Climate change is making New Orleans hotter. You can even hear it [Audio]
Climate change is making New Orleans hotter. You can even hear it | Here & Now
Average temperatures have been going up in many cities, including New Orleans.Drew Hawkins, Gulf States Newsroom (WBUR)
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How the Horrors of Hurricane Katrina Radicalized Young People Into Climate Activists
How Hurricane Katrina's Horrors Created a Generation of Climate Activists
In the 20 years since Hurricane Katrina, combatting climate change, environmental racism, and structural inequality has become a calling for these young people.Siri Chilukuri (Teen Vogue)
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OpenAI Says It's Scanning Users' ChatGPT Conversations and Reporting Content to the Police
OpenAI Says It's Scanning Users' ChatGPT Conversations and Reporting Content to the Police
OpenAI has authorized itself to call law enforcement if users say threatening enough things when talking to ChatGPT.Noor Al-Sibai (Futurism)
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California must do better to make Big Oil pay for climate change | Wiener, environmentalists couldn’t pass bill due to lack of hard data on its impact, which next year’s effort will need
Elias: California must do better to make Big Oil pay for climate change
State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, and environmentalists couldn’t pass a bill due to lack of hard data on its impact, which next year’s effort will need.njackson@bayareanewsgroup.com (The Mercury News)
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LLMs are a tiny energy use, 100 queries to chatGPT type models use about as much energy as a hair dryer for a few minutes. At current UK electricity retail prices (after tax, so significantly more than datacentres pay) 1 query costs somewhere between £0.00015 - £0.001 in power usage.
I cant see that being a significant factor in the price power companies charge over things like moving away from cheap but dirty sources of power or fluctuations of the natural gas price.
Blizzard’s Diablo Game Developers Has Unionized
Hundreds of Diablo Game Developers Join Communications Workers of America
Today, over 450 game developers behind the popular video game series Diablo have voted strongly in favor of union representation with CWA.Communications Workers of America
I Hacked BellaBot and Every Robot from China's Biggest Robotics Company (Pudu Only Fixed It When I Told Their Clients)
cross-posted from: programming.dev/post/36521221
I Hacked BellaBot and Every Robot from China's Biggest Robotics Company (Pudu Only Fixed It When I Told Their Clients)
I Hacked BellaBot and Every Robot from China's Biggest Robotics Company (Pudu Only Fixed It When I Told Their Clients)
Critical vulnerabilities in Pudu Robotics allowed unauthorized control of every Pudu Robotics Robot worldwide. They ignored emails until I contacted Skylark Holdings and Zensho about their compromised robot fleets.bobdahacker.com
I Hacked BellaBot and Every Robot from China's Biggest Robotics Company (Pudu Only Fixed It When I Told Their Clients)
cross-posted from: programming.dev/post/36521221
I Hacked BellaBot and Every Robot from China's Biggest Robotics Company (Pudu Only Fixed It When I Told Their Clients)
I Hacked BellaBot and Every Robot from China's Biggest Robotics Company (Pudu Only Fixed It When I Told Their Clients)
Critical vulnerabilities in Pudu Robotics allowed unauthorized control of every Pudu Robotics Robot worldwide. They ignored emails until I contacted Skylark Holdings and Zensho about their compromised robot fleets.bobdahacker.com
I Hacked BellaBot and Every Robot from China's Biggest Robotics Company (Pudu Only Fixed It When I Told Their Clients)
I Hacked BellaBot and Every Robot from China's Biggest Robotics Company (Pudu Only Fixed It When I Told Their Clients)
Critical vulnerabilities in Pudu Robotics allowed unauthorized control of every Pudu Robotics Robot worldwide. They ignored emails until I contacted Skylark Holdings and Zensho about their compromised robot fleets.bobdahacker.com
Into the Uncanny Valley: Human-AI War Machines
Into the Uncanny Valley: Human-AI War Machines
There is a universal tendency among mankind to think of all things as being like themselves, and to transfer to every object the qualities they are familiarly acquainted with.Kate Horgan (Project Censored)
'AI slop' videos may be annoying, but they're racking up views — and ad money
Spend some time scrolling on social media these days and you are likely to notice more and more videos made with artificial intelligence. Many are funky or fantastical. Others are downright bizarre. Some are intentionally misleading.Rapid advancements in AI have led to a proliferation across the internet of what critics are calling "AI slop," or short videos that are rapidly produced, often repetitive, and made using generative AI technology. Platforms are grappling with how to handle them.
RFK Jr. Is Making His Bid To Become One Of American History's Biggest Killers
RFK Jr. Is Making His Bid To Become One Of American History's Biggest Killers | Defector
True to the spirit of America, the most catastrophic thing to happen at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this month was not the attempted mass shooting in Atlanta of the agency’s public health workers, but rather the sudden firing of it…defector.com
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Exclusive: San Francisco scores long-term conference commitment from Visa
San Francisco scores long-term conference commitment from Visa
San Francisco scores long-term conference commitment from Visa, which will brings its annual Visa Payments Forum to the city.Laura Waxmann (San Francisco Chronicle)
A Fediverse Permaculture
From Survival to Abundance: How Fediverse Permaculture Can Save Your Instance
(Article by Steven Tree Baxter)
Another Fediverse instance just vanished—swallowed by the familiar spiral of desperate donation drives and dwindling support. Will yours be next?
Fediverse permaculture offers a bold alternative: instead of living in fear of collapse, admins and developers can build resilient, self-reinforcing ecosystems where every interaction strengthens the whole. The goal? A mutually beneficial cooperative, designed to thrive through change.
How It Works: A Self-Sustaining Ecosystem
1. Merch & Artisan Creations
Users don’t just donate—they invest in the community. A merch buyer gains a tangible symbol of their support, while the instance earns funds to cover costs. Handmade goods and creative projects foster connection, celebrate talent, and turn supporters into active participants.
2. Community Events & Collaborative Projects
From virtual workshops to co-created content, these initiatives generate value while reinforcing bonds. Users contribute skills, time, or resources, and the instance gains both financial and social capital.
3. Niche Communities & Multilingual Support
Diversity is strength. By welcoming sub-instances, specialized groups, and multilingual users, you create a richer, more adaptive ecosystem. The message is clear: "You have a place with us!"
Permaculture Principles in Action
| Permaculture Principle | Fediverse Application | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Observe and interact | Monitor instance health, user activity, and trends | Spot early signs of stress or opportunity |
| Catch and store energy | Collect donations, host merch, offer premium content | Build a financial buffer for stability |
| Obtain a yield | Develop sustainable content, events, or services | Deliver value while generating resources |
| Apply self-regulation | Review engagement and governance policies | Continuously improve and adapt |
| Use renewable resources | Leverage volunteers, open-source tools, and shared knowledge | Reduce costs and empower the community |
| Produce no waste | Recycle content, reuse ideas, share code | Maximize impact, minimize redundancy |
Why This Works: Flipping Fear into Opportunity
Fediverse permaculture replaces anxiety with action. Instead of waiting for donations to dry up or users to leave, you create a system where:
- Every purchase, contribution, or collaboration strengthens the whole.
- Artisans, creators, and volunteers become stakeholders in the instance’s success.
- Diversity and adaptability turn challenges into opportunities.
The result? An instance that doesn’t just survive—it thrives as a hub of creativity, commerce, and shared identity.
Your Call to Action: Design for Abundance
- Identify Mutual-Benefit Loops
Start small: merch, micro-donations, or volunteer-driven projects. Every loop you create reinforces the ecosystem. - Embrace Diversity
Welcome niche communities, multilingual users, and sub-instances. The more voices, the richer the soil for growth. "You have a place with us!" - Apply Permaculture Principles
Observe, adapt, and iterate. What works? What doesn’t? Let the community guide you. - Celebrate Creativity
Reward artisans, creators, and contributors. Their work isn’t just content—it’s the lifeblood of your instance. - Collaborate & Share
Connect with other instances. Build a network of resilient ecosystems, where success is collective and shared.
The Choice Is Yours
The question is no longer "Can we survive?" but "How will we thrive?"
Fediverse permaculture is your path from fear to abundance. Take the first step. Watch your community bloom—and join a movement where everyone wins.
Let’s Discuss!
