#bigtech Helped Bankroll the #eastwing Destruction #meta, #amazon, #microsoft, #apple, & #google have a lot riding on their relationships with the #trump admin. They all cut checks for the ballroom. #techbros #plutocracy #billionaires #corporations #corruption […]

(copied from elsewhere) #BikeTooter #cycling #infrastructure

If someone had said “if Trump gets elected, he’ll literally bulldoze the White House” just a year ago, everyone - right, left, and center - would have told them to shut up and stop exaggerating.

...and here it is, the clearest evidence yet of a fascist tech bro deciding the current corpus of human knowledge needs "correcting", and openly stating his intention to use his LLM to manipulate public understanding. When I called current iterations of AI […] [Original post on mastodon.world]

News 💣: Michael Wolff received a cease and desist letter from Melania Trump over his revelations on the Daily Beast podcast "Inside Trump's Head" (eg, that Epstein told him that Donald and Melania first had sex on Epstein's plane). Wolff has filed a $1bn lawsuit in response, invoking his right […]

Unless there is an acceleration in the pace at which policymakers and public thought leaders face up to how quickly the EU is consolidating and the US is falling apart the UK will find itself cast adrift in a stormy sea its leaders won't know how to navigate.

I still miss a good few, no, many I used to follow on Twitter. I follow a few on Bluesky (via Bluesky bridge,* not on Bluesky which I will not join) including Alexander Clarkson @APHClarkson *@aphclarkson.bsky.social Sardonic & informed European political commentary. Half Ukrainian […]

Following Rishi Sunak and Nick Cleggs' move to advising tech companies, let's all wish Liz Truss well on her first day at Amazon Web Services.

RE: Dutch spooks deciding they're less willing to share w/the US: Remember that the docs from SVR that were the focus of the (now declassified) Durham annex and HPSCI reports were from the Dutch. Basically Tulsi burned all that to smithereens for partisan gain. nltimes.nl/2025/10/18/d...

THIS.

This is really hard to watch but this is the reality of Russia.

I made a thing called Wellness Ping because someone I care about went silent and it took too long for anyone to notice. You get regular check-ins via email. If you don't respond, your emergency contacts get notified. Built it for anyone who might go missing and needs someone to notice […]

What Americans die from and the causes of death the US media reports on https://ourworldindata.org/does-the-news-reflect-what-we-die-from It's even worse than you might have guessed. And for sure the same disproportionate coverage and lack thereof applies to many other things.

Trump admin lies about #ice being attacked, so they can be the victim. The Technique is called DARVO (Deny Attack Reverse Victim & Offender) But when people see that the "attackers" are people in frog costumes, it visually destroys the lie. There for sharing our silly protests on social media […]

You ever think to yourself “but I am just one person, what can I do to make a difference?” It turns out that “wear an inflatable frog costume and go downtown” is actually a really reasonable answer. #portland #portlandfrog #uspol

Back when I was the last best resort for desperate people, mostly scientists, every one of whom was "just about to make a backup" (I had to ask) I used to think something that saved some people from themselves might be a good idea. But just taking everything. Automatically. 🙄🤦 Nope! […]

I posted this a year ago, and as we now approach #endof10 these superb little laptops are still merrily running #linux very happily, and will be joined by more shortly. It's money saving, planet saving, and even time saving as the machines work so much quicker!

Open letter to Irish minister who's pushing ChatControl from @mariafarrell https://crookedtimber.org/2025/10/07/chat-control-in-europe-an-open-letter-to-the-irish-minister-who-wants-to-scan-all-our-messages/

🇪🇺 EU diplomats discussed #chatcontrol today. Result: No majority, so the vote planned for next week will be called off. https://orf.at/stories/3407810/ A huge success in our fight for freedom!🎉💪 Next goal: No suspicionless scanning, not even on a voluntary basis!

The Trump Action Tracker is brilliant already, keeping track of the regime's bad acts. The UI could use a few improvement, and I'd urge several more categories (or emphasis of sub-categories), but I'm blown away now. https://www.trumpactiontracker.info

Six of the nine Nobel Prize winners this year work in the U.S. Three of the six were born outside the U.S., which is the pattern most years. No country has benefited more from welcoming immigrants from around the world. www.nobelprize.org

RE: https://mastodon.social/@mariafarrell/115333913079023817 Well this is admirably concise and direct by Germany's justice ministry. "Chat control without cause must be taboo in a state governed by the rule of law. Private communication must never be under general suspicion." THANK YOU […]

🇪🇺Germany's Minister of Justice today: "Suspicionless #chatcontrol must be taboo in a state governed by the rule of law." Private communication cannot be placed under general suspicion. "Germany will not agree to such proposals at the EU level." […]

Side point on #chatcontrol: When I worked on the law in the European Parliament, in the face of questionably legal, and highly problematic behavior by DG HOME, I prepared a whitepaper on why it was such a terrible Idea. As it is in the public interest, I have decided to make that white paper […]

An Irish presidential candidate has withdrawn from coming election after revelations about pocketing 2 months overpaid rent and stiffing the tenant. Morally satisfactory outcome, but you'd think he'd used it to pay off a porn star. Compared to par for the course in adjacent democracies the anger […]

