Ben Taylor @VoxDei@qoto.org
Software Engineer, Trade Unionist, Gamer, Geek, Dad. Lives in Devon
Joined Nov 2022
Ben Taylor
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Little bit of Telco trivia: you can't call Guyana. Okay, you CAN, but it's remarkably hard to do. Most carriers won't connect. Why?
Well, most ppl know about Guyana b/c of the Jim Jones massacre. But it was also a hotbed of telephone scams - even moreso than Nigeria is now - to the extent that most carriers simply blocked the country altogether.
Locales which tolerate fraud can and do get cancelled, and the effects of that can last for generations.
Ben Taylor
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Please. Don't "lock him up".
Try him. Convict him. Sentence him.
Baby, their slogans are part of what makes them so creepy and evil.
Don't adopt them.
You want, I get it, to pick up the badguy weapons. I get it.
And that is the first little step towards becoming them.
Resist hate.
Ben Taylor
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(Harris campaign calling Vance "weird" and "creepy")
"I tell women this whenever I get a chance because it can be a useful tool: Men detest being called creepy. I have had entire groups of men change their tune mid-argument when I say something like “I don’t know; I just think it’s kinda creepy.” I have used it to get men to stop defending rapists, or their buddy who just dumped “a crazy bitch,” or their coworker who got a complaint against him for sexual harassment. You deploy “creepy” and suddenly they rethink their behavior. They hate that label so very, very much. Use it and watch the backpedaling in real time. "
https://www.tumblr.com/seananmcguire/757168480179093504
Ben Taylor
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Okay, this is part of my contribution to the idea of a monoculture on mastodon.
I'm Nigerian. Nigeria is about to go on a huge public strike, and I haven't heard anything about it here. Now, I don't blame anyone for that, obviously, but I think it shows the fact that perhaps there aren't as many Africans as I'd like.
Ben Taylor
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CrowdStrike broke Debian and Rocky Linux months ago, but no one noticed
https://www.neowin.net/news/crowdstrike-broke-debian-and-rocky-linux-months-ago-but-no-one-noticed/
Ben Taylor
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Ben Taylor
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The new Railways Bill absolutely does not fuck about.
Expiring franchises cannot be extended or awarded, except to companies fully owned by the government, or jointly owned by the governments of the UK and either Scotland or Wales.
Franchise expires? Public operator. No retender.
Franchise goes bankrupt or hands it back? Public operator. No retender.
That's going to cause some potential short-term fuckery by the TOCs. But its not like they were investing for the future of the railways anyway
Ben Taylor
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“Meta’s plans to ingest its users’ data, posts and pictures will impact more than 50 million Instagram and Facebook users in the UK. It’s not acceptable that the company are making a half hearted attempt to enable people to opt out rather than give their consent to such intrusive data processing.
We urge the Information Commissioner's Office (UK) to investigate thoroughly and stop them once and for all."
🗣️ @marianods, ORG Legal and Policy Officer
Ben Taylor
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So this, from Firefox, is fucking toxic: https://mstdn.social/@Lokjo/112772496939724214
You might be aware Chrome— a browser made by an ad company— has been trying to claw back the limitations recently placed on ad networks by the death of third-party cookies, and added new features that gather and report data directly to ad networks. You'd know this because Chrome displayed a popup.
If you're a Firefox user, what you probably don't know is Firefox added this feature and *has already turned it on without asking you*
Ben Taylor
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Scientists identify a ‘sugar world’ beyond Neptune
https://physicsworld.com/a/scientists-identify-a-sugar-world-beyond-neptune/
The surface of a Kuiper Belt object called Arrokoth is rich in glucose, ribose and other sweet molecules
Ben Taylor
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@cstross What the hell am I reading... This is amazing. As a set piece of hyperbolic polemic, it leaves nothing to be desired. I can't stop shedding tears for the tory non-entities who will lose their cherished rights such as... checks notes... ministerial cars and special advisors.
Wait, *now* the Tories work out that you don't win elections by pandering to your own extreme wing? Reform are doing well not because anybody likes them but because the Tories have demonstrated themselves to be so fundamentally unserious about governing that those Tory voters who can't stand Labour have nowhere else to go.
Ben Taylor
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Amount of Israeli bombs dropped on Gaza surpasses that of World War II
Israel dropped 70,000 tons of bombs on Gaza Strip since last October, exceeding World War II bombings in **Dresden, Hamburg, London combined**, according to rights monitor. #Gaza
Oof. An extra 0.2W/m^2 doesn't sound like a lot if you don't know what these numbers look like, but if you consider that the *total amount of energy* hitting the top of the atmosphere from the sun is only about 1,360W/m^2, just this heat source is equivalent to about an extra seventieth of a percent of the total solar input being retained.
Most of the original input doesn't reach the ground anyway. If you take it as a percentage of the amount that reaches the ground (342W/m^2) it's about a seventeenth of one percent.
That's... um... quite a lot of extra heat.
#climatecrisis #globalheating #shipping #pollution #guardian
Ben Taylor
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Very interesting - a shoal of fake accounts on Twitter #X are posing as Irish and trying to influence people, especially politicians - using such beloved tropes as leprechauns, the wearing of national flag colours, and wolfhounds https://www.thejournal.ie/x-irish-anonymous-accounts-influence-operation-6385526-May2024/?utm_source=twitter_short #scam #twitter #irish
Ben Taylor
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What I love about being Gen X is we get a great balance of microplastics and lead.
Ben Taylor
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Scoop: I obtained the contract Samsung requires independent shops to sign to buy phone repair parts from them.
It requires:
- "Daily" dumps of customer data
- The "immediate destruction" of any phones a shop comes across that has third-party parts
@drandrewv2 I feel like this thread will be of interest to you... https://twitter.com/jimrobottom/status/1793727207732613549
Ben Taylor
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Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead" | Electronic Frontier Foundation
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/05/big-tech-eu-drop-dead
#rr #DMA #EU
Thanks @eff, @pluralistic!
Ben Taylor
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Software Engineer, Trade Unionist, Gamer, Geek, Dad. Lives in Devon
Joined Nov 2022