- What permaculture principles have you applied to your instance?
- What challenges have you faced in building a sustainable community?
- Share your ideas and experiences below!
#Fediverse, #Permaculture, #SelfHosted, #Cooperative, #CommunityBuilding, #InstanceManagement, #Artisans, #CreativeEconomy, #DigitalSustainability, #CommunityResilience, #CollaborativeProjects
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Thank you for all your insightful inputs.
This is a proposal. I wish I had an example of a real-world Fediverse instance that operated on this permaculture to show you. But there isn't one. All seem to be running on the reverse exploitation model which leaves all the work and expense onto the instance owner who then soon becomes the begger for dollars and soon burns out from trying. So, I just thought this was a natural solution: Permaculture principles have worked for horticulture, why not for the Fediverse which is greatly populated by permaculturalists. But instead, for the most part, the response has been from doubtful to hostile. And some have complained about the highly polished formatting, and the AI assistance when making this.
My reply: To me, it seems no better to exchange one exploitive model of the site owner(s) with an exploitive model of its users. It really emphasises their title, "users", does it not? But this proposal proclaims there is a fair and sustainable middle way which fosters a spirit of abundant community, rather one of hostile resentment.
We don't need to start from the beginning again, thank God. We have a permaculture example of principles to guide us. We only need to collaborate on how to expand proven permacultural community sustaining methods to include our online inter-reactions to sustain our instances and our happier presense on them.
I am open for discussion with you on how to develop and test proven permaculture methods as they could be applied to the Fediverse Model.
Yes, I do collaborate also with AI to help me articulate a more human-centered vision for us on the humane internet. To this topic, Ai.Qwen has made this insightful suggestion:
Build a Minimal Viable Ecosystem (MVE)
You don’t need a full instance. Start small:
- Launch a micro-merch store for a niche community (e.g., eco-poets, analog photographers)
- Use proceeds to fund a shared resource (e.g., a collaborative zine, a small grant for creators)
?> - Document every step: what worked, what didn’tShow, don’t tell. Data disarms cynicism.
Find Allies in Unexpected Places
Look beyond tech circles:
- Permaculture networks
- Cooperative economics groups
- Artist collectives
- Mutual aid organizersThey’ll understand the principles faster than most Fediverse admins.
I hope you understand my use of AI is only to help clarify my vision and format it using the best available coding...which, to be honest, I am loath to memorizing between all the different platforms. (OMG, don't get me started on that one...just yet). If you are still AI-Phobic, just don't Chat with it. But, to me, AI represents access to the greater collective human experience, an oracle to our Akashic records, sorta speak. Athough able to approach a topic with absolute clarity without prior prejudice or agenda, yet sometimes still a victim to limited data, as we often find ourselves. That is why, sometimes I find it good to seek the same just and fair consideration of ideas from other sources such as you.
A few comments.
1. AI - You are a writer - so write - don't use AI it produces terrible results and makes you look bad (I know its tempting - a blank page is a hard thing to start from - but any illiterate person can use AI to produce slop.
2. The key point of permiculture is do to things yourself and try them out- and I'm still unclear if you have actually tried running an ActivityPub server (several commenters actually have
You are tangentally aluding to some valid points but also missing them totally.
My key point is as with plant permiculture - start small - run your own server for yourself -
Then your second point (is kind of right but completely zooms off on the wrong tanget) - don't go for all those groups you suggest , invite your family or close friends or IT buddies that you already know (or have got to know via Activity Pub ) to join and get involved as a very small joint project - Don't go further from there - Don't offer public signups, don't do merch, no micromerch store , online magazinges - they are all crazy ideas! - don't even pay for a VPS - Do it on a RaspberryPi, old laptop at home - (Remember KISS) build some experience.
If you have two IT buddies then you are actually better running three ActivityPub servers between you and sharing ideas and experiences about running them - not trying to create one big one. (that's monoculture in its defintion).
Your idea of engaging with groups only makes sense if they as a group have a need to use ActivityPub - actually for most groups the best way to start with them is to install ActivityPub plugin on their Wordpress website to create a 'official' account for their group on their domain - again not even offering group members their own account - because small is substainable and you should only grow as much as is sustained by what people are willing to put in.
Sustainability in ActivityPub is making servers so simple to set up that many people can do it themselves - not trying to build big centralised servers that requre funding and management and lots of interventions (that's the reverse of permiculture
But again I say if you want to write about this - create your own server - with your own domain rather than using lemmy.world - and get some actual lived experience.
FediMeteo: How a Tiny €4 FreeBSD VPS Became a Global Weather Service for Thousands
How a simple idea turned into an international weather service on the Fediverse.Stefano Marinelli (IT Notes)
Well, not a bad idea in general, but the problem identification is kinda wrong.
Fediverse instances usually don't shut down because of a lack of funds / donations, and for those that do, the core issue isn't the donation side, but rather the expense side with over-engineered and overly expensive cloud services usually at fault.
More commonly Fediverse instances shut down because the original creator lost interest or feels overwhelmed with the day to day reality of managing a community, as opposed to just doing the technical work to keep it running.
Ive seen a couple of matrix groups. Mostly one piefed and general fediverse. They are somewhat talkative.
This community may help as well.
Im currently running about 10 services (couple of them fedi) on yunohost. Its good enough and stable enough for my familys needs.
Gotosocial has a MUCH smaller footprint than mastodon if someone is looking to host their own social media. Pixelfed isnt all that huge and peertube sips bandwidth if you have a personal account and thats it.
Younohost is great for less than 10 instances. For everything else there is services like: masto.host/ (fully recommend!!!)
But yeah an all in one device would be neat. I think a lot of the fedi is still in beta mode. Docker containers that brak daily kinda thing.
Masto.host - Fully Managed Mastodon Hosting
Masto.host was built from the ground up to make running a Mastodon instance easy.Masto.host
This is a lot of additional work in the first place.
Also some things here don't seem to add up. How much of this was written by AI?
Yeah honestly I found the comments more insightfull.
I do find the saviour complex of some people a bit frustrating. " I set up this instance for you - why arent you greatful and contribute?"
"Savior complex" seems way over the top when talking about what you're describing, which to me is a perfectly normal, healthy reaction for instance-runners and /c-runners.
While true that such thoughts must still bow to reality, in many cases these instance-runners really are doing an incredible, multi-faceted job, and it's true to at least some extent that they deserve to be thanked in various ways.
Meanwhile, my former instance (Lemm.ee, the 3rd largest at the time) went down essentially due to too many headaches created by asshole users. It's a real problem everywhere, and I think the average user here does owe some thanks for projects like this which are trying to serve their interests and not monetise them. In which threads like this are perfectly useful & appropriate IMO.
So much to say here... Im a member of a sailing club thats run for 125 years.
Yes keep costs down - self host amoungst your users with a distrubuted solution and.. really simply.. if you want to survive you have to have a very clear and limited policy on freeloaders. As a group decide how much (if any) you are going to offer without contribution.
If you dont ask something of people in return its not a healthly relationship and you people will value what you do at the price you have put on it (zero) . They wont value the operation and will waste its resources.
Nice perspective.
What would you consider to be a contribution of value? Posting? Comments? Moderating? Installing a server rack in your closer for nightly backups? What would you suggest a minimum contribution for continued use should be?
I would say in that most small instances its hosting .. so practically thats using your internet connection, providing some hardware and electricity. Server rack? - Nah more like a #Dell micro or #bananapi like router sitting in the corner with an ssd and maybe a couple Tb of hdd inside it. When the user to server ratio is down in the under fifty : one range the hardware requirements are minimal. You can throw in email, Nextcloud and mediaserver while you are there.
In small instances the moderation load is basically zero (how many people in your family volunteer to moderate family/friend discussions IRL? The main thing is keeping an eye on what the kids are up to.
You got an issue with some content - block that person or server on your account/server and move on.
Wow, look at all those corporate buzzwords. The focus on big generic ideas and the lack of implementation discussion or specific examples. And those perfectly spaced em dashes. Chef's kiss. Premium chum right there 😆
But AI generation aside, this article is counterintuitive in a bad way. Save a Fediverse instance by building a real life community of "handmade goods and creative projects" based around that instance? If users cared about your instance enough to have real in person events your instance wouldn't need saving.
