Really enjoyed @z3ntu 's presentation today here in Japan. I agree with much of the assessment of the problems facing software freedom on the mobile space. I'm excited for #postmarketOS to move beyond being ready just for an average hacker and towards the average user.
Facial scanning in our town centres, removal of jury for many trials, digital ID to track our interactions. The Labour Government really is attacking civil liberties and rights on many fronts.
Amazon might not notice that you stopped shopping with them* but if you take that same modest bit of disposable income and spend it on art bought directly from artists, the small electronics projects of your friends, helping people in dire financial situations and the the local theater all of those people WILL notice. It will have a massive impact.
*But, also Amazon does notice. Especially as more and more people do this.
Say No to Digital ID 🚫
Nearly 3 million people signed the petition against Digital ID. Next Monday, MPs will debate this 4th largest petition in British history.
Tell your MP (UK) to attend the debate and stop digital surveillance.
Use our tool ⬇️
https://action.openrightsgroup.org/tell-your-mp-attend-debate-digital-ids
#NotoDigitalID #DigitalID #surveillance #privacy #ukpolitics #ukpol #ID
Expanding facial recognition without proper safeguards in place puts our rights on the back foot.
We should be able to walk down the street without being ID’d at every step.
The UK Parliament must wake up and halt the march of this tech with its questionable accuracy.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3r7pwpgeweo
#facialrecognition #police #policing #ukpolitics ukpol #surveillance #privacy
Upgrade to a new laptop only once every 10-15 years, you get 3x-7x in HD space increase.
2 times ago, it was 2005 when I got this massive increase in laptop disk. Then, the song “My Humps” by Black Eyed Peas was in heavy rotation, & so, when I copy over my old files to my new laptop and I see how much disk space is *left* after copying over the data from the drive that keeps running out of disk space, I imagine these modified lyrics:
“Whatcha gonna do? … with all that space inside your trunk?”
Remember how people go on about how the UK is slowly becoming a fascist country?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/dec/02/david-lammy-jury-trials-cuts-labour-mps-peers
Yes, goodbye Jury Nullification.
I was a juror. The person who was on trial would probably end up in prison if not for the jury system. I was about 75% sure that the defendent was technically guilty of the crime, but I pushed for notguilty and that person is free today. Because the law as it was applied was, I believe, unjust in that specific case.
Anyway, fuck the Labour Party. Good day.
Another year to make a #CyborgMonday joke! For your future cyborg self, invest in #software freedom!
https://sfconservancy.org/sustainer/
Also check out the hot deals on #freesoftware! Dozens of software projects available at deep discount prices. Act now!
At a whopping £1.8 billion, Digital ID is costly to the UK taxpayer and our rights.
This divisive scheme wasn't on Labour’s manifesto. It’s the last thing this government should be embarking on during a cost of living crisis.
The whole thing needs to be binned.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/28/digital_id_cost/
#NotoDigitalID #DigitalID #privacy #surveillance #ukpolitics #ukpol
Kicking off #FreeSoftwareAdvent (thanks, @neil), I'll open with remind(1)
While it took several articles and a couple attempts before I switched over to using it, once you taste the power of what it can do, it's hard to go back to less-capable calendaring tools.
While the classic "garbage day is on Thursday unless there was a holiday earlier in the week, in which case it moves back to Friday" scenario is a nice little demo of its power, one of the best examples from my daily use is the kids' school calendars:
• the teen has an A/B schedule which doesn't mesh nicely with calendar days, week-days, etc
• similarly, our elementary-age kiddo has a 4-day cycle schedule for her "specials" class
But remind's nonomitted() function makes quick work of both of those, taking into consideration weekends, the school holidays, and using PUSH/POP directives for high-school testing days that impact his A/B schedule but not her 4-day cycle. I've never encountered another calendar that handled all the edge-cases with so little effort.
It's a little rocky interchanging with other calendars (you have to use rem2ics to create .ics files to share, and pulling in others' iCal is non-trivial and doesn't seem to maintain the fidelity of remote events).
But otherwise, this runs a great deal of my life schedule.
“Excuse me is this the backpack to Roosjesdaal?”
“Yes via Brussel-Midi”
Alt...
Rosahaj in backpack asking OV a question
You can become a sustainer and read more about what we've been up to here:
We're a small group of UK-focused hackers, from far and wide across the country, looking to bring some of the CCC spirit back home with us!
We're hoping to grow a grassroots community, fostering spaces and meetups aimed at keeping the chaos spirit flowing 1st Jan to 26th Dec.
We'll be looking to meet and connect with other UK-focused hacking communities and like-minded groups.
We're looking forward to seeing you at #39c3 and online!
Stay tuned for more info on how to find us.
I love how the only way I noticed the outage of ~AWS~ Cloudflare is that people on Fedi are shitposting about it.
