Hello there

I just developed two black and white film rolls. That was a painful experience, because of my bad choice of film:

👿 The Lucky SHD400 is too thin, curling on itself like crazy, slipping on the reel.

🫤 The Lomography earl grey 100 is a bit thicker, better catch on reel’s sides and locking ball.

I wish next rolls will be easier to feed on the reel, any advices ?

Until now nothing beats the Kikipan 320. But it’s not produced anymore.

Asking AI seems only to praise most expensive films, not sure if it is true or biased.

Also I tired asking on the mastodon and associated platform first with not much luck.

Hopefully lemmy is better suited for that kind of open question ?

https://www.pcmag.com/news/404-forever-the-tech-that-died-in-2025

[...]How have the copywriters been faring, in a world awash in cheap AI text generators and wracked with AI adoption mania in executive circles? As always, we turn to the workers themselves. And once again, the stories they have to tell are unhappy ones. These are accounts of gutted departments, dried up work, lost jobs, and closed businesses. I’ve heard from copywriters who now fear losing their apartments, one who turned to sex work, and others, who, to their chagrin, have been forced to use AI themselves.

Readers of this series will recognize some recurring themes: The work that client firms are settling for is not better when it’s produced by AI, but it’s cheaper, and deemed “good enough.” Copywriting work has not vanished completely, but has often been degraded to gigs editing client-generated AI output. Wages and rates are in free fall, though some hold out hope that business will realize that a human touch will help them stand out from the avalanche of AI homogeneity.

"I was forced to use AI until the day I was laid off." Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry

Copywriters were one of the first to have their jobs targeted by AI firms. These are their stories, three years into the AI era.

^{Brian Merchant (Blood in the Machine)}

Every republic has founding quarrels. India has Nehru, Gandhi, and Ambedkar arguing over whether the new state would be socialist, village-centered, or liberal-constitutional. Pakistan has Iqbal and Jinnah wrestling with what it means to build a Muslim homeland out of the wreckage of the Raj. South Africa has Mandela and the ANC leadership negotiating, under the gaze of the old security state and with the memory of Biko hovering over the room, what a post-apartheid constitution should guarantee and what it cannot yet touch. Across Latin America, the transitions out of military rule and the new constitutions of the 1980s and 1990s posed the same question in different accents: how far to curb markets, the generals, and the old oligarchies without igniting a counterrevolution.

In the United States, we can name three such moments without much effort. The First Republic is born from Madison, Hamilton, and the Anti-Federalists arguing over the reach of the new federal government. The Second emerges from Lincoln, Douglass, Sumner, and Stevens fighting over slavery and Reconstruction. The Third is the New Deal order of Roosevelt, Frances Perkins, Walter Reuther, and Southern barons battling over the mass-party welfare state that remade capitalism without abolishing it. Their disagreements over federal power, race, and markets still structure our politics.

What we lack is a comparable language, and an equivalent cast of founders, for the Fourth American Republic: the constitutional order created when Black Americans forced the United States to dismantle de jure apartheid and finally extend formal citizenship across the color line. Between Brown v. Board and the Voting Rights Act, the country became, on paper, a multiracial democracy layered onto the New Deal’s economic regime. Yet the people who argued most intensely about what that democracy should be are rarely treated as framers. They are remembered as “civil-rights leaders,” not as architects of a new order.

This matters because the arguments we now conduct under the heading “the crisis of liberalism” are downstream of that unfinished founding. Jerusalem Demsas reaches back to Locke and Shklar to ask what liberalism is for: how a diverse society lives together without turning politics into permanent retribution. Matthew Yglesias looks at the institutional language of contemporary anti-racism and hears an illiberal turn: groups displacing individuals, neutral rules and objectivity treated as domination, universal rights and due process treated as obstacles. My own response has been that much of what he calls “postliberal” is not an external invasion but liberalism’s own cramped, elite offspring: a professional style that promises recognition inside institutions while leaving the political economy largely intact. Those are contemporary arguments, but they are not necessarily new arguments. They are, in softened and professionalized form, the arguments that forged and divided the founding generation of the Fourth Republic.

