⊥ᵒᵚ Cᵸᵎᶺᵋᶫ∸ᵒᵘ ☑️ @falken@qoto.org

Anybody fancies going exploring. To mark its 7th birthday Joy Diversion is back on the 17th May. It is a great way to find new things and meet fellow explorers https://bit.ly/ODM-JOY17

In 2019, Iceland became one of the first countries to approve a four-day workweek. Here's how things have been going for them.

2021: "Trials of a four-day week in Iceland were an "overwhelming success""

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57724779

2024: "Iceland’s economy is outperforming most European peers after the nationwide introduction of a shorter working week with no loss in pay."

https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/25/business/iceland-shorter-working-week-economy/index.html

2025: "The effects of the shorter workweek in Iceland have extended far beyond the office."

https://www.wecb.fm/in-2019-iceland-approved-the-4-day-workweek-nearly-6-years-later-all-predictions-by-generation-z-have-come-true/

#news #labor #WorkersRights #FourDayWorkWeek #work #iceland

"Google refuses to deny it received encryption order from UK government"

The UK’s encryption-breaking order for a backdoor into iCloud isn’t a one-off.

The secret hearing happening RIGHT NOW is bigger than just Apple. If the government wins, our right to privacy and security falls.

Other services will be hit.

https://therecord.media/google-refuses-to-deny-it-received-uk-tcn

Sign our petition ➡️ https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/keep-our-apple-data-encrypted

#e2ee #encryption #apple #google #privacy #security #cybersecurity #ukpol #ukpolitics #tech

Elon Musk's favorite supposed data expert, who he's retweeted at least a dozen times, claims she can only process 60,000 rows of data before her "hard drive overheats".

Perhaps someone should rescue her from where she's apparently stuck twenty years in the past, which is the only possible explanation for those hardware limitations and the apparent lack of access to cloud compute.

Unless, of course, she's just completely making shit up.

#USpol #USpolitics

@pluralistic

> * The internet’s memory problem https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct5zpf

So, I clicked here, it took me to BBC sounds, which now says: "We're replacing BBC Sounds outside the UK and bringing you BBC.com, a seamless way to read, watch, and listen - all in one place."

I remember your rant against BBC sounds when they first set it up. They were going to keep RSS but delay podcasts for weeks unless you used BBC sounds.

It seems like now, only 2 years later, they're keeping BBC sounds for UK residents, but reverting to / switching to BBC.com for international listeners.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/help/questions/listening-outside-the-uk/outside-uk-changes

Apparently though, the RSS feed for the Business Daily podcast still exists and isn't delayed by 2 weeks. You can find it here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p002vsxs/episodes/downloads

I'm not quite sure what's going on here. AFAIK, the podcasts I listen to were never delayed, and the RSS feeds for them still work. Maybe there's other stuff that was exclusive to BBC sounds and never had RSS feeds and are now unavailable outside the UK?

US TRAVEL SALE NOW ON: Get free mystery accommodation and newspaper article about your trip with every visit.

America® – We do fascism right™

https://www.10news.com/news/local-news/never-seen-anything-so-inhumane-canadian-woman-put-in-chains-detained-by-ice-after-entering-san-diego-border

#USA #fascism #travelWarning #Canada #EU

I am reminded once again of this, as I see more news about the UK government talking about cutting disability benefits. If you taxed the Sunday Times rich list 1%, you wouldn't have to make these cuts. If you taxed them 10% of their billions, there wouldn't even be any deficit.

IF THEY WERE TAXED AT THE 45% ON THE HIGHER BRACKET LIKE THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO BE, THEY WOULD GENERATE £357.75 BILLION FOR THE ECONOMY.

But I suppose cutting a couple of hundred quid from the poorest is probably the most sensible solution. Don't want them getting any ideas above their station. In the year 2025. 👍

Edit - someone kindly pointed out that my maths is wrong as this is total wealth not income. So - same point but with whatever the correct figures are.....but probably won't actually resolve the deficit, which rather undermines this whole post. 😂

https://www.news.co.uk/latest-news/the-sunday-times-rich-list-2024-is-out/

A poster has been attracting attention since Wednesday, March 12, 2025, in Tottenham, a London neighborhood (United Kingdom). Activists crowdfunded an anti-Elon Musk billboard.

