Notices by Bruce Lawson ✅ (quiet time) (brucelawson@social.vivaldi.net), page 2

It's not often that I get to interview an ex-Cold Warrior and ex-Microsoft lawyer who's now working to make the web a better place, but I caught up with Gene Burrus, who advises the The Browser Choice Alliance on how to counter Microsoft's anti-choice tactics. https://vivaldi.com/blog/9-gene-burrus-for-a-better-web/

Fair enough that I didn't get the gig.The new Pope has a degree in mathematics from Villanova University. This guy doesn’t just understand sin. He understands cos.

Big Tech has another California problem https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/25/big-tech-california-data-privacy-regulation-fight-newsom-00309171
The nation’s only dedicated privacy agency is attracting international attention over its California rules that could have wider impacts.

The Fanta Fascists are threatening Wikipedia now by going after its tax-exempt status
https://www.theverge.com/news/656720/ed-martin-dc-attorney-wikipedia-nonprofit-threat "The interim US attorney for DC claims Wikipedia is ‘allowing foreign operatives’ to rewrite its website."

Who could possibly have predicted that the TERFs "celebrating" the Supreme Court ruling are now campaigning against immigration? It's almost as if fascists will never run out of hatred.

The initial tariff will be the standard 10%, but could go to 135% if they don't say "thank you" and wear a formal exoskeleton to the Oval Office.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c39jj9vkr34o

@davidgerard 48kHz is the metric sample rate, used by Napoleon. 44.1 is the Imperial sample rate, used by Queen Victoria and ultimately derived from the Roman sample rate of 400 hectoHz, used on Roman CDs ("CD" being 400 in Roman numerals).

Why do AI company logos look like buttholes? https://velvetshark.com/ai-company-logos-that-look-like-buttholes

For A Better Web, episode 8: I had a long chat with @mia about being an independent CSS spec author, CSS Layers, @scope, mixins and Container Queries, and her recent blogpost "Tech continues to be political". Audio, transcript and link to support her excellent work: https://vivaldi.com/blog/8-miriam-suzanne-oddbird-for-a-better-web/

A human rights campaigner, Tanya O’Carroll, has succeeded in forcing social media giant Meta not to use her data for targeted advertising. She argued that its pervasive surveillance, which it calls "personalised advertising", is direct marketing; GDPR gives the legal right to opt out from having your info used for direct marketing. https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/21/meta-settles-u-k-right-to-object-to-ad-tracking-lawsuit-by-agreeing-not-to-track-plaintiff/

"Do we want a web that belongs to its users, or do we want an internet controlled by a handful of corporations whose primary business model is surveillance and lock-in?" https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/18/vivaldi_72/

In which I interview @ilumium of @edri about their work to tame Big Tech so it serves people, rather than the other way round. https://vivaldi.com/blog/7-jan-penfrat-edri-for-a-better-web/

"it’s telling that the response from so-called “free speech absolutist” Musk has been to single out individuals – and spread lies about us and our movement. The harassment that has followed his post has been frightening.

It’s also proof that the Tesla Takedown campaign is working." https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/13/elon-musk-tesla-takedown-protest

Apple patches 0-day exploited in “extremely sophisticated attack” https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/03/apple-patches-0-day-exploited-in-extremely-sophisticated-attack/

"The vulnerability resides in Webkit, the browser engine driving Safari and all other browsers developed for iPhones and iPads." Tell us again, Apple, how stopping us shipping non-WebKit engines makes for better security.

Great news!! First week working at the bicycle factory, and they’ve already made me the spokes person.

"Police officers and employees misusing access to police database now account for over half of all cybercrime prosecutions in the UK. The harms this can cause are considerable. Yet police continue to call for encryption to be weakened to allow for greater access to communication data." - Alice Hutchings, Director, Cambridge Cybercrime Centre, Cambridge University. (3pp PDF: https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~ah793/papers/2025police.pdf)

The boyhood of Donald Trump (by Matt, UK Daily Telegraph)

After my leg x-ray, the radiologist said "your patella measures exactly 2.54 centimetres". I said, "Inch-high knees?". She looked puzzled and replied, "'您的髌骨是2.54厘米高."

Trump has free rein over Dutch government data. "The Netherlands relies heavily on American IT service providers such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon for the storage of government data." - I bet the UK does, too. And many others.
https://ioplus.nl/en/posts/trump-has-free-rein-over-dutch-government-data

The sweater I bought last week was giving me static electricity shocks. So I returned it to the shop and they gave me another one free of charge.