keverets @keverets@librem.one

@nelson It's real thing, and it works very well. Hospitals use it all the time.

The system I have built into my ductwork comes from a company called Swordfish UV; I installed it myself, the drill bit you need comes in the box and it took less than half an hour.

https://swordfishuv.com/

https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/2019-novel-coronavirus-infection/canadas-reponse/summaries-recent-evidence/ultraviolet-germicidal-irradiation-technologies-use-against-sars-cov-2.html

Anecdotally, though we have had colds and one person caught Covid in the last few years, have not had any in-house transmission of _anything_ since I installed it.

Smart take from @gruber on the removal of VPN apps from Apple Store in Russia, following on government demand. One conclusion highlighted, but read the whole thing: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/10/02/russia-app-store-vpns

iOS is a fabulous platform but I have refused, since the App Store launch in 2008, to work on any apps, because I decline to build software which a platform owner can prevent me from sharing it with the world. I have regretted that decision exactly zero times these last 18 years.

#apple #ioS #Russia

Here's the current state of the tech industry:

A week or so ago I went for a big group meal and at the end they brought the card reader machine for us to pay and it had an option for us to go through an itemised bill, check some options, and pay for just those options (plus an equivalent fraction of the service charge). It was amazing! This genuinely saved us about half an hour of talking at cross-purposes and poking numbers into our own phone calculators and hoping nobody did the sums wrong and accidentally stole someone else's tip. I genuinely would consider going back there for future group meals despite the fact that I'd finished my food before Alec's arrived and he'd finished his before Darren's came, so thoroughly do I dislike the traditional bill-splitting process.

And yet in terms of technology, it was nothing but a low-end smartphone running an app built entirely from OS-standard UI components. No AI, no invasion of privacy, no adverts, and I have to assume no VC funding or elaborate toolchain. Just a good idea implemented well, and genuinely we all went away commenting about how clever and useful it was.

And I don't remember the previous time I experienced that. We know what people want. They want you to use the massive technological advances we've already made to build useful things that work. But apparently there's no money in that 🤷

It's the time of year when people cut down and get rid of the fallen leaves and dead plants in their pollinator gardens…

Dead plants and leaf litter are vital habitat for insects, including pollinators! You don't need to "clean up" anything!! Spread the word.

Thanks to Thilo, developer of @Monal, Quicksy is now available on iOS!

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/quicksy/id6538727270

Jabber/XMPP with Easy Entry and Easy Discovery

Conversations for you. Quicksy for your less tech-savvy friends

Remember you don’t have to be on Quicksy yourself to give your friends an easy way to find your XMPP address. Instead you can enter your XMPP address-phone number tuple into the Quicksy Directory
https://quicksy.im/#get-listed

You can also initiate the conversation by adding +1234555…@quicksy.im

A friend of mine suggested that we stop using the sparkle ✨ emoji as the symbol for AI and replace it with a magic eight ball 🎱 as it more realistically conveys how the technology works. I've been thinking about that a lot lately. 😂

PayPal is updating their Terms of Service to automatically give merchants access to your data starting in November and they've already opted you into it. OPT OUT BEFORE THEY START:

Good to Settings > Data & Privacy > Manage shared info > Personalized/PayPal Shopping and toggle it to off.

#PayPal #Privacy #OptOut

We’re excited to announce that Tails (@tails_live) is officially part of the Tor Project family! By joining forces, we’re ensuring that activists, journalists, and everyday users have access to more secure and sustainable tools for online privacy. Read more: https://blog.torproject.org/tor-tails-join-forces #TorTails #PrivacyMatters

Never connect your TV to the internet, episode a million: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2449198-smart-tvs-take-snapshots-of-what-you-watch-multiple-times-per-second/

Many reasons this 401 tunnel is silly, but another one: Ford could pay for both the (unfunded) Waterfront LRT and Eglinton E LRT many times over for what this tunnel will cost. Hell, you could gold plate the trains and offer riders champagne and caviar https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/highway-401-tunnel-traffic-gridlock-ford-1.7333341?cmp=rss

“Content Creator” is a title that inadvertently tells on itself. It’s a tacit admission that the nature of the “content“ is meaningless and it exists to fill space. Might as well call yourself “Stuff Maker” or “Thing Doer.”

Go grab a iCloud backup of your entire user account now. If you lose data you lose it across every device. Be warned it's not a clean backup method a lot of file names are not preserved, but it's an emergency copy. I haven't done it in a few years should start again.
http://privacy.apple.com

I just used for the first time #GNUtaler to pay my Mate at #Datenspuren. GNUtaler is a #FreeSoftware secure electronic payment system funded under the #EU's Next Generation Internet programme #NGI which the EU just decided to cut by €27 mio.

The payment worked awesome - and Free Software needs sustainable, long-term financial support! This is what we at the @fsfe demand from the EU, to ensure Europe's technological independence.

Please support our work!
https://fsfe.org/donate

#PublicCode

Some more accomplishments of the Trudeau gov’t:

- COVID pandemic policy that held deaths to a fraction of the USA’s
- greenwashing ban
- strict labeling and recall rules for “natural” health scam products
- capital gains tax increase
- national pharmacare for diabetes drugs and contraceptives
- reversed Harper’s denial of citizenship to children of Canadians born abroad

And that’s just off the top of my head.

A few good things eh.

I saw a post here talking about the carbon price as “one of the few good things the Trudeau gov’t has done”. So off the top of my head, here’s some accomplishments of the Trudeau gov’t.

- added gender identity protections to the human rights act 🏳️‍🌈
- heat pump and EV incentives
- Canada dental plan, enabling over 500K Canadians to get needed treatment
- $10/day daycare
- national school lunch program
- Canada Child Benefit
- conversion therapy ban 🏳️‍🌈