catileptic

rysiek, 4 days ago to CrystalsHashtags

While #Adobe is doing an absolute stupid with their new licensing terms, and (now Canva-owned) #Affinity slashes prices by half in a "flash sale", I am once again asking people to consider supporting #FLOSS tools instead.

Yes, they are far from perfect.

But with a small fraction of what these closed source vendors are raking in, these tools could be made immeasurably better.

And they won't end up bought up and enshittified, as experience with past attempts at doing that to FLOSS tools shows.

catileptic, 9 days ago to random

i caught myself thinking, this weekend, that there was a interesting idea i wanted to express over here. and then, i caught myself thinking "oh, nobody reads this in the weekend". as though i was doing some sort of outreach / social media work / as though the "numbers" mattered. i wish i could scrub this "intuition" from my brain entirely. this is how the focus mindset poisons our minds and our interactions. :( sometimes i am in awe of just how much stuff i disagree with lives under my skin

catileptic, 3 days ago to romania

nothing like voting day in your home town to really put life into perspective. :))

happy to see that, at this point in time, more people voted in both the local elections and the elections for the EU parliament, in #romania, than in the previous elections. really hope we set a new maximum in both.

catileptic, 6 days ago (edited 2 days ago) to security

Proud of this one: published an article on #security threats to digital rights, and mythbusting around #antivirus software and #vpns

I got a lil' ambitious with this one! :)) Wanted to make it clear that the threats to our human rights hinge just as much on technology as on the political context at any given moment.

The article is in Romanian: https://apti.ro/oer-spune-mi-cine-esti-ca-sa-ti-spun-cum-sa-ti-protejezi-datele

The article is meant to be an intro to this subject, not a rigorous study. Felt cute, might get even more ambitious later

overanalytcl, 12 days ago to random

Wow, writing a Hugo theme (and integrating it with Sass and making your own CSS framework) is harder than I thought

catileptic, 13 days ago to random

On Wednesday (May 29) (yesterday), temperature in parts of New Delhi reached 52.9 degrees Celsius, marking the highest ever recorded in India.

I'll be home, voting for the EU & local elections, in a car-suffocated capital that is already peaking at 30+ degrees Celsius.

The #heat waves scare the shit out of me. And they will get worse.

https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2024/5/29/photos-north-india-swelters-as-new-delhi-records-highest-ever-temperature-of-49-9c

catileptic, 16 days ago to random

"Whenever a work calls attention to itself as are that means that the fact that it is being observed is part of the work which makes the viewer an explicit participant in the art.

[...]

When advertisers break the fourth wall, instead of asking us to disengage and think more critically, instead since meta-textuality makes the observer part of the art this actually reinforces our role as passive subjects who contribute purely through consumption."

https://youtu.be/OQiQlqPza4s?si=oO9xSpO_ZnClHMwi

#wereinhell

catileptic, 18 days ago to random

Pro-Palestinian protests in Romania have been met with hostility and control from the police forces.

From banning banners with slogans that do not infringe on rights, and neither do they incite to violence, to harassing protesters, to summoning people who intended to protest to the police station for "friendly advice", we see Ro police taking sides. The side of genocide.

ActiveWatch also condemns the silence of the press, which only covered these abuses sparingly: https://activewatch.ro/articole/fantomele-militiei-si-securitatii-bantuie-politia-si-jandarmeria/

catileptic, 18 days ago to random

My rabbit-hole of the day: I was taking about Neon Genesis Evangelion and someone introduced me to an April Fool's video on Philosophy Tube (<3) about anime: https://youtu.be/e8MbwOfS6kA?si=lh_XVGpqkOQYf0V0 .

This video is a parody of this: https://youtu.be/KgmoMO66uPg?si=bGLgy7Mt3M3CLRoX which is part of a YouTube channel that also features this 4 hour long uncanny (unheimlich?) montage: https://youtu.be/KgmoMO66uPg?si=DDv-4hRxCq-pdhCL . The ending is very unsettling (and good).

This video essay explains the weirdness: https://youtu.be/5XUwkfxN34k?si=EIHTki3uBBP2zBdW . Le fin. So good.

catileptic, 20 days ago to random

The Romanian Ministry of Digitalization released a form that people can use to report malicious #deepfake materials. What counts as malicious? Fraud, propaganda, disinformation.

We went into detail about how misguided this is, in a Romanian article over on the @apti website: https://apti.ro/ordinul-mcid-deepfake-praf-cu-iz-electoral .

