Notices by Ben Tasker (ben@mastodon.bentasker.co.uk)

New #blog post: Moving #hosting for bentasker.co.uk from US to #EU providers

Given the recent political upheaval in the US, I decided it was worth looking at how viable it was to move my public facing infrastructure off of US owned providers.

This blog post covers the providers I tried and went with as well as how I got on with them

https://www.bentasker.co.uk/posts/blog/the-internet/migrating-my-services-away-from-us-providers.html

New #blog post: Doing an #OnlineSafetyAct assessment for my #Mastodon server

This post contains my feedback after doing an OSA assessment for my fedi server and also takes a cursory look at whether my photography site might be considered a #pornography service

https://www.bentasker.co.uk/posts/blog/law/doing-an-osa-assessment-for-my-single-user-fedi-server.html

Also, **massive** shout-out to @neil for the excellent resources at https://onlinesafetyact.co.uk/

Without those, the assessment would have taken much, much (much much) longer

@cstross I've finally finished and submitted it.

Days of reading, answering, coming back and re-reading all to answer questions that aren't much better than "why do you think our preferred route is beneficial"

Towards the end, there's a particular delight which moots dropping protection for computer generated works because there's no evidence that that protection has encouraged increased use of AI in the UK.

@cstross I started responding yesterday but got fed up and had to hit Save and come back.

As you might expect, a lot of the questions (at least as far in as I've got) tend to assume that you agree with the proposal.

@thatfatguy_bg @_elena Yup, I've also seen an increasing number of people on things like /r/(?UK)PersonalFinance who have a stay-at-home phone which has most most of their banking apps on.

That way, if they do get mugged, they can only give access to one app which doesn't have any savings etc in.

It's not a bad habit to have, even before all these other changes

@glynmoody ISTR that when this first came up, 10 years ago, they claimed it was "too difficult" to delete the images.

Even at the time, it seemed unlikely, but even if it were true, they should have stopped using the database if it couldn't be used in a _legal_ manner.

Instead, they've just been adding to the corpus ever since....

@VModifiedMind @neil "Life Needs a Big Network*"

* and a tiny MTU

@dalias @samueljohnson For most of mine, it's not so much the switching as the consumption reporting that's useful - is the tumbledryer/dishwasher/whatever using lots or is it idle?

I have some quacking duck key-caps on the way and I'd like to note that this purchase is _entirely_ @neil's fault

Wait.... so they *could* have been doing more and arresting CEO's *does* work?

Whoodathunk it?

https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/5/24237254/telegram-pavel-durov-arrest-private-chats-moderation-policy-change

@morph @_edent_ I might be misremembering, but I thought they had only allowlisted some of the bigger instances

@_edent_ I see it, but suspect you wont see this

@Pontificator_OMF

I don't think it's a bot in the way you're thinking - I **think** the forwarded reports are just rewritten to come from that account (infosec.exchange runs Glitch). Those 7 reports probably came from actual users (and like @GossiTheDog I can totally see why)

@Pontificator_OMF @GossiTheDog

Weird. If they were reported all at the same time, it might be that someone just ticked loads in the interface - AIUI people used to do that when mass-reporting on Twitter in the hope it'd mean moderators didn't properly review and suspended/blocked

@GossiTheDog

The one "good" thing in this is the comment from the guy about how his son found out, called him a troll and he's done it less out of fear of being labelled.

Sadly, the fact that it's blokes going for an "easy target" is no surprise

@neil Not sure, but I do know they have multiple processors.... they run on 8 ARMs

New #Blog: #Amazon has an Honesty Problem

In which #AmazonUK (with the inadvertant help of #AmericanExpress) attempt to try and screw me out of nearly £500 after someone in Amazon's delivery chain stole our order

Note: I'd greatly appreciate it if people could boost the ever-living hell out of this one to try and stop the next victim from happening

https://www.bentasker.co.uk/posts/blog/opinion/amazon-parcel-contents-get-stolen-and-then-amazon-tries-to-keep-payment.html

#ParcelTheft #UK

@HauntedOwlbear @andycarolan @neil

I have similar concerns about parental control software. So many of the offerings involve location tracking and similar - it's not *right* for a parent to give up their child's privacy like that.

The middle ground I settled on, of all things, was Microsoft Family Safety - they *can* do location tracking but it's off by default (and needs opting into on device).

But it still suffers from over/underblocking like everything else.

Cheeky fuckers.

#Youtube have deployed Javascript that delays video load if the user is using #Firefox

https://old.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/17z8hsz/youtube_has_started_to_artificially_slow_down/