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was the crucible where many of those fights were conducted. SNCC’s organizers—John Lewis, Stokely Carmichael, Bob Moses, Ella Baker, Diane Nash, Fannie Lou Hamer, James Forman—and allied figures like Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King Jr. fought over the meaning of American liberalism, the role of racism and capitalism, and the future of the Democratic Party. Their debates, as Founding Fathers and Mothers of a new republic, set the terms of the settlement that followed. Their breakup left unresolved tensions that still shape what counts as “liberal,” what counts as “identity politics,” and the Democratic Party.

SNCC’s Ghosts, the Fourth Republic, and the Crisis of Liberalism

Liberalism versus nationalism, social democracy versus identity politics: the Fourth Republic’s buried quarrels and the search for a new American order.

^{Waleed Shahid (Waleed’s Substack)}

Lo so che io in genere ci scherzo fin troppo con la storia degli spiriti, che mi influenzano e mi tormentano e mi condannano modificando malamente il mio intero stato psicofisico per sabotarmi poco a poco… ma ormai, giuro, inizio veramente a credere che ci sia da qualche parte una malvagicissima entità che si sta […]

octospacc.altervista.org/2025/…

minioctt

2025-12-13 17:06:38

la caduta dell’octt da ora sempre più certa e definitiva

Lo so che io in genere ci scherzo fin troppo con la storia degli spiriti, che mi influenzano e mi tormentano e mi condannano modificando malamente il mio intero stato psicofisico per sabotarmi poco a poco… ma ormai, giuro, inizio veramente a credere che ci sia da qualche parte una malvagicissima entità che si sta estremamente impegnando a farmi definitivamente crollare; e, senza ombra di dubbio, ultimamente ci sta purtroppo riuscendo. La percentuale di realtà della mia prospettata megafine pare via via sempre più alta. ☠️

In realtà è impossibile capire per bene cosa ho, a questo punto… anche perché, cercando definizioni normali, a volte mi quadrano e a volte no… praticamente, persino nella mia instabilità sono instabile. Ciò che posso dire senza paura di imprecisione, però, è che mi sento come se in me ci fosse zio perone un buco nero, che a volte, a caso, si attiva, e mi risucchia buona parte delle energie spirituali… A volte mi aspira la voglia, la spinta, la scintilla, di fare alcune cose… altre volte invece, la forza, del tipo che avrei il desiderio di fare qualcosa, ma faccio proprio fatica all’atto pratico… e ancora, forse più di rado ma comunque grevissimamente, ho la voglia, ho la forza, riesco a fare quello che sento di dovere, ma alla fine non ci godo. Ed ecco, con un simile quadretto, aggiunto il fatto che la causa è intangibile, penso sia più che ovvio impazzire!!! 🥰

Nella pratica, tutto ciò mi si esprime in maniera veramente terribile ed insopportabile. E in un momento, magari, non ho quello sfizio di fare niente in particolare… per esempio, non mi va di giocare ai miei videogiochini, o di leggere, e, se l’idea mi viene in mente chiedendomi cosa posso fare per passare il tempo, mi sento che mi scoccio… o magari, appunto, inizio a fare qualcosa di non troppo faticoso, sulla lunghezza d’onda di questi esempi, e magari ce la faccio, continuo fino al momento di decretata fine, e però nel mentre mi sento alquanto zzz e poco gratificata a riguardo… o ancora, forse il più terribile di tutti i casi, che però si applica perlopiù a quelle cose cognitivamente pesanti come scrivere: provo a mettermici, ma sento che proprio mi manca la concentrazione, non riesco ad entrare nel flusso, o non riesco a starci per abbastanza tempo, e il tutto mi richiede una fatica assurda (anche senza distrazioni esterne che mi distolgono). 🥴

Oggi, per esempio, è davvero allucinante. Mi sono svegliata alle 10, dopo circa 8 ore di sonno… e avrei voluto in realtà dormire ancora e ancora, ma il mio corpo non me lo lasciava fare; quindi, verso le 11 ho dovuto decretare impossibile il riaddormentarmi, e sono andata a fare colazione. Durante la colazione, forse volevo scrivere qualche notina, ma nel mentre mi sono accorta tipo di non avere quella forza, e ho dovuto rassegnarmi all’usare il telefono che avevo in mano giustappena per guardare qualche video… e poi, finito di mangiare, sono crollata; letteralmente. Sono stata praticamente un’ora tra il divano e il pavimento, soltanto disperandomi di questa cosa qui, che giusto ora — avendo iniziato giusto dopo pranzo con molta fatica, e finendo adesso che è quasi sera con poco meno sforzo — sto riuscendo a scrivere qui… manco il telefono ho più toccato in quel momento, oh; e, in realtà, nemmeno il fatto di non aver a tal punto ancora preso il caffè, che alla fine della mia colazione io voglio come ogni altra mattina, mi ha dato la forza di alzarmi subito in piedi e tornare in cucina per ottenerlo. Bruciata sono, proprio. 😭

