After countless conversations and debates over the past eight years, I have come to think that the DRM issue is largely a question of which reality one believes to be true - and we must address the solution as such, too.
It's wild how much more in-your-face Wikipedia's donation splash screen is compared to Internet Archive ... especially given how much money Wikipedia is sitting on.
This is the 60 Minutes segment on CECOT that got pulled in the US, but aired and airs in Canada, and is, at this moment, watchable here directly on Mastodon:
“Under the old rules of journalism, a network like #cbs might have pursued that story, taken the heat, & trusted that the audience would reward them for it.
Under the new rules, that story probably won’t get pitched. And if it does get pitched, it won’t get approved. And if it somehow does get approved, it’ll get killed before it airs, just like the #CECOT segment, because somebody upstairs will decide it’s not worth the trouble.”
it's an interesting conversation in media as well when you consider all the link rot and intentional destruction of journalistic history that occurs at the hands of corporate power a narrow window of badly curated knowledge dictated by unreliable narrators forming the foundation of modern wisdom RE: bsky.app/profile/did:plc:kzl46…
in the historical dark ages, only certain groups could read, limiting the knowledge of everyone else to what they were told. This situation sounds like a variation of that. With only certain groups having all the information. The internet was too egalitarian.
The mask is off concerning every type of fascism and corruption, so yeah, I expect they will soon pull the plug on even the pretense of controlled "opposition" in the form of Gecko-based browsers
Perhaps Ladybird will emerge as the #2 alternative. They rely on commercial sponsors, most of which seem to be tech firms. So far, none are what I would call "tech giants," or GAFAM-scale outfits. But will they be able to say no to tech giants indefinitely? I wouldn't count on it, and even if they can maintain (relative) independence, if their audience share doesn't break into double digits, no websites will make any attempt to support it, let alone test on it.
The sheer complexity of the standards comprising the web stack is too complex for a standards-compliant browser to be realistic as a noncommercial, let alone "garage" project. Perhaps the indie parts of online culture should migrate en masse to Gemini, which can be supported by the kinds of technologies amateurs can implement successfully on their own time. Those indie types of course will still use main$tream browsers for their online banking or whatever, but it's a start.
I still proudly use a flip phone. Although, it *does* have an Android based OS, the touchscreen is so tiny that it discourages using it as a smart phone. Like, it's painful trying to do anything on that screen that involves more than a telephone call.
Possible bonus: If it's the flip phone model I think it is (probably the most heavily advertised one currently) it's actually running "stock" Android (AOSP).
@lori I don't think it is. It's a model from several years ago and the company that produced it went out of business. It originally retailed for several hundred dollars and I picked it up for about $60 because the company went under.
have kink at pride punch a cop puritans are cops be sex positive body parts arent inherently sexual those who tell you otherwise are puritans and pervs and trans rights are universal rights neopronouns and xenogender are valid sluts are valid and sexwork is work and otherkin and therians are valid and should be listened to freedom of form should not be gatekept including hrt or bodymods and the upcoming gene editing we are doing #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtqia #transrights #therian #otherkin
I updated the initial Kitten course based on our first lesson with @casey and your feedback here. So now we start with no tooling except for your default terminal app and Kitten and it serves as a gentle introduction to the command line and gets to you seeing your first web page in your web browser far more quickly.
The new Mozilla CEO says he could block ad blockers in Firefox and estimates that it would bring in another $150 million, but he doesn't want to do that. Lmao. This guy has really lost the plot. Is he issuing threats to the users of an open-source project? Boy, what a disaster.
In an interview with “The Verge”, the new Mozilla CEO, Enzor-DeMeo, IMHO hints that axing adblockers is something that, at the very least, was on the table in some form and at some point. From the article:
He says he could begin to block ad blockers in Firefox and estimates that’d bring in another $150 million, but he doesn’t want to do that. It feels off-mission.
It may be just me, but I read this as “I don't want to 😜 😜 but I'll kill AdBlockers in Firefox for buckerinos 😂”. This disappoints and saddens me a lot, and I hope I'm wrong. I've been using Firefox before it was called that. Heck, I even used the Mozilla Application Suite back in the day. It was its commitment to open standards and the open web, and its powerful add-on system, that attracted me to its software.
Honestly, that's what's been keeping me. I think that's also what's been keeping their loyal base of users with the project, the geeks and nerds that care about privacy. It's the same group of people who helped it get very popular at one point.
Killing one of its advantages over the Chromium engine, being able to have a fucking adblocker that's actually useful, and that nowadays is a fucking security feature due to malvertising, will be another nail in the coffin, IMHO. The core community will feel disenfranchised, and this may have negative consequences for the project. You know why? Because these are some of the people that the normies turn to when they want tech advice.
For fuck sake, for-profit side of Mozilla, get a damn grip!
