Square Kilometre Array datacenter needs two Faraday cages
Square Kilometre Array is so sensitive, its datacenter needs two Faraday cages to stop RF leaks
IAC 2025: Stray signals are a no-no when you’re trying to tune into the starsSimon Sharwood (The Register)
like this
copymyjalopy e adhocfungus like this.
Zionist Zohran Mamdani condemns Hamas and calls October 7th a war crime
Zionist Zohran Mamdani condemns Hamas and calls October 7th a war crime
Zohran Mamdani: "I condemn Hamas, of course, I have called Oct. 7 what it was, which was a horrific war crime and, of course, my belief in a universality in international law is also the same set o...TankieTube
Apple has REMOVED the ICEBlock app from the App Store due to “objectionable content.”
Mueller, She Wrote (@muellershewrote.com)
BREAKING: Apple has REMOVED the ICEBlock app from the App Store due to “objectionable content.” More billionaires bending the knee.Bluesky Social
like this
adhocfungus, Rozaŭtuno, originalucifer, Maeve, Chozo, KaRunChiy, frustrated_phagocytosis, giantpaper, TVA, tiredofsametab, Lawelen, essell, Drusas, felixthecat e ruse4766 like this.
Technology reshared this.
like this
dcpDarkMatter, KaRunChiy, Beacon, TVA, giantpaper e felixthecat like this.
And the open source movement is such a blind spot to the 'left' as well, even though technology freedom is critical if you want to be able to organise any type of resistance in the digital space.
Lemmy users largely get it, obviously, but centre left people will happily let themselves get locked into the Apple/Google walled gardens even though you're just giving that company a ridiculous amount of power over you.
Right? The collective dismissal of Mastodon from leftist influencers when the Muskening happened was eye opening.
Like, there's a collaborative, volunteer-based platform right over there. You want mutual aid? Open-source is as mutual-aid as it gets.
But it's nerd shit.
Because they are controlled opposition.
The only time something not controlled got popular was TikTok and you saw how quickly both parties went to ban it in 2024 after normal people started talking about Gaza genocide in every day conversation. The American Congress worked together to ban it even though they couldn't agree on anything else.
It went from an Asian platform where Asian people in the West connected with each other outside the mainstream blue pill/red pill false choice and shared culture as well as history that isn't taught, to "here's the truth about Jesus" and "the world is flat debate me" after that vote. Now it's full on MAGA.
Mastodon is harder to control because servers can pop up organically, but I guess Threads was a hedge against that threat.
The only time something not controlled got popular was TikTok
I'm not sure what you mean by controlled, but how I got to know it was as the malware that's recommended to everyone on the front page of the google play store, and then even factory preinstalled on a lot of them.
It wasn't doing anything that Facebook wasn't already doing, but it got banned. The CEO was brought in front of Congress and racially profiled, gave strong answers, and then got banned anyway.
Wonder why?
TikTok hate was a bot farm. The algorithm was always a reflection of the user.
Yeah. And to think, it's a fairly small amount of nuance - it's very basic and intuitive and information about it is literally everywhere. We are hopeless when it comes to far more complex and nuanced social issues we face like rehabilitation or ethnocentrism or trans athletes or the what have you.
People seem to think socialism and any progress is like "be nice to each other" or some stupid aestheticism about "empathy".
There's basically no way to have a conversation with them most of the time, they are so far gone and their fully formed thoughts seem more like inaccurate shorthands, it's like trying to explain astrodynamics to a dog when it's actively trying not to understand them.
Normies are the death of us all.
Recanted is the word I was thinking of.
We rapidly need to switch to Linux Mobile. PostmarketOS and Mobian are the two most promising projects, and I would highly recommend anyone reading this to donate to them if you have the means.
Both projects directly use your donations to hire developers to build and polish the critical essentials to get this alternative viable as a daily driver.
postmarketOS // real Linux distribution for phones
Aiming for a 10 year life-cycle for smartphonespostmarketOS
It doesn't necessarily need to achieve mass adoption, it just needs to get to a 'good enough' point to make it viable for those who are willing or desperate to get away from big tech.
Linux still has plenty of people giving reasons why they won't switch, but it's now finally viable for many, including myself. I just want mobile Linux to get to that point too, even if there's still rough edges.
how banking apps are mandatory.
This i don't get, i'd rather use home-banking from my home PC.
Yes but you can't motherfucker, don't you understand that? In most of the world you have to use the app, you CANNOT use online banking without the bank's app on your phone, you have no sign-in details apart from the email and the bank app, it is the only way to sign in and you sign in via 2FA inside their app and authorize transactions exclusively via that, and no you can't use Google authenticator or whatever, it's a "tap to allow sign on" type 2FA and the only kind supported.
There is no "home banking", and you are not even allowed to enter a physical bank location on the high street without being intercepted by a ghoul telling you to use the app or fuck off, you cannot call the bank because they have no public number, you do everything via the app or you cannot do anything at all.
That's why even people without access to drinking water have the latest fucking smartphones, they're a prerequisite and there are no alternatives.
Most of the time you don't even have a bank card, just the bank card details in the bank app on your phone that are automatically added to Google Pay, and you use that because near everything is cashless and NFC.
Soon across EU and UK your very ID will be stored on your phone.
I don't need to use an app to manage my bank account.
Sounds like you people have shitty banks. Maybe it's time to switch?
I am not American you weird internet man. In the rest of the world and specifically my part of it - Europe, all banks require their app, there is no way around it, and there is no way to use foreign bank accounts or not have a bank account at all etc etc.
I wrote about all this before, including ITT.
Why the fuck do I have to explain this over and over like you was born yesterday?
Stop assuming your country's experience is at all representative of the rest of the world, because evidently - it is not.
I love how you are getting downvoted for getting frustrated with people who can't see beyond their own nose.
I fully agree with you, these people just don't want to admit some of us don't have the privilege of choosing since all the options end up on forcing a banking app one way or another.
Because it is a fucking privilege at this point.
Yeah, people should have listened to the people warning of privacy concerns with online services. Now that your data is valuable, companies will do anything to extract it from you.
Stop using those products, de-Google, install Linux, use self-hosted solutions.
It will take some effort to switch. You get to decide how much effort you’re willing to expend in order to not sacrifice all of your privacy and control of your digital lives.
"Sideloading" is their term, invented to make it sound like something it is not. We should not use this word. The correct word is "installing".
You don't "sideload" on Windows when you install software outside of the Microsoft Store™️. There is no real difference or distinction with software on phones, so there is no need for a special word.
Windows 10 and Windows 11 in S mode FAQ - Microsoft Support
Get answers to common questions about Windows 11 and Windows 10 in S mode.support.microsoft.com
Microsoft has been trying this for years already. That eventually led to Valve incresing their efforts in the Linux gaming front and releasing the Steam Deck.
See this
Valve boss Gabe Newell calls Windows 8 a 'catastrophe'
Microsoft's system is going to be a catastrophe for everyone involved in the PC industry, says video game firm Valve's boss Gabe Newell.BBC News
I wonder if Valve would ever get into the Linux Phone market.
But for the platform itself to be open, I wonder how much would have to be recreated.
Does anybody actually enjoy gaming on the phone or just do it because there nothing better to do?
I would perhaps buy a valve phone but I wouldn't want to game on it which sounds weird.
Unless it was like a switch and had detachable joycons.
Oh same here. I'm hopeful that valve brings us a linux phone, not a gaming phone. I've never really gotten into gaming on mobile either.
However, if they DO make a linux phone, I'm sure it will be Steam branded and have all kinds of gaming-specific tweaks.
But again, to me that just sounds like it will have good hardware specs. So not a problem!
Not to defend it, but the first time I encountered the term was when BlackBerry released their Playbook tablet. It ran their bbos10 and they created an android emulator so you could run some android apps. The process of installing the apk into the emulator was called sideloading.
I miss BlackBerry is all I really wanted to say.
the term “sideloading” is pretty irrelevant.
No, it's not.
"Installing" is innocuous and easily understandable (by those tech-illiterate dumbfucks that get spoonfed FUD by lobbyists); whereas sideloading is eerily similar to sidestepping and is prone to being interpreted as "working around a safeguard".
Words are not irrelevant.
🙄
If people were more aware of how to make and install mobile web apps it would be less of a problem.
At least on the iPhone you can still add a site to your screen that can behave a lot like an app, including camera access, location services, and even gyro. And it’s just a website like most “apps” are.
Google is not killing sideloading. If the dev is willing to submit to Apple for verification, they'd probably not object to submitting it to Google.
