Interesting developments regarding the EU chat control proposal. I'm seeing posts preemptively celebrating that Germany will block it, but I'm not sure what that is based on. It's clear that we need to keep the pressure up.
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@tarakiyee it's not 100 percent but the CDU parliamentarians faction went on public record opposing chatcontrol innits current form which makes it hard for the gov to agree to it, even if formally possible. There could still be changes and more efforts from the danish presidency to get some variation through I guess but it's uphill now.
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@hpk the issue is that they didn't "totally" oppose chat controls, they specifically stated "anlasslose" controls, which makes me very worried they're playing word games.
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@tarakiyee if the state has an "anlass", like a suspicion accepted by a court, there are already laws that allow inspecting a phone or launching a trojan. I think "Anlasslos" is a key part of the chatcontrol pushed by Denmark, Spain and other states. So I am not sure how you would substitute that word and still arrive at mass surveillance.
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@hpk well, let's see if they share your definition
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@tarakiyee @hpk this: https://bonn.social/@ulrichkelber/115338422800258548 looks promising - but the wording is starting to make me share Tara's worry.
I wonder if the next iteration of the law will be something like:
- "chatcontrol" scanning infrastructure must exist on all devices
- but is disabled by default
- it can be enabled "per device" by some central authority
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@hko @tarakiyee i was just refering to the current iteration of what Denmark presented as text to vote on. No doubt, there will be another attempt at chatcontrol, maybe along your suggest "disabled by default" scheme to circumvent the "anlassloss" barrier. Not sure if that could already flow into next week's decision though.
apk upgrade when I am on the tube and know I'm about to lose connection?I started migrating from #NextCloud to #Radicale, but iOS threw a spanner in the works (turns out accountsd only checks for A and not AAAA DNS records!) I decided to go into a "half-migrated" state: pointing myself to the new instance to continue testing while leaving my partner pointing to the old one.
That caused a problem: any events we created in the meantime wouldn't be synced to the other's devices.
vdirsyncer came in super handy and enabled a three-way sync between NextCloud, Radicale and my laptop! So, despite being on two completely different #CalDAV servers, we both see exactly the same state and all updates flow through seamlessly. And, when they switch instance, it will be like nothing ever happened, despite being on different servers for a few weeks.
Thank you #openStandards and #freeSoftware!
UK Politics, civil liberties [SENSITIVE CONTENT]
I can highly recommend listening to this Prospect Magazine podcast featuring the late Conor Gearty.It's a scary but very worthwhile listen. It covers public support of civil liberties, the right to protest, the proscription of Palestine Action as well as what Labour should be doing to fortify against an authoritarian takeover.
I have thought a good bit about what government could do, and I believe there are a number of simple things they could do that they're not doing. And those are to fortify democracy against the forthcoming fight.So you could - obviously, obviously - change the voting system. Don't have any stupid internal independent commission, don't have any stupid royal commission, don't consult, just have "Single Transferable Vote - PR Act". You'll get Liberal support, Labour support - push it through. Unfortunately it's not in the manifesto, the Lords would try and delay it.
You would ban foreign influence on elections - it would be straightforward. You would make it impossible to have something like GB News. You would not allow Mr Marshall (lovely man though he is) to run a whole lot of outlets in pursuit of an obvious and transparent political agenda.
It's called parliamentary sovereignty, it's called legislation, it's called having will. There used to a requirement that all media was balanced - return to it. A lot of this is return to the past! A lot of this is recover what Mrs. Thatcher began shredding. The community that benefited from the end of the cold war, through the lack of fear of communism, they destroyed many of the social entitlements originally, and they've turned now to the civil and political, and they're seeking, in my opinion, to perpetually empower themselves. But we can fight back.
Let's have some fights with the right enemies. And if you go down, you go down. That strikes me as a more attractive set of scenarios than simply surrendering on the basis that you didn't achieve some growth that you set out to achieve in 2029.
Self hosting is self care.
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It is not for everyone. For many reasons.
But, for me, it has a value and an impact beyond the merely technical.
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@neil Even if it's only a few tools and applications, self-hosting increases people's understanding of how digital infrastructure works on a small scale. Then people can have better and a bit more constructive conversations about how the large scale companies are running the digital infrastructure business.
@neil there are degrees of self hosting, too. I "self host" many services, but it's on rented VPSes on other people's servers.
It outsources the tedious "keeping servers and networks alive", while giving me control over the actual services. Does that count as self hosting?
(to my mind, yes, but not in the purist path of having it running on a computer you can see and touch...)
@neil Are you self hosting your email server? I still have a lot of respect for running your own mail server.
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@NebulaTide Yes, I am.
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@neil That’s impressive. I am also thinking about it. Still didn’t make a final decision. Would be great to be more independent of the large webhosters. But there are also many things you have to consider when running your own Mailserver.
