Browser Alternatives to Chrome
Hi!
I'm wondering if anybody here has used Vivaldi as their browser and if so, what did you like and what didn't you like?
Same questions for Ecosia.
Same questions for DuckDuckGo.
Are there any others that are worth looking at and if you think so, why? (Well, beyond the whole it's not connected to Google thing...)
Bad brainwaves: ChatGPT makes you stupid
Bad brainwaves: ChatGPT makes you stupid
In a new study, MIT Media Lab measured 55 people over four months on how well they could write an essay — either with ChatGPT, with a search engine, or just their unassisted brain. The researchers …Pivot to AI
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Is Matrix cooked?
In today's episode of Kill The Messenger, Matrix co-founder Matthew Hodgson reveals how full of bullshit is the writer of the original article.
The messages were published in the Office of the Matrix.org Foundation room: matrix.to/#%2F%21sWpnrYUMmaBrl…
paper.wf/alexia/matrix-is-cook… is fascinatingly incorrect
Until the 6th of November 2023 when they—in their words—moved to a different repository and to the AGPL license. In reality, the Foundation did not know this was coming, and a huge support net was pulled away under their feet.fwiw, the Foundation had a front-row seat in the fact that Element (as incorporated by the folks who created Matrix) had donated $$M to the Foundation over the years, but wasn't going to survive if it kept giving all its work away as apache-licensed code - which in turn would have been catastrophic for the Foundation.
Yes, the high expenses for the Matrix.org homeserver are largely because they are still managed by Element, just not as donated work but instead like with any other customer.nope, Element passes the hardware costs (and a fraction of the people costs) of running the matrix.org server to the Foundation without any overheads or markup at all.
Either way it shows that Element is seemingly cashing in on selling ,Matrix to governments and B2B as a SaaS solution without it going back to the foundationElement has literally put tens of millions into the foundation, and is continuing to do so - while some of the costs get passed to the Foundation, Element donates a bunch too (e.g. by funding a large chunk of the Matrix conference as the anchor sponsor, and by donating time all over the place to help support trust & safety etc)
At the same time I can't help but think that this could have been prevented. Even Matthew himself recognizes that putting the future on Matrix on the line with VC funding and alike was not the best idea for the health of Matrix.No, even Matthew knows that Matrix would never have been funded without routing the VC funding from Element into... building Matrix. We tried to fund it originally purely as a non-profit, but failed (just as it's a nightmare to raise non-profit for the Foundation today even now that Matrix exists and is successful!). If you need to raise serious $ for an ambitious project, you either need to get lucky with a billionaire (as Signal did with Brian Acton) or you have to raise on the for-profit side. Perhaps it would have have been best for Matrix to grow organically, but I suspect that if it did, it would have failed miserably - instead, it succeeded because we already had a team of ~12 people who could crack on and jump-start it if they could work on it as their dayjob; the team who subsequently founded Element.
Ultimately, for-profit companies will do what makes them profit, not what's the best option. Unless the best option happens to coincide with making the most profit.No, Element is not profitable. Nor is it trying to maximise profit. Right now it's trying to survive and get sustainable and profit-neutral (i.e. break-even) - while doing everything it can to help keep Matrix healthy and successful too (given if Matrix fails, Element fails too).
Unfortunately, supporting the foundation through anything more than “in spirit” and a platinum membership is out of their budget, apparently. I think that morally they owe a lot more than that.wow.
the FUD level is absolutely astonishing, and I really wonder what the genesis of this is
so, absolutely, spectacularly, depressing
this, my friends, is why we can't have nice things.