Adesso è per l’appunto sera, e… boh. Sto abbastanza meglio, dopo aver innanzitutto pranzato, e poi addirittura preso il caffè del dopo pranzo al bar anziché a casa, con la scusa di fare un giro fuori di primo pomeriggio con i miei genitori prima che calasse il sole… però sto comunque pisciata, non lo so. Non ho fatto ancora niente di niente a questo punto, nemmeno scritto una singola notina sul mio Sharkey; giusto perso una ventina di minuti su Pinterest per trovare un’immagine che andasse bene per questo post… e beh, tutto ciò mi secca, appunto. In questo momento, per esempio, mi secca che io stia sentendo proprio la fatica per scrivere questo post, quando invece vorrei essere al 100% nel flusso e non sentire alcuno sforzo… così come mi secca ancora adesso che io ci abbia messo più di 1 ora a scrivere l’articolino di ieri sera; che volevo fare, perché quella di scrivere un post lungo al giorno è una delle poche abitudini buone per me che ho, e che quindi voglio mantenere, ma lì ho provato una fatica ancora più pesante di quella di adesso, e un costante crollo della concentrazione, che mi fa davvero disperare al solo pensarci. 😢

Il vero problema, però, non è manco di per sé il fatto che questi fenomeni paranormali mi capitino… quanto il fatto che, per quanto io provi e riprovi, questa sembra essere la mia condanna a morte; non riesco a trovare alcuna vera soluzione — definitiva, per così dire — al problema. Nel senso… se mi venisse il mal di testa fulminante, so che potrei prendere una tachipirina per farmelo passare, e bene o male dovrebbe funzionare circa sempre… così come, se sono fisicamente stanca alla fine di una giornata, ho la certezza che mi basta dormire per rigenerare il corpo… Invece, per questa rogna qui, non trovo assolutamente nulla che funzioni perfettamente e che lo faccia sempre, in maniera letteralmente 100% affidabile. 🏺

Sto provando a dormire di più e meglio, negli ultimi giorni, ma non sembra essere direttamente utile… ho detto come mi sono svegliata malissimo oggi dopo aver dormito alla fine ok, ma invece altri giorni li ho passati molto bene con anche 3-4 ore di sonno. Sto cercando anche di tenere il culo meno incollato alle sedie, e di stare di più fuori casa e al sole semplicemente per passare il tempo, camminare di più… e magari questo sul momento mi fa stare meglio, ma mi sembra funzioni più come una distrazione, che come una vera medicina. Per qualche inspiegabile motivo, visto che non sto facendo una mazza di pesante, ho di solito anche più fame, e sto mangiando di più (più carboidrati, nello specifico)… però oh, eppure non sento di ottenere più energie (forse perché beh, come ho detto, non mi mancano tanto quelle fisiche, ma quelle spirituali; però che cazzo di merdata). 👹

Ormai, non solo devo andare a dormire la sera senza poter davvero dare per scontato che con il sonno avrò magicamente recuperato sufficienti energie spirituali — che, in quanto ragazza magica, non solo necessito, ma pretendo, e addirittura mi sento di dire che merito, affinché lo scopo della mia esistenza sia allineabile a quello del cosmo — ma anche durante la giornata non posso essere sicura di come si manterranno i miei livelli… così come possono salire a caso, possono crollare; e non sempre lo fanno, ovviamente, e chiaramente non tutti i giorni sono così disperati come oggi… ma davvero questa cosa io non la sopporto, e mi viene pesantissimamente da piangere al solo pensiero… almeno, stamattina mi veniva, e magari mi verrà più tardi; ma, come già detto a me non escono neppure le lacrime, quindi sono proprio condannata. Non sopporto di voler essere al mio assoluto top, e fottutamente non riuscirci più in maniera continuativa!!! 😩

#feels

As a boy, the Hollywood movie “The Border” set the course for his life. He couldn’t believe the Border Patrol agents in the movie were the bad guys. Now that he’s in charge of deportation efforts causing turmoil in Chicago and elsewhere, he sees himself as the good guy. Not everyone agrees.