E: downvotes for facts, I guess? 🤷
like this
giantpaper likes this.
“Not obsolete. Just… illegal.”
~Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge
I’m surprised it stayed up as long as it did. I thought Apple would have taken it down within days.
Anyways I’ve seen this as a non app alternative: stopice.net/
Stop ICE Raids Alert Network
Receive or send immediate alerts about ICE raids in your local areawww.stopice.net
like this
dcpDarkMatter e giantpaper like this.
like this
dcpDarkMatter likes this.
Would I be paranoid to use a VPN while visiting this site? (And others like it) god only knows if IP's visiting the site could be uncovered...
Yeah, I'm probably being paranoid...
like this
giantpaper likes this.
Long? Fascism came about through Mussolini's, Hitler's ally, coining the term and rising to power in '22. Hitler came about in '33. So was 11 years a long time?
Not really. Obama left office in '17. Counting the nomination, we've had to listen to tRump for about as long.
If that's a short time then I'm sure the next 11 years of Trump will flash by.
(That's when he dies)
It's really sickening that every corporation has thrown in with the new fascist regime.
At least these assholes used to pretend to be "not absolutely awful". Now they're just mask-off oppressors.
like this
giantpaper e TVA like this.
Line must go up.
It's such a stupid axiom but it explains everything perfectly
like this
Sickday likes this.
like this
Sickday likes this.
Most apps are a packaged browser that makes proprietary API calls over https. However there is nothing proprietary or valuable in the app itself, except possibly some key material for authentication of the app with the back-end.
Then depending on the user making various requests a middle-ware program will interact with the backend database and retrieve the results back to the user. The database is the valuable part and other then the specific query the user is making, nothing else is can be retrieved by the user. Normally the middle ware isn't even downloadable either.
since apps do have much greater access to the parent device then a website
I'm not disagreeing at all that this should have had a website as a backup, but you yourself are making some really good points about how apps aren't the same thing as websites and the benefits to using an app in this situation. Leveraging user hardware without the intermediate layer of a brower's sandbox is good for performance and makes a site much more robust in the face of things like DDOS, and having locally-hosted resources with which the user can interact without requiring an active TCP connection (because for example: ICE has geoblocked connectivity at one of their "enforcement actions" - but you can still document what's happening and the app will automatically-and-without-user-interaction upload what you've given it once connectivity is restored) is an incredibly important feature.
Offline websites, while potentially able to exhibit similar behavior, rely on extremely hacky workarounds and cached data to be able to do it - and an app is a much less volatile way to store that data than relying on your browser's cache reintegration (which will often be dumped if you're hit with bad a DHCP config).
I think your spirit is in the right place, but you're missing enough of the technical nuance that it's really undermining your ability to convincingly make your point. And again, I 100% agree that not having alternative access to this service is a critical loss.
Alright you've convinced me. The ability to store video's within the app (for a non-technical user) is probably worth having an app. Of course a website could and should have the ability for a user to upload a video independent of an app, but I acknowledge that there are indeed some additional benefits that can only be realized with an app.
Of course I've never liked the wall-garden app store paradigm to begin with, and obviously if that wasn't the only source of apps, then my entire point is moot. If any user could download the app from the digital ocean hosted iceblock website, and install it before going on scouting missions, then the app would be much more valuable, and the service more robust.
Everything is objectionable.
Are we ready to admit that giving 3 companies the ability to decide what everyone can and can't execute on their devices is a massive international problem? This is probably the greatest threat to every country in the world, and the people of the US.
I do think it's comparable. All of this is about money. Americans are funding all of this crap with the, albeit controlled, choices we make with our money. Our taxes are funding genocides and coups and war and destruction; our purchasing habits are funding the decline of our planet and our social structures and our sanity.
You're right though, consumers will likely never change in large enough quantities to make a real difference. People are already resubbing to Hulu so...
Jimmy Kimmel made Disney a lot of money. They had to choose between pressure from the US government, and losing a popular source of revenue along with the vast amount of liberals who swore them off. Jimmy Kimmel was not a real institutional threat to the US government. So the US government did not have a very strong incentive to continuously push for him being taken down, and Disney had a lot of incentive to keep him around.
An app that targets fascists makes Apple no money. The US government faces the loss (or rendering ineffective) of their fascist police force. Both sides therefore face a huge amount of pressure to have the app taken down. It would have to be a gigantic part of their profit margin to warrant any pushback from Apple. I'd be very, very surprised to hear that this change is ever overturned through a boycott.
Americans are funding all of this crap with the, albeit controlled, choices we make with our money.
To an extent, yes, but the dollar has been decoupled from gold a long time ago, they can literally just print money in the billions and they do (although there days it's probably money++ on a mainframe), completely sidestepping tax money..
Yeah this is generally the take I hear the most. The smartphone is presented as a necessity and for a lot of people that may be true, but what it really is is a tool for capitalism. It spies on you, gives you fomo, serves you ads, gives access to all kinds of addictive content... oh and work apps!
It's like AI, shoved down our throats until people think it's needed. It's not.
I would say you’re missing some nuance in these arguments, though.
With a phone people no longer need laptops or full-sized computers and they also get a phone and camera to go along with it. They get a lot of power even just using fairly mundane apps like email, file storage, and a calendar. And then you have access to the internet and all the power that comes with that. I also don’t know why you think phones show ads.
AI, on the other hand, is hot fucking garbage at everything it does. Why anyone uses it I can’t say, it’s so bad and it’s known that it’s actively making people dumber. I don’t touch the stuff and my life has been going just fine.
like this
Sickday likes this.
like this
Sickday likes this.
You can't do those things any other way, eh? That's crazy...
It's a privilege to say no, eh? Interesting take.
No, we cannot do those things any other way.
Yes, it's a privilege to be able to simply say no to having a bank account, for one you'd need to not be in paid employment and not on any financial assistance, so basically a NEET and/or like a foreign-born investor, for which you need to be pretty rich.
You do realize that countries outside the US exist, right? Because the answer is No. No, they do not do these things outside of United States of America - which is 1 country.
Yes, as weird as it seems to you - the world is not entirely in one country called United States and what applies to what you know of your country does not apply in the entire world.
Here in the UK even grandma does not mail in bill payments, nor do most places accept this, she does it via the app or the utility company website for Direct Debit, or she has someone do it for her via the app before she goes on to be racist on Facebook.
This is the same way for blue collar workers. They in-fact - must have debit cards because they must have bank accounts to even get paid via PAYE and IR35 and thus pay taxes. While there are jobs outside of that, the people who work those jobs will be paid into bank accounts, and cash in hand jobs mean via PayPal or Venmo or some such that all also require bank accounts and KYC.
Hell, you can't even rent a place without showing them your bank statements, or straight up letting the letting agency login to your bank account via some third party data harvesting / "income analysis" tool so they can "confirm" your income and employment status. I had this exact thing demanded when I was looking for a place up and down the country just over half a year ago by every letting agency under the sun, from small to big, south to north.
Yes there are people without bank accounts, but it's usually only because they've either:
a) Just arrived and have no permanent address which is required to set up a bank account, meaning they have to pay rent upfront for 6mo to a year to avoid checks to even get an address, which they can't get because they can't get a job which again - requires a bank account - trapping them in a cycle of poverty unless they have savings in a foreign bank account with which to pay upfront rent
Or:
b) Are destitute and homeless, again - without a permanent address, which is required for a bank account.
The same goes for smartphones. You're not realistically gonna get a job without a smartphone.
Credit cards yes - most people do not use them, and their dominance as a default and even commonplace household usage as 'deficit spending' on Temu is most commonly a US phenomenon.
That's because debit cards are the default in the rest of the world - credit cards are not. Since everyone has a bank account and smartphone, most people pay with Google Pay via NFC on their phone anyway IRL, and many people shop online, which is the use of a debit card - paying for things.
As opposed to credit cards, which are seen as borrowing. Not that many people are keen to borrow money or engage in any finance that could be seen as "gambling", definitely least so the wagies, with the exception of some horse betting or memestocks or in the case of 100% brain use - a savings account at a bank or building society, all of which almost universally already require a bank account meaning a minimum of 2 apps.
I personally do have one but I'm in the minority.
You saying this interaction is pointless is very self-reporting, because you are essentially stating that you will not change your mind regardless of how many times and how much you are corrected.
It is an admission that your bizarre insistence that your experience is universal - as if you not knowing how things are in the rest of the world is some sort of attack on you - is in fact, terminal. I'm sorry for you.
