FoxQuirk 🦊 @quirk@computerfairi.es

Principles like "innocent until proven guilty" and "freedom of speech" are important not just because they're somehow inherently "good," but because they are specifically useful tools to prevent abuses of power.

This is why we apply them to governments and their arms specifically, because in the way our society is structured they are nominally at the top of the power hierarchy. The government can imprison or even kill you. It can take away your livelihood or your right to vote. These are unique powers governments have.

So, when looking at whether and how to apply these principles to a situation, it's important to look at the power dynamics involved!

When a government, a major corporation, or a rich and influential person accuses someone else of something, they hold immense power to make that person's life miserable. They may even be able to leverage state power against them, even if they don't directly hold such power! And so it's important to hold them to a very high standard.

But the other way around? When a powerless person accuses a powerful entity of something? It doesn't work the same way, and it's important to recognize that.

Irregular reminder that https://european-alternatives.eu/alternatives-to exists, a great list of service providers from Europe (including the exact nation as well as tags to know what's FOSS *AND* Self-hostable) that will enable you to move away from services hosted within and governed by the upcoming US Regime laws.
#privacy #security #Europe #USA #Safety

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Text boxes were made for typing silly things into them

‪those of you trying to make a joke reply, i can do you one better: https://youtube.com/watch?v=qSlF12xswPY‬

i don't like cars because cars shelter you from the rain

I think it's telling that stories portraying near-future tech dystopia have been getting set earlier as time goes on, not later.

As a kid all this stuff was set in 2070 or 2099. Now it's 2030, 2050.

The EU has fined itself $452 for violating the GDPR because one of its websites was hosted on Amazon’s AWS and used “Sign in with Facebook” which means an EU citizen’s IP address & browser information was sent to those companies in the United States.

That the GDPR implies the US is The Bad Place to host your servers is a little known quirk of the law.

https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/08/eu-court-fines-european-commission-for-breaching-its-own-data-privacy-laws/

til (some?) intel cpus will pretend that the system has overheated if you press the power button for 4 seconds

robotgirl coded

intentionally causing a relationship to sink, call it scuttling

Me trying learning about polyamory in a date and finding out about metamours: "Wait, so in a polyamorous relationship your relationships aren't a transitive closure over all members?"

Her: "a transitive what?"

I fear programming has cooked my brain

TIL that in the UK the police encourage preventing crime by making places so miserable, nobody will want to go there in the first place.

The human eye doesn't move smoothly, but in short quick moves with pauses between them.

The reason is to prevent the CGA snow that would result if the VRAM was being accessed at the same time as the image is drawn