Notices by Marcus Adams (gerowen@mastodon.social), page 2

Random thought. The older I get, the more sense #RichardStallman's absolutist stance on free software makes to me. If you can't inspect, or have someone inspect, the source of software you've paid for, then you own nothing. You have no idea what's going on under the hood. You wouldn't buy a car if the dealership told you they were the only ones allowed to perform maintenance or modifications, so why do we tolerate that behavior from proprietary software vendors?

#OpenSource #GNU #FreeSoftware

@GossiTheDog Some system of theirs get breached?

@Gargron I've often wondered when I see scenic vistas like this, are the shrubs just naturally that short? Around here in Kentucky if you don't mow and weed eat the areas of the hillside you care about before long it'll be a jungle with bushes taller than you are.

@GossiTheDog @derpdean You occasionally respond to followers and it makes us feel cool by association, 😛

@GossiTheDog @dw @wdormann disinformatioD with regards to security exploits? I wonder who stands to benefit from that.

Headline: Hacker Accesses Internal ‘Tile’ Tool That Provides Location Data to Cops

Subtitle: A hacker broke into systems used by #Tile, the tracking company, then stole a wealth of customer data and had access to internal company tools.

https://www.404media.co/email/b2f3b3e8-64a2-4f91-b0b7-8c6220721ecb/

#Privacy #Security #Cybersecurity

I literally just got a Donald #Trump ad on #YouTube asking us to donate to him. A criminal billionaire who tried to stage a coups wants ME to donate to HIM. Fuck that guy and the horse he rode in on.

@GossiTheDog I forget his name but the guy talking is actually here on Mastodon. He at least was, and I think still is an employee at Microsoft.

Headline #NintendoSwitch Is Removing Integration for X, Formerly #Twitter

Source: https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/nintendo-switch-twitter-x-support-removed/

@GossiTheDog The crazy thing is that the engineers who work on open source projects "seem" to be reasonably talented folks. Like the guy who found the back door in SSH because it took a half second longer than normal to authenticate. When it comes to Windows though it just seems like a complete clusterfuck.

@Gargron A lot of stuff these days, from movies to anime to video games, seems to just be re-hashing existing content. People are out of new ideas and they know this stuff will make money, so they're giving old content a new coat of paint because it's a quick and easy cash grab.

BB has wanted and worked towards this for years.

As Gazans return to destroyed homes, Israeli ministers push resettlement

#Israel #Gaza #Palestine

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/01/04/gaza-displaced-civilians-resettlement-israel/

@fsf We're lucky, our kids' schools are surprisingly open to ideas. For example, when a Microsoft Teams meeting fell thru because of an issue with Teams, my son's teacher had no qualms with using Nextcloud Talk on our personal Nextcloud to conduct the meeting. When it comes to online lessons, my daughter is allowed the use the laptop I bought for her that runs Debian. I don't agree with every product choice they make, but they've been a lot more open than some others I've heard of.

I find myself these days hesitant to even consider any private messengers if they don't have the option to verify which devices/keys have access to your messages. #Signal, #XMPP / OMEMO, #Matrix, hell even Facebook Messenger's E2EE chats let you verify which devices can read your messages. If you're encrypting your users' messages, but they can't verify whether a rogue device has access to their messages, then why even bother encrypting them?

#Encryption #Security #Cybersecurity #Privacy

@Gargron I followed several of the media outlets that are accessible now that @Flipboard is federating, so I contributed, 😜

@Gargron @mosseri That's cool. I can't see any of their posts, but it'll be cool to see when it actually rolls out.

@Gargron I've been telling people this forever and they don't want to hear it. They're so enamored with the science fiction of "AI" that they don't understand companies will lie for money.

@Gargron @polygon I'm having to break the habit of removing tracking bits because I've noticed journalists at press.coop have been adding a bit to the url showing that readers arrived there from Mastodon, so I want them to know that their Mastodon feed is generating traffic and therefore revenue, that way they'll stay here.

@Gargron I've owned and operated my own Plex server for several years now, but there's only so much I can justify spending on a personal archive here at home on hardware that I have to pay for and maintain. The death of physical media is sad, 😞 Hopefully somebody like the internet archive can do something about preservation, but I'm not going to hold my breath. My wife, who is a Doctor Who fan, says there are some episodes of Doctor Who that are just gone because they got overwritten.

@killyourfm @thunderbird Your personal data is the new oil.