Notices by Solarbird :flag_cascadia: (moira@mastodon.murkworks.net)

@emeb @ZenHeathen @TerryHancock @blogdiva

Can you hear your neighbour's LG TV? Because it can hear you.

If the microphone is off, you have to be closer.

But they can still do it.

It's all demonstrated in their documentary.

So "don't plug it in hur hur hur" doesn't work. It only cuts out one node of _tens of millions_.

This isn't a problem that can be solved by being smarter than everyone else, because even if you _are_ smarter than everyone else, you're still smarter than _everyone else_, and they're all plugging their sets into the network. That is, after all, most likely _why_ they bought a smart TV. To do exactly that.

Like it or not, this requires _collective_ action.

This is the big LG television surveillance documentary story GN have been working on for a couple of months, and that they previewed a few days ago.

The complete pervasiveness of spying upon not just you and what you watch but _every person and every device around every set_ is genuinely staggering. And it gets worse if you use their apps, particularly the LG TV "network":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IFVTcM28KA

Having an old set DOES NOT HELP YOU; they've been adding these spying functions in firmware updates.

So DO NOT BUY ANYTHING LG. Certainly not anything "smart."

#LG #surveillance #spying #evesdropping #CorporateSurveillance #SmartTV #DoNotBuy #television #electronics #HomeElectronics #journalism #news #GamersNexus

@emeb @ZenHeathen @TerryHancock @blogdiva That's fine for your set.

It's not fine for all the other tens of millions of sets around you.

These sets spy on every network they can sense, wifi and LAN, including yours to one degree or another if you live next door. They build profiles and geolocate, even if you never owned one, even if you never shared a network with one.

And if you _did_ share a network with one of these sets, they have IDed every network device you have and started building profiles around them.

Huge numbers of these sets that _are_ on networks have audio microphones, and can hear you 50-70 feet away, and _are demonstrated in this video_ to be capable of making audio transcriptions of your conversations at distance.

RE: https://mastodon.murkworks.net/@moira/117230619653386536

I'm getting too many "hur hur hur don't plug it into the network" responses that miss the point.

That's fine for your set.

It's not fine for all the other tens of millions of sets around you, _which also listen to you_.

These sets spy on every network they can sense, wifi and LAN, including yours to one degree or another if you live next door. They build profiles and geolocate, even if you never owned one, even if you never shared a network with one.

And if you _did_ share a network with one of these sets, they have IDed every network device you have and started building profiles around them.

(1/2)

#lg #surveillance #spying #evesdropping #CorporateSurveillance #SmartTV #DoNotBuy #television #electronics #journalism #news #GamersNexus

I'm charging my bike via THE SUN

my bike is now fusion poweredsdf;alskjdf;oawjief;

#solar #BikeTooter

TAKE YOUR BALLOTS TO A DROP BOX THIS NOVEMBER.

Don't use a mailbox. Use a ballot drop box, because the US postal service is _already_ fucking with ballots.

This is not a guess, theory, or extrapolation, this is an _observed fact_. Here's the Thurston County auditor talking about postal service fuckery during the primary, and some of the steps they're taking to get around it:

https://www.thurstoncountywa.gov/news/we-are-still-getting-ballots-should-have-counted-primary

Imagine express mail taking 19 days to deliver to the _next county over_. Literally behaviour they've never seen before. That's they kind of fuckery they're seeing.

Take your ballot to a BALLOT DROP BOX, not a mailbox.

#usps #election #elections #seattle #cascadia #2026midterms #midterms2026 #fascism #FuckTrump #FuckTheGOP #FuckFascism

@heidilifeldman Cascadian states vote _entirely_ by mail, with _all_ ballots sent out by mail. Since we also have an extensive network of _non-USPS_ ballot return boxes, our big concern right now is getting ballots in the first place.

While completely-in-person voting is still possible - with like one polling site per county or something like that - we _do not_ have the capacity to go to in-person and _can not_ have it in time for this election.

