Debian has been releasing every other year since 2005. That is actually quite impressive.
@GossiTheDog how many of the "Mythos Preview has already found thousands of high-severity vulnerabilities, including some in every major operating system and web browser," were created by Claude?
It’s not our ability to love that makes us human—it’s our ability to select all the pictures that include a bus.
“Tech Giants and Giant Slayers”- UK Digital Sovereignty
The Open Rights Group has produced a report on ‘The Case for Digital Sovereignty and the Digital Commons‘, with forwards by Lord Tim Clement-Jones CBE, Siân Berry MP and Clive Lewis MP.
Well worth a read, particularly by policy makers. Some of the suggestions have alternatives which are worth considering.
Visio is, as of April 2026, under construction, whereas Jitsi is operational, Open Source, hostable and stable.
Matrix is a good solution for large scale Messaging projects where integrity is vital, but XMPP is more readily deployed at small scale, is an IETF standard, and a better fit for a WhatsApp replacement.
@stevefenton I like to think of the Internet as Ecosystem (had this in Drafts for ages). and the mixture of large and small fits with that. The number of software niches completely dominated by one product seem unhealthy to me.
"Every procurement decision that embeds foreign dependency, every compromise of sovereignty in the name of convenience, accumulates into strategic vulnerability."
Lord Tim Clement Jones supports our #DigitalSovereignty report to reduce dependency on proprietary vendors and restore public sector control.
With greater investment in #OpenSource, we can balance innovation with resilience, economic opportunity with democratic accountability.
Electromagnetic Field and Snikket
Mythic Beasts @beasts are sponsoring Electromagnetic Fields 2026 @emf. Potentially many people could experience #XMPP if every attendee received a Snikket @snikket_im invite for an instance set up for the camp. 'Send Location' is really useful, Concerned families can use Limited Invites for under 18s, programmers could try wring XMPP applications etc.
@vandorb12 It is appalling that testing centers have started to required palm scans.
I'm glad you did, and very sorry it didn't help for you 😔, but everyone should look at their local legislation for this because it is illegal indeed some jurisdictions.
I myself encountered this situation for a certification, and finally, after investigation, the testing authorities did told me this was *not* mandatory, and I could ask to skip it.
But how many people will ask first? People caught off guard all stressed out on their testing day will likely just do it. Even if it's illegal.
Our governments should be protecting us against these predatory practices.
Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not. We are all losing out because of this
https://ourworldindata.org/talent-is-everywhere-opportunity-is-not
RE: https://mastodon.social/@nixCraft/116380044468638699
Microsoft Office is one of the largest #welfare programs in the world. it diverts REAL billions of dollars from the public coffers of governments, into the pockets of Bill Gates and his #EpsteinClass cronies.
Brasil pays for basic universal health care and UBI for kids because it said NO to Microsoft in 2005 & moved to #linux & #LibreOffice.
thanks to Trump, #Microsoft 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
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. #digitalsovereignty
@yassie_j unfortunately I find Harry Harrison's War with the robots is probably closer to the way things will turn out.
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.
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
* 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
* 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.
Wondering how long it will take for someone to appreciate that sprinkling the magic privatization pixie dust on everything is not a universal solution.