Skip to main content



Any act of repair a gratifying gesture of refusal and subversion these days. A poke in the eye to corporate waste and consumer lassitude.

Feeling like renegade heating engineer Harry Tuttle (Robert De Niro) of ‘Brazil’ right now, having decided: eff no, not into landfill—not yet.

And how fitting: while finishing up, @pluralistic heard on CBC radio discussing DCA & right-to-repair.

details in #alttext

#Stratford #canada #repair #technology #corydoctorow #environment #coffee

in reply to Kyle Memoir 🍉

A neighbour asked me recently to take her dead power strip to the e-waste collection point. All it needed was a bit of soldering. Money saved, environment spared a bit, power strip producer furious. Triple win.


I printed out the decal on paper and put it on one of the test pieces. This one's going to my wall of prototypes.
This entry was edited (3 months ago)



@404mediaco has obtained a list of sites and services monitored by an ICE contractor ShadowDragon to let government analysts search and draw connections between people.

"The long list of sites and services that ShadowDragon’s SocialNet tool accesses is a reminder of just how much data is accessible and collected from and about us to provide surveillance services to the government and others."

404media.co/the-200-sites-an-i…

#news #USNews #ICE #immigration #surveillance #technology



Ditto writing, making music, creating cartoons, etc., etc.


Well I'm in. Nothings configured as yet and I'm certainly not ready to swap out the currently working #OpenWRT APU router until I'm 100% happy. For now I'm going to explore and read the docs.
#RunBSD #OPNsense
in reply to Justine Smithies

Very nice. Tinkered with it myself as well. On an old Sophos box. A lot possible. Freq updates (in part a good thing) might be a negative in the sense of inconvenient reboots
in reply to Qper

It is very nice and OMG the sheer amount of available settings are vast. Also you can configure via the CLI too. Been playing around seeing what's where and reading up, maybe tomorrow I'll temporarily see if I can bring up the 1Gb pppoe fttp connection and then once I have connectivity I can concentrate on configuring the firewall and other stuff. I'll obviously keep my AMD APU router in the rack ready to reconnect should I have issues and need a reliable connection. Eventually the nuc will become my main router / firewall. Slow and steady wins the race. 😉


Takeaways from our investigation on AI-powered school surveillance. The AP and Seattle Times teamed up on this investigation.

From their overview: "But these tools raise serious questions about privacy and security. In fact, when The Seattle Times and The Associated Press partnered to investigate school surveillance, reporters inadvertently received access to almost 3,500 sensitive, unredacted student documents through a records request. The documents were stored without a password or firewall, and anyone with the link could read them."

Read more at apnews.com/article/ai-school-c…

#databreach #EduSec #infosecurity #surveillanvce #AI

@douglevin @funnymonkey



#PPOD: NASA's Curiosity rover captured this image of the Sun through the dusty martian atmosphere in July 2018 while the dust storm that ended the Opportunity rover's mission was still raging. Curiosity was not affected by the decline in solar input because it is powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Thomas Appéré

#space #science #scicomm



Oooh, interesting, VOR for Ventura is apparently not functioning. #VOR #aviation


As promised, here is an interview with @ryanleesipes from #Thunderbird, on the whole #Mozilla and #Firefox terms of use situation.

We talk about why this had to happen, how Thunderbird will handle their own Terms of Use, what's happening at Mozilla, and what's changing.

youtube.com/watch?v=ctg5QzSt5t…

in reply to Nick @ The Linux Experiment

Thanks, tot was really interesting. I learned a lot from the video and the peek behind the Mozilla curtain.
in reply to Nick @ The Linux Experiment

thanks for this interview. I still feel unconfortable with all of this, but really appreciated the discussion.
I love Firefox and Thunderbird even more, I would be sad to have to switch!


in reply to Frankie ✅

Said the Canadians while exploiting Mexico and killing indigenous people they colonized to install pipes for billionaires.


Open Source underpins almost 90% of the software used around the world today, but very little of the money used for public procurement reaches Open Source developers. opensource.org/blog/overcoming… #OpenSource


Good day! Unsure if you'll see this before meeting, but... I'm still set and on track.



Only Good-Looking Person In Office Mingles With Hideous Coworkers Like Missionary Among Lepers
theonion.com/only-good-looking…


It is now time to Rocq out with the Coq out

mathstodon.xyz/@gadmm/11414960…

Unknown parent

mastodon - Link to source
mcc
@lt @dmbaturin @hisham_hm *looks at own desktop, scratches head*


A 1912 metamorphic toy celebrates the escape of suffragist Christabel Pankhurst to France to avoid arrest. When you pull the tab, she vanishes and two police detectives crash into each other. rylandscollections.com/2025/03…


404 Media has obtained a list of 200+ sites monitored by a contractor for ICE (Amazon, Apple Music, BabyCenter, Bluesky, Facebook, Github, GoFundMe, etc.). They can “pull a target individual’s publicly available data” from these sites “all at once”. 404media.co/the-200-sites-an-i…



Check this out..

@mirlo is killing it right now, and working hard to do the important (but un-shiny) work of making a site for #Musicians that anyone can host **inexpensively**

This is the endgame for the #Fediverse - thousands of indie sites, not mega instances - but it’ll take this kind of work to pull it off.