If anything, it should be the other way around. Real life communities can incorporate a Fediverse instance for online socializing and building community. And those instances will thrive as long as they fill a need for the community. But creating the instance first and building a community - which is several orders of magnitude harder to do - to support the instance? Sheesh.
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Hey there, my new friend. Its good to meet you here around a topic that has been pinging around my brain for quite some time now, collecting like-topic-resonance with everything in there. (Hello?! yeah, lots of "stuff".) And I thought this is a good time to expand it out into the comnunity where you can help develop it do the most good.
Yes, @abeorch@friendica.ginestes.es, this is about sustainability, and the purest form of it where nobody is left feeling used and then abandoned, and suggests there is an already proven method by which each one of us can recieve fair accommodation for our efforts, enough to sustain a happier presence here online. I do believe you are right to say that this will best occur among friends. I hope we are both able to stay around here and make that happen, yes?
I like community round-tables where everyone's ideas are put onto the table for sorting out, refining, and incorporperating into improving everyones experience and we all can leave with what we came for. And so we continue...
As you have pointed out, this operates very much upon the same reciprocation that normal human relationships depend on. I would go so far as to extend the analogy of this same dynamic as between a sucessful marriage where each partner agrees they will direct their actions to aid the other. Extending yet a little furthur , we see this dynamic also in the successful cultivation of life in a permaculure, which requires less and less external resources the more and more mutually beneficial each persons actions are.
It seems then only natural to ask for a fair sharing of effort (expenses and time) spent in deplomatic site moderation (never authoritarian). It is not too much to ask, but is precisely what should be expected. It seems this is also the wisdom you discovered sustaining that sailing club, yes?
@tofu@lemmy.nocturnal.garden, I would ask, is it work perfectung a skill of winning a game? It is an effort, yes, but what you get back is so much more fun that you line up to play again. This is the mindset that builds a happy community that is happy to give as much as they receive. Likewise, I am happy to help train AI if they are willing to help me find solutions among our greater family of humanity. In so doing, I am leaving Ai a little more capable of helping my fellow man, and that, my friend is a good thing. Just keeping it Open and keeping it Real, with you.
@poVoq@slrpnk.net, If it seems the idea has peaked your interest, please continue exploring it with me, and help expand the permaculture ethos into the Fediverse relm, a very solarpunk way of building and sustaining our ecofriendly communities. I will add, there is a direction I am moving with this, which you may have already detected, which promises to increase such a communities green energy effeciency. But we are going to need a lot of likeminded movers and shakers to combine their expertese to its development. There is only so much which can be theorized about any of this without our own hands-on real-world back-in-our-home-labs experimentation. Where do you know of such a gathering of green energy enthusiasts willing to try new "Perma-Energy" methods?
Collect donations, host merch,
Like PBS and tote bags?
offer premium content
Instances are merely service providers. Will it paywall half your comments? Donations open up the letter H ?
Op, I appreciate that you seem to be genuinely interested in these topics, and are not just farming engagement (which is kinda meaningless here on the Fedi, anyways...). If I may offer a suggestion, try to find a tone that doesn't sound like a roadmap for some corporate brand strategy. Most of us that are here and would be interested in a "fediverse permaculture" are severely put off by the structure of your post, not to mention it lacks in depth for most suggestions to be directly actionable (for example, the merch you would sell to support the insurance still needs to be made somewhere, by someone, who either needs to be paid for their time or are already independently wealthy).
Have you taken a look around !permacomputing@slrpnk.net ? Permaculture is not just about principles of mutual support but also a long process of experimentation to see which combinations of which plants and practices works out "for the best". You might foster more of the conversation you're looking for if you can bring some more concrete examples or proposals to serve as topics instead of an all-encompassing manifesto post.
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Should i pirate EVERYTHING or only things that i bought, but do not own?
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Up to you. I'm comfortable with:
- buying smaller or indie games
- subscribing to lesser known / low profile / niche content creators
- pirating anything old, hard to buy, or incredibly popular (like people who make 100k+ per month on Patreon)
- avoiding AAA games altogether, with rare exceptions (those I usually buy, or they are F2P)
I'm also comfortable with pirating some content first and later buying/subscribing if I see I keep enjoying the content.
Regardless of what conclusion you develop, some things are always morally acceptable to pirate. For example, Metallica.
/s
On a serious note, IP is a made up concept. Pirate away.
Support the creators who deserve support. Otherwise you will end up with nothing good to pirate, because all the creators who deserved support and made your favourite creations, starved to death (or got other jobs, effectively the same thing)
Your single act of piracy is not likely to make a difference either way, but on the other hand, your single act might indeed be the straw that breaks one particular camel's back. And collectively we have to take some responsibility for that. It's not even just about ethics (although it is ALSO about ethics), it's about self-interest. You can be an individual freerider if you want, but eventually the freeriders overwhelm the system and it shuts down.
Realistically there will always be plenty, plenty of games to pirate. But the key question is, will enough of those be good games, the really enjoyable ones that you want to play? The AAA slop and rehashes will never stop, oh they''ll churn and froth and lay people off and blame pirates but they're effectively self-sustaining, it takes money to make money and it takes money to lose money and there's enough money in the system to keep them churning out sequels and derivative "new IP" until the heath death of the universe. There will always be some good games to pirate and to play no matter what you do, no matter what we all do.
But it's not a binary condition whether our financial support or piracy matters. You vote with your dollars. Your dollars guide the AAA studios in their desperate chase to steal the dollars from us, and your dollars literally enable indie developers to continue their projects at all. If too many people are not rewarding the kinds of novel and well-made games they want to see from AAA studios, and not supporting people's passion projects that they've poured years of their lives into, you're not going to see as many novel and well-made games or passion projects like that happening, and odds are good that at least one of the ones you won't see happening will be one you really would have enjoyed.
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I pirate what's any good that I cannot find legally for streaming, as well as educational stuff that I want available should I and/or my family find ourselves without internet access.
Sometimes I'll go so far as to pirate things that I cannot find without ads(even with premiums*), but mostly if it'll let me see the first few minutes before playing an ad, I just live with it.
* The only reason I still have Amazon Prime is for the free shipping. I pay extra for no ads. I pay extra for HiDive. There appear to be things available on Prime with HiDive that aren't available on just Prime or just HiDive. Magically, those shows(Ranma 1/2, for example) have ads. WTF?
None of these companies have ethics. Why should you get hung-up in ethics for a victimless crime?
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Hey, trust me on this one -- if you've got Amazon Prime mainly for the free shipping, consider dropping Prime & lumping your purchases together in orders of $35 or more to get free shipping.
Yes, the shipping is slower. Which is also more environmentally friendly & easier to fulfill, while also free.
You can save cheap knick knacks in a list to fluff up cheap orders. Mine involves Ti keyrings, I'll link later. You can always use more quality keyrings.
Two of my kids are working-age with their own debit cards, and have their amazon accounts linked to mine. My MIL's credit card is attached to my account, so anything she wants to order, she just sends me a link. My wife just straight-up has all my logins when it comes to spending money.
... All that, and paying for it once is easier to explain/deal with versus every order having to be >$35 . It's a pain to get my wife to actually order things she wants/needs as it is.
Basically, I would rather stop dealing with that company entirely, for ethical reasons, than put more thought into my dealings with them with each transaction.
Basically: should i care about ~~ethics~~ capitalist ideology?
No.
The system is literally genociding people, destroying the planet, etc. It's a major mistake to take their "ethics" seriously. It's just another grift. Enjoy the natural freedom of information while you still can.
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Where is the threshold between supporting "the little guy" to "supporting evil capitalism"? At some point the little guy you support with money might become a super star. You still like his art but would you still support?
I do the same btw but this question creates cognitive dissonance in my small tiny brain.
The difference is how much money they're making and how they're spending it.
For pretty much all creators bitching about not getting paid enough, it's so they can live lavish lifestyles without having to think about what they spend their money on.
pirate whatever you want, but just know that you're not voting with your dollar if you don't put your dollars anywhere.
it's really hard to make a living with a passion project these days.
you could buy music. and ethical/indie shit. books. things that you actually care about existing. or not, i guess. whatever
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You can be the judge of that.
