European Court of Human Rights declares backdoored encryption is illegal
Surprising third-act twist as Russian case means more freedom for all The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that laws requiring crippled encryption and extensive data retention violate the European Convention on Human Rights – a decision that may derail European data surveillance legislation known as Cha…
#theregister #IT
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/02/15/echr_backdoor_encryption/
Omai, not only is there that #StarCitizen free-fly going on (see previous posts), the delightful and relaxing Book of Travels and Meadow games (and their sound tracks) by Might and Delight are currently 25% off :) https://store.steampowered.com/developer/mightanddelight
Oh, and a fun random additional thing there - there is a problem with gear (that is, things that are not a vehicle) bought on the pledge store at the moment. Basically, if you lose it, you've lost it until the next patch drops. BUT! The next patch, version 3.23, has a HUGE pile of things being added in, and one of those things is what you can see in the screenshot here (and read in the alt text). It is still marked tentative, but they've recently had pretty good track record of getting things in
Oh look, there's not only a #StarCitizen free-fly happening right now (play the whole thing, entirely for free, until the 15th), but there's also a really neat referral bonus thing happening (both a speeder bike type thing, and a full set of armour/weaponry type stuff) if you buy a $40+ perpetual-access game package sometime before the 25th. Yes, i got the date wrong on my reddit post here, but the rest is good ;) https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizenreferrals/comments/1amynty/starf3v9nvlk_for_5000_uec_bonus_drake_dragonfly/ - if you want help, give us a poke and i'll do my best :)
According to Apple’s lawyers, "no reasonable user would expect that their actions in Apple’s apps would be private from Apple."
I repeat to make it clear: According to Apple itself, no reasonable Apple user should expect privacy when using the device.
So let’s make it even more clear: if you expect basic privacy using your Apple device, you are "unreasonable" (= a fool).
(originally posted by @mysk )
It's been time for a new pinned post. :D
Our new introduction: This is Aural Alliance! 🎵💖
Join us in our effort in creating a more social, accessible and supportive place for the musicians within our fandom.
Visit our website @ https://auralalliance.page ✨
Check the website for links to all our music & socials, including our Discord!
Why I am not ordering anything from the UK any more:
Sticker: GBP 2,50
Shipping to NL: GBP 3,00
Eh fine, I am happy to support an artist. So the sticker was sent to NL.
Then customs decided to take their share of 21%. So Converted back to euro this is 21% of € 5,43 which is € 1,14.
Are we there yet? Nooo, the postal agency wants their share too for handling all this terrible paperwork and is charging me another € 6 for it.
So, i got me a sticker for € 12,57. Super. So yeah, Thank #brexit for this and everyone who voted for it. I'm not ordering anything any more from the UK. :(
Mastodon folks tend to be pretty tech-savvy, but it's come to my attention that simply not knowing how to get ebooks not purchased from a big retailer onto their e-reader. So I wrote a helpful guide! Share it with someone who wants to support DIY authors and small presses! https://write.as/brendanhalpin/how-to-load-downloaded-books-onto-your-e-reader
I never had an Amiga, but I recently discovered the "Topaz" monospaced font used in the original Amiga 500 is actually pretty great - it's got that lo-fi pixelly crunch, but it's also high-contrast, consistent, and visually clear. The only problems keeping it from being a good terminal font in 2024 are:
* It doesn't include box-drawing characters, block graphics, or any other fancy Unicode glyphs people expect these days
* It's a bitmap font, and modern operating systems tend to only support scalable vector fonts
So, I fixed those things.
UK politics
The message from the minister for housing on Radio 4 this morning was clear: Do everything we tell you without complaint, or be made homeless.
The Torytrash stated that people who 'played by the rules' would get social housing. This from a party that made protesting against it illegal and which plans to make being homeless illegal. The idea is to arrest those who disagree with the government, take away their housing and then arrest them again for being homeless. Once they are prisoners they cannot vote, because the UK continues to ignore international court judgements against it like they were international laws and treaties.
Online anonymity: study found ‘stable pseudonyms’ created a more civil environment than real user names
'What matters, it seems, is not so much whether you are commenting anonymously, but whether you are invested in your persona and accountable for its behaviour in that particular forum. There seems to be value in enabling people to speak on forums without their comments being connected, via their real names, to other contexts.
...calls to end anonymity online by forcing people to reveal their real identities might not have the effects people expect'
Inspired by @vnglst amazing work, I re-implemented Pong Wars in C++ on top of the Qt Scene Graph and a bit of Kirigami :)
Source code is here: https://invent.kde.org/carlschwan/pongwars/
I just found out about https://feedle.world, a search engine that exclusively works on RSS feeds that have been submitted to it. Could be a good source for finding actual humans in a rapidly enshittifying internet.
If you have an RSS feed you should submit yours to it as well!
weirdo free/libre open source software person, member of the KDE community since forever, who loves squeaky, slinky and fuzzy things - they/them