In response to an other person suggesting that the publisher is also known as a reasonable person on the platform:
Interesting, the matrix handle that seems behind this blog seems always to have been quite a reasonable personsomewhat why i’m wondering what the backstory is, and whether this is an unfortunate example of spicy lies outpacing the boring truth
Matrix - Decentralised and secure communication
You're invited to talk on Matrix. If you don't already have a client this link will help you pick one, and join the conversation. If you already have one, this link will help you join the conversationmatrix.to
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Jellyfin assistance
Hello,
I yet again come, hat in hand, for assistance from those wiser in the ways of the Linux. I’m having a bit of an issue downloading Jellyfin on my ElementaryOS laptop. I’ve tried all the guide on the first few pages of ddg only to receive errors after entering the comman “ sudo apt-get update “. I get ERR:3 https//repo.jellyfin.org/debian circle Release 404 Not found.
If someone can point me the way I’d be most appreciative
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Docker is a virtualization platform, similar to setting out a Virtual Machine but a lot less resource intense. You need to:
- install docker on your machine
- Start/enable the service (this is usually done automatically on most user friendly distros, and if you're using one that doesn't I expect you to know how to do it)
- Add your user to the docker group
That's it, docker setup done, now you need to write a compose file, i.e. something that tells docker what do you want to run, usually you get a working example on any project website, and linuxserver.io is a great site for them too, for example for Jellyfin can be found here: docs.linuxserver.io/images/doc…
Just create a folder, create a file called compose.yaml there and put that content in it, now run docker compose up -d and congratulations you have a working Jellyfin server.
With time you'll learn what the compose file is doing, for example the ports map ports from the docker to your machine, volumes does the same, so for example the example has /path/to/jellyfin/library:/config if instead you write ./config:/config a folder called config will be created on the same folder the compose.yaml file is and inside the docker it will be mounted as /config which is where Jellyfin will look for configurations. In the same manner you can add /home/myuser/Movies:/Movies and inside docker you will be able to see the contents of /home/myuser/Movies when scanning the /Movies folder.
jellyfin - LinuxServer.io
[Jellyfin](https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin) is a Free Software Media System that puts you in control of managing and streaming your media.docs.linuxserver.io
Op please don't ignore the above.
Learn docker once and you'll be able to install almost anything, rather than having to learn every individual app and how it installs on specific operating systems.
So, Jellyfin is one of those apps where the Docker documentation is really lacking. I'm gonna give you my docker-compose.yml file in case it helps:
services:
jellyfin:
image: jellyfin/jellyfin
user: 0:0
restart: 'unless-stopped'
ports:
- '8096:8096'
environment:
#- JELLYFIN_CACHE_DIR=/var/cache/jellyfin
#- JELLYFIN_CONFIG_DIR=/etc/jellyfin
- JELLYFIN_DATA_DIR=/var/lib/jellyfin
- JELLYFIN_LOG_DIR=/var/log/jellyfin
volumes:
- ./config:/config
- ./cache:/cache
- ./data:/var/lib/jellyfin
- ./log:/var/log/jellyfin
- /data/jellyfin:/data/jellyfin
devices:
- /dev/driFor me
/data/ is my RAID array, which is why my jellyfin data directory is there. Everything else goes in the same directory as the compose file. My system has a graphics card that does transcoding (Arc A380), so I have /dev/dri under devices.You should learn a lot about Docker Compose, because it will help you tremendously. I use Jellyfin behind an Nginx Proxy Manager reverse proxy. I'd highly recommend it. Here's my compose file for that:
services:
app:
image: 'jc21/nginx-proxy-manager:latest'
restart: unless-stopped
network_mode: "host"
#ports:
# - '80:80'
# - '81:81'
# - '443:443'
volumes:
- ./data:/data
- ./letsencrypt:/etc/letsencryptRunning in "host" mode is important, instead of just forwarding ports, because it lets you forward things to localhost, like pointing
https://media/.[mydomain]/ to http://127.0.0.1:8096/ for Jellyfin.Anyway, best of luck to you, and I hope that helps!
After that
apt update and retry. If it doesn’t work you can also try replacing it with „noble” but the you might also need to replace debian -> ubuntu, but that’s just my guess
UK police working with controversial tech giant Palantir on real-time surveillance network
The Nectar project offers 'advanced data analysis' using a wide range of sensitive personal informationA controversial US spy tech firm has landed a contract with UK police to develop a surveillance network that will incorporate data about citizens’ political opinions, philosophical beliefs, health records and other sensitive personal information.
