aral

aral, 11 months ago to security

Wow, Bank of Ireland are completely clueless about #security.

“BOI: We need to speak to you about your credit card application…

Me: Sure…

BOI: First, let’s verify you…full name, date of birth…

Me: …

BOI: Mother’s maiden name?

Me: LjwOtrNGIgpJlJE

BOI: So this is the problem: We need your mother’s maiden name.

Me: I just gave it. This is a security question and I provided you with a password.

BOI: No, that won’t work, we need her name.

Me: Wow… OK… Please cancel my application.”

aral, 11 months ago to random

What’s happening in Turkey today is not some exotic oddity. It’s a forewarning of exactly what can (and is) happening in the West.

Does this timeline seem familiar?

1. Neoliberals get elected. They fill their coffers while alienating a whole swath of society who they deem too far beneath them to matter.

2. A religious fundamentalist arises who speaks to those marginalised people, telling them they’ve been wronged (they have) and that he will make it right.

3. He gets elected.

4. He stays.

aral, 10 months ago to random

Stop anthropomorphising billionaires.

aral, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago) to Tennis

Who has two thumbs but one’s in a plaster because he broke his hand (wait for it…) playing tennis?! 👀

(Almost 47 and first broken bone ever… not bad given I skated all my life, ski, and ride a OneWheel… but fucking tennis? smh)

🎾🕺🏥

#extremeSports #tennis

aral, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago) to internet

Spam alert: thegx.ca/forum

Dear server admins,

If you see an account named thegx.ca/forum (thegx@…) pop up on your servers please suspend it. Some bastard has been setting up spam accounts all over. I’ve lost count of how many I’ve blocked and it’s getting annoying.

#meta #fediverse #mastodon #spam

aral, 9 months ago to random

It’s Lego keyboard making time!

:awesome:

Contents of the box in plastic bags and small boxes: switches, key caps (grey and white), a coil cable, Stabi JKW, and Lego base plates and some Lego pieces showing (white).
More of what’s in the box, sprawled on the desk: Core 64 gasket mount, 01001 Kit Adam instruction manual and bits of - foam plate visible.
Close up of the Lego prices, switches, and key caps.

aral, 1 year ago to random

Encrypted messaging provider: “We make our money selling this to the police.”

Tech folks: This is cool and normal.

#matrix #element #privacy #acab #e2ee #messaging

aral, 6 months ago to Bulgaria

🚨 Another EU mass surveillance attempt. Will kill privacy on web. Must not pass. 🚨

“[A]ll web browsers distributed in Europe will be required to trust the certificate authorities and cryptographic keys selected by EU governments.

These changes radically expand the capability of EU governments to surveil their citizens by ensuring cryptographic keys under government control can be used to intercept encrypted web traffic across the EU.”

https://last-chance-for-eidas.org

#eu #privacy #surveillance #eidas

aral, 11 months ago to random

Was away for a week visiting my parents. Don’t get to see them nearly enough, in no small part thanks to our lovely “European Values” meaning they have to jump through more hoops to come visit us in Ireland than they can manage at their age. You see, we don’t really see non-Europeans as human in Europe. They’re something less. A potential threat.

I may have an EU passport and pass for white but I never forget that. In fact, I think about it every time I miss my parents.

#eu #racism #xenophobia

aral, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago) to Israel

Wix fires Irish employee for Gaza support, tells staff to “join a company initiative to create videos and creative campaigns”, to “support Israel’s narrative” … “show Westernity” in posts, as “unlike the Gazans, we look and live like Europeans and Americans”. It’s “very important to emphasise this in texts and images so that they feel close to us”

https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2023/10/24/internal-wix-chat-encouraged-staff-to-support-israels-narrative-in-hamas-conflict/

#wix #israel #gaza #ireland #genocide

aral, 10 months ago to twitter

Even I didn’t have Twitter locking itself in its panic room after DDoSing itself on my bingo card.

Can you imagine getting into a car made by a company run by someone this incompetent?

#twitter #ElonMusk #tesla #ddos

aral, 8 months ago to uk

It would appear that “former Tory MP Antoinette Sandbach has threatened the University of Cambridge with legal action after a historian named her as a descendant of merchants who enslaved his ancestors.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/31/ex-tory-mp-threatens-sue-cambridge-university-slavery-research-antoinette-sandbach

Oh, my… It would be a damn shame if more people knew of this so please do not boost this post.

#AntoinetteSandbach #SamuelSandbach #Sandbach #british #slavery #britain #slaveOwners #tories #tory #conservatives #uk #cambridge #colonialists #colonialism

aral, 9 months ago to random

Fuck billionaires.
Fuck tech bros.
Fuck adtech.
Fuck Silicon Valley.
Fuck capitalism.