Nothing I use depends on it, that's lovely.
| Fruit: | 0 |
| Vegetable: | 8 |
| Both: | 1 |
Closed
Unsolicited advice [SENSITIVE CONTENT]
This may or may not help, but there's a public bridge at aria-net.org which lets you join Matrix rooms and 1:1 chats, without a Matrix account or server, from XMPP.Like all bridges, I'm never 100% confident it's working properly on the other end! But, it's worked quite well for me so far.
Parliament is going to debate the petition you signed – “Repeal the Online Safety Act”.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/722903
The debate is scheduled for 15 December 2025.
Can a toddler be a terrorist?
A shocking new report has found that babies and toddlers have been referred to the UK's controversial counter-terrorism scheme Prevent hundreds of times since 2016.
ORG has shown that data collected under the Prevent programme is widely shared and retained for years even when referrals are marked ‘no further action’. Lives are being impacted from an absurdly young age.
Read more from Hyphen:
https://hyphenonline.com/2025/11/12/babies-referred-to-prevent-counter-terror-islamist/
Other changes:
"Completely open source" → "based on open standards"
Specific deadlines → open consultation period
Technical specs (OpenAPI) → general principles
Fixed roadmap → iterative development
“What if everybody did it?” is the cornerstone of Kantian ethical morality: “Take every action, as if, by acting it's willed into universal law”.
… which is a fancy way of saying “Do onto others as you would have do unto you”.
So, I'm totally ok with a “what if everyone did it?” analysis.
& I'm not sure there is even a utilitarian comeback here.
Cc: @AnnieBuddy @evan
I’m glad @servo exists, is hosted by the European arm of the Linux Foundation, has excellent engineers from @igalia paid to work on it, and is funded by @nlnet.
Web browsers are a crucial component of how we access to (and share) information. The status quo is not okay, and it’s likely to deteriorate further.
Every now and then it hits me how invisible the advantages of being part of the EU can be. For instance despite bringing billions of phones to Brussels for FOSDEM for multiple years at this point, I only realised today that this only is possible thanks to freedom of movement for goods and people within the EU. I think too many don't appreciate the small things like this enough, like not having to choose between leaving some of your belongings with the border control or missing out on an event.
Websites often pressure users to change browsers needlessly.
I run Firefox ESR 128.14.0.
https://www.firefox.com/en-US/firefox/128.14.0/releasenotes/ says it's nary 3 months old. Yet my bank says:
> “Your browser is no longer supported. For…improved security, update to…latest version.”
Reading bank's FAQ it's b/c they only support last 2 #Firefox releases (ignoring ESRs).
Web designers once aspired to “graceful degradation” — but that principle slowly declined in fashion since ≈ 2011.
Today, those who aspired to it now shun it.
@matt @neal Burying the terminal seems wrong *to us* but it's hard for me to argue against the idea that a huge swath of mainstream users just want an appliance.
"It also gets rid of what makes Linux special over other OSes."
Well, not entirely. One of the things that makes Linux special is that it respects user freedom -- even if said user never exercises the full set of freedoms. It is enough IMO if we manage to liberate a significant percentage of users from abusive ecosystems even if they never do more than change the wallpaper.
The problem is, or a problem is, that we keep trying to design one-size-fits-all distributions that are suitable for the lovable weirdos that have brought Linux this far *and* users who just want an appliance that lets them install a few apps.
I doubt that's possible. We have to have the Fedoras and Debians, for us, but what suits us is not ever going to be the thing that brings "The Year of the Linux Desktop".
I don't know that you *have* to hide the terminal to be successful, but if using the CLI is required it's going to scare off a lot of users. I wish that weren't so!
We should be teaching kids how to use the CLI in school. Hell, if I had my druthers, kids wouldn't be allowed to touch a GUI until they'd learned to do everything with CLI tools. But that requires a much different world than the one we live in today.
⏰ NEXT WEEK ⏰
We're going beyond the screen and hosting a meet up IRL. Whether you're a supporter or just curious, everyone is welcome to pop down.
Hear from our team, mingle and join the movement!
🗓️ Monday 10 November
🕡 6:30-9pm GMT
📍 Newspeak House, London, UK
Sign up ➡️ https://www.openrightsgroup.org/events/org-london-meet-up/
I almost want to try deleting random parts of a throwaway install, but then doing that on a real system is something else entirely. I'd definitely be worried that I missed something subtle/important.
python3.Not many experiences since have replicated that sinking feeling, seeing the system get removed in front of my eyes, kicking myself for having not spent 2 seconds looking at the list of packages to be removed.
Like you @KatS@chaosfem.tw I ended up reinstalling the whole thing, maybe it was salvagable but I for one had no idea how to do that 😀
