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Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("Your weary 'net denizen"):
jamey@toot.cat ("Jamey Sharp") wrote:

I love that hackers extracted and published information about thousands of Department of Homeland Security contracts (https://ddosecrets.org/article/ice-contracts) and I love the website that @micahflee built to explore that data set (https://micahflee.github.io/ice-contracts/).

However, I think it's important to understand that this dataset is exclusively research grants, not the contracts with companies like Palantir or Flock. Also, these are not all ICE contracts; they're from all across DHS, of which ICE is only one part. They're also not all currently active: the dataset includes contracts which ended over 20 years ago.

DHS has funded a lot of research projects, some of which I think were even good. So for any company or university you see in this dataset, I suggest digging deeper into what they actually did before deciding they're evil just by association. There certainly are mass surveillance projects and so on in this list, but there are also projects to make 911 calls reliable for people with VoIP phones, and a wide variety of other research.

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
owa ("Open Web Advocacy") wrote:

Also see:
🧵(5/5)
https://brucelawson.co.uk/2026/on-apples-pinky-promises-to-cma/

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
owa ("Open Web Advocacy") wrote:

⚠️ WRITE TO THE UK'S CMA BY TUESDAY 5pm ⚠️

Under the current proposal, Apple can keep iOS and iPhone functionality exclusive to its own apps and services.

If you want fair access to APIs for competing apps and browsers email 📧 mobilesms@cma.gov.au

See: https://open-web-advocacy.org/blog/apples-interoperability-commitments-to-the-uk-cma-promise-nothing/

🧵👇️ (1/5)

db@social.lol ("David Bushell ☕") wrote:

blogged: MOOving to a self-hosted Bluesky PDS
https://dbushell.com/2026/03/02/mooving-to-a-self-hosted-bluesky-pds/

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

I go over the photos, printing process, why there is no EU shipping, and the overall rationale in a bit more detail in my blog post https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2026/objects-not-data-art-prints/

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

The final print available is an illustration from @uglyreykjavik.bsky.social's graphic novel, The Cat and I https://payhip.baldurbjarnason.com/b/oD4f9 (Again, no EU shipping at the moment)

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

The third print is one of @uglyreykjavik.bsky.social 's, of a strange little hut.
https://payhip.baldurbjarnason.com/b/zp6m4 (No EU shipping at the moment)

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

The second print is this one of horses in the steamy mist in a pasture just outside of town. https://payhip.baldurbjarnason.com/b/G0Tm8 (No EU shipping at the moment)

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

I'm experimenting with selling photography and illustration prints this month. The first print on offer is a photo of a curious raven hanging out on top of the local church here in Hveragerði. https://payhip.baldurbjarnason.com/b/81RCw (No EU shipping at the moment)

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

UK friends! Today (yes, today, Monday March 2nd) is the last day to submit comment to the CMA regarding their plan to capitulate to Apple & Google (booo!), prolonging harm to UK businesses and consumers, despite new powers that would let the CMA rein it in. @owa has details and how to file comment:

https://open-web-advocacy.org/blog/apples-interoperability-commitments-to-the-uk-cma-promise-nothing/

For background on why all of this matters, see OWA Director Alex Moore's recent appearance on the @redmonk podcast:

https://youtu.be/EOT0w7EwkVI?si=7Q44LWe16aUijodQ

/cc @pluralistic

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
gctwnl@newsie.social ("Gerben Wierda") wrote:

One of the best essays on the GenAI hype I have read so far: https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2025/trusting-your-own-judgement-on-ai/ by @baldur

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

So the politician, Davíð Oddsson, who privatised Iceland, crippled our healthcare, was the architect of our 2007 financial crash, and who has for the past few years been the aggressively pro-Trump editor of Iceland’s largest newspaper just passed

The damage he did to our society will take generations to unwind

Boosted by ChrisWere@toot.wales ("Chris Were ⁂🐧🌱☕"):
cmconseils ("Laura Manach :bongoCat:") wrote:

Good news from around the world that nobody is talking about!

France has banned influencers from promoting dangerous cosmetic surgery and extreme dieting products to protect young people

Iceland legally guarantees equal pay for men and women, making the gender pay gap illegal

In Thailand, recycled billboards become shelters and save stray dogs

At 13 years old, Lucas Jemel Janova became the first patient in the world to be cured of a terminal brain cancer.

Boosted by jakedel@mamot.fr ("S. Delafond"):
freexian@hachyderm.io ("Freexian :debian:") wrote:

Join Freexian and help us grow Debian’s impact!

We’re hiring a Senior Sales & Business Development Manager to spearhead the next stage of growth for the sales and business development functions within our organization. At Freexian, we’re passionate about Debian and Open Source, and we’re looking for someone who shares that passion. You’ll help us expand our reach, build meaningful partnerships, and ensure Debian remains the leading Linux distribution—all while working in a fully remote, value-driven environment.

