" and having others reuse it, a nonce/private key combo is needed. To protect that key a DRM style locked down device is necessary. Conveniently removing your ability to know what your device is doing, just a "trust us".
Seeing the EU doesn't make any popular hardware, their plan will always rely on either Asian or US manufacturers implementing the black-box "safety" chip.
A phone can also be shared. If it happens at scale, it will be flagged pretty quickly. It's not a real problem.
The only real problem is the very intention of such laws.
If it happens at scale, it will be flagged pretty quickly.
How? In a correct implementation, the 3rd parties only receive proof-of-age, no identity. How will re-use and sharing be detected?
There are 3 parties:
1) the user
2) the age-gated site
3) the age verification service
The site (2) sends the request to the user (1), who passes it on to the service (3) where it is signed and returned the same way. The request comes with a nonce and a time stamp, making reuse difficult. An unusual volume of requests from a single user will be detected by the service.
from a single user
Neither 2 nor 3 should receive information about the identity of the user, making it difficult to count the volume of requests by user?
I must not be explaining myself well.
both are supposed to receive information about the user's age
Yes, that's the point. They should be receiving information about age, and age only. Therefore they lack the information to detect reuse.
If they are able to detect reuse, they receive more (and personal identifying) information. Which shouldn't be the case.
The only known way to include a nonce, without releasing identifying information to the 3rd parties, is using a DRM like chip. This results in the sovereignty and trust issues I referred to earlier.
The site would only know that the user's age is being vouched for by some government-approved service. It would not be able to use this to track the user across different devices/IPs, and so on.
The service would only know that the user is requesting that their age be vouched for. It would not know for what. Of course, they would have to know your age somehow. EG they could be selling access in shops, like alcohol is sold in shops. The shop checks the ID. The service then only knows that you have login credentials bought in some shop. Presumably these credentials would not remain valid for long.
They could use any other scheme, as well. Maybe you do have to upload an ID, but they have to delete it immediately afterward. And because the service has to be in the EU, government-certified with regular inspections, that's safe enough.
In any case, the user would have to have access to some sort of account on the service. Activity related to that account would be tracked.
If that is not good enough, then your worries are not about data protection. My worries are not. I reject this for different reasons.
is being vouched for by some government-approved service.
The reverse is also a necessity: the government approved service should not be allowed to know who and for what a proof of age is requested.
And because the service has to be in the EU, government-certified with regular inspections, that's safe enough
Of course not: both intentional and unintentional leaking of this information already happens, regularly. That information should simply not be captured, at all!
Additionally, what happens to, for example, the people in Hungary(*)? If the middle man government service knows when and who is requesting proof-of-age, it's easy to de-anonymise for example users of gay porn sites.
The 3rd party solution, as you present it, sounds terribly dangerous!
(*) Hungary as a contemporary example of a near despot leader, but more will pop up in EU over the coming years.
The reverse is also a necessity: the government approved service should not be allowed to know who and for what a proof of age is requested.
It would send the proof to you. It would not know what you do with it. I gave an example in the previous post how the identity of the user could be hidden from the service.
If the middle man government service knows when and who is requesting proof-of-age, it’s easy to de-anonymise for example users of gay porn sites.
It would be a lot easier to get that information from the ISP.
There are plenty of people with full integrity on rooted phones. It's really annoying to set up and keep going, and requiring that would fuck over most rooted phone/custom os users, but someone to fully inspect and leak everything about the app will always be popping up.
If it is about hiding some data handled by the app, that will be instantly extracted.
Look at the design of DRM chips. They bake the key into hardware. Some keys have been leaked, I think playstation 2 is an example, but typically by a source inside the company.
That applies to play integrity, and a lot of getting that working is juggling various signatures and keys.
The suggestion above which I replied to was instead about software-managed keys, something handed to the app which it then stores, where the google drm is polled to get that sacred piece of data. Since this is present in the software, it can be plainly read by the user on rooted devices, which hardware-based keys cannot.
Play integrity is hardware based, but the eu app is software based, merely polling googles hardware based stuff somewhere in the process.
merely polling googles hardware based stuff
I understand. In the context of digital sovereignty, even if the linked shitty implementation is discarded (as it should be), every correct implementation will require magic DRM-like chip. This chip will be made by a US or Asian manufacturer, as the EU has no manufacturing.
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If not it seems to me that it should be sufficient as to serve as a security this phone is legit and not emulated/compromised.
And the phone provider can naturally resolve their sim IDs down to the phone number they are assigned to.