Documents obtained by i and Liberty Investigates show Palantir Technologies has partnered with police forces in the East of England to establish a “real-time data-sharing network” that includes the personal details of vulnerable victims, children and witnesses alongside suspects.
Trade union membership, sexual orientation and race are among the other types of personal information being processed.
The project has sparked alarm from campaigners who fear it will trample over Britons’ human rights and “facilitate dystopian predictive policing” and indiscriminate mass surveillance.
Numerous police forces have previously refused to confirm or deny their links with Palantir, citing risks to law enforcement and national security. However, forces in Bedfordshire and Leicestershire have recently confirmed working with the firm.
Liberty Investigates and i have learned that those projects involve processing data from more than a dozen UK police forces and will serve as a pilot for a potential national rollout of the tech giant’s data mining technology — which has reportedly been used by police forces in the US to predict future crimes.
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Canalys: Companies limit genAI use due to unclear costs
Canalys: Companies limit genAI use due to unclear costs
The research firm believes generative AI's broader potential remains untapped because companies fear recurring cloud costs.Viktor Eriksson (Computerworld)
Finally Free - The Last Three Head Home - Ask You to Keep Mobilizing - Freedom Flotilla (2025-06-16)
Finally Free - The Last Three Head Home - Ask You to Keep Mobilizing - Freedom Flotilla (2025-06-16)freedomflotilla.org/2025/06/16…
———>> The Freedom Flotilla Coalition confirms that all the international human rights defenders and journalists that were aboard the civilian aid ship #Madleen are now en route home. The twelve were forcibly abducted and detained by Israeli forces while attempting to break Israel’s illegal and inhumane siege of Gaza and deliver humanitarian aid to its besieged population.
>> The last three detained #FreedomFlotilla volunteers, Marco van Rennes, Pascal Maurieras, and Yanis Mhamdi, were released from Israeli detention this morning and have begun their return to their home countries via the Jordanian border…
hcommons.social
hcommons.social is a microblogging network supporting scholars and practitioners across the humanities and around the world.Hometown hosted on hcommons.social
Gaza still under siege as more killed trying to collect aid
Gaza still under siege as more killed trying to collect aid
As the focus turns to the war between Israel and Iran, the war in Gaza is becoming ever more deadly and devastating.Channel 4 News
Palantir hits new highs amid Israel-Iran conflict
Palantir hits new highs amid Israel-Iran conflict
The fighting between Israel and Iran suggests the company’s Middle East business will continue to grow.Matt Phillips (Sherwood News)
Netanyahu tells ABC he's not ruling out taking out Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei
Netanyahu tells ABC he's not ruling out taking out Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei
"They're deliberately targeting our population," Netanyahu told ABC News.Jonathan Karl (ABC News)
Google’s Advanced Protection Arrives on Android: Should You Use It?
Google’s Advanced Protection Arrives on Android: Should You Use It?
With this week’s release of Android 16, Google added a new security feature to Android, called Advanced Protection. At-risk people—like journalists, activists, or politicians—should consider turning on.Electronic Frontier Foundation
Google’s Advanced Protection Arrives on Android: Should You Use It?
Google’s Advanced Protection Arrives on Android: Should You Use It?
With this week’s release of Android 16, Google added a new security feature to Android, called Advanced Protection. At-risk people—like journalists, activists, or politicians—should consider turning on.Electronic Frontier Foundation
South Hillsboro, OR.
Sure, it’s a moon I captured on a slightly hazy night, but I wanted to really test out my tripod and telephoto lens and capture something my cell phone would just repeatedly fail at. Ended up going with a one-second shutter after a two-second timer so my hand wouldn’t mess with the tripod balance, and with ISO 100, I had a long enough window to capture good detail on the moon, at least as much as my 75-300m f/4-5.6 telephoto lens would allow. There’s bigger lenses that do more daring stuff, but this one is mine.