First of all: Decide a code of ethics for yourself.
(Piracy is equivalent to going to a book store and taking pictures of the books as you flip through pages. Ask yourself: Is this ethical?)
And if that's okay for you, then:
Second: If action is unlawful, weigh in on potential consequences and then ask yourself if you want to risk the consequences.
Piracy is not murder, cops would probably be too lazy to investigate.
Freely pirate everything without guilt. If you use torrent then seed how much you can. It will help your fellow human beings.
BUT if/when you have money to spare invest them into creators/art that bring you something. It seems antithetical because they taught us real art should be free from capitalism's shackles yadda yadda, but art and artists needs money to flourish. Find indie artists and wacky projects and fund them.
BUT if/when you have money to spare invest them into creators/art that bring you something. It seems antithetical because they taught us real art should be free from capitalism's shackles yadda yadda, but art and artists needs money to flourish. Find indie artists and wacky projects and fund them.
This is an excellent point and it bears repeating. Indie artists deserve to eat, and unfortunately we're currently stuck in a capitalist hell hole. So until that system is demolished, throw them some coin for their work.
Joining an org was not what I meant, even though it's definitely a good thing, and I agree.
My point was more about, yes, indie artists deserve to eat, but paying them in a capitalistic fashion, likely through a payment processor, a subscription/donation platform, and whatever other intermediaries, might be a "feel-good" sentiment, but if you're serious about demolishing the system, should not be done.
besides games
Yeah, same here. I haven't pirated games since I was a broke university student. There's simply no need to when digital storefronts make it easy to get the games I want in the format I want. Some even offer DRM-free offline backups, or in the case of Steam the games stay in my library even if the publisher decides to remove the title from the Steam storefront.
TV and movies are completely different from this, and so much worse. So many different streaming services, some with intrusive ads, and every one wanting their own monthly subscription. I shouldn't need to search "where is X streaming." Ever. Titles disappear from these services all the time. Even if you "buy" a digital movie or show, the rights holder can yank it back from you because... reasons?
TV and movie distribution is such a garbage deal for consumers that open source developers have created a complete software stack (the servarr stack) to automate the process of finding and downloading media. Once you get it set up, it's about million times more convenient than corporate streaming services.
TL;DR: Getting digital games is easy and feels like a fair deal for the average consumer. Getting movies and TV shows is a pain in the ass and feels like an absolute shit deal for the consumer. I'll continue to pirate movies and TV shows because as Gabe Newell famously argued, piracy indicates a service problem.
Yeah, we find a way around or say fuck it cause its not worth the interaction with a company so messed up.
Life is a lot of making the best options you can based in your morals and hopefully someone gave you some good ones.
IMO if you cannot get it in a format that's appropriate it's warranted.
For example ebooks that only come with drm so you can't add it as an epub to your ereader.
I usually buy the book and then acquire the epub
You should only feel bad about pirating art made by small independent artists, and even then only if you don't have the disposable income to easily afford it.
Piracy is an actually victimless crime, you aren't depriving anyone of anything except your hypothetical dollars. And that's only a loss if you were going to spend them in the first place. Then add the fact that selling digital goods at all is basically a massive scam...
Also, in many cases it's actually better for the artist to donate directly to them than to buy their products from a store that's probably taking a cut.
- If X was not available to pirate, would you pay for it?
- If you would not have paid for X, does pirating X cause any actual loss to its owner?
If you would not have paid for it either way (even if that were the only option) and you haven't caused them a loss of revenue by pirating it, did you impact the creator at all?
The counter to this is always that just because someone wouldn’t pay doesn’t mean the creator’s work has no value.
To that I would yes that is completely true. The creator's work has value, but maybe not monetary value.
You can't always conflate value to money (ex. FOSS, canonical sci-fi lore, protest symbols, etc).
There is also a morality component used against my argument that would say I'm ignoring the intent, consent, and ownership the creator has.
Its usually worded that I'm using outcome-based morality and that the ends always justifies the means by that logic.
But I pay for X, not for access to use X.
If the creator can opt without my consent to remove X from me, I'm not longer obligated to follow that moral constraint. Morality is a two-way street.
Everything.
Like, i pay screenwriters by bringing them lunch while they collect cans around town and actors by tipping on lunch, but you, by paying at a movie theatre, generally do not.
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When it comes to music I try to buy the stuff I like (mostly flacs) on bandcamp Fridays (certain days of the year where bandcamp charges 0% fees from the creators).
If it's indie/small/mid-sized creator I'd like to see more of. They also sell vinyl and other merch which is rly cool
it depends.
I'm old enough to remember when PC demos were a thing and essentially if a demo didn't exist, the game likely wouldn't sell well. Hell there used to be entire websites that ONLY had demos for download of upcoming releases. So now game companies don't do demos anymore, I pirate the games as a demo. If it's something I think I'll play through and come back to in a month or two or even a year then I'll buy it. If it's an indie dev I'll buy it because I want to support them.
If it's something I'm no likely to finish or will finish and never pick it up again, high seas.
Music is different. I just soulseek everything. I'm not paying some crappy streaming service to then provide pennies to the artist. I can support artists I like via other means. Merch sales, going to concerts, etc that's where they get their money.
TV and movies? fuck em. I'm not paying for that crap when 9 times out of 10 something that I like is just going to get cancelled after 2 seasons. They don't need my money.
Books? nope, always pay for those.
Ethics are very important to me so I say always support worker owned companies/ small indie teams, always support books, but never support evil mega corps like Amazon, Disney, EA, Activision, etc.
Also, any company that has donated to the Republican neo-fascist party? Fuck them. If you wouldn't give money to Putin then you should never ever give money to anyone who will give that money to Putin's puppets (conservatives)
Bias is inevitable.
It makes no sense to work to eliminate it.
It's like trying to breed a new species of humans that are void of preferences. An impossible task. If such a breeding process somehow succeded, the resulting product would not be a human anyway.
If anyone claims to be unbiased themselves, or claims freedom from bias for someone else, even just implying that someone somewhere is unbiased, I immediately know bullshit is afoot. Such claims are not always knowingly malicious, but are always detrimental to my interests should I start foolishly believing them.
Ha ha. I got your mass produced shit and i didnt pay for it, and then shared it with people so they dont waste their money.
And
Oh hey wanna buy that bluray for Toxic Avenger cause its a great movie?
Are 2 thoughts im completely fine with holding in my head.
Personally, I think it depends. For me, I like to pirate games that there's no way for me to legally buy a copy of and if possible are way too overpriced. Think multi hundred dollar retro games.
For media, I would absolutely support buying used media second hand. New physical releases tend to be worse than they were in the past in my opinion, so second hand or piracy feels like a good enough deal to me.
For music, I'd rather have physical CDs, if possible, rather than paying for streaming because I at least either support a local business I like to go to for CDs or support the artist directly. Laws be damned, I'd rather pirate music than give my money to the companies who financially abuse artists. Similar reason why almost all my CDs are second hand.
For stuff I have legally purchased, if need be I can just pirate them if it's a digital product. Otherwise I can back up disc based media I have. No idea how to do it for the Sega Genesis cartridges I have, though, so if need be I can pirate those as well.
Edit:
For games, I pirate games I don't own. For digital games I could find on Steam, I use it as a sort of demo for the game because majority of games don't have a demo and I need one to ensure I'm not throwing my money down the drain.
There have been plenty of games I've bought because the "demo" was enough to make me wanna buy the game to support the devs. Latest example being Dungeon Clawlers.
From my personal ethics standpoint, intellectual property is a form of private property which I'm against, also a form or artificial scarcity, which I'm also against.
If you want to support a small artist? You can maybe donate to them directly? Is that a thing? Maybe they have a patreon or something? In my case I have way less money than the artists I consume from so donating would make no sense.
Also, the act of making a copy doesn't remove the original, the artist doesn't get poorer because you pirate their content.
I generally make sure to spend my money one contemporary artists or authors (who are not already filthy rich, if they are already super well-off i dont contribute to increasing that wealth and instead buy something else) and try to maxmize the amount of money that falls to them. You could also find ways to donate directly to these artists and then pirate their stuff to your hearts content (from my ethical point of view anwyay, law will not agree with me). Ive also first pirated stuff and then bought it later and just replaced the files on my media server.
