Architect & Nerd
Actions speak louder than words.
I am unable to install EU Login app in my phone because I use LineageOS and not the Google Spy Android.
Thus, I cannot use the double factor authentication, mandatory from the 25-02-2026 on unless I tell Google.
A frontal attack to our #privacy.
Stupid, no?
@sylefeb wow I've never realized what you guys are doing. My wife will hate you for my new hobby ;-)
The war waged by the tech authoritarian oligarchy against the media has reached a new level:
#Palantir is suing us. Us, the Republik Magazin.
A small Swiss media company, funded by readers, founded in 2018 and free of advertising. I am not aware of any other media company globally that Palantir is currently targeting so aggressively.
What is this about? Together with my wonderful colleagues at the WAV research collective Jenny Steiner, Lorenz Naegeli, Marguerite Meyer, and Balz Oertli, we published a two-part series on Palantir's activities in Switzerland on December 8 and 9.
Using an extensive corpus of documents – which we obtained thanks to the Freedom of Information Act – we were able to trace a sales campaign over a period of seven years. Palantir tried to get in with many federal authorities – and was rejected everywhere.
And we also found out that the Swiss Army Staff evaluated the products and came to the conclusion that the army should refrain from using Palantir products.
Among other risks, they feared that data would be passed on to the US authorities.
Palantir is not just any company. ICE uses its products to hunt down migrants in the US. The Israeli army IDF uses the software in its Gaza offensive. The British health authority NHS has made itself dependent on the products for data analysis during the pandemic. And CEO #AlexKarp displays inhuman and aggressive rhetoric towards Europe, while the company itself advertises the “optimization of the kill chain.”
These are all facts, repeatedly verified and published by renowned media outlets. Our research relating to Switzerland and Zurich is based on this.
In addition to analyzing documents, we also spoke to various sources – including Palantir executives here in Zurich. The quotes used were presented to them and approved. Of course, we always adhered to the high standards of journalistic work. We conducted a thorough fact check before publication.
But the company doesn't want us to write the truth.
After the US company owned by right-wing tech billionaire #PeterThiel dedicated an absurd blog post to us, claiming some misinformation (such as that they had not participated in official tenders with the federal administration, a point we never claimed. On the contrary: we spoke from the outset of attempts to establish contact, sales talks, informal meetings, business as usual), after the Global Director of Privacy & Civil Liberties (PCL) Engineering and contact person for Swiss media Courtney Bowman launched personal attacks against us in LinkedIn comments between Christmas and New Year (“partisan fear-mongering”), Palantir's Swiss lawyers demanded a counterstatement on December 29.
We rejected this demand in its entirety.
In January, they demanded the same thing again. We rejected it again.
And now we see each other in court.
But why all this?
Our research on the Swiss army report caused a huge international media response. The Guardian and the Austrian newspaper Der Standard reported on the Swiss army's rejection. Numerous financial portals and stock market magazines picked up our news (which could have consequences for the overvalued stock market company Palantir).
And Chaos Computer Club spokesperson Constanze Kurz presented our research to a huge audience at the renowned IT conference Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg at the end of December.
All of this is making Palantir nervous.
We have now submitted a comprehensive defense brief. We can substantiate all of our findings with several documents and publicly available media reports.
We trust in the rule of law and freedom of the press in this country.
In keeping with yesterday's event “Zurich, little Big Tech City” at the Gessneralle, where we first announced this news exclusively to the audience on site:
World politics will soon be negotiated in Zurich: freedom of the press, the facts about ICE, Trump, Israel, Karp, tech authoritarianism.
The truth.
All this at the Zurich Commercial Court.
We will not be intimidated. And we will keep you informed.
So, Apple has jumped on the Adobe bandwagon and is now charging rent for creative tools 😞
Alternatively, you can use free open source alternatives without any subscription:
VIDEO EDITING
@kdenlive
ANIMATION & EFFECTS
@blender@video.blender.org & @Blender@mastodon.social
RASTER ART / PAINTING
@Krita@mastodon.art & @krita@tube.kockatoo.org
VECTOR ART
@inkscape
RAW IMAGE PROCESSING
@darktable
AUDIO EDITING & PROCESSING
@tenacity
@ardour
@zrythm
DESKTOP PUBLISHING
@www.scribus.net.news
Um ihre Wünsche nach Kastration von DSGVO, DSA & DMA im EU-Parlament durchzusetzen, verbünden sich die Lobbyisten von, Meta, Microslop & Google mit der Faschistenfraktion "Patriots for Europe"
"Big Tech companies such as Google, Microsoft and Meta increased their meetings with far-right groups in the European Parliament ahead of the Commission's push last year, revealed a new analysis by non-profit organisations Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) and LobbyControl."
“The Conscience of a Hacker” by The Mentor is 40 years old today.
Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them https://www.theverge.com/news/858501/bose-soundtouch-smart-speakers-open-source
@HonkHase
Das hat gesessen, danke für die klaren Worte im ZDF!