@GreenSkyOverMe Also Dr. Furter's personal powder room, no doubt.

i haven't seen mastodon go this hard on a meme (the softbank goose and eggs meme) since john fucking mastodon himself and i am enjoying the fuck out of it no matter how stupid, please continue :D

#meme #goose #goose_was_not_valued #eggs

I have committed many violences on the front derailleur frame

but i have earned knowledge and made advancements

you will note the bike is in its lowest possible gear and i got there through ordinary shifting

on the stand, we have:

clean back gears in front gear 1: 1-4
clean back gears in front gear 2: 2-8
clean back gears in front gear 3: also 2-8

this is imperfect but it gets me the maximum gearing range and i will take it for now

if this works I may need to reinforce the frame, i have ... improved it ... mostly through removal

#BikeTooter #BikeRepair

@oheso i was not going to let this thing defeat me

at least not without being defeated itself

if necessary edits destroyed it, so be it, it didn't get to win

(as per other replies, it should never have been on this bike, it literally cannot be fit as intended but that wasn't going to stop me from making it work... ish. xD )

@oheso I was willing to buy brake pads for safety reasons but I don't want to spend money on this abandoned bike unless I decide I really want to do something with it. So: no new derailleur, etc. Fix, adapt, or remove only! Unless safety.

(Well, okay, spares I already have can go in, that's how it has decent grips on that handlebar now. But you get the idea.)

RE: https://solarbird.net/blog/2026/05/21/lets-talk-being-able-to-talk-when-internet-and-cell-phone-service-both-go-down/

In these pleasant (relatively) days of late spring, it's probably a good idea to follow the EFF's advice and figure out how to set up emergency communications for when things go very wrong, and there's no internet, and no cell phone service.

I've done a lot of thinking about this the last year or so, and actually set up, tested, and used three different approaches, and here I share that with you:

#EmergencyPrep #EmergencyPreparedness #radio #GMRS #FRS #AmateurRadio #LoRa #MeshCore #Meshtastic #HamRadio #cascadia #seattle #oregon

If you build it...

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/seattles-daily-light-rail-ridership-jumps-to-no-1-in-u-s/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=mastodon

#news #LightRail #transit #seattle

RE: https://solarbird.net/blog/2026/06/05/elon-musk-and-the-one-trillion-dollar-grift/

Honestly, given [waves hands at everything], I really thought the S&P 500 would go along with this bullshit too, and while this is extremely bad - and still an attempt at a one _trillion_ dollar grift - the damage is much more limited as long as the S&P hold out.

The could, of course, change their minds again. But one hopes not.

And I remind everyone that the fact damage will be contained doesn't change that a full-on attempt to loot retirement accounts to the tune of _hundreds of billions of dollars_ took place here.

#economy #SpaceX #grift #ElonMusk #fascism #FuckThisGuy #FuckThisGuySoHard

what is this actual beast

https://seattle.craigslist.org/see/zip/d/seattle-air-compressor/7938057086.html

#equipment #gear #compressor #AirCompressor #craigslist #FreeStuff #vintage #iGuess

so this is a fun toy

https://trek.epicrandomness.com/

#meme #toy #StarTrek

RE: https://mastodon.social/@matthiasott/116609310065016685

Here, read this. Matthias:

"The infrastructure being built – a deeply personalized agent ... generating natural-language recommendations with no visible boundary between organic and paid content – is a monetization engine.

Vidhya Srinivasan, VP of Google Ads, put it plainly: 'The best ads must be answers.' Ads are already running inside AI Mode. They’re not banners next to the output. They’re generated by Gemini to read as part of the conversation. And advertisers... must hand over creative and targeting control to Google’s system. 'You can’t choose keywords anymore.'"

The answers in Google's new AI-based search _are_ the ads.

More at the post, give it a read.

#google #FuckGoogle #CorporateHellscape #advertising #ads #marketing #evil

35 miles today. Still a bit of a trip, but two years ago I'd've really been feeling it. On my first North Lake Washington Loop - a spur of the moment ride around, the same total distance - I used the whole battery in assist and was like _whoof_ getting home. This runabout, I used less than half the battery and basically, yeah, I got home and started dinner.

also posed in front of a gas station sign showing lollertastic prices because not my problem lol

#biking #BikeTooter

Okay, if this is real, this is worse than I was expecting. I've been thinking about secondary outputs but I've been thinking way more about plastics, inks, other secondaries.

I have been worried about products shortages but maybe not enough. I am and have been assuming that there will be preferential distribution to corporations (which obviously includes most freight) and least preference given to individuals trying to do their own work themselves - e.g., like RAM over the last several months. But I haven't thought about the price side of that.

And holy shit it's gonna get fugly.

So, uh, yeah.

Maybe buy an ebike. Maybe make some plans.

https://bsky.app/profile/carlquintanilla.bsky.social/post/3mly43udoqk2c

#oil #OilPrice #IranWar #fascism #economy