This panel is titled "The Fast and The Führer." On the right, "winner of the Nuremberg Festival."

Other initiatives against the Tesla boss even appear to have flourished in London.

https://entrevue.fr/en/the-fast-and-the-fuhrer-laffiche-polemique-contre-elon-musk-a-londres/

#Coup

@fabianegli @maltimore

In #archaeology we love *analytical* machine learning applications, like the ones that can search through aerial photographs for something we're interested in, or make a charred scroll legible.

But we mostly hate *generative* applications, like LLMs and prompt-based image generators. Because they debase scientific knowledge with their hallucinations, and undermine skilled writing and painting.

#AI #LLM

How sweet of Donold to buy a Tesla for Elon. Especially after Elon bought Donold an election.

The message is clear across the political divide: let's hear it!

The UK government should argue in open court why they want to make us less secure by ordering a backdoor into Apple encryption.

A secret Tribunal would be an affront to the privacy and security issues at stake. It must be held in public.

Read the joint letter from ORG, Big Brother Watch and Index on Censorship ⬇️

https://www.openrightsgroup.org/press-releases/make-the-investigatory-powers-tribunal-on-apple-encryption-a-public-hearing/

#Apple #encryption #e2ee #privacy #security #cybersecurity #ukpol #ukpolitics #tech

I am obsessively proud of the collection of cables I have built up over the years. Sometimes I will just stare at the box I keep them in, thinking how handy some of them would be in certain situations. These situations have never come up

UK investigation says Apple and Google are ‘holding back’ mobile browsers https://www.theverge.com/news/628472/apple-safari-ios-google-android-chrome-cma-competition

The news has been more than a bit grim of late, so hooray for Carbon Brief providing some genuine and really meaningful **good** news: the UK's carbon emissions in 2024 were the lowest since 1872, because demand for fossil fuels just keeps decreasing.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-uk-emissions-fall-3-6-in-2024-as-coal-use-drops-to-lowest-since-1666/

#climate #GHG #science #GoodNews

Having completed its close flyby of Mars, the Hera spacecraft has turned its antenna towards Earth and has been downlinking telemetry, science data and images to ESA’s ESOC mission control centre in Darmstadt, Germany.

The science team is busy processing the images – including astrophysicist, stereoscopist and guitarist Dr. Brian May 🎸

Images will be unveiled during tomorrow's webcast!

#Space #Hera #ESA
3/n

“It was said by some that during the first century of the second millennium, the ruling elite would stare into glass rectangles in order to decipher the will of the gods. This portal, known as stock market, would give them a series of numbers. If the numbers decreased, they would increase the misery of the poor in order to appease their dark gods. If the numbers increased, however, they would accumulate more treasure for themselves. And increase the misery of the poor; this was a constant.”

Terry Pratchett (GNU) describes B S Johnson's organ:

https://frikiverse.zone/@terrybot/114068187263595344

1990s Windows was a grand piano. Classic design, elegant, restrained.

21st Century Windows is a plastic $50 keyboard with a bunch of colourful buttons for preprogrammed backing tracks.

Every Linux desktop tries to refactor the piano.

KDE adds 3 more keyboards at right angles, plus a few dozen more pedals. It colour-codes the keys in a pretty rainbow.

GNOME removes those ugly black-and-white key things, keeping only the backing-track buttons, of which it has 32. With 16 modifier dials. It's made from matchsticks. You get 10 boxes of your own to customize it.

By no coincidence at all, none of the designers can play piano, except for the chaps behind Xfce, who can just about tap out "Chopsticks".

Me: Trying to work out if a bit of thin card goes in the paper recycling bin or the cardboard recycling bin.

World Leaders: Flying to the Amazon by private jet, where the rainforest has been flattened to accommodate an enormous luxury hotel and golf course, where they will feast on panda steaks and hawksbill turtle eggs, and agree to say they might phase out coal-fired power plants by the year 2299, if big tech lets them.