I don't claim to know how things work in America, I've heard American colleagues say crazy stuff about how everything is tied to your credit ratings, which isn't the case here nearly as much, but I also don't claim that everything i know about my country - the UK - applies to the rest of the world, because of course it doesn't, I'm claiming that what you're saying - what might be true in your country - the US - is a universal worldwide experience.
I'm not sure what you expected claiming this in this international discussion on this international community on this international website on this international internet.
Two phones.
One for everyday life.
The other for documentation of events, activism, direct action, this app mentioned in the post, and maybe even rebellions.
(actually if you are doing a rebellion, you better use meshtastic or some sort of radios, and remember: do not transmit from home)
A big problem is that people need smartphones for so much of modern life.
Do you though? They're convenient, for sure, but you can also use a dumbphone and a laptop.
How the fuck would I access my bank then? All banks literally require their apps to access the account or sometimes even open the account, nevermind actually pay for anything or get a debit or credit card.
>Inb4 some American downvotes because they forget the rest of the world exists
We get it, Americans use cash in America, and they use magnetic stripe cards and cheques and all these other technologies that were phased out in rest of the world before I was even born, but that's not really an argument to make on a global platform.
like this
Sickday likes this.
like this
Sickday likes this.
Sickday likes this.
Yes, as opposed to spending money at another capitalist institution that will inevitably do the same thing, which is somehow not a subservient take.
There are a lot of other ways to apply pressure besides boycotts. I dont think a boycott would ever work against Apple over this.
I'm not sure why you're taking such an aggressive / dismissive tone towards me. Did your comment really warrant a breakdown of possible forms of collective action? It never really seemed you were interested in a nuanced discussion in the first place.
I think collective action in this circumstance is better spent on directly obstructing ICE operations. The developers of the app would be better served by making their project accessible in browser, and self hosted so as to prevent further attempts to make it inaccessible. Group collective action should be focused on demonstration and obstruction of the root of the problem, ICE itself. How you go about the depends a lot on when/where but there are a lot of ways to obstruct their operations.
Ive never personally spent money on any kind of Apple device. I would certainly encourage others not to as well, a thing I was already doing. But I think focusing on Apple as the root problem here is a mistake in the first place.
like this
Lawelen likes this.
It makes literally not a single difference if all of us here boycotted them or not. It's meaningless.
Just lemmy users? Sure, but you don't stop with just lemmy users.
These billionaires are making more money than they ever have in human history
Honest to god do you think that money magically appears in their pocket. We can still claw it back. Unionize, boycott, collective action is our strongest pressure against them and IT DOES WORK.
collective action is our strongest pressure against them
Which is why governments fight so much to make it hard.
In my neck of the woods it's not cool to unionize and there's no home owners' association, people only rally for their favorite sports team but don't bother voting.
I guess we get what we deserve.
I agree that collective action is our strongest pressure against them and it does work.
I do not think a boycott itself is likely to reverse Apple's removal of the app. I also think it makes more sense for the app to become available from a web browser, or some other avenue that circumvents the need for Apple's approval in the first place.
I also believe that collective action in this circumstance is better spent on ICE itself, which would be more effective (its the reason the US government wants Apple to remove the app in the first place) and more direct to fascist power.
Between Apple walled garden and the new dev signature thing from Google, those big players sure do like control over what we can do as users.
I agree with you, PWA is the way but Apple has been slow walking integration for years now (see brainhub.eu/library/pwa-on-ios)
PWA on iOS - Current Status & Limitations for Users [2025]
PWAs are a thing, Apple can no longer ignore this fact. Did anything change in the latest OS? See what's new in PWA on iOS.brainhub.eu
Got a source for that?
I’m a dev and have a bunch of PWAs on my iPhone. You can install them right from the browser using that same old “add to Home Screen” behavior that has been in iOS for an eternity.
I’m posting this through voyager for Lemmy, installed from my browser, not the App Store.
Ahh. I thought you were talking about Apple charging for PWAs or something.
That said, I believe push works now.
It's the button to pin a PWA to the taskbar by reading the manifest.json
maketecheasier.com/enable-prog…
Firefox has always supported web-apps, because web-apps are just interactive websites
That's from August, when support was added back after the feature being dropped in 2020.
Mozilla has released Firefox 143.0. The update lets users pin web apps to the taskbar, but only on Windows.About a month [ago], I reported that progressive web apps (PWAs) are available via Firefox's Labs. Now, the feature is available for everyone on Windows.
This is for the September 16 update.
ghacks.net/2025/09/16/mozilla-…
Firefox Finally Brings Progressive Web Apps – How to Enable and Use Them Now - Make Tech Easier
Firefox brings back Progressive Web Apps with Taskbar Tabs, giving Windows users a smooth way to run websites like native apps.Karrar Haider (Make Tech Easier)
Progressive Web-apps are a particular kind of web-app. The person you replied to just referred to "webapps", not this special kind of web-app. Firefox has always supported web-apps.
The nature of progressive web-apps means that you can use them even if the browser doesn't explicitly support them. All that explicit support does is wrap the web-app in an icon and reduced browser window.
like this
tiredofsametab likes this.
Oh no, our precious Apple is really a shit company. Tim Cook, is just like every other Tech CEO, a Liberal POS (or just straight republican).
They don't care about LGBQT+ or the enviornment. They care about money and how much they can make from stupid people.
If you don't want to bother read a centuries year old classic of literature on human condition I don't think I want to bother clarifying.
Forgot my silly opinion, read the 2 pages story.
Does anyone remember how the Devs from there didnt want to release for Android because ApPlE iS sOoOo mUcH mOoOrE sEcUrE
Get rekt.
like this
Sickday likes this.
Based on most smartphones being very insecure. Of course, iPhones aren't extremely secure, but the competition is practically nonexistent. Pretty much the only secure Android phones are Pixels. Samsung is considered one of the more secure manufacturers too, but according to GrapheneOS devs it's still way behind Google.
Note that even police and government agencies sometimes have trouble getting into iPhones. They never have such troubles getting into Android smartphones, except Pixels.
This is by no means meant to advertise iPhones. It's just a simple observation that security in smartphones is heavily lacking.
like this
Sickday likes this.
Both iPhones and Android phones can be configured to your desired security level. Both are used by various government agencies around the world for their most important secrets. Neither are secure out of the box. You have to harden them to your desired level of security
Arguing whether Android or iOS is more secure is a bit like arguing whether an SUV or pickup is safer. It doesn't matter which you pick when basic security steps are magnitudes more important: Wearing a safety belt, having a functioning air bag, driving a safe speed, not driving drunk, etc.
In regards to security, Apple does have three upsides, and only those:
- No sideloading and no unlocked bootloader means you can't sideload malware or install malware-preloaded ROMs. No root also means you can't just install malware that uses root access.
- Long OS support means fewer people run around with iPhones that are 5 OS versions behind.
- There's no tiny boutique iPhone manufacturers who sell phones that come pre-loaded with malware.
The solution for the first one is "don't sideload untrusted stuff" and the solution to the second and third one is "buy an Android phone from a trusted manufacturer that has long term OS support".
I'm not defending apple here. Short OS support (or none at all) is not a good thing, and it's something that's sadly still quite common if you buy the wrong Android brand.
Samsung is doing pretty well in that regard right now.
like this
Sickday likes this.
So if you give me two options, first is updating my phone so it becomes laggy and unusable or keep current version, I will choose to stay on old OS.
It really depends on what your goal is. Usability, keeping a familiar interface, performance, all of that are things that make it reasonable to stay on an outdated OS, and none of these reasons are bad.
Security (which is the only thing we are really talking about here) does require updates.
If security is your most important concern, you need to update. If security is not your biggest concern and other topics are more important for you, it might be reasonable to stay on older versions.
But in the context of this post, which was purely about security, having long term security updates is important.
Most long supported os has bad intentions behind it as making old models inferior and unusable as in case with ios on iphone 5.
Your evidence is an iPhone that came out 13 years ago last month? Back in those days, the year over year improvements in the hardware were immense, and the software tried to take advantage of it. But people would complain, A Lot, if those features didn't come to their older device. Do you remember how much folks lost their mind when the iPhone 4 came out and iOS 4 allowed it and the 3GS to have a home screen wallpaper, but not the iPhone 3G? People were pissed and called it "planned obsolescence" that it didn't get the feature. So, when the iPhone 4 hit iOS 7, they included all the animations. And then people called it planned obsolescence that it stuttered.
