NaibofTabr

“The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”
~ John Gilmore

It’s extremely difficult to actually expunge information from the public internet, for both good and ill.

What happens in the abyss stays in the abyss.

Hmm… maybe not? The low density of helium at 1 atm is what causes the amplification of higher frequencies in the voicebox, but in a pressurized container the gas would be higher density so it might offset the effect… I think?

URLCheck (available in F-Droid) is a nice tool for inspecting URLs and removing tracking and other nonsense. It includes a lot of nice features such as:

• Url Cleaner: Uses the ClearURLs catalog to remove referral and useless parameters from the url. It also allows for common offline url redirections. Built-in catalog from https://docs.clearurls.xyz/latest/specs/rules/
• Unshortener: Uses https://unshorten.me/ to unshorten urls remotely.
• Queries remover: Displays the decoded individual url queries, which you can remove or check.

It’s handy for checking/editing links before pasting them into posts/comments, and also for checking links before you open them.

At worst this was some kinda weird symbolic thing rather than a “try to kill as many people as I can” thing.

These are not exclusive. Killing people could have been the intention - it’s possible that it just blew up on him earlier than intended.

You can tell the narrative government push by just reading the titles of these news agency.

Er, wait, let me check if I understand correctly… you’re accusing the US government of pushing a non-warmongering narrative? a narrative that does not encourage increased US presence in the Middle East and instead seeks to de-escalate the possible response to this incident? … and you’re … complaining about that?

You’re either so deep into conspiracy theory nonsense that you just see government conspiracy everywhere, or you’re a warmongering nut who wants the government to push escalatory terrorist-threat narratives at every opportunity.

The notice recommends customers migrate to Kick, a new accounting startup that announced its $9 million seed raise in October 2024 in a round led by OpenAI and General Catalyst. Kick’s CEO and founder, Conrad Wadowski, posted a message on LinkedIn to former Bench users about how Kick is “working to get your financials back in your hands.”

This is weird. How did “Kick” have access to Bench’s customer list? Is there some relationship between these companies?

OK, this is very interesting. One of the biggest limitations with biodegradable plastics is that they’re water-soluble, which makes them useless for most food packaging applications.

If this only breaks down when exposed to saltwater at particular concentrations it might be a lot more useful.

That said, the article’s not specific on which salt… I assume NaCl because that’s the highest concentration in seawater, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that other salts won’t cause the breakdown to start… and the environment isn’t exactly salt-free. Most foodstuffs aren’t de-ionized either.

But also we’ll track everyone everywhere they go, with facial recognition.

Oh no, Firefox is fine, possibly better than Chrome in that aspect. I’m thinking more about any other browser projects that might come up if Chrome is taken from Google and then collapses.

Or, what happens if a potentially bad actor acquires Chrome, and where does that leave all of the apps that are built around it?

It’s a good question because maintaining a modern web browser is a complicated and expensive project, which any potential buyer would have to sustain financially somehow. Chrome without the integrated ad service business would probably be highly unprofitable - so why would any business take it on?

The only real answer I can come up with is pretty ugly: data mining. Lots of services are dependent on Chrome that can’t just move to a new platform on short notice. Chrome is not just the web browser, it’s also the web engine for most mobile apps (a lot of apps are just stripped-down Chrome with a hard-coded server target).

Chrome has basically sucked all the air out of the room for other browser projects, so maybe taking it away from Google will create some space for new projects to grow… but it’s hard to see any of them becoming well-developed and trustworthy for things like health data, government services, financial transactions &etc anytime soon.

Huuuuge… tracts of land?

Rule of Acquisition #76: Every once in a while, declare peace. It confuses the hell out of your enemies.

Robert Kennedy wants to bring back Polio.

The Trump presidency will be littered with corpses.

The plan is coming from inside the (white) house.

Windows 11

It was last year. You missed it.

Meanwhile, the US is sending Ukraine *checks notes* 50 year old airframes…

Neither the US nor China has found reason enough to commit any of their fancy, expensive hardware yet… that’s probably a good thing. Both the US and China are happy to watch Russia burn out its military accomplishing very little (for different reasons, but ultimately the same goal). The US and China are still on trade dispute terms because a militarily weakened Russia favors both of their interests.

And comparatively, no other country’s military matters at this level. Sure there are other nations that spend high amounts of their GDP on military buildup, but none of them have global deployment capability at scale like the US or China.

So I guess the question is, when the Ukraine situation eventually ends, do the US and China square off for a fight? or do they go back to the quietly simmering economic tension that is the status quo? … with Putin’s control of the Russian nuclear stockpile as a wildcard.

Oh come on, there’s nothing irresponsible or creepy about wanting to collect retinal images of every person on the planet into a single, Internet-connected database. You’re just being paranoid.

This.

Friends don’t let friends Electron.

Most users are stuck with crappy Electron apps because of the same forces that prevent users from switching to other platforms or services. […] They exist because software markets are anticompetitive.