"Graphite" software from Paragon, which has sold its high-end phone spyware to the U.S. government and holds itself out as more ethical than peers, has been found in the devices of Italian migrant rescuers close to the Pope, according to Citizen Lab and WhatsApp. Gift link: wapo.st/3Y2t8KK
I really can't get over how irresponsible it is for MS to tell people to throw away or recycle perfectly working computers. There are so many machines people *could* keep using for much longer if not for Windows 11. mastodon.social/@dosnostalgic/…
You could use ChromeOS, which I am not recommending, as they are pushing for people with older computers to migrate to ChromeOS.
You could use any of the many great GNU/Linux distros. Unless you have a really old computer, which is doubtful seeing you are presumably using MS/Windows 10 now, you do not even need to get a so called lite version.
On the one hand, latest Smithsonian Magazine has a good piece on Dr. Barbara Stimson, the first American woman to serve as a doctor or surgeon during WWII. On the other, the author (or the editor) is “longtime companioning” it so hard, it’s like the last few decades never happened. So she lived with another female doctor for decades, was referred to as “sir” by the men and could have starred in a prequel to “Ode to a Gym Teacher” but we’re not using the “l” word here? smithsonianmag.com/history/tal…
With its new social web beta, Ghost(Pro) integrates with Mastodon, Flipboard, WordPress & more via ActivityPub. Others can now follow your Ghost blog, and engage with you - and vice versa - across the fediverse. No more walled gardens!
This is a big shift for independent creators & communicators. I’ve shared my first take: bit.ly/4iY3f6O
The Internet is evolving, and Ghost is at the forefront of an exciting new shift. On 17 March, the content management and blogging platform announced the public beta of its social web – a ground-breaking move that allows creators and publishers on th…
this is pretty wild, I wonder what platform the messages were and how random the stop was. Certainly doesn't make the US a more desirable conference destination.
This is the problem with things like iCloud backups: even if you factory reset your phone, if you're made to give the nice officers access to it, they can restore whatever they want. Best thing is to delete all cloud backups, back it up to a computer you control instead, wipe it and do the "new phone" initialization before coming to the US. It'll still work as a phone, for browsing the web, etc. Restore it when you get home.
As an FYI, I cancelled all my plans to visit the USA for the foreseeable future back on November 7th of last year. It's going to get a lot worse, and creatives are going to be in their gunsights too before long (if not already).
@cstross I've also ruled out all travel to the USA, including in-person job interviews for remote positions (I'm a software engineer currently looking for work).
I've had Americans ask me "Aren't you overreacting? It's not actually that dangerous.", and then it turns out they haven't even heard about the cases of Canadians and Europeans just randomly siezed, locked up mostly incommunicado, and eventually deported, even when they had valid visas etc.
The MSM in the USA is doing a very thorough job of covering up the growing autocracy.
The French authorities said the academic had been traveling to a conference near Houston when border officials blocked his entry because of conversations found on his phone.
If criticism of Trump is the equivalent of terrorism then all critics of his are enemies of the state. Which means the Trump Administration could, hypothetically, do to all of us what Bush II attempted to do to al Qaeda. I’d wager that acknowledging that would also qualify me as a terrorist. Guess I better finish my Hamas job application. I hear they need IT…
Enable full-disk (or storage) encryption. (Include the SD card on a phone)
Disable fingerprint or face login on all electronic devices. Use password/pattern or PIN only. Enable MFA if possible.
Fully power/shut down phones, laptops, etc. Don't use Hibernate or Sleep modes.
You have the right to refuse to enter your password. Refuse to enter your password if asked, if cajoled, nagged, or harassed. Refuse under any circumstances. The most they can do is make a clone of the encrypted data, which they will likely just delete rather than expend cycles decrypting.
If they're just going to refuse entry anyway, and send you home, you have nothing to lose.
One of the darker threads of Walled Culture the book (free digital versions available) is how complex copyright enforcement systems can be abused, for example by sending Digital Millennium Cop…
Over the weekend, the #Trump admin ignored a federal judge’s order not to deport a group of Venezuelan men, violating an instruction that could not have been plainer or more direct.
