Notices by funnymonkey (funnymonkey@freeradical.zone)

Question for the Fediverse Hivemind: does anyone have good numbers on how widely chromebooks are used *outside* K12 education?

My gut is that they are primarily used in K12, but I'd love to see numbers from some form of a reliable source.

#edtech #askfedi

@anildash
I can't count the number of variations I've had on this conversation.

Thanks for putting this out there.

Because Chromebooks were the cheapest device that could run required standardized tests, schools went all in on Chromebooks.

Now, schools can't disable the AI "features" rolled out on Chromebooks.

So, yeah - that third grader with a school-provided Chromebook also gets Google-mandated AI.

I'd like everyone involved in this highly predictable own goal to give themselves a well deserved golf clap.

Hello, privacy loving fediverse hive mind!

I am looking for some of the most adtech-driven "mainstream" sites on the internet.

You know -- sites that a normal person, a tech civilian, might visit, that ostensibly perform some useful function but are crawling with adtech and trackers.

Some of my "favorites" - weather.com, cnn.com, HuffingtonPost, WebMD.

Hit me up with some of the best!

(and by best I mean absolute worst!)

Thank you! (I think lol)

Shorter version. We are all asshats. You all will suffer because of it.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwy7vrd8k4eo

ICE thugs shutting down Girl Scout food drives and pepper spraying 1 year old kids in Chicago.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/2025/11/09/1-year-old-pepper-sprayed-by-federal-agent-in-cicero

Imagine being the richest person in the world and you still need to force computers to say nice things about you because real people won't.

This is a great piece of writing, and it highlights a really problematic reality: a so-called "smart" vacuum -- that connected to a home network -- was designed to allow remote code execution on the device via a backdoor in the device.

This. Is. By. Design.

How many other devices are built this way?

https://codetiger.github.io/blog/the-day-my-smart-vacuum-turned-against-me/

@evan Only voted "no" because "fuck no why why why" wasn't an option.

Trump destroying the White House is a pretty spot on presidential legacy.

When you buy and use Amazon Ring products, you are siphoning data to Flock, and to law enforcement.

And yes - this is the same Flock that cops in Texas used to surveil a woman in Texas who accessed medical care.

Don't use Ring products.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/10/ring-cameras-are-about-to-get-increasingly-chummy-with-law-enforcement/

Had to verify that this was real.

It is.

https://www.nytimes.com/1939/02/04/archives/goebbels-ends-careers-of-five-aryan-actors-who-made-witticisms.html

In the years and decades to come, the US will need to come to terms with the reality that we have forced more than a generation of children to go to school having multiple mass shooting drills a year, every year.

@sand The entire point was to give people a reason to drive - aka, places that are worth getting to.

Totally wild.

@darnell @evan This exact mess is why age verification laws create more problems while failing to solve an issue that isn't technical to begin with.

Even if age verification "worked" it would create a privately owned and controlled trove of identifying info, connected to very personal trends and interests.

The data breaches that inevitability occur will make Equifax look benevolent.

If you are an edtech company and you joined X in or after 2024, you have told on yourself.

How about billions of people can keep their old pictures and a few thousand oligarchs give up their private planes?

Apparently we are at the "run diffs on the Constitution" phase in our descent into fascism.

https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/06/key-sections-of-the-us-constitution-deleted-from-governments-website/

Let the bribes continue.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/11/trons-justin-sun-100-million-trump-memecoin.html

Evergreen note:

Features aren't trustworthy.

Organizations have the potential to be trustworthy.

If an organization has failed to maintain trust, then whatever "features" they offer should be viewed through that lens.+