Greg Bovino’s the star of Trump’s deportation show. We trace his roots.

As a boy, the Hollywood movie “The Border" set the course for his life. He couldn’t believe the Border Patrol agents in the movie were the bad guys.

^{Dan Mihalopoulos | WBEZ (Chicago Sun-Times)}

Companies tend to be rather picky about who gets to poke around inside their products. Manufacturers sometimes even take steps that prevent consumers from repairing their device when it breaks, or modifying it with third-party products.

But those unsanctioned device modifications have become the raison d'être of a bounty program set up by a nonprofit called Fulu, or Freedom from Unethical Limitations on Users. The group tries to spotlight the ways companies can slip consumer-unfriendly features into their products, and it offers cash rewards in the thousands of dollars to anyone who can figure out how to disable unpopular features or bring discontinued products back to life.

“We want to be able to show lawmakers, look at all these things that could be out in the world,” says right-to-repair advocate and Fulu cofounder Kevin O’Reilly. “Look at the ways we could be giving device owners control over their stuff.”

Fulu has already awarded bounties for two fixes. One revives an older generation of Nest Thermostats no longer supported by Google. And just yesterday, Fulu announced a fix that circumvents restrictive digital-rights-management software on Molekule air purifiers.

Fulu is run by O’Reilly and fellow repair advocate and YouTuber Louis Rossmann, who announced the effort in a video on his channel in June.

The basic concept of Fulu is that it works like a bug bounty, the long running practice in software development where devs will offer prize money to people who find and fix a bug in the operating system. Fulu adopts that model, but the bounty it offers is usually meant to “fix” something the manufacturer considers an intended feature but turns out to be detrimental to the user experience. That can mean a device where the manufacturer has put in restrictions to prevent users from repairing their device, blocked the use of third-party replacement parts, or ended software support entirely.

“Innovation used to mean going from black-and-white to color,” Rossmann says. “Now innovation means we have the ability to put DRM in an air filter.”

Fulu offers up a bounty of $10,000 to the first person to prove they have a fix for the offending feature of a device. Donors can also pool money to help incentivize tinkerers to fix a particular product, which Fulu will match up to another $10,000. The pot grows as donations roll in.

Bounties are set on devices that Rossmann and O’Reilly have deemed deliberately hostile to the owners that have already paid for them, like some GE refrigerators that have DRM-locked water filters, and the Molekule air purifiers with DRM software that blocks customers from using third-party air filters. A bounty on the XBox Series X seeks a workaround to software encryption on the disk drive that prevents replacing the part without manufacturer approval. Thanks to donations, the prize for the Xbox fix has climbed to more than $30,000.

Sounds like a sweet payout for sure, but there is risk involved.

Fixing devices, even ones disabled and discontinued by the manufacturer, is often in direct violation of Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the 1998 US law that prevents bypassing passwords and encryption or selling equipment that could do so without manufacturer permission. Break into a device, futz with the software inside to keep it functional, or go around DRM restrictions, and you risk running afoul of the likes of Google's gargantuan legal arm. Fulu warns potential bounty hunters they must tackle this goal knowing full well they're doing so in open violation of Section 1201.

“The dampening effect on innovation and control and ownership are so massive,” O’Reilly says. “We want to prove that these kinds of things can exist.”
Empty Nest

In October, Google ended software support for its first- and second-generation Nest thermostats. For lots of users, the devices still worked but couldn’t be controlled anymore, because the software was no longer supported. Users lamented that their fancy thermostats had now become hunks of e-waste on their walls.

Fulu set up a bounty that called for a software fix to restore functionality to the affected Nest devices. Cody Kociemba, a longtime follower of Rossmann’s YouTube channel and a Nest user himself, was eager to take the bounty on. (He has “beef with Google,” he says on his website.) After a few days of tinkering with the Nest software, Kociemba had a solution. He made his fix publicly available on GitHub so users could download it and restore their thermostats. Kociemba also started No Longer Evil, a site devoted to his workaround of Nest thermostats and perhaps hacks of future Google products to come.