But, because this matter concerns me deeply, here's a break-down in English (especially relevant if you're following the #DSA implementation): 1/4

catileptic, 23 days ago to CSS

Google announced client-side scanning for Android. I don't think there's any point in calling it otherwise, or discussing the alleged "usefulness" of this technical implementation.

https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/15/googles-call-scanning-ai-could-dial-up-censorship-by-default-privacy-experts-warn/

#CSS #ClientSideScanning

@Mer__edith very aptly reminded, in her reaction, that the AI-powered scanning is proprietary and it's within Google's discretion what type of communication is flagged as problematic. Scams, today. What next? Reproductive rights? Labour organizing?

tek, 1 month ago to random

I have been working in infosec for too long, I just wrote phishing rod 🤦‍♂️

catileptic, 29 days ago to Georgia

"Georgian MPs approved controversial plans to brand hundreds of NGOs and media outlets as foreign agents on Tuesday, paving the way for the bill to become law despite growing domestic dissent and condemnation from the U.S. and EU."

https://www.politico.eu/article/georgia-parliament-pass-foreign-agent-russian-law-amid-pro-eu-protest-crackdown-tbilisi/

Reminder: this law mandates that newsrooms & NGOs with more than 20% of their funding coming from outside the country declare themselves "foreign agents".

There have been constant protests, police brutality and intimidation.

#georgia

catileptic, 30 days ago to FiberArts

i'm learning to sew using a sewing machine. i have two second-hand sewing machines.

stuff breaks and threads jam and half the time i don't know if i did something wrong or the machine did something wrong.

it's tempting to quit. it's also tempting to think a new machine will fix all the problems. the "parent" in my head is trying to soothe me into being patient with the machines and with my learning process.

and then the catgirl in my head just wants to make a mess.

#hobby #sewing #meow

catileptic, 1 month ago to random

The situation in Georgia is developing into a coordinated intimidation campaign.

The OCCRP published an update and every single paragraph is chilling: https://www.occrp.org/en/daily/18707-georgian-opponents-to-russian-law-face-serious-threats

Journalists and activists are being intimidated, as are their families. They see their own faces on posters under the message "no place for agents in Georgia". And it's not just them who are treated with such brutality - protesters have also seen their faces on such posters.

1/2

catileptic, 1 month ago to random

OpenAI has partnered with StackOverflow to use the content on the site to train ChatGPT. Some users who have posted highly-rated answers have tried to either delete or edit them. But they noticed that the moderators changed their edits back and their old answers re-appeared. Then the moderators banned them for 7 days.

Oh and while we're on the subject, Valve also removed the ban on AI-generated art on Steam.

Anything we put up in these walled gardens will be monetized.

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/stack-overflow-bans-users-en-masse-for-rebelling-against-openai-partnership-users-banned-for-deleting-answers-to-prevent-them-being-used-to-train-chatgpt

catileptic, 1 month ago to trans

Google Delists DIY Hormone Therapy Sites

"Google has removed two websites providing “DIY” hormone replacement therapy used in gender-affirming care from search results at the request of the UK government, according to legal letters viewed by 404 Media."

https://www.404media.co/google-delists-sites-providing-diy-hormone-therapy-at-behest-of-uk-government

"Both sites were temporarily offline after their domain registrar received letters [...] asking them to suspend their domain names". The registrars are Namecheap and NiceNIC.

#trans #TransUK #transrights

catileptic, 1 month ago to random

Brett Scott published a really good piece on the cost of "cashlessness".

"Money is political, and that’s the starting point of the economics of cash."

https://www.asomo.co/p/the-cost-of-cashlessness

It's especially important since the only other time I hear people defending cash is when they fear a take-over from a shady, world-wide organization. And it's not that they want freedom, but they want another shady, world-wide organization to not lose its foothold.

catileptic, 1 month ago to random

Facebook has a "who can comment on your post" option in the drop-down on public posts. You can restrict commenting to "people & pages you mention in this post" which effectively means nobody can comment if you didn't mention anyone. Great way to still do activism on FB without a slew of harassment.

I just posted something publicly and the option wasn't there anymore. After 20 mins and refreshing, the option appeared again.

Great way to dis-incentivize people from protecting themselves.

catileptic, 1 month ago to random

The police in Georgia are reacting violently and abusively against protestors who took to the streets against the "foreign agent law", that would force NGOs, civil rights groups and media to register as “foreign agents” if more than 20% of their funding came from abroad.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/may/01/georgia-protest-foreign-agents-bill-police-georgian-parliament

The chair of the leading party says the law is meant to prevent “non-transparent funding of NGOs", which is "the main instrument for the appointment of a Georgian government from abroad”.

1/2