keverets @keverets@librem.one

The Way Things Work (1994)
Personal Computer

Google Search has told people to use gasoline in spaghetti, drink urine, and eat rocks. It said President James Madison graduated from college 21 times, and that there's no country in Africa that starts with the letter K.

This is *one week* after Google executives and engineers spent almost two hours on stage evangelizing about the power of AI at Google I/O. I really don't know if I've seen another product failure this bad in recent history.

https://www.howtogeek.com/google-search-ai-overview-responses/

When I talk about digital privacy, there is always some smug genius who shrugs and tells me, "Who cares? We all know we don't have any privacy anyway." Nothing could be more wrong. Convincing you that the fight is already over to the way people in power get you to stop resisting.

So, I knew that signal had ensured that desktop installs weren't first-class users of the account and had no way of backing up messages. I didn't realize that there was no backup option of any kind on iOS at all, and no way to keep messages when switching platforms. That's, uh, kind of a big deal?

I looked into this because a friend on iOS has stopped using signal. They have a really important relationship that started on signal, and while it's since moved elsewhere, they don't want to lose all the original chat logs. So they bought a new phone and just keep the entire old phone somewhere safe, because there's no other option. The result is annoying (for me) and shitty for them — because the data still isn't backed up.

But it's ok, we've got stickers, Giphy support, and stories, and that's more important than absolutely basic security features.

Most common 4 digit PINs.
https://jwz.org/b/ykP8

⚡ Today is a momentous day for Internet competition in Canada — not quite "mission accomplished", but a very important and long-awaited step: As of today, you can finally buy full fibre service from competitors like TekSavvy! (some conditions apply sorry I'm a lawyer I have to say things like this ;-)

Let me explain more:
👇🏼🧵 #CRTC #CdnPoli #TekSavvy
1/8

“They cut speed limits, changed street design, removed space for cars…Now it appears that work is paying off. #Oslo and #Helsinki are reaping the rewards of committed action on making their roads safer, reducing pedestrian fatalities to zero last year.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/16/how-helsinki-and-oslo-cut-pedestrian-deaths-to-zero

"Work on something that matters, if only to you.
Work on something that helps people, even in small ways.
Work on making things understandable."

http://www.rntz.net/post/against-software-development.html

I can't believe a paid OS needs a tool like this. Here's a GUI tool called OFGB (Oh Frick Go Back) to remove all the ads in Windows 11. It's understandable if a free OS or app needs ad support, but this is just crazy https://github.com/xM4ddy/OFGB

I know weird opinion, but if it’s “Chrome only” it’s not the Web.

It’s Flash, but worse.

If you really want to get upset about something going on in open source / open data space, I would suggest considering Niantic.

After years of refusing any communication with #OpenStreetMap, not to mention -any- kind of support. Niantic joined the Linux Foundations Overture (for substantial amounts of money), but its customers continue to vandalize OSM, burning lots of volunteer time at multiple levels.

https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/beware-of-fake-beaches-pokemon-go/112413

“We found there’s this perfect one-to-one relationship. If a city increased its road capacity by 10%, then the amount of driving in that city went up by 10%.”

https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/

#Infrastructure #Roads #InducedDemand #Cities

Completely mind boggling to me that we threw away 5 billion phones in 2022.

Some of those could have been repurposed: smartphones are hardly innovating any more. The most eco-friendly phone is the one you already have.

We need to publicly support communities like @postmarketOS who work on making these phones repurposable, and @gnome that work on making a polished mobile experience that serves people, not creepy corporations.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-63245150

In which I ask meta.ai a few questions about myself and the world. No real *new* news here: The answers are plausible but wrong: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2024/04/18/Meta-AI-oh-my

Decent entertainment value; still waiting for progress on modeling meaning.

Open access paper titled "The impact of real-time carbon dioxide awareness on occupant behavior and ventilation rates in student dwellings"

Highlights:

- Air quality awareness led to reduced median CO2 levels in 77% of bedrooms.

- Air quality awareness doubled the ventilation rates in 70% of dwellings.

- Display-integrated CO2 monitoring is an effective air quality intervention in student dwellings.

#IndoorAir #IAQ
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378778824002482

Just watched a demo of a couple of ML models (image-to-text + text-to-voice) used as an accessibility feature to read text from an image. It's one of the very few use-cases I've seen lately that is actually compelling and solves a genuine problem that needs solving. Unsurprisingly these models run locally and don't need a mega data-center and your credit card number.

This is a great piece, and confirms the broader scale of a piece I did a long time ago: Apple has "must shred" agreements with e-waste recyclers that require them to destroy devices that could easily be repaired/refurbished/reused after having data wiped

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-04-18/apple-iphone-recycling-program-has-secrets?embedded-checkout=true