No sideloading and no unlocked bootloader means you can’t sideload malware or install malware-preloaded ROMs
It's a simple configuration change to disable it and can be done with any corporate MDM system, making this a moot point. Not to mention too many people don't understand security, so Android is taking away sideloading anyway, FoR sEcUriTY
No root also means you can’t just install malware that uses root access
The vast majority of Android phones do not come with root access. For both, you generally have to elevate access yourself
Long OS support means fewer people run around with iPhones that are 5 OS versions behind
If you're running an out-of-date OS, clearly security is not a priority
There’s no tiny boutique iPhone manufacturers who sell phones that come pre-loaded with malware
Supply chain attacks absolutely can happen to iPhones as well. There are plenty of re-sellers
You missed the actual security benefit over iOS that Android cannot compete with: Apple controls the entire software chain from security patch to OTA update. This allows them to patch and release a fix for critical vulnerabilities far faster than any Android device possibly could. Apple does not need to get the approval of an OEM (such as Samsung), and, due to special deals, they do not need to get the approval of a carrier (like Verizon). Android devices typically need to get approvals from both before releasing updates (although Google flagship phones can bypass one, and can fast track the other)
The downside there is there are no checks on Apple. They could release a horribly vulnerable patch with no additional checks in-between
You don't seem to get my point and seem to think that I'm some apple fanboy that you need to convince or win against.
I use android, I've never used iOS. I enjoy the freedom of sideloading. Still it is a fact that the overwhelming majority of malware infections on Android happen due to side loading. The percentage of devices running corporate MDM is tiny, making this a moot point.
The vast majority of Android phones do not come with root access. For both, you generally have to elevate access yourself
And yet quite a few devices in the wild run rooted or custom ROMs.
If you're running an out-of-date OS, clearly security is not a priority
You seem to forget what this thread is about. It's not about personal security and whether one can run a safe android device, but about an app developer not providing an Android version, because the platform as a whole (meaning the average user) is less secure.
Personal preferences like paying for a new, non-outdated phone don't really matter for that big picture view.
Supply chain attacks absolutely can happen to iPhones as well. There are plenty of re-sellers
That's a strange argument. Getting malware that survives a factory reset onto an iPhone without apple's approval is close to impossible. Making an Android phone from scratch that contains malware right in the system image has been done over and over again. You are argueing a hypothetical versus something that happens every day.
Always funny watching apple users think they know something.
pinches cheek
In terms of security alone, iPhones easily beat most Android phones
That's not how security works in the modern tech landscape. No major OS is going to meet a high security standard out of the box. All of them have to be configured to the desired security level, then be added to ongoing security efforts. Every major OS can be secured to the highest security standards
The primary difference is how much effort each takes, but even then there isn't much of a difference. You'll find tooling and in-house expertise makes a much larger difference than the OS
The myth that some OS are inherently secure really needs to die off
Every major OS can be secured to the highest security standards
Has Android added E2EE to their cloud backups yet like Apple has?
Apple is no friend to any of us, but Google openly and shamelessly scrapes every piece of data you put on their phones. Apple is absolutely the lesser of these two evils with out of the box functionality. I say this as a lifelong Android fan and Apple hater that entered the cybersecurity space and am only interested in the most private option I can get out of the box.
Like an Android can be more secure and private than an IPhone, but afaik that involves owning a Pixel specifically and installing an entirely different OS on it, one that Google a
Is also out to get.
You do know that Apple privately scrapes every piece of data you put on their phones right? Go read the privacy and ad policies. Apple also gives access to a lot of their users private information (China has full access to its users iCloud), will remove apps like this (while Google still allows apps that block ad trackers like DuckDuckGo that block Google own trackers). And Google supports CSE.
We get it from your post, your a huge and blind Apple fan that wants to do anything you can to confuse others into believing falsely like you that Apple is somehow a great company and product. But the truth is, Apple doesn't care about your privacy, lies to your face about it, and makes you less secure and your information less private as these situations show. And if you were in cybersecurity, you'd know this.
I’m not much of an Apple fan, I just like to get my privacy where I can. And with over a decade of experience in cybersecurity I can confidently say that as much as you shouldn’t blindly trust Apple, they at least give you a number of tools to increase your privacy out of the box.
Android on the other hand is a nightmarish hellscape of data mining and user profiling. There is GrapheneOS which is as of today a great option to circumvent Google’s data mining, but now that its future is at stake I worry for the future of privacy on Android devices.
But we get it from your post, you’re a pro-Google shill bot that didn’t actually read my comment and is just regurgitating nonsense to muddy the waters.
I'll just back up what I said with real links and not "trust me bro".
apple.com/legal/privacy/data/e… Apple collects in real time info about you like "Your name, address, age, gender... your approximate location (when turned on, kinda needed for many functions so pretty much everyone does)" I could go on.
support.apple.com/en-us/111754 Apple explaining that yeah, they give the Chinese government full access to Chinese iCloud users. You know who actually cared about their users privacy and didn't do that, preventing them from selling in China? Google.
play.google.com/store/apps/det… Book ad tracking on Android from all apps. Notice that it's on the Play Store? Where is the equal to it on Apple's App Store?
support.google.com/a/answer/14… Gooe built in CSE.
Just because I was able to call you out and prove you wrong, doesn't mean I'm a shill. The fact you just doubled down on your mis-information does out you as the shill though.
DuckDuckGo Private Browser - Apps on Google Play
Private. Fast. Fewer Ads. DuckDuckGo never tracks you.play.google.com
I2P proxy
With the current political weather, you're going to want the client anonymity protection. All they need to do is run a handfull of proxies, and they'll narrow down your house/phone as ICE targets.
We're beyond the nahh nahh can't get me because i'm not sharing illegal files, you'll get trucked off like the immigrants.
If they can log you reporting ICE to a website, you're toast.
not probably; the doj forced apple to remove it and apple caved: 404media.co/iceblock-owner-aft…
ICEBlock Owner After Apple Removes App: ‘We Are Determined to Fight This’
The developer of ICEBlock, an app that lets people crowdsource sightings of ICE officials, has said he is determined to fight back after Apple removed the app from its App Store on Thursday. The removal came after pressure from Department of Justice officials acting at the direction of Attorney General Pam Bondi, according to Fox which first reported the removal. Apple told 404 Media it has removed other similar apps too.“I am incredibly disappointed by Apple's actions today. Capitulating to an authoritarian regime is never the right move,” Joshua Aaron told 404 Media. “ICEBlock is no different from crowd sourcing speed traps, which every notable mapping application, including Apple's own Maps app, implements as part of its core services. This is protected speech under the first amendment of the United States Constitution.”
💡
Do you know anything else about this removal? Do you work at Apple or ICE? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.This post is for subscribers only
Become a member to get access to all content
Subscribe nowICEBlock Owner After Apple Removes App: ‘We Are Determined to Fight This’
Apple removed ICEBlock reportedly after direct pressure from Department of Justice officials. “I am incredibly disappointed by Apple's actions today. Capitulating to an authoritarian regime is never the right move,” the developer said.Joseph Cox (404 Media)
This is why the web is way better than any app store, yes even with the problems of DNS (DIDs becoming more prevalent cant come fast enough though). Any future phones should have a first class web experience imo.
Edit: I wanna add that browser monopolies are a real threat too. Ladybird is legit on Charlie Kirk's side aka nonpolitical so not a fan of the outlook there. Would love to see KDE fork chromium/blink with valve money and recreate Konquerer and bring back KHTML (I like irony). Valve even has a fork of CEF (Chromium Embedded Framework, electron uses this as well) because of Steam and its ui being a big web app. KDE then has web apps and add them to Discovery, or you can build qt apps. Make it happen valve! And hire me to help lol
I’m only just learning about this, but don’t the encrypted DNS protocols solve the privacy problem?
Or do you mean more like not being able to trust a registrar or public DNS server?
Usually when people complain about DNS, they're talking about stability issues. In this case I think he's pointing out how centralized it is, and how a bad actor could cause significant issues
At a local level, the most common issue I know of is ISPs blocking sites at the DNS level by feeding in fake information that redirects you to one of the ISP's blocked/parked domains. Usually implemented to prevent customers going to piracy sites. It's not much of an issue to subvert currently, as you can simply use any public DNS provider
That being said, much of that has been consolidated into a dozen or so tech companies. In the current political climate, I could see a coordinated effort happening between those tech companies to block sites deemed non gratis. Obviously there's still ways to subvert it, but the vast majority of user's won't be able to
I had to look it up too
Apparently it stands for “decentralized identifiers”
From what I’m gathering it’s a client based web protocol That works in conjunction with DNS
Thats kinda what FreeNet does.
broadbandsearch.net/definition…
What Is Freenet? Architecture & Functions Explained (2025)
Explore FreeNet: An overview of its decentralized network, intricate architecture, and operational dynamics.Find Internet Providers - BroadbandSearch
Yeah, but are Apple users going to punish Apple for glazing Trump's tiny manhood by not buying Apple products?