#DOJ attys later justified the…actions w/contentions that many #legal experts said bordered on frivolous.…again raising the question of whether the latest clash between Trump & the #judiciary amounts to a #ConstitutionalCrisis.
Legal scholars say that the nation has reached a tipping point and that the right question is not whether there is a crisis, but rather how much damage it will cause.
Legal scholars say that is no longer the right inquiry. #Trump is already undercutting the #SeparationOfPowers at the heart of the constitutional system, …& the right question…is how it will transform the nation.
“If anyone is being detained or removed based on the admin’s assertion that it can do so without judicial review or #DueProcess, the president is asserting dictatorial power & #ConstitutionalCrisis doesn’t capture the gravity of the situation,” said Jamal Greene, #law prof at Columbia.
I don't really use Goodreads anymore bc it sucks so now if you wanna know what I think of a book you just have to listen to me babble about how stupid it is for 30 minutes. Anyway here's what I thought of Playground by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Powers youtu.be/8DUFaKc8CJA
News outlets found that at least 10 articles about the Code Talkers had vanished from the U.S. Army and Department of Defense websites as of Monday. The Defense Department’s URLs had been modified to include the letters "DEI"
- Texas , Caddo Nation, means "Friend" - Milwaukee , Ojibwe, means "Good Land" - Miami - Illinois , is actually the name of a Language (Algonquian) - Tallahassee (Florida), Muskogean, means "old fields" (just few examples)
It's done! Here's the epic moment after the 11m concrete beam has left the yard (leaving a nice brown skidmark).
I was going to film it, but the gusty wind blew the camera over before it got interesting.
The other beam was damaged and broke in half, leading to some sketchy cutting of rebar under load (ping!) and dragging two halves out. Had to shovel the concrete debris out of the garden, that took even longer.
MANA: Making Authoritarianism Normal Again. With the Global Order collapsing under Trump, more Authoritarians are emerging nytimes.com/2025/03/19/world/m…
The mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, was detained after prosecutors accused him of corruption and terrorism. The opposition said the arrest was politically motivated.
And that's precisely why this closet skinhead isn't fucking fit for office.
The international stage is not a place for schoolyard politics. I'm angry about the dumb orange fuck, I yell about him all the time, but I'm not in office and that's appropriate.
International politics is a job for grown people. Not merely legal adults, but people with the maturity and grace not to fall for the insult-politics and braindead jabs of the dementia-patient-in-chief.
Aww. Diddums. Is the fascist billionaire who used his social media platform to defend neo-Nazi thugs and buy an election for his sex-pest billionaire BFF discovering that actions have consequences? Wibble.
Maybe Tesla should jettison the one person who is responsible for all negativity towards itself outside the airlock. C'mon Tesla. It's only one fucking person who has slung the boat anchor of hate around your goddamned pencil necks.
Tesla is the car brand that a study shows has been involved in the most accidents. Tesla is well known for its self-driving system, which critics argue, is the problem.
Actually, Tesla has some culpability too. The cybertruck is ridiculously heavy, thus wasting energy, and is apparently killing occupants too, never mind pedestrians and occupants of other vehicles. Tesla’s corner-cutting on safety is certainly a cause for blame.
actually the Board of Tesla is also complicit with Musk's shitfuckery. After all it was they who tried to pay him the multi billion bonus against the wishes of independent shareholders.
WAISN is the largest immigrant-led coalition in Washington State. We are a powerful, volunteer network of immigrant and refugee-rights serving Washington State.
WAISN is the largest immigrant-led coalition in Washington State. We are a powerful, volunteer network of immigrant and refugee-rights serving Washington State.
According to surveillance video provided by Emish Grocery, an SUV with an "ICE" decal circled the store's parking lot on Sunday, leaving when approached by security.
A TON of these impersonators have been going to jail but I know this of little comfort to immigrants who are living this reality right now.
There have been an insanely large number of much more confrontational ICE impersonators. Several fake ICE agents have pulled people over and have been armed with guns.
This is a real and serious threat to all minorities and immigrants in the US right now.