Thanks for seeing some really big sky cheese!
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How to Dress and Undress your Home | To make buildings more energy-efficient, consider curtains, awnings, wall hangings, and other technologies from before houses were designed for air conditioning
How to Dress and Undress your Home
Before the large-scale use of fossil fuels, removable textile layers kept homes warm in winter and cool in summer.LOW←TECH MAGAZINE
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Iranian strikes expose lack of shelters for Palestinian citizens of Israel, residents say
Iranian strikes expose lack of shelters for Palestinian citizens of Israel, residents say
Palestinian citizens of Israel are having to fend for themselves amid ongoing missile strikes by Iran, with the beleaguered community lacking access to shelters and safe rooms due to discriminatory building policies.Lubna Masarwa (Middle East Eye)
Looking for feedback on 5-week degoogling plan
I created a 5-week degoogling plan PDF based on the steps in my book DISENGAGE: Escape the Leash of Big Tech, Scams and Surveillance—Everyday Resistance for the Digital Underdog.
Before I finalize and post it to my site, I'd love some feedback from people who have degoogled or are in the process of doing so.
The final package will be a single PDF, and I've pasted images of the pages below. The final infographic has a link for each product. Please don't worry about formatting issues, I'll get those fixed. But in general, I'm wondering.
- Does this seem motivational/doable?
- Are the tips clear?
- Is there anything that is now incorrect? I wrote the book originally two years ago and updated it in February, so some of my suggestions may already be out of date.
- At the bottom I mention that full instructions for each step are available in DISENGAGE, which is a free book. Is that enough? Or should I instead either note which chapter/page to look at for each step, or directly include links to instructions/tools online?
- The infographic at the end...is it weird to be sideways? I created it a while ago and don't want to have to redo it to fit the orientation. I could offer that separately, OR I could redo the whole PDF to be landscape instead of portrait (which I don't love).
- I'm thinking of turning this into a group challenge (also no cost). If there's enough interest, it could be the checklist, the book, and a Signal group (maybe with a weekly call). I don't know nearly everything about the topic, but I did degoogle myself, and everyone in the group/on the call can share questions and suggestions. What do you think of this idea?
Thanks!
Is Internet Content Too Engaging?
By targeting design rather than content, lawmakers hope to regulate social media without constitutional roadblocks. Here’s why that’s a problem.
Reddit will help advertisers turn ‘positive’ posts into ads
Reddit will help advertisers turn ‘positive’ posts into ads
Reddit is launching a new feature for advertisers, called “Conversation Summary Add-ons,” that slots positive posts from Reddit users right under their ads.Jay Peters (The Verge)
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Polish media outlets supportive of Poland’s national-conservative opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party have published a recording of a private phone call involving Prime Minister Donald Tusk when he was president of the European Council.
They say it shows how he was continuing to interfere in Polish politics – and speaking in a dismissive and vulgar way about certain parts of Poland – while holding his supposedly neutral EU position.
But commentators and legal experts, as well as figures from Poland’s current ruling camp, say that the conversation reveals nothing of interest and that the real issue is how it was recorded and came to light. They believe it was produced as part of illegal surveillance conducted under PiS using Pegasus spyware.
On Friday and Saturday, right-wing broadcasters wPolsce24 and Republika released audio from two phone conversations involving Roman Giertych, who is currently an MP elected on the list of Tusk’s centrist Civic Coalition (KO). One was with Paweł Graś, Tusk’s current chief of staff, and the other with Tusk himself.
Though the recordings are undated, their content makes clear that they were made in the lead-up to the October 2019 Polish parliamentary elections, when KO was in opposition and Tusk was head of the European Council.
During the majority of his conversation with Tusk, which lasts around 16 minutes, Giertych – who at the time worked as a lawyer, including for Tusk and his children – was complaining about the then-leader of KO, Grzegorz Schetyna.
