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33 posts total
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 The EU #TaxTheRich petition has failed to gather 1 million signatures. Germany, France and Denmark were the only countries to cross the line. That tells you how many people can actually be mobilised for real change to our system. I am very disappointed. https://eci.ec.europa.eu/038/public/#/screen/home/disabled 1/3 "For legal reasons the Torment Nexus will not be made available to our valued customers in the European Union. We apologise for the inconvenience." ;)
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   @jwildeboer It's a shame that GDPR prevented us from enjoying the Torment Nexus (although some might argue it should have never been created...). Quite some years ago (2006-08), we brought the #OLPC AKA the 100$ laptop to Ethiopia as pilot. A surprising thing happened. The laptops were often without battery power in the morning. A thing that wasnβt anticipated. It had two reasons. One was the keyboard LED (it was removed in later series). It was used by the parents to have a light at home. The other was a bigger surprise. The parents used the mesh networking to discuss market prices for their produce. Fascinating. 1/8
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@jwildeboer maybe it's time to revive it again? Cause nowadays hardware should be even cheaper and less energy consuming nor?  @jwildeboer I remember taking delivery of a pallet with 100 of them for linux.conf.au in 2008 and unboxing them all to upgrade them (to stop a bug breaking the conference wifi) and re-packing them to give them all away to developers :-)  @jwildeboer this is awesome. Are you aware of a similar mesh networking technology that's still available for current day computers? Sounds like this should get much more attention from the OS community.
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@jwildeboer signed both. Preservation was the primary reason me and a few buddies made #worldofwarcraft private servers Open Source and available to everyone with MaNGOS. π @jwildeboer I only learned of the Tax the Rich initiative by accidentally stumbling upon it while browsing the EU site for the Stop Killing Games one. This is not a priorities problem, but a PR problem. You can't vote for an initiative you don't know exists and clearly they haven't spread the word effectively.  @jwildeboer BTW your toot is not publicly visitable, if I visit https://chaos.social/@jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net/113005206326896548 it's a 404. Just if someone tries rto share itβ¦ It's strange as it is marked as being pubic. #Chatcontrol mandate is listed as *possible* item for tomorrowβs council meeting, as the very last thing. Could end up being postponed. If we all call on our politicians to do exactly that today, that seems quite possible. https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-11316-2024-INIT/en/pdf But do note: getting it removed from the agenda tomorrow does not mean itβs gone. It *will* come back possibly many more times, until the commission decides to drop the procedure altogether, which is very unlikely to happen ATM. Continuous political pressure could change that, though. #ThanksEU "Meta halts plans to train AI on Facebook, Instagram posts in EU" https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/06/meta-halts-plans-to-train-ai-on-facebook-instagram-posts-in-eu/ Adding up to 360 metric tons of aluminium oxide per year to the atmosphere due to disposing of mega-constellation (Starlink etc) satellites might create ozone depletion amongst other as of yet unknown effects. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024GL109280
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 @jwildeboer You're telling me letting something burn up in the atmosphere doesn't just mean it magically disappears? Inconceivable!  "If you don't know how to fix it, please, stop breaking it!" β Severn Cullis-Suzuki's speech to the United Nations, 1992. I had a longer thread on this topic a while ago and wanted to turn it into a blog post. But I am happy to see real experts weighing in. Facebook/Meta starts talking about the "Extend" phase of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish as predicted: "βYou could imagine an extension to the protocol eventually β of saying like, βI want to support micropayments,β or β¦ like, βhey, feel free to show me ads, if that supports you.β Kind of like a way for you to self-label or self-opt-in. That would be great,β
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 @jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net I mean tbf, neither of those extensions would be very useful for the general population of the fediverse, and threads is at a poit right now where they don't even support most of the functionality of general fediverse...  @jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net oh yeah, they'll extend the protocol, but they won't implement it properly What happens when every time your browser sends data to a tracker it makes a beep sound? Well, @bert_hubert did just that. And it sounds like you are listening to an old school modem. Creepy stuff! https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/tracker-beeper/
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@jwildeboer @bert_hubert @jwildeboer @bert_hubert Per has written a blogpost about this very thing https://axbom.me/objects/87db3bcb-8ff4-4748-a44f-609eeab21574 Again the FOSS world has proven to be vigilant and proactive in finding bugs and backdoors, IMHO. The level of transparency is stellar, especially compared to proprietary software companies. What the FOSS world has accomplished in 24 hours after detection of the backdoor code in #xz deserves a moment of humbleness. Instead we have flamewars and armchair experts shouting that we must change everything NOW. Which would introduce even more risks. Progress is made iteratively. Learn, adapt, repeat.
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 @jwildeboer You're the second person posting a sentiment like this, that I've seen, but the actual flamewars seem to elude me. Getting kinda curious what y'all are on about  @jwildeboer reminds me of when some version of Windows had three backdoors: one accidental, another created by Microsoft for the CIA, and another one created by an infiltrated CIA agent  @jwildeboer Absolutely. I marvel at the prompt and efficient response by everyone involved. In the proprietary software world there would still be denial that there even is a problem.
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@jwildeboer   @jwildeboer i never have understood why ppl are using bit fly instead of just giving a link. I donβt want an internet where 90% of traffic and electricity is wasted to make generative βAIβ and their investors happy while their energy hunger destroys our planet. I want an internet that shares knowledge for free for everyone, so we can build a better world. I donβt want a #libertarian internet β¦ *drumroll* β¦ I want a #librarian internet
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@jwildeboer So what can we do to avoid this? I feel impotent, there is no possible action on my hands considering all tech companies are literally embracing generative AI. I am not saying that generative AI in general is wrong. Quite the opposite. Just like Machine Learning, Large Language Models can be a net positive. When they are focused and domain specific. But the #GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out) approach by the big players is not helping at all. 