Anything related to celltower interactions is PII.
Yeah no. Requiring anything Google for something as basic as this violates the GDPR. If they go through with this, it's one legal case until they have to revise it.
Edit: German eID works on any Android btw., flawless actually. I sure hope I can use that for verification
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EID can be used for anonymous age verification. It doesn't even need to give out your birthday and can attest to any "over the age of X" requirement.
Ref: bfdi.bund.de/DE/Buerger/Inhalt…
BfDI - Meldewesen und Statistik - Datenschutz beim Personalausweis mit eID
Der Personalausweis verfügt seit 2010 über eine elektronische Identitätsfunktion (eID). Welche Daten sind auf dem Ausweis hinterlegt und was ist bei der Nutzung zu beachten?www.bfdi.bund.de
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"Government issued app can be used for anonymous age verification."
Doesn't sound like the most trustworthy statement...
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Edit: German eID works on any Android btw., flawless actually. I sure hope I can use that for verification
Same in Italy... I mean, I can pay taxes with that application but I cannot be verified for my age ? Seriously EU ?
violates the GDPR.
I wouldn't be too sure. Data protection mainly binds private actors. Any data processing demanded by law is legal. You'd really have to know the finer points of the law to judge if this is ok.
Data processing mandated by law is legal. Governments can pass laws, unlike private actors. Public institutions are bound by GDPR, but can also rely on provisions that give them greater leeway.
I don't see how that this is in any way necessary, either. But a judge may be convinced by the claim that this is industry standard best practice to keep the app safe. In any case, there may be some finer points to the law.
The state legally cannot force you to agree to some corporations (i.e. Google’s) terms,
I'm not too sure about that, either. For example, when you are out of work, the state will cause you trouble if you do not find offered jobs acceptable.
It's another question, if not having access to age-gated content is so bad as to force you to do anything. Minors nominally have the same rights as full citizens, and they are to be denied access, too.
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As usual, it's the implementation that matters.
Someone jumped at me for comparing EU and MAGA to Stalin's and Hitler's regimes, quote, "arguing in newspapers whose worker class has been liberated more". Like they are not equal at all and all such.
What is it with everyone being obsessed with porn censorship suddenly? Why is this a trend?
At first I thought it's about control and data gathering, but this seems like too much of a genuine attempt at such a system. Why is the government so obsessed with parenting and nannying the citizens?
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There is a bit of a conflict between the laws requiring certain companies to identify their clients and GDPR in basis, but there is something in GDPR that allows these companies to still collect the relevant data and use it or to verify the data and not store it depending on the use case.
The whole use case thing is even the reason why companies are allowed to collect data from you. You couldn't get anything delivered if this exception wasn't there, because they wouldn't be allowed to progress your address.
At least that's what I gathered from the Dutch implementation the AVG, when I last read it a couple years ago.
Why is the government so obsessed with parenting and nannying the citizens?
I think it's because people from outside the traditional political families are getting popular votes.
For the established politicians, blaming "the internet" and building a supressing censorship machine is easier than looking in the mirror and seeing where the discontent comes from.
Been wondering myself. It's certainly part of the general right-ward trend. Societies are becoming more illiberal. It's not just the right that is moving to the right.
Obscenity laws have always been about enforcing the "correct" sexuality. Protecting minors meant preventing them from becoming "confused"; ie becoming LGBTQ.
You also have growing nationalism. In Europe, people are saying we should enforce "our laws" and "our values" against meddling foreigners (ie Big Tech). It often sounds a lot like the rants against the "globalists" that have been a staple among the US far right for decades. Age verification is part of that.
For example, Germany has long enforced age verification within its borders. It's part of the whole over-regulation thing that makes competitive tech companies almost impossible in Europe. For some reason, Europeans have trouble accepting that. You can see it here on Lemmy. The solution must be to enshittify everything to level the playing field.
The legal precedent for gaining the ability to ban content under the guise of preventing the dissemination of "obscenity" allows the future banning of "obscene" political opinions and "obscene" dissent.
Once the "obscene" political content is banned, the language will change to "offensive".
After "offensive" content is banned, then the language will change to "inappropriate".
After "inappropriate", the language will change to "oppositional".