People use ad blockers to protect their computers from scams and malware because Google and other ad companies have failed to do so. They put profit above everything else. I can't believe this guy is on a mission to kill Firefox by the end of this year. People who use ad blockers are also less likely to buy your product if you bug them too much. I can't believe Mozilla has fallen to this level, where the CEO openly issues soft threats for a product that has little market share left.
Here we have a little fishie who fancies himself a shark, who thinks that just because we can swim when it suits our purpose to do so, that we must play by the rules of his pond.
He's about to find out why OSS can't be monopolized, bought out, coerced, or bribed.
I'm frustrated and depressed by the direction Mozilla has gone in. I hope that forks are able to fully shift, or that independent browsers like konquror are able to get better add-on support/development
I'm thankful he's saying that it 'feels off-mission', but would rather him say it "_is_ off mission", as feelings can change. A mission statement presented to the community of users would mean more. I don't want to be more pessimistic.
@Number1SummerJam When almost all of Mozilla's money comes from Google (I heard it's currently about 80 percent), then Firefox is already effectively a Google product.
We need an independent third browser with a web engine not based on Chrome and not based on Firefox, and we need it now before Google orders Mozilla to block uBlock Origin in Firefox.
And this third browser needs to be developed outside of the politically unstable and unpredictable USA, by a FOSS project, not company.
@harmone @Number1SummerJam Not solving "we need it now" (Alpha version targeted for Summer 2026), but ladybird.org/ might cover some of your criterias. Downsides seem to be: 1. based in US (but as a non-profit organization) and 2. The current architecture doesn't plan for windows and mobile versions. Future plans to develop versions for non unix-like environments will require very big efforts ("considerable changes required to make it work well outside a Unix-like env…")
Yes, this Alilo toy uses GPT4o-mini to raise your kids. It's $100, comes with a monthly subscription fee, and four modes—including a "mommy" and a "daddy" mode.
Mommy mode teaches useful things like where the kitchen knives are located, while daddy mode teaches kids about the merits of capitalism. It also sings in a "cute bunny voice".
Typing on a phone is insane and I cannot get used to it. To know which key you’ve typed, you have to look some third place, not on the page, and the key is lost under your thumb, you have to look at some space that isn’t the key OR the page. I cannot fucking learn it. 😈😈😈😠
"Sideloading" is the rentseeker word for "being able to run software of your choosing on a computing device you purchased". There is no reasonable case for an operating system developer having a say over what programs you run on your hardware."
YES, I run Linux on a 2009 Mac Book Pro and Mac OS currently on a 2014 Mac Book Pro. For now i am not missing anything. Updating benefits Apple revenues.
Recently, someone has created a YouTube channel which impersonates congresswoman Jasmine Crockett.
The channel is building up a fanbase of people who like Ms. Crockett, but who do not realize that this is an AI robot. The channel already has over 1 million views.
This is extremely dangerous and could be weaponized in the midterm elections. I hope you will help by reporting the video using the flag button underneath it. Use category “Misleading”.
Seven impeachment articles have just been pushed into motion, and the political earthquake they’re creating could reshape everything we thought we knew about...
For documentation purposes, I am sharing a brief clip of the FAKE AI VIDEO of Jasmine Crockett.
This is what democracy will be up against in 2026. Clearly, this is not made in 10 minutes by a teenager in a basement, so the real question is: Who is behind it?
Can't find it again now, but i've seen a clip just yesterday with an interview "with Warren Buffett". To me it looked suspiciously (rather obvious) like a deepfake. Like for example the whole clip same handgestures in a looplike repeat (no change of a hand..), a cut in the clip every few (same) seconds... This stuff is scary, because so real looking and increasingly less possible to identify as fake.
Same fuckwits that generated an AI vid of "King Chump" flying an F-(whatever) to shit-bomb protesters...
Maybe not *exactly* same but fundamentally same.
Thanks in large part to the travesty that is billed as "AI" we now live in a post-reality world... And it will only get worse as the ability to differentiate reality from fiction continues to degrade.
I’ve seen people reposting and sharing fake content, or reacting to it as if it were real—made-up quotes and similar things. If we, as users, are so quick to react to these posts, I can’t imagine how far this level of misinformation could go.
Building a mass following with increasingly high-quality deepfakes… for what? To strike someone with something fake or slightly twisted just to turn people against a real person.
@va3ekr what scared me was, my first thought was not "is this AI?". My first thought was, "She is in a different mood today. What happened?".