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 @jwildeboer citizen or resident: > β1. Any citizen of the [European] Union, and any natural or legal person residing or having its registered office in a Member State, has a right of access to documents of the institutions, subject to the principles, conditions and limits defined in this Regulation. Yes, #Apple will demote WebApps to bookmarks on iOS 17.4 in the EU. Yes, they claim the EU is to blame. And no, that is not true IMHO. What is right is that under the DMA (Digital Market Access) rules WebApps could become a real escape route for Apps to avoid the Apple App Store tax. So better to close that possible loophole and blame the evil EU. IMHO. Reminds me a lot of the Cookie Banner stuff. Same story. Same blame game.
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 @jwildeboer The Cookie Banner stuff drives me nuts. They pop these big forms in our face just to force us to click "OK" to get them to go away, and falsely blame GDPR for the mess. It's Trumpian tactics. I hope EU starts to sanction sites that does this. @jwildeboer I disagree. It's a security feature. #EU is in the wrong on this one (as they were with the pointless cookie-law). With βAIβ generated websites and content that are SEO optimised making it next to impossible to find real answers to even the simplest questions, it dawns on me that my weird decision to get a printed version of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica was an inspired one. We are losing access to reliable knowledge due to βAIβ and centralised, commercial services defining the web. We, the elders of the internet, look at this with fear and disgust.
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Will Wikipedia be able to withstand the already ongoing flood of βAIβ generated content? βOn the internet no one knows you are a dogβ is an old joke/meme. But when you think about it by replacing dogs with βAIβ, where βAIβ means a small oligopoly of commercial entities with an agenda that can afford to burn tons of fossil fuel and water to run their datacenters for the training phase of models β things start to look really frightening. What we need is more H2H (Human to Human) communications.   IMHO: #Mozilla is repeating the #OpenAI process. A growing conflict between community driven/focused products and greedy managers thinking more VC (Venture Capital) style as they become more and more decoupled from the humble origins. This conflict will explode (I mean β asking for donations while the managers take home millions has a weird smell to it) soon and money will win (again). It's really a shame in this case.  @jwildeboer i feel is becoming more and more the case. I wonder if we can make it back to the true spirit of open source. I definitely still have it, but I feel more and more uncomfortable with sharing nowadays. The #SMTPSmuggling attack is being mitigated and tracked in the following CVEs: - CVE-2023-51764 postfix All three CVEs have been filed *today* by the community and NOT by SEC consult who discovered the flaw in June 2023 but decided to not share their findings with postfix, sendmail or exim. Only after they published their post on 2023-12-18, the communities have become aware and are now working hard to fix what is now more a 0day :(
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 @jwildeboer never been happier to have just finished my on-call shift. Good luck everyone in the trenches  @jwildeboer That's awful. What possessed them to hold onto it for that long.. then release at christmas?  @jwildeboer Asimovβs three (well, four) laws of robotics are not supposed to actually work. They are vehicles to create interesting literature BECAUSE they are wrong and create contradictions that lead to good books. Too bad so many techbros donβt get that.
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@jwildeboer Put any robot with a #PositronicBrain subject to the #ThreeLaws in a room with #CaptainKirk for five minutes, and it will be a smoldering psychotic wreck when the Captain strolls off to keep his date with his latest alien babe or armada. #Asimov is no match for #Roddenberry. @jwildeboer Techbros are striving shitsacks that have never read an SF book in their lives.  @jwildeboer They're not theses. They're entertainment. They're supposed to make you want to read them and not get bored. π π€
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 @jwildeboer I can see him suing everyone using the unicode in future for plagiarising their trademark ! @jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net the logo looks like it represents "how to chop your income in half"  @jwildeboer followed as a tag and boosted. I would like to join your cult and receive your newsletter. If some people say the #fediverse is a left-progressive project, it only shows how successful we collectively are to block the Nazis. Loads of far-right instances and users exist in the fediverse. Gab, anyone? But defederation and blocking makes that part invisible to most of us. They still exist and federate amongst themselves. ActivityPub, the protocol, is neutral. We decide what we want and not want. The fediverse is a herd of Venn diagrams, not a closed circle.
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That we are capable of such coordinated action on the network is only a start. There is still lots of racism and bigotry. We should lean into our willingness to cooperate to further develop mechanisms to do so. To make coordinated action easier and more seamless  @jwildeboer In my book, "the fediverse" is defined by what's actually federated, not by what speaks a protocol that would allow it to be federated if not for being blocked by everyone. So no, Gab is absolutely not part of "the fediverse". @jwildeboer @mekkaokereke Having tried out several of the βTwitter alternativesβ over the past few months, I think that Mastodon is much less of an βecho chamberβ than the others. So I think your point is well taken. 12
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Gregory's Server
@jwildeboer Fortunately in Europe we have enough knowledgeable people in economics for them to know how bad for economy are all those taxes. Starting a business is almost impossible as it is and people recognize how bad it would be to scare investors even more.
Short term gain is not always beneficial in the long run.
@jwildeboer
I would sign but outside the EU now against my will.
@jwildeboer it was lacking publicity IMHO. I signed it early on, spread links to friends and family and not once did I see anything in media or on social until you posted about it months after.
I fear the participants do paint a correct picture of how many folks in Europe want change though. π