“My moral belief is that this should be accessible to people,” Kociemba says.

Kociemba submitted his fix to Fulu, but discovered that another developer, calling themselves Team Dinosaur, had just submitted a fix slightly before Kociemba did. Still, Fulu paid out the full amount to both, roughly $14,000 apiece. Kociemba was surprised by that, as he thought he had lost the race or that he might have to split the prize money.

O’Reilly says that while they probably won't do double payouts again, both fixes worked, so it was important for Fulu’s first payout to show support for the people willing to take the risk of sharing their fixes.

“Folks like Cody who are willing to put it out there, make the calculated risk that Google isn't going to sue them, and maybe save some thermostats from the junk heap and keep consumers from having to pay $700 or whatever after installation to get something new,” O’Reilly says. “It's been cool to watch.”

This week, Fulu announced it had paid out its second-ever bounty. It was for a Molekule Air Pro and Air Mini, air purifier systems that used an NFC chip in its filters to ensure the replacement filters were made by Molekule and not a third-party manufacturer. The goal was to disable the DRM and let the machine use any filter that fit.

Lorenzo Rizzotti, an Italian student and coder who had gone from playing Minecraft as a kid to reverse engineering and hacking, submitted proof that he had solved the problem, and was awarded the Fulu bounty.

“Once you buy a device, it's your hardware, it's no longer theirs,” Rizzotti says. “You should be able to do whatever. I find it absurd that it's illegal.”

But unlike Kociemba, he wasn’t about to share the fix. Though he was able to fix the problem, he doesn’t feel safe weathering the potential legal ramifications that he might face if he released the solution publicly.

“I proved that I can do it,” he says. “And that was it.”

Still, Fulu awarded him the bounty. O’Reilly says the goal of the project is less about getting actual fixes out in the world, and more about calling attention to the lengths companies are allowed to go to wrest control from their users under the auspices of Section 1201.

“We need to show how ridiculous it is that this 27-year-old law is preventing these solutions from seeing the light of day,” O’Reilly says. “It's time for the laws to catch up with technology.”

https://www.wired.com/story/fulu-repair-bounties-nest-molekule/?=0

The effort to bring federal charges has been met with resistance by some career prosecutors who argue the crime doesn’t appear to fall under any federal statutes.

Three months after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the Justice Department is weighing how to bring federal charges against the shooter, including under a novel legal theory that it was an anti-Christian hate crime, according to three people familiar with the investigation.

The suspect, Tyler Robinson, is already facing multiple state charges, including an aggravated murder count, and Utah prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty. Robinson’s partner is trans, and authorities have produced text messages from the suspect to his partner saying he was motivated to kill Kirk because he had “enough of his hatred.”

It’s not uncommon for defendants to face both state and federal charges, including for drug-related crimes and domestic terrorist attacks, among other offenses. But the effort to bring federal charges in the Kirk case has been met with resistance by some career prosecutors who have argued that the crime doesn’t appear to fall under any federal statutes, the three people said.

DOJ weighs novel federal hate crime case against Charlie Kirk's alleged killer

The Justice Department is weighing how to bring federal charges against Charlie Kirk's alleged assassin, Tyler Robinson.

^{Ryan J. Reilly (NBC News)}

The watershed summit in 2015 was far from perfect, but its impact so far has been significant and measurable

‘A shift no country can ignore’: where global emissions stand, 10 years after the Paris climate agreement

^{Fiona Harvey (The Guardian)}

Mark Carney, once a U.N. special envoy on climate action and finance, is now winning praise from industry but alienating former environmental allies.

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Companies tend to be rather picky about who gets to poke around inside their products. Manufacturers sometimes even take steps that prevent consumers from repairing their device when it breaks, or modifying it with third-party products.

But those unsanctioned device modifications have become the raison d'être of a bounty program set up by a nonprofit called Fulu, or Freedom from Unethical Limitations on Users. The group tries to spotlight the ways companies can slip consumer-unfriendly features into their products, and it offers cash rewards in the thousands of dollars to anyone who can figure out how to disable unpopular features or bring discontinued products back to life.