If you believe this is a "slippery slope" fallacy, then as a counterpoint, I would refer to the actual history of the term "politically correct":
In the early-to-mid 20th century, the phrase politically correct was used to describe strict adherence to a range of ideological orthodoxies within politics. In 1934, The New York Times reported that Nazi Germany was granting reporting permits "only to pure 'Aryans' whose opinions are politically correct".[5]The term political correctness first appeared in Marxist–Leninist vocabulary following the Russian Revolution of 1917. At that time, it was used to describe strict adherence to the policies and principles of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, that is, the party line.[24] Later in the United States, the phrase came to be associated with accusations of dogmatism in debates between communists and socialists. According to American educator Herbert Kohl, writing about debates in New York in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
The term "politically correct" was used disparagingly, to refer to someone whose loyalty to the CP line overrode compassion, and led to bad politics. It was used by Socialists against Communists, and was meant to separate out Socialists who believed in egalitarian moral ideas from dogmatic Communists who would advocate and defend party positions regardless of their moral substance.— "Uncommon Differences", The Lion and the Unicorn[4]
You're right but the example you gave seems to illustrate a different effect that's almost opposite — let me explain.
The phrase "politically correct" is language which meant something very specific, that was then hijacked by the far-right into the culture war where its meaning could be hollowed out/watered down to just mean basically "polite", then used interchangeably in a motte-and-bailey style between the two meanings whenever useful, basically a weaponized fallacy designed to scare and confuse people — and you know that's exactly what it's doing by because no right-winger can define what this boogeyman really means. This has been done before with things like: Critical Race Theory, DEI, cancel culture, woke, cultural Marxism, cultural bolshevism/judeo bolshevism (if you go back far enough), "Great Replacement", "illegals", the list goes on.
I see your point. I should've limited my citation to the phrase's authoritarian origins from the early 20th century.
To clarify, the slippery slope towards "political correctness" I wanted to describe is a sort of corporate techno-feudalist language bereft of any real political philosophy or moral epistemology. It is the language of LinkedIn, the "angel investor class", financiers, cavalier buzzwords, sweeping overgeneralizations, and hyperbole. Yet, fundamentally, it will aim to erase any class awareness, empiricism, or contempt for arbitrary authority. The idea is to impose an avaricious financial-might-makes-right for whatever-we-believe-right-now way of thinking in every human being.
What I want to convey is that there is an unspoken effort by authoritarians of the so-called "left" and "right" who unapologetically yearn for the hybridization of both Huxley's A Brave New World and Orwell's 1984 dystopian models, sometimes loudly proclaimed and other times subconsciously suggested.
These are my opinions and not meant as gospel.
I get what you mean. You're saying we're sliding towards something that brings back political correctness in its original definition, and I agree with you.
The idea is to impose an avaricious financial-might-makes-right
This resonates a lot. I'd argue we're already there. All this talk of "meritocracy" (fallaciously opposed to "DEI"), the prosperity gospel (that one's even older), it's all been promoting this idea of worthiness determined by net worth. Totalitarianism needs a socially accepted might-makes-right narrative wherever it can find it, then that can be the foundation for the fascist dogma/cult that will justify the regime's existence and legitimize its disregard for human life. Bonus points if you can make that might-makes-right narrative sound righteous (e.g. "merit" determines that you "deserve" your wealth, when really it's a circular argument: merit is never questioned for those who have the wealth, it's always assumed because how else could they have made that much money!).
- Govt. want to control access to everything
- People are not too happy about this
- Govt. say "to protect children, you have to install this app, under these conditions"
- You want to protect childrens, so you do so
- Govt. say "to protect this or that, we have to impose approved gates on many websites, based on the app you installed before"
- You want to protect this or that, so you accept it
- Govt. say "fuck you, you whatever is not in line with the fucking biggot at the helm of your country/federation/whatever, now we know what you do, we control what's allowed, and anything to get around the blocks is illegal and will land you in jail. Fuck you again, fucker."
- You're a happy little plant in a pot.
Basically, it's not about porn. It's not about protecting kids. It's not about helping "victims of abuse". If anything, it's putting all these in more danger, along with everyone else.
- actively defending child rape
- calls vaccines poison
- calls prenatal care and school lunch subsidy woke
- spends billions bombing brown children
FYI: Most of the world actually restricts, and some outright bans, porn.
Its only western countries that have unrestricted access to porn.
Sure, but it has some good sides as well
It's just a shame that they aren't just made of the good sides
What's going on with Europe lately? You all really want GOOGLE of all mega corps in control of your identity?
You're going the opposite way, it should be your right to install an alternate OS on your phone. If anything they should be banning Google licensed Android.
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I miss LineageOS so much, my last couple of phones haven't had a build of it and my asshole banking apps wont work on it now.
For my next phone i'm just not going to buy one unless it's already supported and if I have to skip online banking I'll do it.