Then I saw the repetitive eye movement, and it sent shivers down my spine, because there will be users who do not have the capacity to be able to spot this. And for those only listening, it is even harder to tell.
to do what exactly? this kind of thing is happening right now to every politician world wide every hour. There are injected ads on YouTube that will have a politician pushing gambling. These will be commercials during an AI made documentary. At this point it’s just wise to assume everything is fake and not trust platforms that are indifferent towards the slop being uploaded on them.
about "for Dokumentation purposes": you could download The whole Video, use ffmpeg and a PNG with transparent background and The words "attention fake AI Video from YouTube" to put a warning message above it, then upload to peertube.
people in The EU can report this to DSA/DMA authorities. Some Staates outside EU have simular legislation (maybe even California or PRChina) and people under The jurisdiction of one of these countries can use The local means of reporting to The state.
While reporting to YouTube will in The end make Google remove this specific Video or even The whole channel, reporting to DSA/DMA will result in a policy change by Google for all Content of YouTube.
Basically, my biggest nightmare wrt where the current media technology will take us. Into a twilight zone where no-one will know anymore what is truth and what is not. The use for rogue dictators will be endless...
Only rules, regulation and prosecution can put a hold to this...
This channel features videos of Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, Member of Congress proudly representing the 30th District of Texas. To learn more about Congresswoman and the 30th district, visit: Crockett.house.gov
See also The Lincoln Project on YouTube. Rick Wilson's videos are also being mimicked by someone using his voice, his Substack content, his image, the background of his home. Some frame drops and giveaway odd pauses in the wrong place in the audio.
Downside: Rick loses revenue. Silver lining (not for Rick): many more views of anti-Trump content
In this case the content is representative output but I'm sure we'll see material generated with deceptive content.
done! She is from my state of TX, and she is never that calm; she is emphatically talking in a controlled yet strong voice, not this relaxed one here. Peace, my brother.
IMPORTANT: remove The si Parameter from The link! The si Parameter is used by Google for Findung out who-knows-who! Should The USA ever become a fascist dictatorship The information acquired through The si Parameter will be used to put people on "list"s.
@tootbrute Youtube has already been caught using AI to modify videos without the creators consent, AND is owned by Google, whose founders have been invited to Donald Trumps fascist tech bro dinners.
They are more likely to be behind this than to do anything to stop it.
YouTube made AI enhancements to videos without telling users or asking permission. As AI quietly mediates our world, what happens to our shared connections with real life?
Welcome to the brave new world with Steve Bannon's "flood the zone with shit". You see the video, but there is little chance to verify if the story they tell you is true or not. And when you can't distinguish the lie from the facts, then you're at the point where you cannot trust any news at all. I stopped using YouTube because of that about half a year ago and I don't regret that decision. Too much AI slop there, not worth the precious time.
this is a new suite of tools being offered as a service. Any recognizable figure who ideally also has public writings gets their texts and writings fed in as training data then once the model is built they use prompts as with chatgpt to generate the video.
The first of these I was conscious of was one purporting to be Alan Watts (died early 1970s) voice that mentioned social media.
One of the guys from the Lincoln project just made a video about several such fake channels. 1/
@krypt3ia Yea it's all legal cover. There's nothing about AI on the individual video, but there's obviously false information in the channel's "disclaimer", such as: "they do not represent or impersonate any real individual"
As I said in 2018, Europe needs to disconnect from America—at any cost. Only when we suffer will we learn (as they have). And but for a few, we have not yet begun to suffer.
This entire thread is some of the hardest earned truth we all need. Seriously.
Society isn't built for us. Institutions, traditions, capitalism (and communism!) - all of it, it's been built by dead men to appease their ideas of 'proper' or to establish their legacies. Their families, their ideals, their wealth. We're all just trapped in it, stuck in their trauma machines.
The thing about trauma is, you can carry a shit ton of trauma with you and have no clue that you have that trauma in the first place. Part of living in a world that fosters and generates trauma, is that these systems invest a lot of time and energy in shaping you to think these systems have never traumatized you. That is the nature of the abusive systems in which we exist.
Dug up some of my "web to-do lists" from the aughts. It may be of interest to students of #oldweb as it is "meta oldweb" material...rich in links to other oldweb material.
These are web to-do lists I created during a time when I had no Internet access at home, and would bring removable media to the library for bringing home reading material from the Internet.
If the war crimes we've already perpetrated on Venezuelan civilians weren't enough, we have now effectively conducted an act of war-declaring piracy.
Our behavior as a nation towards Venezuela is a lot like all the ICE and national guard invasions of various US cities -- an attempt at provoking a response that can then be used to justify more violence against the victim.
tl;dr -- US foreign policy is now literally "we are a bully, give us your lunch money"
@timberwraith Most cities have these ideas about rewilding which would probably interfere with your plans too. Humans. We were better off in trees and in small numbers 🙃
If you really want to protest stores' removal of price tags from all products, take things you want to price to the self-checkout, scan them, then walk away. Enough people do this and I bet something will fucking change.
New frustration: people on FB Marketplace posting pictures of appliances that aren't actually the same as the appliances they're selling. Listing had photos of a range with a double oven and two center burners. Actual model they're selling is an oven with a baking drawer and a single center burner. At least this time I got the model number over the phone instead of spending an hour in the car first.
