New from 404 Media: Flock, the license plate reader company that has cameras all across the U.S., is now building a massive people lookup tool using hacked data. The plan is to "jump from LPR to person." Won't require a warrant. This is according to leak we obtained.

https://www.404media.co/license-plate-reader-company-flock-is-building-a-massive-people-lookup-tool-leak-shows/

🚨 Today, noyb has sent a cease and desist letter to Meta regarding its AI training plans in Europe.

👉 If Meta doesn't comply with the request, noyb could file an injunction – or launch an EU class action in the future.

All the details 👇
https://noyb.eu/en/noyb-sends-meta-cease-and-desist-letter-over-ai-training-european-class-action-potential-next-step

Ausführlicher Beitrag zum Bundesregierungs-Projekt "Schüler-ID". Bezeichen wir als "Kinder-Kennzeichen (KKZ)". Gut begründet. Geschichte, Entwicklung und Pläne sowie (Un)Vereinbarkeit mit Volkszählungsurteil. Alle Pro- und Contra-Argumente zum Vergleich. https://freiheitsfoo.de/2025/05/14/schueler-innen-id/

OK, I'm going to hammer on this one. Five days might not seem like much to get 700,000 signature, but I've seen petitions get to 1 million in a day to save baby seals, so why not banning conversion therapy.
We have 4 countries above the threshold, but even if you're in those, your signature can make a different to reach the million.
Aside from that, we are nearing the threshold in the following countries:
Belgium
Slovenia
The Netherlands
Denmark
Germany
https://eci.ec.europa.eu/043/public/#/screen/home

About two weeks later, we've reviewed the #fosstodon stance about their former moderator's display of transmisia and xenophobia.

Essentially, the two-person leadership packed their suitcases and blamed it on too much "drama"; while a new leadership figure said that everything should, in principle, stay the same.

That means our block of fosstodon.org will become a permanent one. Good riddance, despite we'll miss some posts of some darn good projects for now. They chose a bad instance once, but may make a better choice soon.

https://infosec.exchange/@tuxwise/114399514932489945

I have blocked the domain fosstodon.org, since they stand by a moderator that publicly states their approval of transmisia and xenophobia.

Update: While the admin has doubled down ("We don't have an openly [sic] nazi mod.", "We have a moderator that's expressed conservative [sic] political views"), the account of the moderator has been suspended over night, without any follow-up statement by the admin.

I'll keep my block up until I see a clear acknowledgement of their failure.

#TransRightsAreHumanRights
#fosstodon

Consider installing #USBGuard on your #notebook (and other #Linux devices with #USB ports that will leave your office).

It helps protect them against unknown USB devices, by not allowing them to be used without your approval (temporary or permanent).

It may also be helpful with mouse jigglers that were plugged into your desktop PC, to keep your screen lock from kicking in.

Caveats:

1) After installation, use generate-policy to create an initial configuration, as per the instructions, before enabling and starting the service.

2) It is probably a good idea to plug in a spare keyboard and a spare mouse, and run an allow-device -p for them. Hardware may fail.

3) Not all USB devices provide a serial number that uniquely identifies them. By default, USBGuard associates allowed devices lacking a serial number with the exact port they're plugged in: plug them in elsewhere, and they can't be used.

While you can bypass this initially during generate-policy via its -Pswitch, the allow-device sub-command does not have any such option.

BIOS upgrades or CMOS battery failures may change the port numbering of a device – locking you out of using your keyboard or mouse. Or worse: out of internal USB devices that are no longer permitted to work.

Either learn how to chroot, using a fairly recent image of your distro on a bootable stick (read up on #Ventoy), so you can fix this manually, if it happens.

Or remove said port associations from all rules via:

sudo sed -i 's/ via-port "\([^"]*\)"//g' /etc/usbguard/rules.conf

https://usbguard.github.io/

Lawyer friends around the world, can you help @fdroidorg out?

Strengthening FOSS Legal Resilience

Our first step in this process is to build a solid understanding of the current legal landscape affecting F-Droid. We’re actively cataloguing the legal challenges the project has encountered over time, identifying recurring patterns and responses. I

https://f-droid.org/en/2025/04/16/strengthening-foss-legal-resilience.html

#lawfedi #FOSS #fdroid

Just a reminder for con organizers, even outside immigration risks, this is genuinely all that is still relatively safe for gnc attendees in America, 2025.

If you'd like to migrate your #AddressBooks and #calendars from somebody else's platform to a self-hosted or self-managed one, but there's no "migration assistant":

Check whether both platforms support the #CalDAV and #CardDAV standards. If they do, look into #vdirsyncer https://vdirsyncer.pimutils.org

We'd recommend to test-migrate your existing data to a local filesystem storage first, and swap in your new storage only when syncing to the test storage worked without errors.

To protect yourself against migration blunders, mark your source storage (platform) as read_only and let it "win" in your conflict_resolution setting.

For address book pairs, you can also sync the "displayname" and "description" metadata – for calendar pairs, additionally "color" and "order".

#introduction

Our motto is »#Linux #OpenSource News & #KnowHow for #Office Tasks.«

Our posts are for #solopreneurs, #trainers, #facilitators, and everybody else who tackles their office tasks using open source software under Linux.

While we appreciate #portability, we're strictly Linux-only. With respect to other operating systems: no bashing, no praise, no comparisons. We've already made our choice.

Formerly @social.tchncs.de, 2021-09-01 to 2024-06-15; then @mastodon.de until 2025-04-17