I'm on the board of some non-profit organisations in London. They get spam because public records of directors are harvested and used to generate email. One repeat offender doesn't even bother harvesting public records. It simply makes up names and blasts unsolicited messages. The company is […]

This Is Not A Drill podcast: Trump's economic warfare – Are there any winners? https://pca.st/episode/1d655ab7-fe38-47f6-b2ad-4d4adcadd475 Worthwhile interview with Adam Posen, President of the Peterson Institute. Poor guy, former member of Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee, goes from […]

I finally have finished reading the 69 page complaint and multiple exhibits filed by the state of Illinois and City of Chicago against Trump, Noem, Hegseth etc., seeking to prohibit them deploying federalized National Guard troops in #chicago. #chicagoland #lawfedi […]

The Economist, always and forever in the tank for America (even now), has an article saying the EU can't innovate. On Hacker News many patriotic Americans agree, as they always do. Much of the innovation in the US is done by immigrants, to whom a majority of graduate degrees in science, tech […]

I subscribe to Anthropic which I find alternately useful and a waste of time. (What a different world we'd have if Google had subscribers--I doubt it ever collected €20/month/person using personal data). A worthwhile analysis of the AI bubble […]

NASA is facing backlash after reportedly being ordered to destroy a fully operational satellite that plays a crucial role in monitoring the Earth’s atmosphere. Imagine a perfectly good, high-tech spacecraft gathering invaluable data on carbon dioxide – a key player in climate change – only to […]

Whenever you see someone recommend Cloudflare or something else that decrypts and re-encrypts TLS for something, esp. for something related to open social media or media storage etc., reply with this picture from the Snowden leaks

Dread annual clothes shopping day. Low & high points Getting the gamma ray treatment from a righteous woman while waiting, idly, for my wife in a lingerie dept. "I'm with my wife" I finally volunteered, wearily. "You could wait over there" she glared. "Why?" She had no answer. "I was with him […]

"Microsoft ♥️ Linux" so much they are going way out of their way to get people to ditch Windows for Linux. It's not just the TPM requirement. Here's someone already on Windows 11 discovering just how hostile Windows can be towards users […]

The possibility that the UN will have to relocate out of New York before 2028 needs to be taken more seriously

Starting today I'm going to become more aggressive about supporting independent media and journalism. I'm not wealthy enough to make a big difference on my own but I think this is something that could have an impact if enough people with a little handful of disposable income and deep concerns […]

John Naughton is on very good form in his latest column for the Observer. https://observer.co.uk/news/columnists/article/the-three-sickbag-spectacle-of-tech-bros-at-the-court-of-trump-20

Anil Dash's writing crosses my radar now and then. This excoriation of Apple's kissing Trump's backside is worthwhile https://www.anildash.com/2025/09/09/how-tim-cook-sold-out-steve-jobs even if, like me, you aren't a fan of Jobs or an Apple customer.

Ireland has overtaken the UK on more metrics than I can keep track of -- but you wouldn't know it if you attended to some of the internal self-criticism (much of it deserved of course). Nevertheless, this was a bit of a surprise: "... at the end of 2024 there were seven operational solar farms […]

I've been driving a Kia Nero EV for the last 19 months and been very happy with it - - until Kia recently replaced the Kia Connect app used to do things like control charging remotely, lock and unlock the car, initiate climate control etc. The new app is one of the most shockingly awful […]

I switched keyboards on Android devices today. Ditched SwiftKey (now owned by Microsoft; sends data to the cloud) in favour of FUTO. Tried it before. Wasn't quite good enough. Excellent now. Voice input too. Works without sending any data anywhere. Not the most exciting presentation but I […]

Not since the Red Scare, when researchers at the University of California had to sign loyalty oaths, and those at the University of Washington and MIT were disciplined or fired for being suspected Communists, has American science been so beholden to political ideology. At least during the […]

My late father in law used to say "Get out of my house" and reach for the off button on the remote whenever a party political ad appeared on TV. I'm reacting like this to growing efforts to shove unwanted AI into my life. The contempt for the customer / sucker in late-stage American neoliberal […]

Most people know by now that Google search is a worthless enshittified shambles. I haven't used it as a first resort in years. https://duckduckgo.com is my current default. Kagi has been on the radar or, more accurately, the "someday" list (known in these parts as being "on the long finger") […]

Currently I have the following NAS operating systems running DSM TrueNAS w ZFS Unraid OpenMediaVault and now a Ugreen DXP4800+* w UGOS w BTRFS. Have to decide whether to replace UGOS w TrueNAS or Unraid. (DSM and OMV will be retired w hardware shortly). Comments welcome from any network […]

A catchy little number https://youtu.be/ELJhKli-dmk

This Is Not A Drill with Gavin Esler: Appetite for corruption – How Trump is letting kleptocrats destroy the world Episode webpage: https://www.patreon.com/thisisnotadrill Media file: https://chrt.fm/track/131A7G/traffic.megaphone.fm/NSR2914827280.mp3?updated=1752056917 Interview with Oliver […]

Ireland has a drug problem. 2nd worst coke habit in Europe supposedly. I watched a documentary on the work of An Garda Síochana (the police; guardians of the peace, literally) the other day, dealing w drug crime. We're rightly proud of having an unarmed police service. They've been on the front […]