If you care about Open Source, want to make a real impact, and thrive in a collaborative, mission-driven team, we’d love to hear from you!

🔗 Learn more and apply:
https://freexian.odoo.com/r/sales-bizdev-scl

#Debian #OpenSource #Freexian #Hiring #TechForGood #fedihire #getfedihired

Boosted by jwz:
johnrogers.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy ("John Rogers") wrote:

speaking as someone old enough to remember, the Cold War was very bad and imminently apocalyptic in ways our life today isn’t, but the psychic damage was different. We didn’t *know* about Able Archer until years later. I’d say this is much more of a constant assault on dignity and sanity.

Boosted by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷"):
glyph ("Glyph") wrote:

the AI alignment problem is entirely a smokescreen designed to distract from the capital class alignment problem

Boosted by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷"):
ophiocephalic@kolektiva.social ("ophiocephalic 🐍") wrote:

Added the category "Political Corruption" to the Meta Nightmares page of the Free Fediverse wiki.

Also, went through and converted all paywall-free archive.ph links to Wayback Machine links. So cool and fun when the archive site you've been relying on suddenly starts weaponizing its visitors' bandwidth!

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

Also, do any of you know of any Democrats talking about this? Specifically, how Epstein was super far-right and influential to the movement?

Ahhhggg it's frustrating to think that the Dems are taking direction from some centrist think tank warning them not to use words like "white supremacy" lest they make their base uncomfortable.

jwz wrote:

Palantir Sues Swiss Magazine For Accurately Reporting That The Swiss Government Didn't Want Palantir.

By the way, I have just been informed that "Peter Thiel" is an anagram for "Hitler Pete". The articles, produced in collaboration with the...
https://jwz.org/b/yk37

Boosted by jwz:
cmconseils ("Laura Manach :bongoCat:") wrote:

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

Okay I'm gonna freestyle this thread if you don't mind haha. I have a lot of unorganized thoughts and observations that I need to just get out of me. Writing it out as a thread helps me :)

Anyway, we're exploring the frenzy of APIs that launched in the late 2000s, early 2010s, once big tech realized that our "social graphs" were valuable.

pzmyers@freethought.online ("pzmyers 🕷") wrote:

AI has exposed my most precious secrets!

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/03/01/my-secrets-exposed/

Boosted by isagalaev ("Ivan Sagalaev :flag_wbw:"):
isagalaev ("Ivan Sagalaev :flag_wbw:") wrote:

@cassidy I was thinking about it the other day, and I think I have a theory why techies write these docs all of a sudden: because they work.

Maintaining docs for people (in corporate environment, at least) is often an exercise in futility, because nobody reads them. Nobody expects docs to be up to date or usefully written, so they usually just ask the maintainer directly instead.

With AGENTS.md you actually see how it affects things and you see that your effort is not in vain.

jscalzi@threads.net ("John Scalzi") wrote:

It involves quite a lot of data entry

RE: https://www.threads.com/@jococruise/post/DVWjN8uj6mZ

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

November 2007—Google declares war.

Facebook is a relatively small and scrappy startup, but it's growing exponentially.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg managed to dodge a billion-dollar Yahoo acquisition just a year prior. Now, he must prove to his board that Facebook is more valuable under his leadership. He's succeeding.

The release of Facebook Platform is causing a frenzy of development, and Google desperately needs something to slow this budding ecosystem down.

Google's about to release Open Social.

Boosted by jwz:
flexion@oldbytes.space ("/usr/people/flexion") wrote:

When this dialog pops up on your SGI, simply enter 01/01/1970..

Boosted by jwz:
ZenHeathen@beige.party ("ZenHeathen :canada:") wrote:

Okay, #RaidersOfTheLostArk. Opening segment, the idol up through flying home.

Indy's pilot with the float plane. Is his name "Jock" or "Jacques"?

And is his accent British or American?

He flips from "oi, das jus moy pet snake reggay" to "c'maaan, show a liddle backbone, will ya?" from one line to the next.

This has been bugging me for *forty-five years*.

jscalzi@threads.net ("John Scalzi") wrote:

It's been a wild couple of days, here, have a cat

Boosted by jwz:
fzer0@nerdculture.de ("A Light Shining In Darkness") wrote:

Peter Thiel is an anagram of Hitler Pete and it fucking shows.

Boosted by jwz:
hugh@ausglam.space ("Hugh") wrote:

Last night I went to a 70th birthday party and ended up sitting next to Frank.

Frank used to work as a computer programmer, because this was the 1970s to 90s and people had normal job titles that described real things, instead of "full stack orchestration engineer" or "solutions architect".

Anyway Frank's employer was the Victorian Attorney General's department. He wrote, updated and maintained in-house software for managing the court system, trial documentation managements and so on using low level languages.

The point of this post is that there was nothing special about this period of history that made it possible for government departments to write and maintain their own software to solve their own problems then but not now.

The complete lack of any in-house capacity to do this kind of thing is a political choice. Frank is a reminder of that.