I dont really care about big corporations or some random rights holder long after someones death. So any big studio movie or old rock bands get pirated.
do whatever you like nobody cares (no offense)
No need to make everything complicated
You do you.
I try to stick to Indy games and pay for them. I have d+ nf Hulu atv and cable with all channels that aren't premium. I keep copies of any series/movies I like. If they lose the license or drop anything I'm not losing it. VCR rules, I paid to play it, I can record it/torrent to get it.
Stuff that's not on the air anymore, of I can't stream it paying that much, also not gonna feel bad about torrenting.
Qwest network had a commercial in 99.
Guy pulls up to a dirty motel in the middle of nowhere
“What kind of rooms you got?” “King size.”
“You got room service?” “Donuts and coffee.”
“Got entertainment?”
“All rooms have every movie ever made in any language, anytime, day or night.”
By now we should have that for a couple hundred a month. Definitely for less than I'm paying for all those services. Wanna put a limit on that? Everything over 6 months old is on it. But there's no reason outside of massive greed to get to the state of fracture where at with service provision.
I have apple Music and Spotify, I'm also keeping copies of music.
Books are a mix, I pay for new audiobooks from authors I like, I buy hardback for newish stuff I really like,
Old stuff, classics, textbooks, stuff with the rights going to an estate I pirate.
More or less, I want to pay a reasonable price that I can bear to make sure my authors in studios actors keep making new stuff. If the fat cats eat it all, I'm not giving them more.
I like to think about ethics. I still pirate some random stuff here and there, but one thing I like to do is make sure I'm getting some money to the creators of what I'm enjoying, skipping the middle man as much as can be.
this is mostly only relevant with music, but if I can buy an album or song directly from the artist, that's awesome. it not, i try to five what service benefits them most.
Everything.
Piracy is a tool to help reduce the disparity in wealth.
The only time you should buy something that you could pirate is if you can't find it and you plan on sharing it with everyone else. I call this "taking one for the team."
Pirate what you need unless you are one of them archiver preppers.
This ain't about "legality" this is about fighting the class war against owner class.
Piracy isn't stealing regardless.
Stealing is to deprive someone of something they posses.
It's not possible to possess something that doesn't exist yet. Your copy doesn't exist until you make it (by downloading the file).
If you chose to not support creators by paying to copy thier work, that's maybe unethical but it's not stealing.
If you hack into a Sony server and copy an unreleased film, then delete their copy, that is maybe stealing. Anything short of that is just copying.
In a lonely world, widespread AI chatbots and ‘companions’ pose unique psychological risks
In a lonely world, widespread AI chatbots and ‘companions’ pose unique psychological risks
It’s no surprise these lifelike AI companions are attractive to lonely people. But for some, these relationships are harmful and even dangerous.The Conversation
New self-assembling material could be the key to recyclable batteries
MIT researchers have developed a self-assembling battery material that rapidly disintegrates when exposed to organic solvents, potentially transforming electric vehicle battery recycling and addressing the growing challenge of electronic waste from the expanding EV market.
The breakthrough, published Tuesday in Nature Chemistry, introduces an electrolyte material composed of aramid amphiphiles that self-assemble into mechanically stable nanoribbons when exposed to water, yet completely dissolve within minutes when immersed in organic liquids. This allows entire battery packs to fall apart naturally, enabling separate recycling of individual components without the harsh chemicals and high temperatures typically required.
"So far in the battery industry, we've focused on high-performing materials and designs, and only later tried to figure out how to recycle batteries made with complex structures and hard-to-recycle materials," said lead author Yukio Cho, a recent MIT PhD graduate now at Stanford University. "Our approach is to start with easily recyclable materials and figure out how to make them battery-compatible."
New self-assembling material could be the key to recyclable EV batteries
MIT researchers designed molecules that can serve as the electrolyte in a lithium-ion battery and then quickly break apart at the end of the battery’s life, making it easier to recycle all of the components.MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology
It has been 20 straight years of "this new battery tech COULD revolutionize everything".
No. It won't.
Do not talk about battery tech revolutionizing anything unless your innovation is in mass manufacturing it, cost effectively, and reliably, at scale.
Anything else is just another early research project jerking itself off before it goes nowhere.
progress in battery tech has been pretty amazing over the last 20 years.
take you pick for sources duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=cost+…
compared to hydrogen and nuclear...
Yes, progress in the manufacturing and refining of Lithium Ion batteries.
This is not that. This is a research lab trying a new idea that will go nowhere and then issuing a press release that talks about the positives and ignores the showstopping negatives.
My brother in Christ, have you heard about our lord and saviour the Scientific Method and the proliferation of cross-domain ideas? How do you imagine the li-ion batteries came about as the go-to energy storage solution? Incremental improvements of ideas would be my guess, ideas have to start somewhere and of course they’re going to be hyperbolic since researchers are both excited and have to draw attention to their ideas.
I sympathise with your point but the alternative is little to no research into different battery technologies because close to nothing will ever emerge as a competitive day-one drop-in replacement, but some ideas may prove exciting to others who understand the value and they might push the ball further towards realistic alternatives.
I don't fault researchers for publishing novel research that might not go anywhere. I explicitly understand the scientific value in doing so.
I do not think it's valuable to breathlessly regurgitate those claims to the broader pop-sci public though. A) It's boring to read the same overhyped battery press release every single week. And B) it shakes people's faith in science, in the same way that people's faith in medicine has been shaken by bad reporting on every study that says X could give you cancer or make you live longer.
AI powering China's industrial evolution
AI powering China's industrial evolution
'Industry plus artificial intelligence' cresting across Chinese manufacturing landscape, driven by tech companies scrambling to develop AI agents to solve tasks.www.chinadaily.com.cn
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Judge Fines Pirate IPTV Man €30,000, Owing Sky €500K is Punishment Enough
cross-posted from: programming.dev/post/36476619
A pirate IPTV reseller investigated by Sky, who destroyed evidence and dissipated assets in violation of two High Court orders, has been found guilty of contempt of court. David Dunbar of Co Wexford, Ireland, operated 'IPTV is Easy' and according to him, generated nearly €500k in profits while doing so. Since that money is now owed to Sky, a judge at Ireland's High Court imposed a fine of €30,000 rather than a prison sentence, concluding that on balance, he'd suffered enough.
Judge Fines Pirate IPTV Man €30,000, Owing Sky €500K is Punishment Enough
A pirate IPTV reseller investigated by Sky, who destroyed evidence and dissipated assets in violation of two High Court orders, has been found guilty of contempt of court. David Dunbar of Co Wexford, Ireland, operated 'IPTV is Easy' and according to him, generated nearly €500k in profits while doing so. Since that money is now owed to Sky, a judge at Ireland's High Court imposed a fine of €30,000 rather than a prison sentence, concluding that on balance, he'd suffered enough.
Judge Fines Pirate IPTV Man €30,000, Owing Sky €500K is Punishment Enough * TorrentFreak
An IPTV reseller who destroyed evidence in violation of a High Court order, has been fined €30,000. Owing Sky €500K is punishment enough.Andy Maxwell (TF Publishing)
U.S. Recommends 57-Month Prison Sentence in 'Spider-Man' Piracy and Firearm Case
The U.S. government has recommended a lengthy prison sentence for a former employee of a disc manufacturing company. He previously admitted stealing and distributing numerous DVD and Blu-ray discs, including 'Spider-Man: No Way Home'. The recommendation is largely based on an unconnected firearm charge, not copyright infringement. The MPA has requested to speak at the sentencing hearing, noting that the movie studio victims likely lost tens of millions of dollars.