I think the AI ethics work I do is often mixed in with the RAI folks but it’s becoming clear that I feel like I’m a virologist studying ways to prevent viruses from jumping into humans, not making it easier for viruses to replicate and jump ‘responsibly’
I feel like I'm willing to compare this to "corporate DEI", where genuine, honest actors are hamstrung by the system, which then optimizes for grifters who know how to sell the appearance of DEI while ensuring it remains toothless. This is definitely how "responsible AI" stuff seemed to work when I was at MSFT.
Hungary has definitely fallen into fascism. Poland seems to have crawled at least partway out from under it, at least for a little breather. Now I'm worried about Slovakia. Thing is though, throughout Europe (and much of the rest of the world) there's always an explicitly anti-immigration (and all around social conservative/authoritarian) party with locked-in double digit support levels, and efforts by non-fascist parties to build non-fascist coalitions are squeaker victories at best, in France, Britain, Sweden, Canada, seemingly everywhere. I am not optimistic about the future. Trumpism will not die with Trump. Pushing it back to the margins of the marketplace of ideas will be a long and probably dangerous slog.
I'd actually be open to the idea of AI if the technology were open source. Computers curing leukemia is an example of a chicken that hasn't hatched and perhaps should not be counted yet. Some things that they almost certainly WILL be used for include surveillance pricing, disinformation campaigns, further optimization of addictive algorithms, etc.
More Perfect Union and Consumer Reports are trying to reverse engineer the business model of #surveillancePricing. This is exactly the type of research I've been advocating as long as I've been promoting the #pubwan hashtag. This is a HIGHLY adversarial type of #data collection, and clearly getting anywhere with such a project is going to require a level of resources inconsistent with independence from deep pockets.
Meta offers EU users ad-light option in push to end investigation Facebook agrees to change "pay or consent" model after talks with European Commission. arstechnica.com/information-te…
Tiresome, lazy, and mean. If they're not blaming Immigrants it will be the Disabled and if not them then Trans People. Never the Rich. Never a sour word to the Oligarchs but us voters are "scum" That's the Labour Party in 2025
Open Food Facts is a non-profit project developed by thousands of volunteers from around the world. You can start contributing by adding a product from your kitchen with our app for iPhone or Android, and we have lots of exciting projects you can contribute to in many different ways. world.openfoodfacts.org/
💕
![What about the idea someone can get a car because of allegedly minor
conditions, such as acne? “Government data shows there are just five people
claiming enhanced mobility [of the gateway benefit, personal independence
payments] for acne,” says Laura Burnip from Scope. “The stats don’t show
co-conditions, so those people could have multiple other disabilities too.”
That means the handful of people with acne who are eligible for a Motability
car - but are not necessarily leasing one - could have, say, arthritis as well.
The British Association of Dermatologists also confirmed to me that there are
ways acne might impact mobility, including rare forms that can cause joint
pain. GB News pundits, funnily enough, aren’t medically qualified.](https://cambrian.social/photo/preview/640/1143850 "What about the idea someone can get a car because of allegedly minor
conditions, such as acne? “Government data shows there are just five people
claiming enhanced mobility [of the gateway benefit, personal independence
payments] for acne,” says Laura Burnip from Scope. “The stats don’t show
co-conditions, so those people could have multiple other disabilities too.”
That means the handful of people with acne who are eligible for a Motability
car - but are not necessarily leasing one - could have, say, arthritis as well.
The British Association of Dermatologists also confirmed to me that there are
ways acne might impact mobility, including rare forms that can cause joint
pain. GB News pundits, funnily enough, aren’t medically qualified.")
ZZ Bottom
in reply to David August ❌👑 • • •David August ❌👑 reshared this.
David August ❌👑
in reply to David August ❌👑 • • •And here's a local version that's less than 75MB:
This is the 60 Minutes segment on CECOT that got pulled in the US, but aired and airs in Canada, and is, at this moment, watchable here directly on Mastodon:
#USpol #HumanRights #immigration #torture #cecot
reshared this
GailWaldby@bsky.social❌👑, Nicole Parsons and David August ❌👑 reshared this.
Deborah Sampson
in reply to David August ❌👑 • • •This is beyond disturbing…
“Under the old rules of journalism, a network like #cbs might have pursued that story, taken the heat, & trusted that the audience would reward them for it.
Under the new rules, that story probably won’t get pitched. And if it does get pitched, it won’t get approved. And if it somehow does get approved, it’ll get killed before it airs, just like the #CECOT segment, because somebody upstairs will decide it’s not worth the trouble.”
David August ❌👑 reshared this.
Dany [Danny]
in reply to David August ❌👑 • • •Carolyn
in reply to David August ❌👑 • • •