⊥ᵒᵚ Cᵸᵎᶺᵋᶫ∸ᵒᵘ ☑️ @falken@qoto.org

Whoa: The European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter spacecraft got a spectacular view of Comet ATLAS (C/2024 G3) as it passed close to the Sun. Look at that enormous, splintered tail!

This comet won't be seen again for another 600,000 years.

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Solar_Orbiter #space #science #art

Australian government: 'AI worse than humans in every way at summarising information'. https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/09/03/ai-worse-summarising-information-humans-government-trial/
UK government: 'Great, we'll use it to match medical conditions for Employment and Support Allowance claims!': https://www.gov.uk/algorithmic-transparency-records/dwp-employment-and-support-allowance-online-medical-matching#detailed-description

We are happy to announce that 56 teams and individuals will receive funding to support their work on improving the core technologies of the internet.

We'd like to congratulate them and thank them for making the internet better for us all.

Come and take a look at the projects to see the marvellous work being done to upgrade the open internet architecture.
https://nlnet.nl/news/2025/20250321-call-announcement-core.html
#FOSS #NGI0 #NGI

Been a collector of synths and music tech for 30 years. My studio takes over two full rooms of the house, much to the annoyance of my wife, who believes that I need it all to make music. I recently had my first hit record which I made on a train, using only my laptop.

8/10 What happens next?
Apple and Google will face a Strategic Market Status (SMS) designation
Binding rules are coming — including lifting the engine ban
The designation will happen within 9 months

9/10 This is historic.
The UK joins the EU and Japan in forcing open competition on iOS.

The web will finally be free to compete head-to-head with native apps.
The open web can win. Let’s make sure it does.

— Open Web Advocacy (@openwebadvocacy)

1/10 The UK regulator’s final report is out and it’s clear: Apple’s browser engine ban harms competition.

Forcing all iOS browsers to use WebKit hurts developers, users, and the web itself.

Change is coming.

https://open-web-advocacy.org/blog/uk-regulators-final-verdict--apples-browser-engine-ban-harms-competition/

Waiting for my plane at #YYC … starting off this weekend’s adventure to @SDF’s Interim Computer Festival in Seatttle.

And yes, there is a Newton #MessagePad in my carry on.

A decade of waiting has led to this!

https://news.itsfoss.com/gimp-3-release/

This excellent youtube video by a critical cybertruck owner goes over every major body panel which is glued on.

It's clearly possible to rip off some of these panels by hand.

Kinda surprised they haven't started walking off the trucks given how easy some of them come off.

Most panels appear to be easily pealed off part of the way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WldSl3HGr8

#RUD #cybertruck #tesla #nazicar

Wow! The new live action Snow White from Disney has an estimated budget of $270m! The reviews are coming in now, and it's not looking too good. Here's one that caught my attention.

“There’s nothing wrong with Disney’s live-action remake of ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ that couldn’t be fixed by making it 26 minutes shorter, 88 years ago and in hand-drawn animation.” – William Bibbiani, The Wrap

"We have ceded so many of the core operations of our lives and institutions to tech, we must recognise that strong encryption isn’t the enemy of security — it *is* security." - Signal President
@Mer__edith for the Financial Times on the war on encryption

https://www.ft.com/content/a934150f-e0f5-4e75-a2d1-a3671ea52ca0

My dad is in his early 70s.

He’s always been into computers, but he’s used nothing but MS-DOS and #Windows since the 90s, and resisted change at every turn.

Last month he called me up to ask me about #Linux, package managers, and “the terminal”. He’s now installing Linux Mint on his friends’ computers so they don’t have to throw out perfectly good computers because Windows 11 won’t support them.

I’ve never been more proud.

https://mastodon.social/@dosnostalgic/114184937238415364

Some More Love From Our Canadian Brothers.
And canadians can sell in EU no problems we will buy Canadian as well replacing US products

@santiago I'm pretty sure I wrote the first review of a linux distribution in a British newsstand computer magazine—for Computer Shopper, some time in 1994, of an early slackware (installed off floppy).

Here are a few bangers:

“It isn’t that you don’t ’get‘ tech, it’s that the tech you use every day is no longer built for you, and as a result feels a very specific kind of insane.”
“almost every single interaction with technology, which is required to live in modern society, has become actively adversarial to the user”.
“The average person’s experience with technology is one so aggressive and violative that I believe it leaves billions of people with a consistent low-grade trauma.”

If you use eBay, they’ve just updated their T&Cs to say that they may train generative models (AI) on your personal data. Opt out here, if you’re in the EEA, UK or Switzerland: https://accountsettings.ebay.co.uk/ai-preferences

Sometimes, Ofcom bewilders me:

Ofcom has said that for small sites, the costs of complying [with the Online Safety Act] “are likely to be negligible or in the small thousands at most”.

Small sites, especially volunteer-run community sites, generally don't have "small thousands" to spend on legal advice. And even if they did, that's far from "negligible".

https://archive.ph/eRu0m

#OnlineSafetyAct