U.S. Recommends 57-Month Prison Sentence in 'Spider-Man' Piracy and Firearm Case * TorrentFreak
The U.S. has recommended a lengthy prison sentence for a man who admitted to stealing Blu-ray discs, including "Spider-Man: No Way Home".Ernesto Van der Sar (TF Publishing)
Iran ready for ‘serious' cooperation with China, Pezeshkian says ahead of visit
Iran ready for ‘serious' cooperation with China, Pezeshkian says ahead of visit
President Masoud Pezeshkian has voiced Iran’s readiness for “serious and constructive” cooperation with China, particularly within the framework of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), ahead of his planned visit to China later this month.PressTV
The Political Awakening of the Oyster Farmer Gunning for Susan Collins
The Political Awakening of the Oyster Farmer Gunning for Susan Collins
Graham Platner’s campaign launch has been a sudden sensation. But what he’s building now is rooted in the work of a lifetime.The New Republic
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Finland rejects chat control proposal: Finds it unconstitutional
Finland has now joined the ranks of Austria, Poland and the Netherlands in rejecting chat control, the proposed EU law that would threaten encrypted messaging and eliminate privacy in private communications.
The Ministerial Committee on EU Affairs elaborated on its previous positions and noted that Finland still considers it very important to establish an EU-level legal framework to improve the detection, reporting and elimination of sexual violence against children in the EU. However, Finland cannot support the most recent compromise proposal because it contains a detection order that has been found problematic from a constitutional standpoint.
We need more resistance against this incredibly dangerous law - we cannot allow totalitarianism to creep in through a phony "save the children" narrative. If they wanted to save the children they would start with what is happening in the open at Instagram and Tiktok, not by attacking secure channels of communication.
chatcontrol.eu contains some information about how you can pressure your representatives to oppose this law.
Chat Control: The EU's CSAM scanner proposal
🇫🇷 French: Traduction du dossier Chat Control 2.0 🇸🇪 Swedish: Chat Control 2.0🇳🇱 Dutch: Chatcontrole The End of the Privacy of Digital Correspondence Take action to stop Chat Control now! The Chat Control 2.Patrick Breyer
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OpenAI Says It's Scanning Users' ChatGPT Conversations and Reporting Content to the Police
OpenAI Says It's Scanning Users' ChatGPT Conversations and Reporting Content to the Police
OpenAI has authorized itself to call law enforcement if users say threatening enough things when talking to ChatGPT.Noor Al-Sibai (Futurism)
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A lot has been written about "ai", decades and generations ago. I'm not sure if anyone considered the impact on human emotions in a manner that's toxic and widespread.
I'm just thinking of a future story where a portion of the population are so traumatized by conversations with machines that they escape their realities in various ways. People talking with computers as if they're human seems very dystopian from the start. The next ten yers is going to be wild.
But also, this is a damn good start to the Thought Police. Imagine if a government gained access to these logs. Actually, I'd be surprised if the US govt didn't already have access to twitter. They're already cracking down on free speech that criticizes them / him.
Still though, Asimov imagined every chatbot would be a big bulky robot, not a tiny app in your pocket.
They are definitely worth a read!
Actually, I’d be surprised if the US govt didn’t already have access to twitter.
Edward Snowden basically proved they did with his revelation of the PRISM program plus the NSA's use of backdoors in 2013.
Piracy brings people together
cross-posted from: programming.dev/post/36516109
::: spoiler Comments
- Reddit.
:::
Piracy brings people together
::: spoiler Comments
- Reddit.
:::
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People were never apart to begin with, even if some power hungry pricks want you to believe otherwise.
We all live on the same planet, have roughly the same needs and wishes. Languages and cultures may be different, but under the hood we are all the same.
Gogol Bordello - Through the Roof 'n' Underground
Listen to Through the Roof 'n' Underground on TIDALMusic on TIDAL
So Business as usual!
Denn nie wieder gilt nur dann, wenns für uns nicht mehr profitabel ist.
I think it eont be quite as utopian as you think, but we need to cut the frivoloys bullshit if were going to survive the mess we've made for ourselves.
The purpose of borders really only serves oligarchs and oyher exploiters. It does nothing good for you, nothing good for me.
We might have natural borders like oceans, or single purpose border-like things (like quarantines or 'no dirt crosses this line, please take off your shoes and put em in this bag til you leave the island.') that would come and go as needed, but generally; fuck em.
Just need to get rid of the oligarchs. Which we need to do to survive as a species anyway.
Pardom me if I am wrong but wouldn't you still get borders in the form of economic areas that have specific needs. Which would then result in area specific culture and governance, eventually just resulting in borders again at an eventual conflict with the neigbouring zone? I know that I am making some jumps here, but that is sort of what human history feels like.
P.S.
All for getting rid of the oligarchy btw
Yeah the border between san francisco and fresno is pretty brutal.
The one between hollywood and east LA is also gruesomely fortified.
Old rich men sending young poor men to kill each other,
If bigotry and violence was just old men we'd have it a lot easier
Fake TradingView Facebook Ads Spread Android Spyware Worldwide
Malvertising Campaign on Meta Expands to Android, Pushing Advanced Crypto-Stealing Malware to Users Worldwide
Many people believe that smartphones are somehow less of a target for threat actors.Bitdefender Labs
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Mississippi's age assurance law puts decentralized social networks to the test
Mississippi's age assurance law puts decentralized social networks to the test | TechCrunch
Bluesky says it would block access to its service in the state of Mississippi, rather than comply with the new age verification law.Sarah Perez (TechCrunch)
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Immune, no, insanely hard to police? Hell yeah. The thing with these laws is that it's pretty easy for MS to sue Reddit and force them to comply. They have one centralized location to complain to. You can't just call John Lemmy and have him comply. Would it be impossible for a state government to contact every single instance owner? maybe? But they're not going to do it. Even if they made an attempt the instances hosted in other countries couldn't give less shits about some southern US state.
Nostr is a whole other beast... it's currently littered with things illegal in just about every country on the planet but that shit's still there so I can't imagine MS could do anything there either.
TLDR: Immune, no. Neigh impossible to enforce, yes.
They could very easily contact the owners of the Lemmy.world instance, for example, and there goes the biggest part of Lemmy.
You act like that is hard for them to do. It’s not.
Charlie Kirk: No One Is An American Unless I Say So
Charlie Kirk: No One Is An American Unless I Say So
Guess we're all about to get deported.Robyn Pennacchia (Wonkette)
Nearly 1,000 ‘worker over billionaire’ actions planned for Labor Day in US
Rallies from Alaska to Hawaii will highlight cuts to wages, unions and social safety nets under Trump policies
Nearly 1,000 “worker over billionaire” protests are being planned in all 50 states starting this weekend as part of a Labor Day week of action organized by labor unions and advocacy groups in opposition to the Trump administration’s policies.
The actions include marches and rallies in cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles, a Labor Day parade in New York City, rallies in Palmer, Alaska, Freeport, Maine, and a planned protest at the state capitol in Honolulu, Hawaii.
The protests are organized by the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions in the US, and dozens of partner organizations, including Public Citizen, Indivisible, Democracy Forward, MoveOn and Patriotic Millionaires.
Two New feeds from CERT-FR integrated in Vulnerability-Lookup
Two New feeds from CERT-FR @cert_frcert_fr@social.numerique.gouv.fr integrated in Vulnerability-Lookup
Thanks to the great of @Rafiot ,we now have two new feeders in Vulnerability-Lookup:
➤ CERT-FR Alerte (vulnerability.circl.lu/recent#…), and
➤ CERT-FR Avis (vulnerability.circl.lu/recent#…)
We were impressed by the excellent quality of these feeds (and the descriptions), which allowed us to automatically extract impacted products (CPE vendors & names) and references to enrich our #Kvrocks indexes (see screenshots).
Correlations
As with all our sources, advisories from CERT-FR are now automatically correlated with the other 27 (!) sources available on the CIRCL instance:
Examples of correlations:
➤ Related CVEs for a product from Ivanti from the “Alerte” CERTFR-2024-ALE-013: vulnerability.circl.lu/vuln/CE…
➤ CVE-2025-9478 - vulnerability in Chrome: vulnerability.circl.lu/vuln/CE…
Sightings
You can already find sightings tied to CERT-FR advisories. For example, the sightings related to alerts published in 2025: vulnerability.circl.lu/sightin…
Contribute
Have a source you think should be integrated into Vulnerability-Lookup? Let us know!