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@NebulaTide I can only speak from my own personal experience, but I have not found it particularly tricky or time consuming so far. I appreciate that other people have had problems.
> We have been forced to geo-block access from the United Kingdom to the lgbtqia.space services and community.
> This action is a direct result of the UK's Orwellian "Online Safety Act" a piece of legislation that, despite its name, is incredibly dangerous to online privacy and makes the internet absolutely not safe for marginalized communities and the volunteers who run services like this one.
This isn't new, but I saw it again this morning, and it made me sad.
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The links that I forge online are incredibly important to me.
I don't have "online friends" and "offline friends", just "friends".
Friends come and go over time, as our paths cross and diverge. That is inevitable.
But losing friends because of legislation sucks particularly hard.
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@neil
A free vpn immediately resolves this issue
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> In the UK you no longer can host an ActivityPub enabled service without blocking federation to those out-of-country sites, lest posts there might be replicated on the federated timeline.
I don't understand this?
I run my server in the UK, and don't block federation other than on a moderation basis.
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@neil Punishing citizens of a country for the actions of the country's lawmakers - who are able to exempt themselves from the punishment - is the traditional US way of dealing with foreign affairs.
@neil rarely have I been so disappointed with my country. As this government veers closer to outright authoritarianism (digital ID cards, support of a genocide, attacks on trans rights), this law will empower them further.
I hope one day the people responsible for this face a human rights court. That’s the politicians that ignored human rights to win popularity from newspapers. That’s civil servants at Ofcom that “just followed orders” to enable it. It won’t happen, because there’s no fairness in this world. But it should. #OnlineSafetyAct
> The Taliban in Afghanistan have imposed a nationwide shut down of telecommunications, weeks after they began severing fibre-optic internet connections to prevent what they call immorality.
Interested readers may note that "disruption measures", including access restriction orders, form the backstop of the UK's Online Safety Act.
Over next 1-2 weeks,I'd appreciate an extended thread re: #FrameworkLaptop, #mntreform, & #FOSS.
TL;DR on my idiosyncratic needs:
* minimize binary firmware blobs¹
* Having 2 disks in RAID-1²
* Runs stock Official #Debian stable³
* Understanding best current replacement keyboard options⁴
* Form factor that works for my travel needs.
Is @frameworkcomputer or @mntmn better for me?
I'd be glad if ∃ active engagement on this!
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Picking up my #FrameworkLaptop / #mntreform / need-a-FOSS-laptop thread
³ I need Debian stable & it has to work. I realize I'll have to install some blobs,, but I'd like to know what proprietary firmware blobs are mandatory, & which are optional. (e.g., I basically never use Bluetooth on my laptop anyway, so I don't really need that blob unless it's the same blob as another rperipheral.)
IIUC, MNT Reform is blob-free? Is there a blob laundry list somewhere for the various Framework models?
@dianea free open source software on my hardware is something more akin to #droidian and getting away from an android project that is dependent on Google’s aosp -with an uncertain future, also powered by google hardware.
Graphene has a lot of dependencies on google being generous and those gifts are drying up quickly.
We need to be supporting more TRUE open source solutions. More #linuxmobile options and focus is what we need.
“We are not saying we are going to boil the ocean in one go as the public would be really sceptical of that. We startering with right to work checks first but there are loads of other applications for digital ID.” Josh MacAlister. They are literally saying there will be future function creep of digital ID and this is about merging records across Government.
UK politics, digital ID [SENSITIVE CONTENT]
Dear Estonian government: could you please schedule an embarassing leak of all digital ID records for sometime in the next few weeks? That would really help us out.
OV is saying goodbye to his beloved ICR! Bye bye single deck international VIRM 😢💕
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OV on table with goodbye pin
So, after blockchains, cryptocurrencies, NFTs, metaverse, VR, AI-for-everything... what is the next bubble?
Any chance that it will be small, sustainable, local computing?
@jonquark @openrightsgroup It is definitely a significant risk, I think the HO eVisa app works like this. And of course, eVisas don’t work except on an app; in both cases the systems will make some people very dependent on relatives or partners who are abusive.
We're in a cost of living crisis and Labour wants to bring in digital ID cards for everyone 🤡 They're risking turning the UK into a pre-crime state where we constantly have to prove who we are to go about our daily lives.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/sep/25/keir-starmer-expected-to-announce-plans-for-digital-id-cards #precrime #digitalid #idcards
# Digital ID cards to be compulsory for all UK adults under government plans
*sigh*
Tiny details, like what to do about people who don't have a compatible smartphone, still need to be worked out..
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g54g6vgpdo
(Fixed link)
@neil I wonder if that's a reasonable bit of digital legislation that could be implemented 🤔
"Services cannot be provided purely through a downloaded app and there must be feature parity between a mobile-optimised web application (to be accessible through a browser of the user's choice) and any developed mobile application."
