Digital and software freedom/rights advocate from Slovenia, Europe. Also a member of the Pirate party. You can find me on Mastodon: @JRepin
This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. View on remote instance
Digital and software freedom/rights advocate from Slovenia, Europe. Also a member of the Pirate party. You can find me on Mastodon: @JRepin
This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. View on remote instance
EU Commission opens formal proceedings against Meta under the Digital Services Act related to the protection of minors on Facebook and Instagram ( ec.europa.eu )
The Commission is concerned that the systems of both Facebook and Instagram, including their algorithms, may stimulate behavioural addictions in children, as well as create so-called 'rabbit-hole effects'. In addition, the Commission is also concerned about age-assurance and verification methods put in place by Meta....
Optimizing Linux for an AMD (Ryzen 7 7840HS) Xiaomi Laptop ( jdecourval.com )
Linux 6.9 released ( lore.kernel.org )
What's New in Fedora KDE 40? ( fedoramagazine.org )
Fedora Linux is a community developed and maintained operating system. Fedora KDE is one of our adaptations of Fedora Linux for your laptop or desktop. With this milestone release of Fedora KDE 40, we hope that you’ll be interested in trying an OS that belongs to you from start to finish, from install to first shut down, from...
Qt Ubuntu 24.04 betas show there's room to innovate ( www.theregister.com )
The beta versions of Lubuntu and Kubuntu 24.04 are out, showing that there's room to improve on the standard Ubuntu formula. The beta announcements for Lubuntu 24.04 and Kubuntu 24.04 don't reveal quite as much information as the Lubuntu's alpha-test announcement did. The Reg FOSS desk looked at the two Qt-centric remixes, and...
They're Looting The Internet ( www.wheresyoured.at )
This is the state of the modern internet — ultra-profitable platforms outright abdicating any responsibility toward the customer, offering not a "service" or a "portal," but cramming as many ways to interrupt the user and push them into doing things that make the company money. The greatest lie in tech is that Facebook and...
LXQt 2.0.0 released ( lxqt-project.org )
Genocide in Gaza: Enabled by AI, powered by Big Tech ( www.aljazeera.com )
The algorithms that Big Tech designed - and the genocide they assisted. The Listening Post explores how Israel’s killing campaign of Palestinians has relied on artificial intelligence to choose its targets. A dystopian nightmare serves as a marketing campaign for technology flawed by design, and deepens the global digital...
This week in KDE: Explicit Sync ( pointieststick.com )
This week something big got merged: support for Explicit Sync on Wayland!...
TUXEDO Sirius 16 Gen2 All-AMD Linux Gaming Laptop Gets Faster Ryzen 7 8845HS CPU ( 9to5linux.com )
TUXEDO Sirius 16 Gen2 is here with a faster processor (APU), namely the AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS with 8 cores, 16 threads, 24 MB cache, up to 5,1 GHz clock speed, and AMD Radeon 780M integrated graphics. However, the discrete graphics card is unchanged from the first generation, namely the AMD Radeon RX 7600M XT graphics card based on...
To understand the risks posed by AI, follow the money ( theconversation.com )
There is one class of AI risk that is generally knowable in advance. These are risks stemming from misalignment between a company’s economic incentives to profit from its proprietary AI model in a particular way and society’s interests in how the AI model should be monetised and deployed. The surest way to ignore such...
Don’t Be Fooled: Much “AI” is Just Outsourcing, Redux ( www.techpolicy.press )
The promise of AI, for corporations and investors, is that companies can increase profits and productivity by slashing their reliance upon a skilled human workforce. But as this story and many others show, AI is just today’s buzzword for “outsourcing,” and it comes with the same problems that have plagued outsourced...
KStars 3.7.0 is Released ( knro.blogspot.com )
KStars is a feature-rich free astronomy software that caters to a wide-variety of use cases. Whether you are a student, an educator, an amateur astronomer or an astronomy enthusiast, you will find tools in KStars that are useful to you.
Surveillance as a Service: The Global Impact of Israeli “Defense” Technologies on Privacy and Human Rights ( blog.torproject.org )
Highlighting, exposing, and actively working against the proliferation and normalization of surveillance technology is crucial in protecting human rights worldwide. At the Tor Project, we know that it is through collective awareness and action that we can all build and contribute to privacy-preserving technologies that aim to...
