⊥ᵒᵚ Cᵸᵎᶺᵋᶫ∸ᵒᵘ ☑️ @falken@qoto.org

Our article on passkeys has been published in The Register, where it is generating some spirited debate. https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/17/passkeys_passwords/

In ~82-83 my dad got a behind the scenes tour of the Jodrell Bank radio #astronomy centre, near us in #manchester , I vaguely remember being taken along.
Here are some pictures from it; including the control desk of the classic Mark 1/Lovell telescope.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jodrell_Bank_Observatory

#retro

Boost this toot if you're planning on sticking around Mastodon & the Fediverse whether or not it's more popular than Bluesky.

Some way towards exiting the #Apple ecosystem. I've been using a #fairphone for a while now (18 months) with de-Googled @murena ; and @linuxmint on the desktop. Final piece is my Apple laptop, which I'm replacing with a @frameworkcomputer

So far so good!

Yes, please help Mozilla find their way. Make absolutely sure to tell them to stop dicking around with AI. Like fill in all the optional fields with that info.

Also telling them not to keep hands off of advertising might make sense (even though the questionnaire is from the foundation not the corporation, but that distinction is mostly BS)

https://mamot.fr/@Siltaer/113487305585943186

This is an experiment. Please boost.

http://mastoddosnt.ddns.net/

Here's the idea: This post is going first to my followers, then, if they boost it, to other people. This domain has been registered for only this experiment. I should see in my web server's logs when mastodon instances start crawling the site for info. Then maybe also some curious humans.

I just want to play with my monitoring a bit :)

12 years of #Scarfolk (and my life) now deleted from Twitter/X...
The many political reasons aside, X's change to its Terms of Service are damaging for creatives, as their work - and all your data infact - is now training #AI.

The #xodus escalates. Most of these accounts that are no longer following mine in the last week are listed as “deactivated by user.”

Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind was released 47 years ago today.

What a fantastic movie.

Mozilla has a "what should we focus on?" survey where you can encourage them to focus on privacy, the open web, disinformation or open source.

Just in case anyone feels like adding another "NOT THE FUCKING AI, YOU IDIOTS" voice to the mix.

https://mozillafoundation.tfaforms.net/100

#Mozilla #Survey #GenAI

Mastodon is benefitting from the #X exodus (eXodus?) too: The official app downloads are up 47% on iOS and 17% on Android. Sign-ups are up approx. 27% compared to previous month with about 90K new accounts, while the MAU has jumped to 894K (across all Mastodon servers).

BREAKING: Ruby Rhod arrested in Fhloston Paradise after Governor Zorg's new anti-drag law goes into effect. Was Gemini Croquettes too "woke" in speaking out in support of Rhod? We'll ask some average Mangalores in this Fhloston diner, after the break.

Siri, show me physical technical debt

(We’re clearing out at least 30 years’ worth of accumulated cabling under a datacentre raised floor. Lots of voice copper, co-ax (voice and Ethernet), serial cables and even some AppleTalk!)

@azonenberg The f00f bug is probably in microcode, so here's a random piece of the Pentium's microcode as it appears on the die :-)

Why the Guardian is no longer posting on X https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/nov/13/why-the-guardian-is-no-longer-posting-on-x " X is a toxic media platform and … its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse".

So why are YOU?

"Why the Guardian is no longer posting on X"

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/nov/13/why-the-guardian-is-no-longer-posting-on-x

x.x.x.x - - [10/Nov/2024:00:02:37 +0000] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 301 162 "-" "okhttp/4.9.0"

You know what’s interesting about this log line? It repeats 56,686,963 times in www.kernel.org logs for yesterday, across 4 nodes. That’s about 700 times a second, and this has been going on for months.

These requests aren’t intentionally malicious – they issue a simple GET /, receive their 301 redirect, and terminate the connection. From what I can tell, this is some kind of appliance or software installed on mobile clients that uses “can I reach www.kernel.org” as a network test.

This wouldn’t be that big of a deal – a single plaintext “GET /“ that triggers an immediate 301 is very cheap for us to generate, but the number of these requests has been steadily growing.

If you have any idea what this is and how to make it stop, please reach out?

A few weeks ago, I sent my 1985 Swiss Army Knife back to Victorinox for a broken blade replacement.

It came back today, fully repaired, cleaned, polished, lubricated and in a new box.

Total cost: £10 + return postage.

They sent the knife back with an invoice. I didn't have to pay a penny before the job was done.

A product that's been out of production for almost 40 years, repaired at very little cost by the original manufacturer.

I'm stunned. Happy, impressed, grateful and stunned.

"Patterson, who just wrapped up his remarks, said he still didn't know whether the Horizon IT system was reliable and that he would be "very worried" if its Post Office contract was renewed"

In other words...

Major government contractor says "please don't renew our contract because we don't want to be associated with this thing we've sold you and charged you millions for...

#postoffice #horizon