keverets @keverets@librem.one

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 🏳️‍🌈

Purism has released the Librem 5's mechanical design, adding to already available schematics and PCB layouts.

https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/3D_designs/-/blob/master/Librem5-Chassis/librem-5.step

I think that may make it the first proper Open Hardware smartphone out there.

#purism #librem5 #linuxmobile #linuxsmartphones #openhardware #oshw #cad

Canada’s S-210 bill is a repressive and unworkable online regulation that would cause more harm to the very communities it intends to protect. Canadian politicians should drop bill S-210 before it’s too late. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/09/canadas-leaders-must-reject-overbroad-age-verification-bill  

It's not like we (society) talked about this and decided we'd sacrifice ground-based astronomy in exchange for internet access in remote areas.

Musk and a few others did this unilaterally. It wasn't to help anyone. They did it to make a profit and consolidate control over critical infrastructure.

Interview with the vampire

2nd round interview with the vampire

Zoom interview with the team with the vampire

we have decided to pursue another candidate but will keep you in mind if future positions open up with the vampire

My beliefs are simple, and hardly radical: Libraries are critical infrastructure. Access to information is a human right. When you buy a book you should truly own it. When a library buys a book, they should be able to lend it. Readers should be able to read without any third parties spying over their shoulders, or preventing them from accessing the materials they have legally obtained.