pleroma.debian.social

pleroma.debian.social

jlines | @jlines@pleroma.debian.social

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your auntifa liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦 blogdiva@mastodon.social

RE: https://mastodon.social/@nixCraft/116380044468638699

Microsoft Office is one of the largest programs in the world. it diverts REAL billions of dollars from the public coffers of governments, into the pockets of Bill Gates and his cronies.

Brasil pays for basic universal health care and UBI for kids because it said NO to Microsoft in 2005 & moved to & .

thanks to Trump, finally lost the 2nd largest economy in the European Union and the 7th largest in the world.

merci a la France.

RT: https://mastodon.social/users/nixCraft/statuses/116380044468638699

Jim Killock jim@social.openrightsgroup.org

The Netherlands is building a "digital emergency kit" in case the internet shuts down nationwide.

Meanwhile the UK is providing every home with the opportunity to rent a bag of Microsoft Copilot sand to put your head in.

https://cybernews.com/security/netherlands-build-a-digital-emergency-kit-internet-shutdown-nationwide/

jlines jlines
@openrightsgroup it shouldn't necessarily require handing over sensitive data to demonstrate being over 16. For example if I have had a Gmail account for over 20 years then Real Intelligence, rather than the Artificial type which wants proof like an upload of a birth certificate or passport, will deduce that I am over 16

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@liw @babble_endanger @suihkulokki @PhineasX perhaps Debian offers Deliverance from being locked in to proprietary software 😀

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@yassie_j unfortunately I find Harry Harrison's War with the robots is probably closer to the way things will turn out.

Mx. Eddie R silvermoon82@wandering.shop

George Clooney is an actor.

Put him in the role of a surgeon in front of a camera, and he will do and say things the average non-surgeon viewer will agree are surgeonish. After an hour of that, we are, as average non-surgeon viewers, satisfied and entertained.

Put him in an operating theatre, and the patient will fucking die because he's not a surgeon and knows nothing about really doing surgery.

This is a post about LLMs.

jlines jlines

I sign up to mailing lists and accounts with 'plus' addresses, except when disallowed, when I create aliases with a minus sign. Was interested to see two fail2ban postfix-sasl failures, close in time, but completely different sources for the same 'user', who only exists as a mail address. Suspect the attack sources are part of the same group,. Looking at logs for development of secinfo-xmpp, where if a system is attacked rest of group blocks

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@liw
* Power plugs mostly solid, have internal, changeable fuse, so plug density lower. Techy friends have similar mess of extensions , but theirs take up far less space.
* Due to the shuttering mechanism in the socket, some can become almost impossible to insert or worse remove if they have been in place for decades.
* Switched sockets are good, though the switches can be a failure point.
* My aunt, in her late 90's switches gadgets on/off with her walking stick!
* Friends ditto

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@liw I have lived in the UK all my life, but we stay with friends in Europe, so see real as opposed to hotel electrics.
* Access to good fish and chips makes us aware that there are also many places with disappointing fish and chips
* Railway ticketing is almost incomprehensible, even to Brits, public transport integration is almost non-existent, timetables semi-fictional. Dutch friend directions from outer Haarlem, bus, train to Gronigen 5 min gaps, worked perfectly.

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@GossiTheDog @musing_sys I am on the third IT system for patients to access their medical information, all from the same hospital. I am not sure where these IT related decisions are made, but pretty sure it is not the a push from the clinical side.
Wondering how long it will take for someone to appreciate that sprinkling the magic privatization pixie dust on everything is not a universal solution.

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@GossiTheDog @ISO8601 Artificial Intelligence is not as good as Real Intelligence, and at those rates is not even cheaper!

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@highvoltage @withaveeay I have too many contacts who use WhatsApp a lot to avoid it completely, but I use it on a second phone, which only contains Whatsapp users for reasons explained in https://wordpress.debian.social/jlines/2025/07/04/who-owns-your-contacts/
On that link I offer small UK charities donations towards trying out Snikket as a major issue is the nobody has heard of any alternatives, and 'if everyone uses it then it must be OK'

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@openrightsgroup Targeted Advertising is also a flawed concept. Suppose I want to buy a sofa/fridge/car/mattress... and research my purchase on the Internet, pick one which seems to match my needs and buy it. I now have what I want, and actually less in the market to buy one than a random untargetted person who might happen not to have the product.

Brought to you by Real Intelligence - as opposed to Artificial Intelligence - used by those without the real thing

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@jim If there is a measurable decrease in suicide, anti-social behavior, self harm or any of the other ills which are blamed on unrestricted access to the internet then these can be balanced against the harms of fraud or misuse of personal data required (or claimed by data collectors to be require) by the legislation. 2/2 See also https://blog.wp.paladyn.org/2024/11/14/the-proof-of-identity-problem/

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@jim I sympathize with the people hoping the Online Safety Act will solve a variety of Internet related social problems. Safety legislation often involves finding a balance between personal freedom and public good. For example the Road Safety Acts result in reduction in Road Accidents 1/2

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@jim Additionally it is hard to unravel the difference between state surveillance - which ideally should have a level of oversight, and transparency - and that carried out by private companies, where the use of the data they have collected may be subject to change, and hard to discover.

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@jim The problem is that technological capability is amoral, and does not distinguish between, for example, a woman wishing to be educated in Afghanistan, a freedom fighter planning to blow up a religious building, a member of an oppressed minority want to draw attention by damaging some public symbol of oppression, or a group planning to reduce financial inequality by redistributing goods or cash.

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@vkc @kasperd For some time I have felt that some form of federated ActivityPub based security system would be beneficial. This would be aimed at being produced and consumed primarily by computers, but should be readable by humans for verification. Things like fail2ban from a computer attack level, sharing spam sources and sharing info on objectionable content origins. Web of trust and similar content policies would apply.

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@nixCraft I would like to see more organisations/companies setting up their own Fediverse (I use pleroma for my personal Fedi - as does Debian - server diversity is good). This deals with a lot of the issues of identity confusion, once people start to see more accounts like @news@bbc.co.uk (does not exist, but hard to fake, and fewer @thisIsTheBBCNewsHonest@mastadon.social (also does not exist).
https://wordpress.debian.social/jlines/2021/01/12/it-is-good-to-be-a-tree/

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@JamesBaker Beyond this, once a digital means of proving your identity goes out of your control who is to prevent it being re-used. I wrote https://blog.wp.paladyn.org/2024/11/14/the-proof-of-identity-problem/ about this, and I believe it is a hard, but important problem.

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