Olives @olives@qoto.org

The Borg are the best part of Star Trek though, lol.

"We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile."
Threads and co even fit the Borg's distinctive phrase, lol.

Life in the United Federation of Planets here continues. But, will the federation come under siege by... The Borg...?

Saw Rurouni Kenshin on my feed and it was... Actually normal content.

If this was the gossipy bird site, I have no doubt I'd see more people complaining about the Rurouni Kenshin guy.

A bit less toxicity.

Apparently, Techdirt was removed from Bing until Mike posted a blog post about it, it blew up, and they quietly added it back.

Ugh...

What's interesting about this is how there was so much less friction, and more freedom, for all kinds of things... Right up until 9/11.

Ugh... That ruined a lot.

https://reason.com/2023/07/28/say-goodbye-to-permissionless-travel/ What do you think of this?

https://reclaimthenet.org/uk-ministry-of-justice-invests-in-social-listening-tool What do you think of this? o.O

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/mastercard-demands-termination-cannabis-purchases-its-debit-cards-2023-07-26/ MasterCard has told financial institutions to stop allowing people to use their cards for cannabis transactions.

https://reclaimthenet.org/meta-patent-scan-voices-voiceprint Ugh, another privacy invasion from Facebook.

Someone tells me that ChatGPT's quality continues to degrade.

It makes you wonder if the whole thing wasn't just some publicity stunt. Perhaps, they turned it up to a level which wasn't financially sustainable?

https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/web-environment-integrity-is-an-all-out-attack-on-the-free-internet Yes, these people are right. Web Environment Integrity is such, such a terrible idea.

Complaining about "the fediverse" is a lot like complaining about "something on the internet". Lol.

Apparently, the instance which must not be named (lol) was acquired by a cryptobro (still based in the same country, it seems).

Maybe, we should revisit whether it's really good to have these gigantic corporate-y instances, rather than smaller more community based instances.

It's not just the "think of the children", it's been a bit problematic for a while now.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/07/deja-vu-fbi-proves-again-it-cant-be-trusted-section-702 Section 702 (which the FBI relies on for unconstitutional mass surveillance) is on the brink of expiring again.

These "this service should be penalized for taking down content which isn't against their terms of service" bill proposals are very strange.

A platform could easily just create a vaguer terms of service which covers even more content...?

When writing apocalypse novels or scripts for apocalyptic films, remember to include a scene of people fighting over toilet paper, lol.

https://reason.com/2023/07/27/a-professor-criticized-a-public-official-then-her-university-suspended-her/ Professor at Texas A&M University suspended for criticizing government official over not implementing harm reduction measures (for opioids).

Isn't this a violation of the First Amendment?