“We want to be able to show lawmakers, look at all these things that could be out in the world,” says right-to-repair advocate and Fulu cofounder Kevin O’Reilly. “Look at the ways we could be giving device owners control over their stuff.”

Fulu has already awarded bounties for two fixes. One revives an older generation of Nest Thermostats no longer supported by Google. And just yesterday, Fulu announced a fix that circumvents restrictive digital-rights-management software on Molekule air purifiers.

Fulu is run by O’Reilly and fellow repair advocate and YouTuber Louis Rossmann, who announced the effort in a video on his channel in June.

The basic concept of Fulu is that it works like a bug bounty, the long running practice in software development where devs will offer prize money to people who find and fix a bug in the operating system. Fulu adopts that model, but the bounty it offers is usually meant to “fix” something the manufacturer considers an intended feature but turns out to be detrimental to the user experience. That can mean a device where the manufacturer has put in restrictions to prevent users from repairing their device, blocked the use of third-party replacement parts, or ended software support entirely.

“Innovation used to mean going from black-and-white to color,” Rossmann says. “Now innovation means we have the ability to put DRM in an air filter.”

Fulu offers up a bounty of $10,000 to the first person to prove they have a fix for the offending feature of a device. Donors can also pool money to help incentivize tinkerers to fix a particular product, which Fulu will match up to another $10,000. The pot grows as donations roll in.

Bounties are set on devices that Rossmann and O’Reilly have deemed deliberately hostile to the owners that have already paid for them, like some GE refrigerators that have DRM-locked water filters, and the Molekule air purifiers with DRM software that blocks customers from using third-party air filters. A bounty on the XBox Series X seeks a workaround to software encryption on the disk drive that prevents replacing the part without manufacturer approval. Thanks to donations, the prize for the Xbox fix has climbed to more than $30,000.

Sounds like a sweet payout for sure, but there is risk involved.

Fixing devices, even ones disabled and discontinued by the manufacturer, is often in direct violation of Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the 1998 US law that prevents bypassing passwords and encryption or selling equipment that could do so without manufacturer permission. Break into a device, futz with the software inside to keep it functional, or go around DRM restrictions, and you risk running afoul of the likes of Google's gargantuan legal arm. Fulu warns potential bounty hunters they must tackle this goal knowing full well they're doing so in open violation of Section 1201.

“The dampening effect on innovation and control and ownership are so massive,” O’Reilly says. “We want to prove that these kinds of things can exist.”
Empty Nest

In October, Google ended software support for its first- and second-generation Nest thermostats. For lots of users, the devices still worked but couldn’t be controlled anymore, because the software was no longer supported. Users lamented that their fancy thermostats had now become hunks of e-waste on their walls.

Fulu set up a bounty that called for a software fix to restore functionality to the affected Nest devices. Cody Kociemba, a longtime follower of Rossmann’s YouTube channel and a Nest user himself, was eager to take the bounty on. (He has “beef with Google,” he says on his website.) After a few days of tinkering with the Nest software, Kociemba had a solution. He made his fix publicly available on GitHub so users could download it and restore their thermostats. Kociemba also started No Longer Evil, a site devoted to his workaround of Nest thermostats and perhaps hacks of future Google products to come.

“My moral belief is that this should be accessible to people,” Kociemba says.

Kociemba submitted his fix to Fulu, but discovered that another developer, calling themselves Team Dinosaur, had just submitted a fix slightly before Kociemba did. Still, Fulu paid out the full amount to both, roughly $14,000 apiece. Kociemba was surprised by that, as he thought he had lost the race or that he might have to split the prize money.

O’Reilly says that while they probably won't do double payouts again, both fixes worked, so it was important for Fulu’s first payout to show support for the people willing to take the risk of sharing their fixes.

“Folks like Cody who are willing to put it out there, make the calculated risk that Google isn't going to sue them, and maybe save some thermostats from the junk heap and keep consumers from having to pay $700 or whatever after installation to get something new,” O’Reilly says. “It's been cool to watch.”

This week, Fulu announced it had paid out its second-ever bounty. It was for a Molekule Air Pro and Air Mini, air purifier systems that used an NFC chip in its filters to ensure the replacement filters were made by Molekule and not a third-party manufacturer. The goal was to disable the DRM and let the machine use any filter that fit.

