⊥ᵒᵚ Cᵸᵎᶺᵋᶫ∸ᵒᵘ ☑️ @falken@qoto.org

RE: https://mastodon.social/@404mediaco/115712622290141712

“ICE officials have told us that an apparent biometric match by Mobile Fortify is a ‘definitive’ determination of a person’s status and that an ICE officer may ignore evidence of American citizenship—including a birth certificate—if the app says the person is an alien,” he said. “ICE using a mobile biometrics app in ways its developers at CBP never intended or tested is a frightening, repugnant, and unconstitutional attack on Americans’ rights and freedoms.”

Yes, you read that right. Glitchy AI programs are being used on US citizens to deny their citizenship.

This century has been a good one for the greedy, the ignorant , the cowardly , the narcissistic , the cruel and the awful - Trump getting FIFAs inaugural peace prize has had me laughing like Batman and The Joker at the end of Killing Joke #fifa #peace #trump #football #comics #comicstrips

FFS. @robinince has left The Infinite Monkey Cage because the BBC are cowards and transphobes seeking to control what their freelance contractors say and do. https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:2w3eicjzblwvqo3nsxiivwgb/post/3m7tcbsr7522l

More #Amiga Settlers 2 and wine tonight! Come along and chat, starting at 8:30pm GMT: https://twitch.tv/daedalus2097 #Settlers #Retro #OS4

I'm working on a study of Bronze Age axes, and I find it a little hard to articulate why.

* I don't get paid.
* Another journal paper won't make any difference for my employability at this stage.
* Almost nobody knows or cares that these axes exist.

I think the main reasons I do this is

* It's fun.
* I'm one of the few who can do this well.
* I've dedicated my life to expanding our scientific knowledge.

#archaeology #career

The UK health service #NHS is using an #AI tool made by Anima. It hallucinated a set of false diagnoses for a patient, and backed it up with a fake hospital and fake address! The poor dude thought he had diabetes and angina 😱

https://fortune.com/2025/07/20/uk-health-service-ai-tool-false-diagnoses-patient-screening-nhs-anima-health-annie/

https://www.animahealth.com/

#bigtech #reversecentaur

Petition asking the BBC to boycott the Eurovision Song Contest if Israel is allowed to take part.

https://38d.gs/dvit

so after being bedridden for 16months due to a hernia, I've finally got my surgery!
now I'm bedridden for recovery, which is at least a great improvement.
I'm still broke as hell though, so if you've got a couple dollars, it'd help me get through this last stretch. Thanks so much!

https://ko-fi.com/fooneturing
#mutualaid

Is it me or are major internet platform outages getting more frequent? I used to instinctively reboot my router, now I just assume it's the platform. GitHub broke for me this morning, now LinkedIn is offline. Reddit and Twitter feel like they go down twice a week. Meanwhile all these companies are bragging about layoffs because they've "become more efficient with AI". Like, dawg, you can't even keep your website online.

The last Global Newton Users Meetup (GNUM) of 2025 is coming up!

Global Newton Users Meetup #18
Saturday, December 27th, 2025 @ 17:00 UTC

Join us on Zoom for a casual, online get-together for fans, aficionados, developers, and collectors of the #AppleNewton platform.

Details on the NewtonTalk mailing list:

http://lists.newtontalk.net/pipermail/newtontalk/2025-December/003548.html

Hope to see you there!

Meet the young creatives VCARB is getting into the F1
https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/69119/1/vcarb-creator-platform-young-creatives?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub

Posted into Life and Culture @life-and-culture-DazedMagazine

This really highlights how incredibly dependent we are on Starlink's continued perfect collision avoidance maneuvers. So far they've done it, but they keep adding more satellites and making it harder.

Other megaconstellations are now launching as well, and they all need to communicate PERFECTLY in order to not crash. Will China talk to Starlink? Will the US gov't secret satellites talk to OneWeb? This is all incredibly important so that we don't destroy LEO.

The CRASH Clock uses the current density in altitude bins (averaged over eccentric orbits) of satellites, rocket bodies, and tracked debris, assuming typical cross sections for each type and orbital speeds. This calculation tells us how long to a collision if all orbital maneuvers were to suddenly stop.

The CRASH Clock is currently* at 2.8 days.

In 2018 it was 121 days.

*This is actually for June 2025 because that's when we ran it. Will update soon!

Thought I had an off-by-one bug but it's actual off by two, so even my off-by-ones are off by one

God this dart_eval stuff is exhausting. The compiler and runtime are works of art, but with so many holes due to almost non-existent usage. Looks like Every Door will be the first Flutter app ever to have proper programmable plugins.

4 packages wrapped, 7 to go. 100500 lines of code to be generated and reviewed. Hoping to have something by next week ugh.

Thanks for @NGIZero for supporting this, but I have absolutely miscalculated the effort lol.

ESTA: USA wants to check social media accounts of European travelers as well

For a vacation in the USA, people from Europe have so far not had to reveal too much. This could soon change if it's up to US border control.

https://www.heise.de/en/news/ESTA-USA-wants-to-check-social-media-accounts-of-European-travelers-as-well-11109526.html?wt_mc=sm.red.ho.mastodon.mastodon.md_beitraege.md_beitraege&utm_source=mastodon

#Datenschutz #Netzpolitik #Recht #TechnikfürdenUrlaub #news

Today I discovered that the only way to get an immediate tax refund from HMRC in the UK is to go through an "open banking" service that gives a random third party company the right to see all your account details, including transaction histories.

Apparently this is better for people than a couple of text boxes to grab an account no and sort code.

The other option is a cheque, which can take up to a month to deliver.

And this is the government that wants us to trust it to build a Digital ID system.

#Privacy #Security #UKPol

The International Obfuscated C Code Contest (IOCCC29) is in "pending state," meaning the contest is open for you to register:

https://www.ioccc.org/next/register.html

Feel free to register today, even if you are not sure if you want to enter, instead of waiting until the last minute near the contest deadline.

On 2025 December 14th at 23:00 UTC, there will be an IOCCC Discord hangout to discuss IOCCC29. To join the IOCCC Discord server:

https://discord.gg/Wa42Qujwnw

#ioccc #ioccc29 #ioccc2025

Current level of yak shaving: need to use the old Apple Scanner to scan the bottom of a keyboard so I can create the proper standoffs in Fusion because the new scanner makes things blurry if they’re not flat on the glass but the scanner isn’t working now for some reason and now the drivers have locked up my old Mac that I’d use to scan with and what else will go wrong.

#RetroComputing