Tim Apple certainly doesn't think so.
It’s really not that bad a compromise, as far as bribes go. Some cheap gaudy bauble as payment for not interfering with billions of dollars in business?
It’s still a bribe and it’s still encouraging mango mussolini, but very efficient tradeoff
Disclaimer: The app is closed source, so all we can go off is the developer's word, although the fact the government removed it is a strong indicator they don't have access to data from the app
The developer stated they do not even retain any identifying data, so the only data the government could get is public anyway. Through Apple they'd be able to see who downloaded it, and likely when it was used. Your defense would be easy enough though: "I just wanted to make sure the libs weren't harassing our ~~fascist~~ patriotic ICE agents near me"
This is cowardice from Apple, but ICEBlock was not a good app:
- Micah Lee: Unfortunately, the ICEBlock app is activism theater
- Micah Lee: ICEBlock handled my vulnerability report in the worst possible way
ICEBlock handled my vulnerability report in the worst possible way
Last week, I wrote about how Joshua Aaron's ICEBlock app, which allows people to anonymously report ICE sightings within a 5-mile radius, is – unfortunately, and despite apparent good intentions – activism theater.Micah Lee (micahflee)
When I had an iPhone 3GS I got in a hot tub with it in my pocket and it died. I let it dry out. Then I very carefully took it apart and found all the little white stickers inside that turn from white to pink when in contact with water. I used a razor blade to remove those stickers without damaging them. I then placed a drop of bleach on each which turned them back to white and let them dry out. I used very tiny amounts of super glue to re-apply them to the exact same positions within the phone and then very carefully reassembled the phone.
Took the phone into an Apple store. Guy disappeared into the back for about 10 minutes with it. Came back out and said it must have just up and died but he doesn't know how and gave me a new iPhone.
Only Apple product I've ever owned.
Fuck you Apple.
Google's sideloading restrictions seems almost like its perfectly timed... 👀
Anyways, Google can gargle my:
How to choose between this and GrapheneOS, CalyxOS, etc? I feel ready for the switch too.
Edit: Plus is it possible to get banking apps and Google Wallet to still work (easily) in these Android-based alternatives?
Mostly: Price
Are you willing to, either: (a) spend $500-$600 for a new Google Pixel? (the 9 that is, I don't think 10 is ready for GrapheneOS yet), or (b) willing to dig into the second hand market and potentially get not-unlockable phones? (those run rampant in the used market, note that Carrier Unlock does not equate to Bootloader Unlock, and Verizon ones are guaranteed to not allow bootloader unlocking, I'm unsure about other carriers)
(Also you are kinda supporting google if you get a new one btw.)
I personally don't wanna spend $500 since if it ever breaks, its hard to replace or even repair. And I hate dealing with the used market.
So for me, Graphene isn't an option.
I went for the cheapest new Moto that has custom ROM support, Moto G 5G 2024 for $140 (carrier variants do not unlock).
I'm basically still testing to see what wouldn't work, haven't really be using it as a "daily driver"
I've also come across the CMF Phone 1 which is OLED and supports e/OS its about $300
TLDR: Get Graphene if you can afford a pixel or willing to look for a used phone from a reputable source. I personally do not like used phones because I think there's too much risks IMO, you might assess the risks differently. Other options are Moto G 5G 2024 for $140 which runs both LineageOS and e/OS, or CMF (by Nothing) Phone 1 which runs e/OS and is an overall much better phone, but its more expensive, at $250 for 128 GB and $300 for the 256 GB.
Oh one last thing: Even "New" "Unlocked" cheap Pixels on sites like Amazon aren't guaranteed to unlock. I was looking at older pixels like the 6a, 7, 7a and checked the reviews and some comments indicate they are locked to Verizon because the reseller didn't unlock it for some reason, so I'm get the vibes that its unsold stock previously owned by carriers, so I don't know if they'll bootloader unlock, even if its SIM unlocked. Where as CMF never has carrier variants, so they all should unlock.
Edit: Also, the CMF phone needs the IMEI added in to carriers such as ATT and Verizon, since they use IMEI whitelisting, Tmobile is fine. For some countries like, Australia they also does nationwide whitelisting. Custom ROMs can break VoLTE, rendering it not work with cell service for csrriers that require VoLTE, Might wanna research about that.
It is impossible to send a (edit: true) push notification to a device without knowing which device it is going to. The developer may not know/have access to that information, but Apple/Google know which devices they are sending those pushes to. If it wasn't a true push notification, then they would not arrive in a timely manner and potentially only when the app was opened the next time.
He was using true push notifications, so the government could just subpoena that information.
He could maybe obfuscate who initiated the initial message, but its impossible to do that for the receivers.
Apple CEO Tim Cook recently gave Trump a 24 carat gold bribe.
usatoday.com/story/news/politi…
Tim Cook appeals to Trump’s love of gold with a 24-karat base for Apple plaque
President Trump hosted Apple CEO Tim Cook at the White House as they announced new US investments. Cook also gifted Trump a plaque with gold base., USA TODAY (USA TODAY)
Canadian PM Mark Carney’s Shift From Climate-Change Warrior to Fossil-Fuel Cheerleader
like this
copymyjalopy likes this.
The Shutdown Isn’t a Stalemate — It’s a Power Grab. And the Media Are Missing It.
The Shutdown Isn’t a Stalemate — It’s a Power Grab. And the Media Are Missing It.
While the media fixate on partisan blame, Russ Vought and a hard-right GOP faction are quietly using the shutdown to sidestep Congress and reshape government.Colby Hall (Mediaite)
like this
copymyjalopy, adhocfungus, Rozaŭtuno e essell like this.
Have you considered emigrating from the US? If so, where to?
like this
copymyjalopy e adhocfungus like this.
Mysterious "rogue planet" spotted gobbling 6 billion tons of gas and dust a second
Mysterious "rogue planet" spotted gobbling 6 billion tons of gas and dust a second
ESO's Very Large Telescope has observed a rogue planet and revealed that it is eating up gas and dust from its surroundings at a rate of 6 billion tons a second.CBS News
copymyjalopy likes this.
Votação de vínculo entre motoristas e apps será em 30 dias, diz Fachin
Votação de vínculo entre motoristas e apps será em 30 dias, diz Fachin
Supremo Tribunal Federal julga recursos protocolados pelas plataformas Rappi e Uber, que contestam decisões da Justiça do Trabalho que reconhecem o vínculo empregatício.Agência Brasil
Russia does not wage anti-dollar campaign — Putin
Russia does not wage anti-dollar campaign — Putin
Members of BRICS do not build up such policy against anyone, Putin stressedTASS
like this
adhocfungus, Maeve e SuiXi3D like this.
Technology reshared this.
Family says Atlanta journalist Mario Guevara will be deported tomorrow
EPA Moves to Prioritize Review of New Chemicals for Data Centers
ICE Zip-Ties Children in Horrific Raid on Chicago Apartment Building
ICE Zip-Ties Children in Horrific Raid on Chicago Apartment Building
ICE agents forced everyone out of a Chicago apartment building in the dead of night.The New Republic
like this
copymyjalopy, adhocfungus e Rozaŭtuno like this.
Hundreds of societies have been in crises like ours. An expert explains how they got out. | An analysis of historical crises over the past 2,000 years offers lessons for avoiding the end times.
the principles behind a successful exit from crisis remain relevant. While the specific policies will differ across societies, the overarching goal remains the same: to rebalance the distribution of wealth and power in a way that promotes long-term stability, not short-term elite enrichment.
Hundreds of societies have been in crises like ours. An expert explains how they got out.
No, we aren’t in “unprecedented times.” An analysis of 100 historical crises over two millennia has lessons for how society can avoid the end times.Peter Turchin (Vox)
like this
copymyjalopy e adhocfungus like this.
The Price of Unpredictability
How Trump’s Foreign Policy Is Ruining American Credibility
Keren Yarhi-Milo
October 2, 2025
For decades, U.S. foreign policy has depended on credibility: the belief that Washington would honor its commitments and that its past behavior signaled its future conduct. The United States, for instance, was able to develop a large network of allies because its partners trusted that, if attacked, Washington would defend them. It could strike free-trade deals with countries around the world and negotiate peace agreements because, generally speaking, it was seen as an honest broker. That is not to say the United States has never surprised, or that it never reneged on a promise. But for most of its modern history, it has been a trustworthy actor.But unlike any U.S. president before him, Donald Trump has abandoned all efforts to make Washington reliable or consistent. His predecessors had also, at times, made decisions that undermined American credibility. But Trump’s lack of consistency is of an entirely different magnitude—and appears to be part of a deliberate strategy. He proposes deals before backing down. He promises to end wars before expanding them. He berates U.S. allies and embraces adversaries. With Trump, the only pattern is the lack of one.