Google Won’t Say Anything About Israel Using Its Photo Software to Create Gaza “Hit List” ( theintercept.com )
Google prohibits using its tech for “immediate harm,” but Israel is harnessing its facial recognition to set up a dragnet of Palestinians.
The Miseducation of Kara Swisher ( thebaffler.com )
Silicon Valley was supposed to be “different,” or so veteran tech journalist Kara Swisher wanted to believe. Facebook was going to bring people together, in the process strengthening our communities, our democracies, our world; Google was going to deliver the vast stores of human knowledge to our fingertips; Tesla was going...
Can a Major Antitrust Case Rein in Apple? ( jacobin.com )
Last month, the Justice Department charged tech giant Apple with serious antitrust violations related to the iPhone. It’s a relatively aggressive suit — but likely an inadequate response to Apple’s outsize power.
Qt 6.7 released ( www.qt.io )
Qt 6.7 is out with lots of large and small improvements for all of us who like to have fun when building modern applications and user experiences. Several additions are released as technology previews, and we are looking forward to your feedback so that we can get everything ready for the next LTS release!
Apples4Ceasefire: Apple Employees Request Ceasefire Recognition ( www.apples4ceasefire.com )
"We, current and previous employees of Apple Inc., wish to express our disappointment and shock at the lack of care and understanding this company has given the Palestinian community, not only abroad suffering in Gaza, but also towards our own team members and anyone who supports them within our stores and offices. "
Qt 6.7 released ( www.qt.io )
Qt 6.7 is out with lots of large and small improvements for all of us who like to have fun when building modern applications and user experiences. Several additions are released as technology previews, and we are looking forward to your feedback so that we can get everything ready for the next LTS release!
How to use Steam Deck as a desktop PC ( www.pcworld.com )
European Commission opens non-compliance investigations against Alphabet, Apple and Meta under the Digital Markets Act ( ec.europa.eu )
Today, the Commission has opened non-compliance investigations under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) into Alphabet's rules on steering in Google Play and self-preferencing on Google Search, Apple's rules on steering in the App Store and the choice screen for Safari and Meta's “pay or consent model”....
This week in KDE: Plasma bug fixes and UI improvements ( pointieststick.com )
The bug-fixing continued this week with the aim of getting Plasma 6.0.3 into a great state. Already the big bugs you folks found have almost all been fixed, and this week a lot of time was spent on some X11 regressions and various crashes that our new automatic crash reporting system was able to find (thanks for submitting...
Matrix 1.10 released ( matrix.org )
Matrix 1.10 is here! We aim to release the specification once in each calendar quarter, and with Q1 wrapping up in a few days we’re due for this quarter’s release. It has been 5 months since the last release (Matrix 1.9) brought in some protocol maintenance for us though, and the implementation teams have been hard at work...
The antitrust case against Apple ( pluralistic.net )
The foundational tenet of "the Cult of Mac" is that buying products from a $3t company makes you a member of an oppressed ethnic minority and therefore every criticism of that corporation is an ethnic slur:...
Are AMD laptop discrete gpus good in linux?
I want to buy used laptop with rx6600m and r7 5800h...
Your Car Is Spying on You for Insurance Companies ( jacobin.com )
It turns out that the “Internet of Things” is full of automated snoops and spies. Data collection, now integrated into new car designs, is more pervasive than ever and is ushering in a brave new world of surveillance and corporate collusion.
How to write a QML effect for KWin, KDE's window manager ( blog.vladzahorodnii.com )
Since the dawn of the times, the only way to implement any effect that has fancy user interface used to be in C++. It would be rather an understatement to say that the C++ API is difficult to use or get it right so there are no glitches. On the other hand, it would be really nice to be able to implement dashboard-like effects...
Element Call: Secure video conferencing for Matrix ( element.io )
Element Call is an open source end-to-end encrypted video and voice conferencing solution built on the Matrix protocol for secure communication....
digiKam, KDE's powerful photo managing software, reaches version 8.3.0 ( www.digikam.org )
Mozilla Firefox 124 Is Now Available for Download, Here's What's New ( 9to5linux.com )
This release updates the Caret Browsing mode to also work in the PDF viewer and adds support for the Screen Wake Lock API.