I use cards, I don't even have NFC on my phone, but it is nice to be able to check my bank account, lock/unlock the card, deposit checks, etc.
I may be able to do most of that on the website, idk. Guess I'm probably going to find out 😀
to hear it from any non-Americans on lemmy they're better than America.
looks like they're just as susceptible to this fascist bullshit to me though...
We invented this bullshit, of course we're susceptible.
Still better than America, though ;P XD
I call it effective authoritarianism, it's a sugar coated baton
No one is laughing... We're horrified how the people who have been screaming "freedom" and being obnoxious about how much more free they are than anyone else in the entire universe, seem to love getting enslaved while being obnoxious about how cool it is to be enslaved.
Europe has its problems. We've had them for generations, and right now they're getting worse. But at least we have a culture of fighting back, something americans don't.
But at least we have a culture of fighting back, something americans don’t.
Talk is cheap. Prove it in the coming years. I really hope you're right, because I want SOMEWHERE to not be either a coporate fascist hellholle or a collapsed country in the future..
Some thoughts on Surf, Flipboard's fediverse app
I've got access to the beta of the Surf app. Some thoughts:
some stuff I really liked:
- rss works (though no custom URLs yet, just what they already scraped)
- you get lemmy, mastodon, bluesky, threads all together
- you can make your own feeds and check what other people made (like a custom timeline, or topic-specific like “NBA”, “woodworking”, “retro gaming stuff”)
- has different modes: you can switch between videos, articles, podcasts depending on the feed
but also...
- can’t add your own RSS feeds (huge miss)
- some feeds break and show no posts even when they’re active (ok, it's still a beta)
- YouTube videos have ads (not into that—I support creators through patreon, affiliate links, whatever. not ads)
- feeds you create are public by default unless you manually change it
- not open source. built on open protocols, sure. but the app is locked up. (HUGE MISS)
all that said, I really believe: better feeds = better experience = better shot at the fediverse going mainstream.
anyone else tried it?
do you know anyone building an open source version of this? is that even realistic?
I’d love to hear what do you think 😀
i also have the same grievances with surf.
::: spoiler i've seen a few that are clients for both the (microblogging) fediverse and bluesky,
| app | license | platform |
|---|---|---|
| fread | apache 2.0 | android |
| agora | mit | web/pwa |
| openvibe | proprietary | android & ios |
| soraSNS | proprietary | ios |
:::
but none seem to have any of the rest of the features, unfortunately.
SoraSNS: iOS Mastodon Misskey Bluesky Nostr client
Beautiful and futuristic iOS third party client for Mastodon, Misskey, Bluesky, and Nostr. Gallery mode, video reel, local ML powered For You feed keeps your timeline interesting!msz (MszPro・株式会社Smartソフト)
apps.apple.com/us/app/tapestry…
First review was interesting.
Tapestry by Iconfactory
Tapestry weaves your favorite blogs, social media, and more into a unified and chronological timeline.App Store
Flow control? China starts mega-dam project on Brahmaputra in Tibet; how will it impact India - Times of India
Flow control? China starts mega-dam project on Brahmaputra in Tibet; how will it impact India
China News: China has commenced construction of a major dam on the Brahmaputra River in Tibet, near the Indian border, with Premier Li Qiang present at the groundTOI World Desk (The Times Of India)
db2
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zero
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jordanlund
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tal
in reply to jordanlund • • •IIRC, they have hybrids with a bunch of other berries that don't have thorns.
I don't think that boysenberries have thorns, though I haven't been picking them for a long time.
kagis
Apparently there are thorny and thornless variants.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boysenbe…
The loganberry:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loganber…
The "smooth blackberry":
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubus_ca…
plants.ces.ncsu.edu/plants/rub…
Probably others.
species of plant
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)jordanlund
in reply to tal • • •Drusas
in reply to jordanlund • • •As a Pacific Northwesterner who also loves to eat blackberries, I have found that there are tactics. I can handle some brambles pretty well.
Raspberry thorns. Those are worse. They are so thin that they will go right through most leather gloves.
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Alloi
in reply to Pro • • •it can harvest my black berries.....
and by that i mean it can be used as an automated masturbation device to extract the semen via sexual stimulation from my genital region. implying that i wouldnt use it for its intended purpose, but for sexual ones, as a joke.
on a subconcious level, this is a knee jerk reaction to a creeping feeling that humans are becoming more and more obsolete in the face of automation, and the horrific potentialities of what is yet to come.
fuckin' clankers!
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Intheflsun
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