So, what’re you all doing for the weekend? Got any fun plans? :)

aral, 11 months ago to random

It’s very interesting to see who in the fediverse is falling in line behind Silicon Valley and Big Tech and who is not.

And no, we can’t all just get along.

Big Tech is the antithesis of the cooperative and humanitarian values of federation and decentralisation. You can either be an apologist for surveillance capitalists or support the nascent ethical alternatives to their toxic business model that’s detrimental to human rights and democracy.

Pick a side. History will remember your choice.

aral, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago) to random

Elon Musk: “And now, I will literally piss in people’s faces…”

Mainstream media:

• Five health benefits of urine
• How to stay hydrated like Elon
• I was first in line, here’s how it felt
• Jack Dorsey also unzips his pants
• Swallow or spit, readers have their say

aral, 8 months ago to random

So the rage.love folks seem lovely; asking for me (apparently “a massive tool”) to be fediblocked because I called Twitter/X a Nazi bar.

Hmm… 🤔

#fediblock

aral, 10 months ago to mastodon

Direct messages (DMs) on #Mastodon / #ActivityPub / the #fediverse are not end-to-end encrypted (#e2ee) and you should never include sensitive/private information in them.

Until they are e2ee, this is all we should be telling people. Anything else is irresponsible and could cause vulnerable people harm.

Specifically, it doesn’t matter:

• if your instance admin is ethical or not
• whether Elon Musk can read DMs easier on Twitter
• etc.

It’s not end-to-end encrypted. It’s not private. End of.

aral, 6 months ago to random

But what if it wasn’t a genocide and we needlessly stopped the endless slaughter of innocent civilians?

aral, 9 months ago to startups

Do I want it?
↓
Is it by a startup?
↓
No.

(A ‘startup’ is not just any new small business. It’s a temporary venture capital funded company that must either fail fast or exit. An exit is where you’re either bought by Big Tech or become Big Tech through an IPO. To understand this better, if you have a sustainable small company, a startup is what will put you out of business.)

#startups #SiliconValley #ventureCapital #vc #SurveillanceCapitalism #PeopleFarming

aral, 10 months ago to random

Threads is Instagram. Instagram is Facebook. Facebook is Meta. Meta is Mark Zuckerberg.

Facebook was complicit in a literal genocide.

Meta is a surveillance capitalist that exploits you for profit.

Mark Zuckerberg straight up called you “dumb fucks” for trusting him.

What’s it going to take for you to not help these assholes continue to fuck people over?

aral, 11 months ago to climate

Whenever someone tells you that the climate crisis is a personal responsibility issue, show them this:

https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change

The climate crisis is a billionaires crisis, a trillion-dollar corporations crisis, a capitalism crisis, a systemic inequality crisis.

#climateChange #climateCrisis #climateCatastrophe #climate #corporatocracy #capitalism

aral, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago) to apple

Whenever anyone says “Apple stuff Just Works™”, tell them you can’t use the backspace key in iCloud Calendar on Firefox.

Then laugh in their faces.

#apple #justWorks #iCloud #calendar #firefox #web #dev #trillionDollarIncompetence

aral, 2 months ago to accessibility

So @gnome is removing the x11 session, leaving just the Wayland one.

If this goes out before Orca, the GNOME screen reader, is fixed to work on Wayland, it will mean that people who rely on screen readers will have no way to use one on GNOME. And thus on the major Linux distributions.

So I’m hoping the plan is that this change will not land until GNOME has a working screen reader.

#accessibility #a11y #gnome #linux #openSource #foss #wayland #x11 #orca https://peoplemaking.games/@ailepet/112077559713299711

aral, 3 days ago to DuckDuckGo

“Choice.”

#alternatives #choice #DuckDuckGo #DDG #Qwant #ecosia #bing

Qwant search for foo at 09:18: Qwant is temporarily unavailable.
Ecosia search for foo @ 09:17: There was a problem loading search results for “foo”
Two astronauts staring at Earth from space. Front astronaut: “you mean it’s all just Bing?” Rear astronaut, aiming gun at front astronaut: “Always has been.”

aral, 1 month ago to mastodon

If you’re on mastodon.social, I would highly recommend that you switch to a different server that protects its people instead of exposing them to a well-known bad actor like Facebook/Meta via Threads.

For alternatives, see: https://fedipact.veganism.social

And remember that Mastodon is not the fediverse. The fediverse is much more than just Mastodon and definitely more so than mastodon.social and Mastodon gGmbH.

#mastodonSocial #mastodonGGMBH #mastodon #fediverse #threads #facebook #meta