Lorenzo Rizzotti, an Italian student and coder who had gone from playing Minecraft as a kid to reverse engineering and hacking, submitted proof that he had solved the problem, and was awarded the Fulu bounty.

“Once you buy a device, it's your hardware, it's no longer theirs,” Rizzotti says. “You should be able to do whatever. I find it absurd that it's illegal.”

But unlike Kociemba, he wasn’t about to share the fix. Though he was able to fix the problem, he doesn’t feel safe weathering the potential legal ramifications that he might face if he released the solution publicly.

“I proved that I can do it,” he says. “And that was it.”

Still, Fulu awarded him the bounty. O’Reilly says the goal of the project is less about getting actual fixes out in the world, and more about calling attention to the lengths companies are allowed to go to wrest control from their users under the auspices of Section 1201.

“We need to show how ridiculous it is that this 27-year-old law is preventing these solutions from seeing the light of day,” O’Reilly says. “It's time for the laws to catch up with technology.”

https://www.wired.com/story/fulu-repair-bounties-nest-molekule/

A phone number can reveal whether a device is active, in standby or offline (and more). This PoC demonstrates how delivery receipts + RTT timing leak sensitive device-activity patterns. (WhatsApp / Signal)

What it does: By measuring Round-Trip Time (RTT) of WhatsApp message delivery receipts, this tool can detect:

• When a user is actively using their device (low RTT)
• When the device is in standby/idle mode (higher RTT)
• Potential location changes (mobile data vs. WiFi)
• Activity patterns over time

GitHub - gommzystudio/device-activity-tracker: A phone number can reveal whether a device is active, in standby or offline (and more). This PoC demonstrates how delivery receipts + RTT timing leak sensitive device-activity patterns. (WhatsApp / Signal)

A phone number can reveal whether a device is active, in standby or offline (and more). This PoC demonstrates how delivery receipts + RTT timing leak sensitive device-activity patterns. (WhatsApp /...

^GitHub

A phone number can reveal whether a device is active, in standby or offline (and more). This PoC demonstrates how delivery receipts + RTT timing leak sensitive device-activity patterns. (WhatsApp / Signal)

What it does: By measuring Round-Trip Time (RTT) of WhatsApp message delivery receipts, this tool can detect:

• When a user is actively using their device (low RTT)
• When the device is in standby/idle mode (higher RTT)
• Potential location changes (mobile data vs. WiFi)
• Activity patterns over time

GitHub - gommzystudio/device-activity-tracker: A phone number can reveal whether a device is active, in standby or offline (and more). This PoC demonstrates how delivery receipts + RTT timing leak sensitive device-activity patterns. (WhatsApp / Signal)

A phone number can reveal whether a device is active, in standby or offline (and more). This PoC demonstrates how delivery receipts + RTT timing leak sensitive device-activity patterns. (WhatsApp /...

^GitHub

Choosing a movie or series has become harder than watching one.

People scroll for 20–30 minutes across IMDb, Netflix, or JustWatch and still can’t decide.
I faced the same problem, so I built a small AI-powered app.

How it works:
– You answer a few short questions (mood, time, type)
– The AI instantly suggests what to watch
– It improves over time based on your choices

No accounts. No endless lists.
Just a fast decision.

I’m sharing this to get honest feedback:
– Would this be useful for you?
– What would you improve or remove?

App Store link above.

What to Watch – AI Movies & TV - Apps on Google Play

Mood based AI movie finder — better than JustWatch, Reelgood & IMDb lists.

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Self-hosting anything that is deemed "content" openly on the web in 2025 is a battle of attrition between you and forces who are able to buy tens of thousands of proxies to ruin your service for data they can resell.

This is depressing. Profoundly depressing. i look at the statistics board for my reverse-proxy and i never see less than 96.7% of requests classified as bots at any given moment. The web is filled with crap, bots that pretend to be real people to flood you. All of that because i want to have my little corner of the internet where i put my silly little code for other people to see.

i have to learn to protect myself from industrial actors in order to put anything online, because anything a person makes is valuable, and that value will be sucked dry by every tech giant to be emulsified, liquified, strained, and ultimately inexorably joined in an unholy mesh of learning weights.

Guarding My Git Forge Against AI Scrapers - VulpineCitrus

A summary of the techniques in place to protect my git forge

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