Man seen driving fake ICE vehicle in Fife WA has been arrested and charged with 2nd degree criminal impersonation.
The man claims he did it for his youtube channel, which is also how cops located him, bc he posted videos staging fake ICE arrests(uniform n all) with the same vehicle.🥴
The car was also driven on public streets with no plates and had misspellings in the ICE emblem.
A man accused of driving around a Ukrainian grocery store in a fake U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) vehicle said he did it for a YouTube video and that the whole thing was being blown out of proportion.
Hey @thunderbird, what's going on with addons.thunderbird.net/ and do you have an ETA for when it will be fixed? I keep getting hung pages or Cloudflare Bad Gateway errors and I can't update my add-on listings or upload new add-on versions.
We just checked on our end (Southeastern United States) and it loaded okay, but we've reached out to our contacts at Mozilla Corporation to see if they know more about this (since this is also the site for FF add-ons). Thanks for the heads up!
@seindal We had issues with bots creating large traffic spikes but it's largely resolved, as you noticed. (And yup, they're different sites! This typist is definitely having some big Wednesday energy.)
The apparent olive branch offered by Moscow after lengthy talks on Tuesday in fact suits the Kremlin tactically, writes world affairs editor Sam Kiley in Odesa, Ukraine
HP's Omen Transcend 32 OLED is a true dual threat: an outstanding 4K gaming display, as well as an excellent pick for the color-accuracy-critical work of creative pros. Here's our review: pcmag.com/reviews/hp-omen-tran…
This week, Jonathan Bennett and Ben Meadors talk to Darko Fabijan about Semaphore, the newly Open Sourced Continuous Integration solution! Why go Open, and how has it gone so far? Watch to find out…
Plex ups its price for first time in a decade, changes remote-streaming access You've got until April 29 before the Lifetime Pass more than doubles in price. arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/0…
Another model underway... To be fair, it's been underway for a while , but it seems I haven't shared any #WorkInProgress shots yet, apologies!
This is a print from AliExpress, so no idea of the actual model name, but it's from #ZBBoy and I think I'll call it #JetBikeDemon* (*demon not included in these shots) #MiniaturePainting #Crafty
♪I like big bugs and I cannot lie♫ You other brothers can't deny. When a wasp flies in with an itty bitty waist And you wave your hands around your face, you get stung!♫
There is an anime called "JoJo's Bizarre Adventure" where all of the lead characters are always dressed in this wild fashion for absolutely no in-universe reason. Just because I think? IDK really. Anyway they have these powers that are like alternate spirits called "stands" so a "stand user" is another superhero type.
Saying they could be "anyone" is absurd. It's always the guy with the crazy outfit.
Ah! My kids used to watch JoJo. I only caught glimpses of the episodes. Yes, they had some very _interesting_ fashion choices, much like those in the tumble photo. LOL!
Today in my surveillance class we're discussing Faraday bags for mobile devices: what threats they can (and most importantly, can't) protect against, the physics involved, and how to measure their effectiveness.
Should you keep your phone in a Faraday container? Probably not. But Faraday bags are useful to provide assurance against a particular, if narrow, range of threats, and understanding what they do and don't do for you is essential if you're considering using one.
In particular, if the protest is one that's illegal (or that could be treated as illegal), I'd be at least as worried about having the device seized and analyzed, revealing all my contacts and text history. To the extent a Faraday bag is emboldening you to bring your fully-loaded phone with you, it's actually hurting, rather than helping, your security and privacy. (I'd rather bring a burner, if possible, and leave it off unless needed).
They do seem (in the UK at least) to have a niche for trying to prevent keyless relay attacks, you even have auto magazines doing reviews (autoexpress.co.uk/product-grou…)
SpaceLifeForm
in reply to Misty • • •The hiidden backdoors are not available on old kit.
#Linux
Unus Nemo
in reply to Misty • •@Misty
You could use ChromeOS, which I am not recommending, as they are pushing for people with older computers to migrate to ChromeOS.
You could use any of the many great GNU/Linux distros. Unless you have a really old computer, which is doubtful seeing you are presumably using MS/Windows 10 now, you do not even need to get a so called lite version.