The Price of Unpredictability: How Trump’s Foreign Policy Is Ruining American Credibility
Trump’s foreign policy is ruining American credibility.Keren Yarhi-Milo (Foreign Affairs Magazine)
caffettistica truffa delle macchine universitarie (la macchinetta del caffè rotta mi ha rovinato la giornata)
Oggi, la giornata pareva aver incalzato un piede giusto (si può dire? boh!) — o, quantomeno, non marcio — sembrava che per una buona volta io potessi non soffrire — almeno, tolto il fattore meteo, che dalla sera alla sera stessa (letteralmente!) si è riconfigurato coi pinguini, e se adesso sono a casa senza un […]
Excel's AI: 20% of the time, it works every time
Excel's AI: 20% of the time, it works every time
A Microsoft blog post about "vibe working" broke me.Corbin Davenport (Spacebar)
Excel's AI: 20% of the time, it works every time
Excel's AI: 20% of the time, it works every time
A Microsoft blog post about "vibe working" broke me.Corbin Davenport (Spacebar)
like this
adhocfungus e SuiXi3D like this.
Technology reshared this.
like this
slothbear likes this.
Accountants tally the numbers and hand you the totals. Twisting them is unethical and can lead to them losing their licenses.
Analysts manipulate the numbers to push a message. No ethics allowed.
Signed, an analyst raised by an accountant. Interacting with other analysts is infuriating.
- 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
How Much Is Trump Worth? Depends on How He Feels
Assessing Trump's wealth was like trying to bottle smoke. It went up and down based on his feelings.Timothy L. O'Brien (Newsweek)
Microsoft literally calls the feature "vibe working." Youre not far off the actual name.
They aren't even pretending to care anymore.
Vibe working: Introducing Agent Mode and Office Agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot | Microsoft 365 Blog
Microsoft Copilot introduces Agent Mode in Office apps, enabling smarter document creation, analysis, and collaboration across Excel, Word, and PowerPoint.Sumit Chauhan (Microsoft 365 Blog)
It's really more about the overall flavor of the spreadsheet than how "right" any individual field is.
Just like the Xerox copier/scanners that helpfully kept scanned images small by reusing parts of the image elsewhere. Like, all these 6s on your scanned invoices can totally be replaced with 8s. There's just a tiny degradation in the overall image, it shouldn't be a problem!
Xerox should have just called it AI compression and people would have been throwing money at them.
Only when people use the wrong input, garbage in and garbage out.
In the same vein I can't think of any instance where excel had calculated things wrong unless there was a fault in the formula that I made.
That’s funny because I grew up with math teachers constantly telling us that we shouldn’t trust them.
Normal calculators that don’t have arbitrary precision have all the same problems you get when you use floating point types in a programming language. E.g. 0.1+0.2==0.3 evaluates to false in many languages. Or how adding very small numbers to very large numbers might result in the larger number as is.
If you’ve only used CAS calculators or similar you might not have seen these too since those often do arbitrary precision arithmetics, but the vast majority of calculators is not like that. They might have more precision than a 32 bit float though.
No, the user is wrong quite often, the calculator gives the answer to the question asked, not the answer to the question the user wanted to ask.
Garbage in, garbage out.
AI Agents having access to the functionality of Excel means that they won’t be wrong with the actual calculations though, since it doesn’t do 5x10 in the LLM but instead uses excels built in functions to do it.
AI and excel are a match made in heaven tbh. Same with AI and databases.
Did he just spend the first half of the article explaining why 'copilot in excel' (not agent mode) wasn't designed for calculation tasks, them finishes with complaining that on benchmarks it fails 80% of the time?
The 54% accuracy of agent mode should be called out, not the low accuracy of the thing that wasn't designed for it.
Everyone else who's anti-AI:
- What is that smell? It smells like a used diaper filled with Indian food!
- What is that?! It smells like a turd covered in burnt hair!
- It smells like Bigfoot's dick!
- What is that stench?! It smells like the inside of a fake leg!
Excel is the fucking backbone of Microsoft Office. It's solid and backwards compatible for a couple of decades. Excel is the one reason business sticks with Office. It never fails, everyone knows it, nothing can replace it. You cannot trust any other spreadsheet to perfectly translate if you move away from Excel. The world runs on Excel.
I never imagined Microsoft would fuck with Excel. Ever. There's a fairy tale about killing the golden goose, can't remember how it goes.
Just look what they're doing with their Xbox brand. One of the most well established brands in the most profitable entertainment sector and they are literally setting fire to it in every conceivable direction.
Microsoft must be taking business cues from GRRM... Kill all your main characters.
unless you're running one of the Enterprise/IoT SKUs....
That is the whole point. They're squeezing the users they don't give a shit about. But personal users almost never buy Windows licenses from Microsoft I'd bet. So what if they switch away? And how are they or their kids going to play Fortnite or League after switching?
The money for Windows non-Enterprise is made with OEM deals. They probably wouldn't even notice if nobody bought personal licenses anymore. Might as well make actual money from selling data about them.
Enterprise is a different story, once you squeeze too hard, companies will find ways to replace you; they are somewhat resilient to pain, but it does have limits.
I'm on Win11 and see almost none of the issues people like you are talking about. No doubt they exist! Maybe it's because I'm on a plain vanilla ISO and I stripped the crap out early on? Same SSD I had 4 computers ago on Win10, just get moving it over. Talk like yours makes me afraid of a fresh install!
If it's as bad as people say, I'll give up and go Debian. I was largely staying Windows so I could be familiar and support my coworkers. Unemployed now. Who cares?
They've since relaxed a bit on the forced hardware upgrade part; you can install Win11 on 'unsupported' hardware now, you'll just have click a prompt saying you'll get no support and you're on your own if you attempt that, where initially it wouldn't even let you do that.
The forced MS account login is very much an issue with the consumer SKUs and the Enterprise/IoT SKUs still let you use a local account. Similarly, LTSC in particular is barren on the bloat front, while the consumer SKUs and even the non-LTSC Enterprise and IoT SKUs aren't much better in this regard, come loaded with bloat.
You can operate without a local account - source, I‘m on Windows 11 and I‘ve never had a Microsoft account - but it‘s a massive PITA and takes a lot of playing around and disconnecting from the internet during install, and stuff like that.
You‘re right that 99% of people won‘t know/won‘t bother to go through the hassle and that Microsoft through the years have been making it harder and harder to have a local account, but at the moment it‘s still technically possible.
yep. it's the one tool that is incredibly versatile in the workplace and for which I do not have a replacement
are there better tools? quite often. would those tools be able to be used by anybody opening the files you are sharing with them? nope. and keeping things in the same format means it's very easy to move data across files and link things up.
forms, trackers, calculations, data logging, all easy to reference/transfer to one another and I can expect anybody on my team to be able to work with files I send them without having to teach them how to use a different program
Just because it doesn't offer features a database has doesn't mean people aren't trying to use it as one
I support your argument, but unfortunately there are some real monstrosities out there that have carried small businesses since decades
Costly and Deadly Wildfires Really Are on the Rise, New Research Finds | The past decade in particular has seen an uptick in devastating blazes linked to climate change, according to the study.
The paper is here
The chart in Vox is particularly revealing, though I haven't found a gift link to it yet.
The surging price tag of wildfires, in one chart
A new study reveals that increasing global temperatures are fueling the rising financial toll of wildfires, with costs surging dramatically over the past decade.Umair Irfan (Vox)
Amid special election to replace Rep. Mark Green in Tenn., one county explains purge of 80k voters from rolls
Amid special election to replace Rep. Mark Green in Tenn., one county explains purge of 80k voters from rolls
Early voting in the special election to replace Rep. Mark Green is underway as Davidson County election official explains purge of 80,000 voters from rolls.Ben Hall (News Channel 5 Nashville (WTVF))
Ex-CDC director talks about why she was fired
Exclusive: ex-CDC director talks about why she was fired
“I would never do that, as a scientist,” Susan Monarez says of being asked to approve changes to vaccine recommendations without knowing the details.Kozlov, Max
Lemmy doesn't federate across either NOSTR bridge
As you may know NOSTR (Notes and Other STuff via Relays) is another protocol for the fediverse like ActivityPub. In order to allow AP folks to communicate with NOSTR folks there are [at least] two "bridges" (mostr.pub & momostr.pink) created to allow certain level of server, client interaction between the two.