The growing backlash against AI ( tante.cc )
While the crowd at sxsw2024 booing a sizzle reel of people either promising the beauty of the future “AI” will bring or claiming it to be “without alternative” is funny and went viral for all the right reasons, this event speaks to a deeper shift in perception....
VC/DC: Silicon Valley wants its cut of US military spending ( responsiblestatecraft.org )
It’s official — the Pentagon is becoming a bank. Well, sort of. At a March 8th event on dual-use technology at SXSW in Austin, Texas, director of the Office of Strategic Capital Jason Rathje announced that his team has officially received the internal authority to grant executive loans and loan guarantees, a first within the...
Today's AI is unreasonable ( www.anildash.com )
There's an extraordinary amount of hype around "AI" right now, perhaps even greater than in past cycles, where we've seen an AI bubble about once per decade. This time, the focus is on generative systems, particularly LLMs and other tools designed to generate plausible outputs that either make people feel like the response is...
This week in KDE: Dolphin levels up ( pointieststick.com )
In addition to lots and lots of Plasma 6 stability work and the beginning of Plasma 6.1 feature work, Dolphin received large amount of development this week, resulting in some nice improvements. Check it out!
Completing the KDE Frameworks 6 transition ( volkerkrause.eu )
Getting the KDE Mega Relase 6 out was a key milestone in the transition to Qt 6 and KDE Frameworks 6, but it doesn’t mean we are done yet. There’s still components to port and scaffolding to remove.
Festival crowd boos at video of conference speakers gushing about how great AI is ( www.businessinsider.com )
Audiences attending the SXSW premiere of "The Fall Guy," starring Ryan Gosling, were not happy about having to watch a sizzle reel before the movie that touted the promises of AI.
openSUSE Tumbleweed Begins Rolling Out KDE Plasma 6 Desktop, But No Wayland Default Yet ( www.phoronix.com )
The openSUSE Tumbleweed rolling release Linux distribution has begun rolling out the KDE Plasma 6.0.1, Gear 24.02 apps, and Frameworks 6.0 packages. Plasma 5 is being replaced within the Tumbleweed repository but openSUSE Tumbleweed isn't yet transitioning to the Wayland session by default.
Pivot to AI: Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain ( amycastor.com )
Since the buzzword “artificial intelligence” was coined in the 1950s, AI has gone through several boom and bust cycles....
Tech Titans Are the Robber Barons of Our Gilded Age ( jacobin.com )
Apple’s battle with Epic is a reminder that today’s tech companies behave like 19th-century monopolists. Installing democratic control over these modern throwbacks to Gilded Age robber barons is the only way to curb their power.
KDE Plasma 6.0.2 ( kde.org )
The bugfixes are small but important and include:...
How to lock away sensitive information on Linux with KDE Vaults ( www.zdnet.com )
When you want to protect important information, encryption is your best option, and KDE Plasma makes it easy. Here's how to use its Vaults feature.
Kdenlive 24.02 video editor released ( kdenlive.org )
The team is thrilled to introduce the much-anticipated release of Kdenlive 24.02, featuring a substantial upgrade to our frameworks with the adoption of Qt6 and KDE Frameworks 6. This significant under-the-hood transformation establishes a robust foundation, shaping the trajectory of Kdenlive for the next decade. The benefits of...
European Commission’s use of Microsoft 365 infringes data protection law for EU institutions and bodies ( www.edps.europa.eu )
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/13035348...
Linux 6.8 released ( lore.kernel.org )
Elon Musk v OpenAI: tech giants are inciting existential fears to evade scrutiny ( www.theguardian.com )
In 1914, on the eve of the First World War, HG Wells published a novel about the possibilities of an even greater conflagration. The World Set Free imagines, 30 years before the Manhattan Project, the creation of atomic weapons that allow “a man [to] carry about in a handbag an amount of latent energy sufficient to wreck half...
Why sharing the tech wealth is really important ( www.bangkokpost.com )
One of the defining economic challenges of our time is how to distribute the value generated by groundbreaking technologies, such as generative artificial intelligence and recent innovations in biomedicine and manufacturing. To improve living standards, the benefits of transformative technologies must be widely shared. So far,...
Delay, depress, destroy: How tech corporations subvert the EU’s new digital laws ( edri.org )
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/12896912...