Good job, guys. I’m super jealous of you rn.

mirlo.space/post/222

reshared this

in reply to il fabbro

Two different projects, but yes. I believe #Mirlo is working on Federation: github.com/funmusicplace/mirlo…

Today, we celebrate Mirlo 🎉

My project, #Bandwagon federates with ActivityPub, but is still missing other important features that Mirlo supports (like paid album sales)

The good thing is that we’re all converging on a similar point, and that will be a huge win for indie artists and labels everywhere.

@ilfabbro @mirlo

in reply to Ben Pate 🤘🏻

It's amazing what both #Mirlo and #Bandwagon have achieved in the last few months. Big up yourselves! ❤️

(Not to forget #TheIndieBeat of course)

@ilfabbro



Bluesky To Sell Your Content To AI Data Miners

So it begins. Hidden in Jay Graber's recent charm offensive is this innocuously framed initiative: Bluesky is weighing a proposal that gives users consent over how their data is used for AI (techcrunch.com/2025/03/10/blue…)

Not so fast.

1) Shows they are planning on doing content deals with AI companies.
2) Seems like it is Opt-out vs. Opt-in (see below).
3) It is just a voluntary robots.txt file

h/t @Lydie tech.lgbt/@Lydie/1141490233448…

more...

#Bluesky

This entry was edited (3 months ago)

Paul Cantrell reshared this.




“The goal is to cast vaccines into the shadows. That has deadly consequences.”

Legislators are bent on dismantling our vaccine safety net even as this deadly disease sees a frightening resurgence in our state. texasobserver.org/measles-outb…

#politics #USpol #Texas #measles #antivax #vaccines #health #healthcare #news #TXlege #Republicans



A bug in a recent Windows 11 update is causing some USB printers to produce random, programming-related text. pcmag.com/news/is-your-printer…


How one’s hand configuration affects the sound of clapping
Faster clapping yields lower-frequency sounds, as does cupping one's hands while clapping.
arstechnica.com/science/2025/0…
in reply to Ars Technica

Right at the end is the scary part:

"It might even be possible one day to identify someone based on their distinctive claps and use it as a kind of acoustic login for electronic devices."

More surveillance - AI to be used to review footage of every concert, theatrical performance etc. ever, and produce a massive database linking you to the sounds of your hand claps.
Then you can be tracked by the sound you make whenever your flat hand contacts something 🤯😱


in reply to Chris White

@cdwilson
All my shack/office photos are carefully angled and tightly cropped.

I just backed up & shot a pano, as it's presently (just pre-spring) in the worst condition it's been in months.

Toying with posting for comedy.



ACH has confirmed reports that DOGE is at the NEH. Chair Shelly C. Lowe has been replaced by Acting Chair Michael McDonald. ACH remains committed to a diverse, inclusive, and supportive DH. To engage in advocacy efforts: secretary@ach.org. Read our statement of support for NEH: buff.ly/bQeRaGw


This is the executive branch we in the U.S. are dealing with. Meanwhile Trump is blaming Canada for fentanyl.



Meeting Leah was a real highlight for me at WorkbenchCon a couple weeks ago. We carried those logs across the hotel singing the log song. I’m very grateful for such a fun shoutout and a great log reveal. #woodworking instagram.com/reel/DHGeul5gxY6…


12 March 1903 | A Slovenian, Josef Sitter, was born in Šentjakob. A car mechanic.

In #Auschwitz from 28 September 1941.
No. 21141
He perished in the camp on 24 February 1942.




Slicing up kumquats for marmalade takes a lot longer than I expected
Unknown parent

mastodon - Link to source
Emily Velasco
@VE2UWY I don't think I've ever seen an episode of his show, but that was pretty good
Unknown parent

mastodon - Link to source
Come On Giant Asteroid!
I don't actually know your age-ish so this may not be appropriate for Younger Viewers .... because they are too young to have been there at the time.


Today's Low Quality Ad is for this Leather Hole Punch Tool. I carry mine everywhere. You never know when someone's leather jacket will get wrapped around their face, and they'll be in need of a hero to punch an air hole into it so they don't suffocate.
amazon.com/dp/B08VN7W1JR?ref=t…

in reply to Cory Doctorow

this is why the Rs are taking union-busting to the states with laws like Ohio SB1 aiming to kneecap (first) university collective bargaining units


Let me tell you how I became a proud science denier, and how it saved my life.

--

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

pluralistic.net/2025/03/12/epi…

1/

Unknown parent

mastodon - Link to source
Cory Doctorow
Long thread/eof

Sensitive content

in reply to Cory Doctorow

I don't think this science denial. A big part of science is rigorous debate of the evidence. If you have evidence to the contrary, whether it's "anecdotal" lived experience or published data, then not blindly trusting established narrative *is* science. Dissenting views and contradictions are more valuable to the scientific process than confirmations* because it's evidence of some misunderstanding that can be used to push science as a whole forward.

*Of course you need some confirmations, and the replication crisis is a whole separate issue that leads to mistrust in science



In case you weren’t paying attention, most of the people that understand economics told you that Trump was going to be a disaster. Only those that were part of the cult told you otherwise. So now you are going to act surprised because you voted for a felon, a bigot, a con man, and a dolt.

fastcompany.com/91294460/trump…

#Economics



WOW 😳 🤯

The Trump administration and GOP, they are admitting this!!!