For some reason no lemmy communities nor users are ever found by either. It works just fine for mbin magazines and users. Do any of you have an idea why?
Stanford Study: ‘AI’ Generated ‘Workslop’ Actually Making Productivity Worse
Automation undeniably has some useful applications. But the folks hyping modern “AI” have not only dramatically overstated its capabilities, many of them generally view these tools as a way to lazily cut corners or undermine labor. There’s also a weird innovation cult that has arisen around managers and LLM use, resulting in the mandatory use of tools that may not be helping anybody — just because.
The result is often a hot mess, as we’ve seen in journalism. The AI hype simply doesn’t match the reality, and a lot of the underlying financial numbers being tossed around aren’t based in reality; something that’s very likely going to result in a massive bubble deflation as the reality and the hype cycles collide (Gartner calls this the “trough of disillusionment,” and expects it to arrive next year).
One recent study out of MIT Media Lab found that 95% of organizations see no measurable return on their investment in AI (yet). One of many reasons for this, as noted in a different recent Stanford survey (hat tip: 404 Media), is because the mass influx of AI “workslop” requires colleagues to spend additional time trying to decipher genuine meaning and intent buried in a sharp spike in lazy, automated garbage.
The survey defines workslop as “AI generated work content that masquerades as good work, but lacks the substance to meaningfully advance a given task.” Somewhat reflective of America’s obsession with artifice. And it found that as use of ChatGPT and other tools have risen in the workplace, it’s created a lot of garbage that requires time to decipher:
“When coworkers receive workslop, they are often required to take on the burden of decoding the content, inferring missed or false context. A cascade of effortful and complex decision-making processes may follow, including rework and uncomfortable exchanges with colleagues.”
Confusing or inaccurate emails that require time to decipher. Lazy or incorrect research that requires endless additional meetings to correct. Writing full of errors that requires supervisors to edit or correct themselves:
“A director in retail said: “I had to waste more time following up on the information and checking it with my own research. I then had to waste even more time setting up meetings with other supervisors to address the issue. Then I continued to waste my own time having to redo the work myself.”
In this way, a technology deemed a massive time saver winds up creating all manner of additional downstream productivity costs. This is made worse by the fact that a lot of these technologies are being rushed into mass adoption in business and academia before they’re fully cooked. And by the fact the real-world capabilities of the products are being wildly overstated by both companies and a lazy media.
This isn’t inherently the fault of the AI, it’s the fault of the reckless, greedy, and often incompetent people high in the extraction class dictating the technology’s implementation. And the people so desperate to be innovation-smacked, they’re simply not thinking things through. “AI” will get better; though any claim of HAL-9000 type sentience will remain mythology for the foreseeable future.
Obviously measuring the impact of this workplace workslop is an imprecise science, but the researchers at the Stanford Social Media Lab try:
“Each incidence of workslop carries real costs for companies. Employees reported spending an average of one hour and 56 minutes dealing with each instance of workslop. Based on participants’ estimates of time spent, as well as on their self-reported salary, we find that these workslop incidents carry an invisible tax of $186 per month. For an organization of 10,000 workers, given the estimated prevalence of workslop (41%), this yields over $9 million per year in lost productivity.”
The workplace isn’t the only place the rushed application of a broadly misrepresented and painfully under-cooked technology is making unproductive waves. When media outlets rushed to adopt AI for journalism and headlines (like at CNET), they, too, found that the human editorial costs to correct and fix all the problems, plagiarism, false claims, and errors really didn’t make the value equation worth their time. Apple found that LLMs couldn’t even do basic headlines with any accuracy.
Elsewhere in media you have folks building giant (badly) automated aggregation and bullshit machines, devoid of any ethical guardrails, in a bid to hoover up ad engagement. That’s not only repurposing the work of real journalists, it’s redirecting an already dwindling pool of ad revenue away from their work. And it’s undermining any sort of ethical quest for real, informed consensus in the authoritarian age.
This is all before you even get to the environmental and energy costs of AI slop.
Some of this are the ordinary growing pains of new technology. But a ton of it is the direct result of poor management, bad institutional leadership, irresponsible tech journalism, and intentional product misrepresentation. And next year is going to likely be a major reckoning and inflection point as markets (and people in the real world) finally begin to separate fact from fiction.
CNET had to correct most of its AI-written articles
CNET has issued corrections for over half of the AI-written articles the outlet recently attributed to its CNET Money team.Igor Bonifacic (Engadget)
AI ‘Workslop’ Is Killing Productivity and Making Workers Miserable
A joint study by Stanford University researchers and a workplace performance consulting firm published in the Harvard Business Review details the plight of workers who have to fix their colleagues’ AI-generated “workslop,” which they describe as work content that “masquerades as good work, but lacks the substance to meaningfully advance a given task.” The research, based on a survey of 1,150 workers, is the latest analysis to suggest that the injection of AI tools into the workplace has not resulted in some magic productivity boom and instead has just increased the amount of time that workers say they spend fixing low-quality AI-generated “work.”The Harvard Business Review study came out the day after a Financial Times analysis of hundreds of earnings reports and shareholder meeting transcripts filed by S&P 500 companies that found huge firms are having trouble articulating the specific benefits of widespread AI adoption but have had no trouble explaining the risks and downsides the technology has posed to their businesses: “The biggest US-listed companies keep talking about artificial intelligence. But other than the ‘fear of missing out,’ few appear to be able to describe how the technology is changing their businesses for the better,” the Financial Times found. “Most of the anticipated benefits, such as increased productivity, were vaguely stated and harder to categorize than the risks.”
Other recent surveys and studies also paint a grim picture of AI in the workplace. The main story seems to be that there is widespread adoption of AI, but that it’s not proving to be that useful, has not resulted in widespread productivity gains, and often ends up creating messes that human beings have to clean up. Human workers see their colleagues who use AI as less competent, according to another study published in Harvard Business Review last month. A July MIT report found that “Despite $30–40 billion in enterprise investment into GenAI, this report uncovers a surprising result in that 95% of organizations are getting zero return … Despite high-profile investment, industry-level transformation remains limited.” A June Gallup poll found that AI use among workers doubled over the last two years, and that 40 percent of those polled have used AI at work in some capacity. But the poll found that “many employees are using AI at work without guardrails or guidance,” and that “The benefits of using AI in the workplace are not always obvious. According to employees, the most common AI adoption challenge is ‘unclear use case or value proposition.’”
These studies, anecdotes we have heard from workers, and the rise of industries like “vibe coding cleanup specialists” all suggest that workers are using AI, but that they may not be leading to actual productivity gains for companies. The Harvard Business Review study proposes a possible reason for this phenomenon: Workslop.
The authors of that study, who come from Stanford University and the workplace productivity consulting firm BetterUp, suggest that a growing number of workers are using AI tools to make presentations, reports, write emails, and do other work tasks that they then file to their colleagues or bosses; this work often appears useful but is not: “Workslop uniquely uses machines to offload cognitive work to another human being. When coworkers receive workslop, they are often required to take on the burden of decoding the content, inferring missed or false context. A cascade of effortful and complex decision-making processes may follow, including rework and uncomfortable exchanges with colleagues,” they write.
The researchers say that surveyed workers told them that they are now spending their time trying to figure out if any specific piece of work was created using AI tools, to identify possible hallucinations in the work, and then to manage the employee who turned in workslop. Surveyed workers reported spending time actually fixing the work, but the researchers found that “the most alarming cost may have been interpersonal.”
“Low effort, unhelpful AI generated work is having a significant impact on collaboration at work,” they wrote. “Approximately half of the people we surveyed viewed colleagues who sent workslop as less creative, capable, and reliable than they did before receiving the output. Forty-two percent saw them as less trustworthy, and 37% saw that colleague as less intelligent.”
No single study on AI in the workplace is going to be definitive, but evidence is mounting that AI is affecting people’s work in the same way it’s affecting everything else: It is making it easier to output low-quality slop that other people then have to wade through. Meanwhile, Microsoft researchers who spoke to nurses, financial advisers, and teachers who use AI found that the technology makes people “atrophied and unprepared” cognitively.