Something that bothers me a lot is when people conflate "having compassion and understanding for people who hate you" with "letting people who hate you do whatever they want to you".
It's possible to have firm boundaries and to take urgent, protective action while also believing that everyone is fundamentally good at heart and being deeply curious about what happened to some people to make their fundamentally good hearts twisted enough to believe and do such vile things.
Can someone explain the context I'm lacking for all of this? Non-UK person here 😅 Thanks!
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UK Politics, flags [SENSITIVE CONTENT]
I'll do my best from my perspective (based in London, I don't want to speak for everyone or other nations in the UK).Generally speaking, many in England find nationalistic flag-waving distasteful (with the exception of England playing in a major sporting event, or, for some, when there's a royal event).
In the last few weeks, far-right groups have tried to push the narrative within their circles that "we are 'not allowed' to fly the flag and 'be proud of our country'" (dog whistle for ethnic nationalism and anti-immigration + anti-asylum viewpoints). This led to people putting up flags on lampposts, spray-painting it on pedestrian crossings and bus stops etc. Councils initially started taking them down off lampposts, but then the far-right people were able to say: "look, it's proof that we're not allowed to fly our flag" (aka "the 'true Brits' are being suppressed by the 'others'") so councils have largely backed off.
I think it is essentially used as a dog whistle to make "others" feel unsafe. Certainly that is how I feel when surrounded by these flags.
That is not to say that everyone is putting them up for these reasons, but if you are putting them up now, I think it is a way of showing a particular point of view.
People are rightly upset with another Musk intervention in British politics. Yet so many Polticans, organisations and journalists still use X. Polticans and organisations should ditch the platform. Move to federated services and alternatives. Be the change they want to see. #Musk #X #Fediverse #ukpol
Installing #munin on a new server, wondering why it is not generating graphs.
Hmmm, everything is working fine if I callmunin-crondirectly, graphs are generated, and the cron entry is there in/etc/cron.d, so what's going on? Why is it not getting run from cron?
$ sudo service cron restart
Unit cron.service could not be found.
$
Huh? What is up with systemd? Why can't it find cron? Oh, hang on a second...
$ apt search cron | grep -i installed
$
D'oh!
There's something so wrong about it ultimately not respecting your choice.
Mozilla seems to have compromised its values. I don't think it's wrong to struggle with that. It reminds me of one of Karen Sandler's excellent talks on when to say no to funding:
We are fighting to make improvements in the areas that we think are so important, and if people think that that's important, they will get on board and help you find money, and help donate to you - and if they don't, well, you know, maybe it wasn't that important, and you'll have to find something else to do.I feel the same about the forks. I really hope, with all the new browsers with real community involvement, that better days are ahead of us.But, if you don't stay focused on that mission, and you're willing to compromise around the corner, you will never build trust for your organisation, you'll never be able to get the volunteers you need to keep going, and your funding will then constantly be on a downward spiral towards things that take you further afield from the reason you got started to begin with.
feed2exec!I love how flexible it is. I wanted to download each article to a file so I could copy those back and forth between devices. The man pages gave me everything I needed to write a simple plugin to do this, and it was well worth taking the time to learn.
Now I have the ability to do completely crazy and arbitrary things to my feeds before reading them! Well, I'm probably not going to do anything with that, but it's nice to know I can 😀
vidir, available from the moreutils package in #Debian.I can't believe I didn't know about it already! I frequently have to rename many files, and vidir lets me apply my keybinding and hacky macro knowledge to yet another task :D
Censorship creeps onwards 🤐
Ignoring issues with the UK Online Safety Act, the government is using Henry VIII powers to engulf more content.
Aimed at blocking 'self-harm' content, algorithms will misidentify support resources and content will vanish behind age gates.
https://www.digit.fyi/uk-gov-to-toughen-online-safety-act-against-self-harm-content/
#onlinesafetyact #onlinesafety #osa #censorship #freespeech #freedomofexpression #ukpolitics #ukpol
@BBCNews So much of this relates to the tabloidification of social media. Which is about disempowered users, who cannot choose their moderators and prioritisation engines,
@ret 100% especially when you add that the far right are inevitably quite happy to forget FX once they have the power to restrict speech they do not like. We are watching that happen in real time.
The Open Rights Group is working on an amendment to the OSA which would propose a small site exemption, for sites that are maintained without a view to profit, with a small number of active users, and which the owner reasonably believes to pose no risk to users.
If you want to give thoughts on various parts of the potential amendments, there's a form here:
https://cloud.openrightsgroup.org/nextcloud/apps/forms/s/dQB6GSRQ4jHzGjxiYG5tAnDB
Any sufficiently large node on a decentralised service should be treated with the same caution as a centralised service.
@generalx@freeradical.zone @id@fedi.4x31.dev @prosodyim@fosstodon.org I use a PostgreSQL backend and it works fine for me. Granted, my server has ~5 users :)