Giertych expressed frustration that Schetyna was blocking his attempts to become an election candidate for KO, saying that Schetyna was trying to suggest that Giertych stand in districts where he would have little chance of winning.
Here, Giertych described the places being suggested by Schetyna (eastern Wielkopolska province and the city of Radom) as “shits” (using the English word), at which point Tusk expressed agreement that they were places “where the fuck-ups are” (“gdzie zjeby są”).
When publishing the material, Republika noted that, at the time, “Tusk was the president of the European Council and, according to EU law, he should not interfere in domestic political disputes. And yet the tapes show something completely different”.
In response to the release of the recordings, Giertych issued a statement in which he said that they were made “as part of an illegal operation conducted against me by the CBA [Central Anticorruption Bureau]” using Pegasus spyware purchased by the PiS government.
PiS has been accused of illegally buying Pegasus and then using it to spy on opponents of its government, including Giertych and Krzysztof Brejza, who was the head of KO’s election campaign in 2019. Extracts of recordings made using Pegasus were then leaked to PiS-friendly media.
“Recording conversations between a lawyer and his clients, not destroying them, taking copies of the conversations from the CBA, passing them on to the media and publishing these conversations are very serious crimes,” wrote Giertych. “Those guilty of all these crimes will be punished.”
Legally, the CBA is supposed to destroy surveillance recordings that do not contain evidence of any crime. Giertych has not been charged with any crime in relation to the content of the recordings.
Przemysław Rosati, the president of Poland’s Supreme Bar Council, says that the newly released recordings “confirm that Pegasus was used for surveillance without a legal basis and unrelated to state security”.
“Monitoring a lawyer’s telephone is an action that directly violates attorney-client privilege and…is simply an abuse of power,” he added.
Foreign minister Radosław Sikorski also commented on social media, writing that he “hopes the media will not get excited about tidbits [contained in the recordings] but will help identify the criminals who recorded and distributed conversations between a lawyer and client”.
Tusk himself has not yet commented on the recordings.
Since replacing PiS in power in December 2023, Tusk’s ruling coalition has launched a number of investigations into the use of Pegasus by the former government.
Last year, prosecutor general Adam Bodnar revealed that almost 600 people in Poland were targeted for surveillance with Pegasus between 2017 and 2022. The interior minister, Tomasz Siemoniak, said that this had included “too many cases” when it was used “against inconvenient politicians, lawyers, judges and prosecutors”.
Subsequently, a former PiS deputy justice minister, Michał Woś was charged with abusing his powers for the alleged illegal transfer of justice ministry funds to finance the purchase of Pegasus in 2017. He denies the allegations.
In February this year, the head of the CBA, Agnieszka Kwiatkowska-Gurdak, resigned from her position after refusing to answer questions during an appearance before a parliamentary commission investigating the use of Pegasus spyware.
What tools are people using to create batches of torrents?
For occasional torrent creation, qBittorrent has Tools > Torrent Creator, but suppose one has hundreds of folders from which to create individual torrents. A quick internet search yields forum posts from more than ten years ago mentioning dead projects. For example, this Reddit post from 2013 mentions qMakeTorrent, which is no longer maintained.
How are people doing this in 2025? I reckon one could write a bash or python script for this, but are there any user friendly tools out there that are built for this purpose and still actively maintained?
GitHub - kz26/qMakeTorrent: an advanced torrent file creator with batch functionality, powered by libtorrent-rasterbar
an advanced torrent file creator with batch functionality, powered by libtorrent-rasterbar - kz26/qMakeTorrentGitHub
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GitHub - pobrn/mktorrent: A simple command line utility to create BitTorrent metainfo files
A simple command line utility to create BitTorrent metainfo files - pobrn/mktorrentGitHub
Apple Researchers Just Released a Damning Paper That Pours Cold Water on the Entire AI Industry
cross-posted from: midwest.social/post/29979054
can't understand why they keep needing more power. like trying to smash through a wall or something.