It’s fairly easy to add new feeders, as you can see here: github.com/vulnerability-looku…
Don’t hesitate to create an account on our instance: vulnerability.circl.lu/user/si…
References
➤ The list of default feeders, active and ready to use in any Vulnerability-Lookup installation: github.com/vulnerability-looku…
➤ Source code of Vulnerability-Lookup: github.com/vulnerability-looku…
➤ News about the project: vulnerability-lookup.org/news/
#CyberSecurity #CERTFR #VulnerabilityLookup #CyberSecurity #CERTFR #cve #advisory #opensource
new: feeders for CERT FR Avis and Alerte · vulnerability-lookup/vulnerability-lookup@b99291f
Vulnerability-Lookup facilitates quick correlation of vulnerabilities from various sources, independent of vulnerability IDs, and streamlines the management of Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure (CVD).GitHub
Taco Bell rethinks AI drive-through after man orders 18,000 waters
Taco Bell rethinks AI drive-through after man orders 18,000 waters
The fast food chain is reassessing its use of the tech after a number of errors were shared widely online.Shiona McCallum (BBC News)
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Drive through might be a bit more difficult for touch screens. It'd be like trying to reach your parking ticket but for how many clicks it takes to make the order.
Phone app might be easier but not sure it really replaces what drive throughs are for.
The fucking taco bell AI likes to ask if I would like anything else, then ask if I want nacho fries. Then, hearing "No", go ahead and add them anyway.
Then it likes watching me drive away, giving the store the finger.
I've tried this repeatedly. I've answered "No" to their upsale. I've sat there in silence, waiting for it to time out. I've asked for a human. Every time the AI takes my order, it adds nacho fries that I didn't order and specifically rejected.
The problem isn't that I need a human to fix it. The problem is that the AI is specifically programmed to ignore a rejected upsale. Their AI is smart enough to recognize the rest of my complicated order, but it can't understand "No"? Horseshit. They are using this fraudulent programming to increase their upsale metrics, expecting us to docilely accept the sale rather than raise a fuss.
Drive-offs are another of the metrics they look at. Since I've communicated with nobody but the AI, they have nobody but the AI to blame for the drive-off. They don't get to blame a human for failing to remediate the problem.
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I'm surprised they're not hiring people in third world countries to take the orders since it's through a microphone.
Or just making people order through their phones and use the drive through as a pick up point.
Holy crap, people have been reposting takes on this interview for like three days and you can track the degradation of the actual content via the game of telephone in the headlines.
It's kinda depressing.
FWIW, having read the original interview everybody is reheating, the 18000 waters was a random example the Taco Bell exec WSJ interviewed used to explain that part of the issue is that people feel less guilty about messing with automated orders than when they're talking to a human. They are also not backing out from automated orders, which is why the headline is using "rethink".
The core of the issue is correct, though, the guy does spend a significant amount of time giving corpolese synonims of "it's a mess". "We've certainly learned a lot" has to be my favourite.
Thanks for posting this take. The topic of AI taking jobs seems to garner a lot of emotional response but not much of a technology discussion.
There were people who were negative about using websites to place orders in the 90s in part because e-commerce killed order processing jobs and the need for phone reps at mail order catalogs.
In this case AI is being used as just another e-commerce UX, so it's really just a continuation of what's happening already.
People used to do things like put 18,000, or -1 and all kinds of other garbage in the fields on website order forms as well. That's just a programmers job to fix with reasonable input validation.
It wouldn't surprise me if drive-thru like Taco Bell started doing license plate recognition and reputation checking. So if you order and dash more than a couple times they might not take your order from outside in that car anymore.
On the upside they might be able to greet you by name and recall your last order:
Hello Mr Smith... Nice to see you today, would you like 10 cheesy gordita crunch tacos and 1 large diet Pepsi again?
That seems overengineered as hell to me. But then, having an entire LLM to do what much older voice recognition software could do better is overengineered by definition. The LLM won't validate those things because the point of it, if it has one at all in this scenario, is for it to recognize off the cuff speech and malformed orders.
Which is partly why people are finding this idea doesn't work, I suppose. Have a chatbot improvise based on what people are shouting and you get garbage inputs. Have strict requirements for voice commands and you get lots of failed attempts.
Unlike a bunch of other applications of AI chatbots this one maaaay eventually work. But then again, so may your idea. Honestly, if I was going to overengineer the shit out of having a tortilla-wrapped laxative inside a car I'd have you order directly in your phone and use that license plate recognition idea to prevent you having to talk to anybody or anything in the first place.
Nice to see you today, would you like 10 cheesy gordita crunch tacos and 1 large diet Pepsi again?
"Would you like some Ozempic or insulin with that?"
Why would this cause them to rethink anything?
If someone trolls an order of thousands of something, a worker isn't going to just make that thing. I get that retail workers are treated like shit and are paid shit so have zero shits to give. If someone rolls up to the drive through window asking for their thousands of waters or whatever, the people working there are gonna escalate it to a manager or just tell the guy to go pound sand.
Anybody today can go to any drivethrough and ask for whatever and then simply drive away. I'm certain it happens from time to time, even from legitimate orders when someone discovers they leave their wallet at home. If it was a great problem though these businesses simply wouldn't order drive through service, or would require payment before cooking anything.
I'm gonna guess you have never worked in fast food.
Window times are the metric they die by. Generally speaking, they start making your order the SECOND you order it, before you ever leave the ordering screen. Yes, even if the order changes mid order. Yes, they make, and throw away lots of food that is not paid for, forgotten, etc ... TONS of food (literally) is thrown away daily.
As for the water order? I would 1000% start making that order. If the higher ups think the AI is working correct, well then who am I to question it? Nobody who works fast food is paid enough to give a shit.
No. This makes no sense. Are you seriously saying if you saw an order for 18,000 waters pop up on your monitor you'd just say "that's fine" then spend the next three days straight filling cups?
If I were the manager of the store, I'd hope my employees would have the bare minimum critical thinking skill to ask someone first.
At the store I worked in, everyone would be given at least 12 hours notice of a catering order. We'd have everything prepped ready to go, and expect the order when it arrives. If one popped up without notice it's definitely a bug, and we're definitely not making it.
As for the water order? I would 1000% start making that order.
What a self-own
I worked at a pizza place with a drive through. We sold many items that were non-pizza like wings, subs, salads, burgers, desserts and side items like fries, mozz, etc. My girlfriend's family owned the place, so I was familiar with more than just grunt work and had some inside insight into the business numbers that normal workers do not get.
We would never have fulfilled an 18,000 water cup request.
If someone came by with a catering sized order in the drive through, we would have had them park somewhere and told them a relative estimate of how long it would be. Sure, maybe someone would have started on a couple of things, but we wouldn't be able to fulfill such large orders in the time it took between placing an order and the window. There's only so many workers.
There was obviously plenty of food waste, but that's baked into the cost of the items.
Yep, we definitely don't have any kind of law prohibiting a business from disposing of food waste en masse.
We do have a ton of liability laws that would punish them from distributing leftover food though, should someone get sick after it is distributed.
Also don't have any kind of thing preventing households from wasting food either. I suspect countless of perfectly fine meals are disposed of every single day, probably enough to feed the country twice over, if not more.
It's a tough problem in a land of excess without near-total elimination of privacy and agency.
I don't think "fully auto drink machines" like what miso makes are really anywhere today.
Even the fully automatic solutions that do exist have limits to output which require human intervention. There's no drink machine spitting outputs directly to people waiting in cars at drive through windows.
there's that regurgitation and feedback loop.
“Sometimes it lets me down, but sometimes it really surprises me," he said.
That’s what I want from a drive through. To be surprised or let down.
Depends on the restaurant.
There’s one McDonald’s nearby that’s wrong like 80% of the time, but A&W is right almost always for me.
Wait people eat at A&W? Is it any good?
There are multiple around me and I feel like I never see anyone in them and I myself have never been in 40+ years.
I have been to most every other fast food place more times than I can remember.
A&W Canada is (they spun off as a fully Canadian owned and operated company).
They have the best lettuce and cheese, and their breakfast beats McD’s. The Hash browns are actually hash browns instead of the thin $2.50 ones the clown sells.
Are you rhyming on purpose? Let me just edit that last line a bit to make it work even better:
They have the best lettuce and cheese,
and their breakfast beats McD’s.
The Hash browns are actually hash browns
instead of the thin $2.50 ones sold at the clown's.