Each study I referenced above has several anecdotes about individual workers who have found specific uses of AI that improve their own productivity and several companies have found uses of AI that have helped automate specific tasks, but most of the studies find that the industry- and economy-wide productivity gains that have been promised by AI companies are not happening. The MIT report calls this the “GenAI Divide,” where many companies are pushing expensive AI tools on their workers (and even more workers are using AI without explicit permission), but that few are seeing any actual return from it.
Microsoft Study Finds AI Makes Human Cognition “Atrophied and Unprepared”
Researchers find that the more people use AI at their job, the less critical thinking they use.Emanuel Maiberg (404 Media)
like this
adhocfungus e copymyjalopy like this.
Help a Family Trapped in Northern Gaza – Your Support Can Save Our Lives
We are a family still trapped under ongoing bombardment in Northern Gaza.
We desperately need your help to evacuate to the south. Transportation costs have soared to over $2,000 — an amount we simply cannot afford.
Please, we are pleading for your support. Any contribution could help save our lives.
You are our lifeline. Please don’t leave us alone in this moment of despair
gofund.me/00439328
Technology reshared this.
Help a Family Trapped in Northern Gaza – Your Support Can Save Our Lives
We are a family still trapped under ongoing bombardment in Northern Gaza.
We desperately need your help to evacuate to the south. Transportation costs have soared to over $2,000 — an amount we simply cannot afford.
Please, we are pleading for your support. Any contribution could help save our lives.
You are our lifeline. Please don’t leave us alone in this moment of despair
gofund.me/00439328
Perplexity’s Comet browser is now available to everyone for free
Shockingly, Perplexity says ‘the internet is better on Comet.’
Perplexity’s Comet browser is now available to everyone for free
Perplexity said its AI-powered web browser Comet and news service Comet Plus will be free to use globally.Robert Hart (The Verge)
DNC backs drive for Missouri gerrymandering referendum - Salon.com
DNC backs drive for Missouri gerrymandering referendum
The Democratic National Committee said it's supporting an effort to put the Missouri GOP's new map up for a voteRussell Payne (Salon.com)
like this
adhocfungus e copymyjalopy like this.
Meta won’t allow users to opt out of targeted ads based on AI chats
US users stuck with AI ad targeting as EU users win more control over their feeds.
copymyjalopy likes this.
How Much Energy Does It Take to Power Billions of AI Queries?
like this
adhocfungus likes this.
Technology reshared this.
More on this subject:
"We Went to the Town Elon Musk Is Poisoning"
"We Found the Hidden Cost of Data Centers. It's in Your Electric Bill"
“We Went to the Town Elon Musk Is Poisoning”
Wait, mobile gas turbines?
What a hack. No permits. And lying about it through gritted teeth.
And they are branded "Solar Turbines"? WTF?
These figures are too cherry picked for the shock value. You could go the opposite end and say that (these are all true, I've tried my best to research them):
8.5 Wh (average of all daily queries for a user) is also...
- Equivalent to running a 2000 W hair dryer or a kettle for 20 seconds
- Equivalent to idling a car during a traffic light and not turning off the engine
- A quarter of the energy required to reheat a ready meal in the microwave (roughly 45 Wh)
- The power usage of a Macbook screen over just 30 minutes.
850 MWh (whole consumption of all AI queries in the world) is also equivalent to...
- The power consumption of ONE single cruise ship for 12h (link)
- Charging 0.002% of the 75 million electric cars in the world
- The energy stored in the fuel tanks of 2000 petrol cars - a small stadium car park in Europe
- The amount of energy the largest solar plant in Spain or Germany generate... In a couple of hours.
So yes - AI bad... But for other reasons. This is a diversion. Datacentres powered by coal are bad. Cruise ships are worse.
The problem isn't that the whole world needs less than a solar farm's worth of energy for AI. The bigger problem is the social damage of AI - including the fact that this "expansion at all costs" is justifying getting that energy from non-renewable sources.
But seriously, one single cruise ship uses more energy than all of the AI in the world. They serve no useful purpose and there are hundreds of those.
like this
Fitik likes this.
Cargo ships are getting way more efficient and less polluting. I work on container ships which have a capacity ranging from 14k to 20k teu.
Imagine transporting these many containers from 1 continent to another via trucks. The amount of pollution they would be emitting on land.
There are strict regulations in place regarding emission. Now with the introduction of dual-fuel ships, they are going to be more environmental friendly.
It's a concept of the past that cargo ships are pollution factories.
Yes my friend.
Also in recent years, huge push for renewable energy from EU, China, India etc. is a step in right direction. It may take time for the world to consume less coal and petroleum, but in the meantime production from renewable source will only increase.
Long way to go, but we are on right path. Maybe our children's get to see a good future.
Once this thing gets trained it’s not going to be free.
It feels similar to when I was first on the internet. Older people thought it was a fad. They made jokes about it on sitcoms. The bubble burst and everyone was like ahhh knew it the internet sucks! Then the smart phone hit 🚀
Datacentres powered by coal are bad. Cruise ships are worse.
Coal Vs Marine fuel. You've picked the kings of pollution.
Coal is worse for CO2. The free carbon it releases binds with oxygen in the atmosphere to produce more CO2 mass than the coal itself. It's crazy how much CO2 it generates.
Heavy fuel oil / bunker oil / marine fuel is cheap ass shit that contains masses of pollutants. So whilst it won't generate as much CO2, it will create a load of other stuff including Sulphur Dioxide. That creates acid rain.
Here's an idea. Let's do neither of them.
Sooner.
None of these AI applications are making money and unlike earlier IT companies (Amazon, Google search, social media site, etc ), the marginal cost of each additional user isn't near zero.
They are having to invest hundreds of billions to cope with demand for applications which lose money on each use.
It's a $50 billion dollar industry priced as a trillion dollar industry.
And there‘s still no compelling use-case for the average consumer. Coders and scientists? Can be. But most people don‘t really have a use for it in most situations, even in business contexts. It‘s mostly a solution in search of a problem, and even then it‘s so unreliable that even things trying to sell you it as a solution have to add the disclaimer that you shouldn‘t use it for anything that‘s remotely important.
So even if the costs were markedly less than they are, there‘s still no real path to profitability because there‘s no real call for it.
The only use I‘ve found as a consumer is using something like Perplexity as a search engine. And that‘s not a testament to how good Perplexity is, but instead a testament to how bad other search engines have become. Perplexity just avoids things like SEO and is mostly quite good at finding sources which aren‘t themselves AI-generated.
And…I really see a near future in which AI-SEO becomes a thing and Perplexity et. al. become just as useless as google.
Nvidia's 16-pin time bomb could be defused by this $95 gadget — Ampinel offers load balancing that Nvidia forgot to include
Ampinel could be the salvation for 16-pin power connectors.
UK police caught slacking off by jamming their keyboards while working from home
One officer was recorded pressing the 'I' key more than 16,000 times
UK police caught slacking off by jamming their keyboards while working from home
: One officer was recorded pressing the 'I' key more than 16,000 timesBrandon Vigliarolo (The Register)
copymyjalopy likes this.
Meta's Threads inches closer to X with new Communities feature
Meta's text-based platform Threads has taken another page from X's book and launched the Communities feature.
https://www.neowin.net/news/metas-threads-inches-closer-to-x-with-new-communities-feature/
Steam Hardware & Software Survey (Linux, September 2025)
All fields expanded, very long screenshot: imgur.com/a/steam-hardware-sof…Note, the source will change every month. That's why I made a screenshot, so the discussion in this thread makes sense in the future. Source: store.steampowered.com/hwsurve…
Linux Mint 22.2 64 bit got +3.34% from previously 0%, while Linux Mint 22.1 64 bit lost -2.71%. So the rest of the 0.65% are either new users or upgraders from even older Linux Mint versions. Whatever the reason is, these two entries should have been a single one as Linux Mint 22 with 8.84%.
Also what is the category "Other"? It's almost 20% big, so this is not something to wave over. Bazzite got a good start, hopefully it will grow further. I'm surprised that CachyOS is this popular, much more than Ubuntu and Bazzite.
OC text by @thingsiplay@beehaw.org
adhocfungus likes this.
'Particularly Heinous': UN Chief Condemns Manchester Yom Kippur Synagogue Attack
The head of Amnesty International UK implored public figures to "not stoke hatred and division but focus on the solidarity and humanity that connects us all."
Archived version: archive.is/newest/commondreams…
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.
Putin hails bravery of US national who died fighting for Russia
Putin hails bravery of US national who died fighting for Russia
Michael Gloss, the son of the CIA deputy director, had secretly enlisted in the Russian military and was killed in Donbass last yearRT
ToiletFlushShowerScream
in reply to Spectre • • •masquenox
in reply to Spectre • • •