Apple Researchers Just Released a Damning Paper That Pours Cold Water on the Entire AI Industry
Researchers at Apple have released a damning paper that throws cold water on the "reasoning" capabilities of modern AIs.Victor Tangermann (Futurism)
Trattato di non proliferazione: da quando l'Iran ha un programma nucleare? da Focus.it
Trattato di non proliferazione: da quando l'Iran ha un programma nucleare?
Il programma nucleare in Iran iniziò nel 1954 quando gli Usa fornirono a Teheran un reattore a uranio arricchito, ma il Trattato di non proliferazione cambiò le regole del gioco.Focus.it
Is Internet Content Too Engaging?
By targeting design rather than content, lawmakers hope to regulate social media without constitutional roadblocks. Here’s why that’s a problem.
A useless add-on Russia’s Wikipedia replacement is touting its integrated AI — but the results are underwhelming
A useless add-on
Russia’s Wikipedia replacement is touting its integrated AI — but the results are underwhelmingMeduza
A useless add-on Russia’s Wikipedia replacement is touting its integrated AI — but the results are underwhelming
A useless add-on
Russia’s Wikipedia replacement is touting its integrated AI — but the results are underwhelmingMeduza
LLM agents flunk CRM and confidentiality tasks
Salesforce study finds LLM agents flunk CRM and confidentiality tests
: 6-in-10 success rate for single-step tasksLindsay Clark (The Register)
🍹 Log Out @ Bologna
Lunedì 23 Giugno torna il Log Out!
Log Out è il ritrovo dei Tech Worker che dopo il lavoro vogliono incontrarsi. Un'occasione per socializzare, conoscersi, parlare del nostro lavoro o di qualsiasi altra cosa ci piaccia. Un incontro informale davanti ad una birra, un cocktail o una bibita per scaricare la stanchezza della giornata di lavoro.
Unisciti al gruppo Telegram!
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The Riker Maneuver vs. The Picard Maneuver
- 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
Reddit will help advertisers turn ‘positive’ posts into ads
Reddit will help advertisers turn ‘positive’ posts into ads
Reddit is launching a new feature for advertisers, called “Conversation Summary Add-ons,” that slots positive posts from Reddit users right under their ads.Jay Peters (The Verge)
Troops Deployed to LA Have Done Precisely One Thing, Pentagon Says
I Tried Pre-Ordering the Trump Phone. The Page Failed and It Charged My Credit Card the Wrong Amount
The website failed, went to an error page, and then charged my credit card the wrong amount of $64.70. I received a confirmation email saying I’ll receive a confirmation when my order has been shipped, but I haven’t provided a shipping address or paid the full $499 price tag. It is the worst experience I’ve ever faced buying a consumer electronic product and I have no idea whether or how I’ll receive the phone.
I look forward to learning more about how terrible these phones turn out.
I Tried Pre-Ordering the Trump Phone. The Page Failed and It Charged My Credit Card the Wrong Amount
I got a confirmation email saying I'll get another confirmation when it's shipped. But I haven't provided a shipping address.Joseph Cox (404 Media)
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RNC Sued Over WinRed's Constant 'ALL HELL JUST BROKE LOOSE!' Fundraising Texts
The Johnsons claim that the RNC sent Samantha 17 messages from 16 different phone numbers, nine of the messages after she demanded the messages stop 12 times. Cari received 27 messages from 25 numbers, they claim, and she sent 20 stop requests.
I know my phone gets blasted to hell every election season.
RNC Sued Over WinRed's Constant 'ALL HELL JUST BROKE LOOSE!' Fundraising Texts
The RNC and other Republican groups are violating Utah telecommunications law by continuing to text people incessantly after they've asked them to stop, a new complaint alleges.Samantha Cole (404 Media)
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The "standard" car charger is usually overkill—but your electrician might not know that [32:26]
- 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
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BlueMonday1984
in reply to David Gerard • • •Posted this on a Discord I'm in - one of the near immediate responses was "I'm glad they made a non-invasive procedure to lobotomise people".
Nothing more to add, I just think that's hilarious