Ham radio turns 100 in South Africa
“The South African Radio League (SARL) wants to broaden its contribution to the growth of amateur radio in sub-Saharan Africa as the organisation celebrates its centenary next month. Amateur radio, also known as ham radio, is a hobby that involves e ...continues
See https://gadgeteer.co.za/ham-radio-turns-100-in-south-africa/
It's fascinating that the vast majority of computer scientists are so publicly and strongly critical of generative AI systems as they are currently being deployed by Big Tech -- unless they happen to be working for one of those firms.
Debian Developers Pursuing A General Resolution Around AI Models
The Debian developer community is pursuing a General Resolution for voting on their policy around AI models...
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Debian-Free-AI-Models-GR
Greta #Thunberg was due to be on humanitarian aid ship attacked by suspected #Israeli drones while it was in international waters.
“I was part of the group who was supposed to board that boat today to continue the voyage towards Gaza, which is one of many attempts to open up a humanitarian corridor and to do our part to keep trying to break #Israel’s illegal siege on #Gaza,”
The Oregon State University's Open Source Lab needs your help 🤝 !
We at #Inkscape rely on them for hosting our website 🌐 , mailing lists 📨 , mail servers 📮 and DNS ℹ️ .
They are also a host for many other open source projects - e.g. #Drupal, #Gentoo Linux, #Debian, #Fedora, #phpBB, #OpenID, #Buildroot/#Busybox, #Cinc, …
Please consider donating 💌 to them so they can keep their services running for all of us!
🍃
The EU is introducing an energy label for phones, together with mandatory requirements for phones sold in the EU;
- 5 years of software updates (AFTER they stop selling the device in the EU)
- providing important hardware parts (during sale and for 7 years after), including free software (if needed), to every repair shop, within 5-10 business days
- batteries have to make 800 charging cycles and still be above 80% original capacity
And on top of that, phones and tablets need this energy label from 20 June 2025, which also includes a fall damage durability and repairability score.
(https://energy-efficient-products.ec.europa.eu/product-list/smartphones-and-tablets_en)
Bluesky is cancelling accounts when foreign governments ask them to, and Threads is doing adverts soon.
The thing to understand about the corporate public messaging systems is that they do not exist to let you publish or to talk to people. That is not the point of them. That's at best just the bait laid to lure you into their trap.
They exist to make money for the shareholders. That's why Threads exists, that's why Blockchain Inc invested to keep Bluesky running.
Only one network exists in order to let people communicate as the point and reason for it's existence. Only one network has no shareholders and no owners.
Only one is fighting for the user, not the shareholder.
#fediverse
Fighting words from @molly0xfff's opening talk at the Fediverse House at SXSW 2025:
“We're facing an existential threat. We need a web that serves people not profit, a web built on protocols, not platforms…It's being built right now by people like you in communities like this one.”
Thank you, developers and denizens of the open social web.🙏🏼
https://flipboard.video/w/p7cECAUgThGrfQo9Cqvb8r
#OpenSocial #OpenSocialWeb #ProtocolsNotPlatforms #MollyWhite #DigitalSovereignty #ActivityPub #Fediverse #FediverseHouse #SXSW
Today Melissa Lewis over on BlueSky pointed out that the font used in the infamous "You wouldn't steal a car" anti-piracy campaign was actually designed by Just van Rossum, whose brother, Guido, created the Python programming language (bsky.app/profile/melissa.news/post/3ln7hx5rhcj2v)
She also pointed out that the font had been cloned and released illegally for free under the name "XBAND Rough". Naturally, it would be hilarious if the anti-piracy campaign actually turned out to have used this pirated font, so I went sleuthing and quickly found a PDF from the campaign site with the font embedded (web.archive.org/web/20051223202935/http://www.piracyisacrime.com:80/press/pdfs/150605_8PP_brochure.pdf).
So I chucked it into FontForge and yep, turns out the campaign used a pirated font the entire time!
‘The #BBC presenter Evan Davis has been told he can no longer host a podcast about heat pumps due to the corporation’s concerns that discussing the technology risks “treading on areas of public controversy”’
Controversial to #FossilFuel industry and #Reform voters who are trying to kneecap anything that will help us avert #ClimateBreakdown.
#HeatPumps are NOT controversial outside UK.
