Notices by Corbin Davenport (corbin@toot.community)

No more North Carolina and South Carolina. We must restore Long Carolina to its former glory.

@till @killyourfm It does work with the Firefox snap package!

I'm excited to release Just the Browser! It helps you remove AI features, sponsored content, shopping integrations, and other annoyances from desktop web browsers.

This project includes configuration files (group policies), a simple setup script, and guides for manual installation. It supports Chrome, Firefox, and Edge. Everything is open-source on GitHub.

https://justthebrowser.com

Why is everyone saying the Tea app was “vibe-coded”? I don’t even know how you could tell in most cases unless the developers admit to it. Humans are just as capable of shitty code and security practices as LLMs.

Kind of weird that even IT/security professionals are repeating this with no evidence.

Hey Linux people: is there a good GUI app for making bootable Linux USB drives so I don't have to use the dd command? Ideally something available on most distributions. #linux #foss

EDIT: Should have clarified, not Belana Etcher, it has weird privacy stuff.

@selea I used to use Etcher, but there's some weird privacy stuff going on: https://github.com/balena-io/etcher/issues/2977

PowerPC processors, Newton PDAs, and other relics of Apple's past are still present in modern Mac computers. You just have to look in a font! #mac #apple #vintagecomputing

https://www.spacebar.news/apple-history-hiding-in-mac-font/

Firefox FINALLY supports custom search engines without weird bookmark hacks or Add-ons! I can finally set Google without AI Overviews as my default search. It's been in the beta channels for a while and should be in the Firefox 140 release tomorrow. #firefox

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/140.0beta/releasenotes/

I guarantee no film-flam in my software. Flim-flam-free.

There are so, so many Apple bloggers and commenters regurgitating Apple's talking points about the EU this week, it's kind of shocking. You can build open and interoperable systems that are still secure: look at Android, the web, and email.

Apple doesn't want to open up because that's not profitable for Apple. Anyone saying it's for “privacy" or "what's best for users" or whatever is being disingenuous or ignorant. https://appleinsider.com/articles/25/03/19/the-eu-is-betraying-its-users-and-weakening-their-privacy-for-political-gain

The year is 2027. The average US phone plan now includes Disney+ with ads, Hulu with ads, HBO Max with ads, Netflix with ads, SiriusXM, easy payments with Affirm, a Roku streaming stick with ads, a three-month AARP membership, a digital redemption code for the Ben Affleck film of your choosing, parlay boosts, and a gun.

#MondayMotivation

@tk @doskel I think the newer N100 CPU is also entirely E cores lol

Not surprising, but still bad! "The BBC [tested] four prominent, publicly available AI assistants – OpenAI’s ChatGPT; Microsoft’s Copilot; Google’s Gemini; and Perplexity. 51% of all AI answers to questions about the news were judged to have significant issues of some form. 19% of AI answers which cited BBC content introduced factual errors – incorrect factual statements, numbers and dates."

https://www.bbc.com/mediacentre/2025/bbc-research-shows-issues-with-answers-from-artificial-intelligence-assistants

I'll be doing a privacy and security checkup for all my software projects over the coming weeks. I don't want to collect your personal data, and I'm doing as much as I can to protect the privacy of anyone using my software projects.

More info: https://www.patreon.com/posts/120497418

@sudden @nocontexttrek The attack is in Enterprise 2x26, but this specific flashback might be in a later episode, not 100% sure https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Expanse_(episode)

Someone tell the kids Mastodon is a Chinese app. We can still win this.

The age of Facebook is over. The time of the Google+ has come.

This is probably more impactful than anything at CES this week. Every mainstream social network in the US has fully given up on moderating right-wing extremism, and we're all going to suffer because of it.

https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/07/meta-drops-fact-checking-and-loosens-its-content-moderation-rules/

I now have my very own John Mastodon. #plushtodon