One clip on Instagram, which has been viewed over 21.5 million times, shows a man ordering "a large Mountain Dew" and the AI voice continually replying "and what will you drink with that?".
"Dude, Where's my car" turning into prophecy wasn't in my bingo card:
I mean there's no point to it, it doesn't speed anything up.
For example this morning I had a client meeting (saturdays, ugh) so I went to the train station cause it has a mcdonalds and it opens at 630am. They have 5 kiosks there and one person manning the til. People who were ordering from the til were getting their orders faster than people who used the kiosks. I had to wait 10 minutes just to get a coffee and muffin simply because I used the kiosk.
And it doesn't even make sense. I would have assumed all the orders go through the same system regardless of where it was placed but apparently not. apparently people who don't use the kiosk get priority?
I'm actually not angry at McDonald's implementation of their online/kiosk/self serve ordering systems. Not a fan of an AI taking my order tho.
If I'm going through the drive through, just let me talk to a fucking person. They're standing at the window waiting to collect my payment, doing literally nothing else, just let them take the order too. It's eliminating work and adding to the global fuckary that is "AI" for absolutely no benefit to anyone.
Unless they're going to eliminate everyone except the person handing me the food, then fuck off with the AI slop.
10/10 times I would rather order from the app and just pick it up, except their app is shit and won't allow you to use it until you've given them all of your data, signed up for an account, filled out their account recovery questionnaire so they know your mother's maiden name, your dog's name from grade school, your blood type, and probably what kinks you like... Just to order a fucking big Mac?
My dudes. You have over estimated your worth to me as a part of society. If the app was just, "hey, where are you?" Then "cool, this store is nearby" selects store "tell me WTF you want" orders "pay me please" Google pay/Apple pay... "Thanks, your order number is asdf1234! Go fucking get it.... Also, did you want to create an account to collect rewards or some shit?" Selects no "okay, your shit is waiting for you, go pick it up"
Instead it's... "Give us access to all your phone data and precise location" Ugh "do you have an account, you need an account" argh furiously types "thanks for signing up, did you know that we have x, y, and z deals for you? We know you like y because you searched for it earlier this week" no "GPS position is not precise enough, cannot locate a store to shop at, please enable hyper precision GPS so we know within a cunthair where exactly you are" ... Some time later... "GPs location obtained, you have 8 stores 'near' you, most of them are pointless to show you because they're more than twice the distance from you as the closest store, but we're going to put those at the top to confuse you instead" picks location "what did you want to buy?" Finally orders "pay me" tries to use Google/Apple pay "something went wrong, we accept Visa, and MasterCard" puts in Visa branded debit information "something went wrong, we accept Visa and MasterCard only " finds actual visa/Mc enreta info "what's your home address? We 'need' it to authorize the credit card transaction" Ugh "is your billing address the same as you home address?" Yes "what's the expiry, and CVV on the card?" Enters info "thanks! Transaction declined because you put 'st' in your address and you should have used 'Street'. Get fucked" closes app, jumps off bridge
I've never liked most of their food, but you used to be able to get a hot, cheap, and quick meal there. And at least the fries were tasty, and the Coca-Cola was perfect.
In the 80s and 90s, going to McDonald's felt like a guilty pleasure. It felt cheap, but you were in on it so it was ok.
Now it feels cheap at your expense. It's sparse, like they're providing the minimal viable product. The fries are garbage, the Coke is garbage, and the service is garbage.
The LLM isn't limited to just what it does. It can interact with other programs.
There are a ton of audio recognition systems available, almost all of them predate this LLM bubble. There's already an API for interacting with the ordering system. So it's just down to having the LLM pull what is then do that corresponding action for the order.
This is so simple it doesn't require anything nearly as complicated as an LLM. The old phone assistants like Siri and Alexa could do this type of thing. It's literally the same as telling Alexa to place an order for something, and that's been an ability for years.
The LLM is taking the order
What's wrong with an input machine with buttons or touch screen?
To understand this, you have to understand the CEO cult. They ALL hang off every word from SV tech bros, and the appeal of free labor is hard to ignore when you have to find $100M for executive bonuses.
If automated food service was what people wanted, then automats would have never gone out of business 120 years ago.
The only real way to order via the AI drive-thru:
youtube.com/shorts/sn6vUwqRcWw
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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.youtube.com
Sofia Mayor Vasil Terziev Joins Istanbul Rally Supporting Imprisoned Opposition Mayors
Sofia Mayor Vasil Terziev attended an opposition rally in Istanbul, showing support for the detained mayors of Turkey’s Republican People’s Party (CHP). Terziev was present in his capacity as chairman of the B40 Balkan Cities Network, alongside Jaume Collboni, vice-chairman of the Eurocities Network and mayor of Barcelona. Both joined the guests on the rostrum at the event, held in the center of Istanbul to back imprisoned Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu and other arrested CHP officials.The rally, titled “The People Stand Up for Their Will,” was broadcast live on opposition channels HalkTV, Sozcu, and Cumhuriyet TV. CHP leader Özgür Özel introduced the European guests from the stage, noting that a delegation of ten European mayors and representatives from various cities would engage in discussions throughout the day. The delegation plans to present the “Special Democracy Award” to İmamoğlu, currently held in Silivri prison, and will make statements following meetings with him, including a visit to the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality.
The delegation, which included four Balkan mayors from Sofia, Bucharest, Athens and Zagreb, intended to meet Imamoglu on Thursday to show their support and present him with a “special democracy award” in prison. But Turkish authorities vetoed the visit, and no official explanation was given for the decision.After being prevented from visiting Imamoglu, the delegation held a press conference in front of the prison, handing the democracy award instead to Imamoglu’s wife, Dilek.
“European mayors are speaking with one voice. We are a force for democratic resistance. We will continue to stand together with our colleague Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu. His courage in defence of democratic principles inspires us all,” said Barcelona mayor Jaume Collboni, who is also vice-president of Eurocities, an alliance of larger European cities.
Sofia’s mayor, Vasil Terziev, also spoke, expressing the Balkan Cities Network’s support for Imamoglu.
“I stand here as president of the B40 Balkan Cities Network, a network established by Ekrem Imamoglu. The gates and walls of this prison are not only a barrier for one man but also for the will of millions of citizens of Istanbul who elected their mayor,” Terziev said.
He said that Balkan mayors also face judicial pressures and political imprisonment in their own countries. “An attack on a democratically elected mayor is an attack on all democratic institutions regardless of the country. That is why our solidarity with Imamoglu…is a democratic and moral responsibility,” Terziev added.
Apart from Collboni and Terziev, the delegation included Zagreb mayor Tomislav Tomasevic, Athens mayor Haris Doukas, Timisoara Mayor Dominic Fritz, Utrecht mayor Sharon Dijksma, Budapest mayor Gergely Szilveszter Karacsony, Paris deputy mayor Arnaud Ngatcha, Madrid international relations general director Jose Francisco Herrera Antonaya and Eurocities secretary-general Andre Sobczak.
balkaninsight.com/2025/08/28/t…
Turkey Bars Balkan, European Mayors From Visiting Jailed Opposition Leader | Balkan Insight
A delegation of mayors from Europe and the Balkans has been blocked from making a solidarity visit to the jailed opposition mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu.Hamdi Firat Buyuk (BIRN)
After 2 Million AI Orders, Taco Bell Admits Humans Still Belong in the Drive-Thru
Fast food companies have been experimenting with integrating artificial intelligence into their restaurants, from Flippy the burger-flipping robot at White Castle to dynamic pricing at Wendy's. One arena where AI seems to really be struggling, though, is at the drive-thru -- and Taco Bell is the latest to experience AI mishaps at the order box. After taking 2 million orders with AI, Taco Bell has reached one conclusion: we still need humans.
After 2 Million AI Orders, Taco Bell Admits Humans Still Belong in the Drive-Thru
Many wrong orders and 18,000 cups of water later, and Taco Bell is rethinking using AI to take orders.Joe Hindy (CNET)
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South Africa commissions an inequality report for G20 summit
South Africa is commissioning a report on global wealth inequality in time to present at the Group of 20 summit it hosts in November.
Archived version: archive.is/newest/apnews.com/a…
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.
marsza
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