Parienve @Parienve@qoto.org

Learning #RustLang in 2023: Call for Discussion

https://naiveai.hashnode.dev/learning-rust-in-2023-a-call-for-discussion

EFF is proud to defend the @internetarchive in this case, and we will keep fighting for a robust and vibrant digital future.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/12/fighting-digital-future-books-2022-review

I highly recommend supporting the Standard Ebooks project. 📚

«Standard Ebooks is a volunteer-driven project that produces new editions of public domain ebooks that are lovingly formatted, open source, free of copyright restrictions, and free of cost.»

👇
https://standardebooks.org/donate

#standardebook #ebook #publicdomain #book #reading

Happy the year of the Linux desktop to everyone!

Annual reminder that while many #cybersecurity professionals are also deeply invested and interested in privacy, sometimes the two align and sometimes they’re opposed to one another in practicality. Always be conscious of when you’re sacrificing your (and more importantly other peoples’) privacy for the sake of security, and be very careful and measured about those decisions. Lost privacy rarely comes back. Not in business, and not in society at large.

Short intro: I'm Colin from Germany, a software and reverse engineer, who started as an application developer and joined the #ReactOS Project in 2007 to work on all parts of the OS stack.

I discovered #rustlang in 2017 and ported the HermitCore unikernel (https://github.com/hermitcore/libhermit-rs) from C to Rust as part of my Master's Thesis.

Since then, I'm using Rust for new projects whenever possible, and bring the Windows and Rust worlds closer together. I'll likely talk about my latest Rust projects here.

I think it’s important to repeat: you don't "have something to hide" when you put blinds on your windows or close the door when you're on the can or wear clothes.

Privacy isn't about having something to hide. It's not about keeping secrets. It's about you being the person who chooses what you reveal about yourself, and when, and to who, and the other word we have for that is "dignity". Your inherent dignity, as a human being.

Your privacy is the agency you have over your dignity.

For this year's gingerbread I made... Curiosity!

#space #gingerbread #nasa #mars #curiosity #baking #astronomy

This is what Earth looks like from 1.5 billion kilometers away. A pale blue dot beneath the rings of Saturn captured by the Cassini spacecraft.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI
#earth #space #saturn #planets #nasa

Stop Talking To Each Other.

Being an elderly #millennial myself, the #essay on the commodification of the social commons on the #web by Cat Valente resonates deeply, and sadly as it is a dead spiral.

https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start

The essay is further given context by a masterful description by @pluralistic on why #mastodon matters.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/23/semipermeable-membranes/#free-as-in-puppies

Take time to read through it. Also, be like Andrew of Dairyland: "just a guy making a thing that people liked and giving a shit about it."

Another reason not to run large scale AI models for everything. They are so resource intensive, in terms of hardware, electric power and, here, water.

https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2022/12/googles-water-use-is-soaring-in-the-dalles-records-show-with-two-more-data-centers-to-come.html

"The records show that Google’s water use is up threefold since 2017, the year before the company opened a third data center in The Dalles. Data centers are packed with hundreds or thousands of powerful computers. The water provides essential cooling, and Google said the increased water consumption reflects the demands of its newest local data center.

Google’s data centers used 355 million gallons of The Dalles’ water last year, 29% of the city’s total water consumption. ...l, has a population of about 16,000.

...

And like much of eastern and central Oregon, The Dalles has been in a multiyear drought that has farmers, environmental watchdogs and tribal fishers worrying about the future.

“I don’t believe that the best interests in the greater community have been in mind. It’s been more of a short-term economic deal … just to get Google in. And then Google’s become a water vampire, basically,” said Dawn Rasmussen, who lives in an unincorporated area of Wasco County outside the city limits."

@ebakerwhite we published research into TikTok pixel tracking on websites in September. https://blog.disconnect.me/tiktok-tracks-your-sensitive-web-activity-even-if-you-dont-use-tiktok/ TLDR TikTok is tracking a huge amount of sensitive data across the web, whether you’re a user or not. Websites that embed TikTok pixel include really sensitive services like WebMD, the Mayo Clinic, Planned Parenthood, RiteAid, several financial and educational sites, even the Girl Scouts.

Great Mastodon article on Ars Technica this morning! No paywall.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/12/mastodon-is-hurtling-toward-a-tipping-point/

Hey all - here's a quick timeline about how this TikTok spying stuff all went down:

In March, I broke the story that TikTok was working on Project Texas, a companywide effort to separate out US user data and limit China-based employees’ access to it.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/emilybakerwhite/tiktok-project-texas-bytedance-user-data