@AG_KRITIS
@NanoRaptor
Ever tried kagi.com?
Menschen beziehen selbst Position
Mit unseren über 1’200 Mitgliedern, wovon sich mehr als 150 in über 50 Fachgruppen aktiv engagieren, vermitteln wir Informationen zugänglich, erarbeiten konkrete Vorschläge und bringen uns kompetent, aktuell und umfassend in den gesellschaftlichen und politischen Diskurs ein.
Mit einer Spende sorgst du mit dafür, dass wir auch für die Zukunft gut aufgestellt sind: https://www.digitale-gesellschaft.ch/150-franken-fuer-unsere-zukunft/
I wrote a book about the problems with bottled #water ("Bottled and Sold") several years ago. Here's just another reason to avoid it.
https://www.wired.com/story/people-who-drink-bottled-water-on-a-daily-basis-ingest-90000-more-microplastics-per-year
RE: https://mastodon.social/@Mastodon/115689198997943088
Dank Elon ist klar: Behördenkommunikation darf nicht der Willkür von Tech-Konzernen ausgesetzt sein. Nationale, kantonale und kommunale 🇨🇭 Behörden müssen X sofort verlassen! Gleichzeitig sollten sie offene, gemeinwohlorientierte und digital souveräne Alternativen (wie @Mastodon) unterstützen.
#ItsTimeToAbolishX #eXit
#DigitalSovereignty
@digiges @algorithmwatch_ch @OpendataCH @spschweiz @GrueneCH @rahel_estermann @bglaettli @maemst @adfichter
An fast allen Unis werden Betriebssysteme von #Microsoft genutzt - das immer mehr auf Abo-Modells für zentrale Funktionen setzt. Die Wissenschaft macht sich damit abhängig von schwer kalkulierbaren Kosten und gibt gleichzeitig immer mehr Souveränität über eigene Daten auf.
Zeit, auf #Linux zu wechseln, fand Stefan Scherbaum, Prof. an der TU Dresden. Was dabei zu beachten ist, berichtet er hier 👇
Notepad++ version 8.8.9 was released to fix a security weakness in its WinGUp update tool after researchers and users reported incidents in which the updater retrieved malicious executables instead of legitimate update packages.
Zuckerberg has blown 77 billion – enough money to revitalize entire countries – on an idea so overwhelmingly, obviously stupid that I have never once heard anyone, from the Thanksgiving avuncular table to the most wretched depths of social media, say they liked it or even tried it. He was so sure that it would revolutionize the world that he renamed his extremely famous company after it. And now he's on to the next thing that he's so very, very sure about.
The world needs direction from sober people who aim to improve the human condition, not the whims of a handful of billionaire princelings who absolutely, positively cannot be dissuaded from failing at unprecedented scale while chasing their own vainglory off the edge of a cliff.
Petition in Germany to recognize unpaid contribution to free and open source software projects as 'society-beneficial volunteering' (ehrenamt)!
This will give volunteering for e.g. @postmarketOS , @freifunk , @kde , @nextcloud , @Mastodon and other libre projects the same legal status as taking care of an elderly family member or volunteering for a youth association, which provides tax benefits and relaxes requirements for receiving unemployment benefits.
Interested people may sign it using one of the two following links.
The petition in german language: https://www.openpetition.de/petition/online/anerkennung-von-open-source-arbeit-als-ehrenamt-in-deutschland#petition-main
The petition in english language: https://www.openpetition.de/petition/online/recognition-of-work-on-open-source-as-volunteering-in-germany
News article (German): https://www.heise.de/news/Petition-Open-Source-Arbeit-soll-als-Ehrenamt-gelten-11094436.html
News article (English): https://www.heise.de/en/news/Petition-Open-source-work-should-count-as-volunteer-activity-11095357.html
The petition is organized by @webvision.
If you're not a resident of Germany, go ahead and use this thread to organize similar initiatives in your country of residence.
#deutschland #foss #floss #volunteer #ehrenamt #freiwilligkeit #openSource #freeSoftware
Tatsächlich enthält das Paket Vorschläge zu Cookie-Bannern, die Kritik aber richtet sich gegen die viel gravierenderen Vorschläge zum Rückbau von Regeln für KI und Datenschutz. Unter anderem will die Kommission Tech-Konzernen einen Freifahrtschein für KI-Training mit personenbezogenen Daten geben. Die Kritik daran kommt nicht nur von Datenschützer:innen, sondern auch von vier der fünf demokratischen Fraktionen im EU-Parlament. Hier findet ihr die Fakten: https://netzpolitik.org/2025/faq-zum-digitalen-omnibus-was-plant-die-eu-kommission-bei-ki-und-datenschutz/
October in Servo…
🌳🍃 XPath enabled by default
🗜️📦 Compression Streams too
🦾🍎 native macOS arm64 releases
🤖☢️ Android experimental mode
🪆🤝 new input and zoom API
