Microsoft wants 2025 to be the "year of the Windows 11 PC refresh." They want up to 400 million perfectly good computers running Windows 10 to become e-waste. Why? So Microsoft can have their cake ($140-$200 for a Windows 11 license) and eat it (your data) too

It's time to switch sides, and break away from this cycle of endless upgrades. Our new guide walks you through installing a Linux-based operating system—keeping your computer secure long after Microsoft walks away

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/How+to+Install+Linux+on+a+Windows+PC/196722

The king frowned severely. "We are in a crisis," he said. "If we cannot discover what is draining all the water from our kingdom, I fear for the safety of my subjects!"

"Then I have good news, your Excellency!" replied the head wizard. "For I have created a great Artificial Brain to solve complicated problems like these! I have tested it for the last year, and now it is ready to aid us!"

The King smiled. "Amazing! What powers this marvelous device?"

"Water, my Liege!"

#microfiction

The technical consensus is clear: you can't create a backdoor that only lets the "good guys" in. However they're dressed up, these proposals create cybersecurity loopholes that hackers and hostile nations are eagerly waiting to exploit. 6/

Periodic self-repetition: As a data librarian I can say that "AI" is not a matter of personal preference -- whether you like it or not, or whether you have found some use that you think is useful. It actively destroys organized knowledge, and therefore it actively destroys civilization.

Whenever someone looks for a human written text and can't find it because statistical near variants have been created and indexed, whenever "AI" "hallucinates" a reference, knowledge has been destroyed.

Every small and big tech CEO and community manager has to make this choice. It's easier for some.

#Framework #MNT

Edit: thanks! Now I have to make one of the solutions work on the computer if it lets me D:

Asking in English in hope that it'll reach more people! I'm french, windows user and unfortunately not playing locally. Do you know of some software a deafie could use to game with her pals? One that could transcript what people say in their mics? Not necessarily free, I'm willing to pay for something that works well.

Asking for a me.

BTW if you're looking for an open hardware, repairable laptop made by a small team in berlin with no venture capital, maybe MNT Reform Next could be interesting for you: https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt/mnt-reform-next

I continue to be flabbergasted by just how boring billionaires are with their money.

Like... where's the paying your favorite band to record a new album entirely without commercial pressure? Commissioning some artist to make a massive mural of a bee/cheeseburger creature?

Where's the contract to fill an entire swimming pool with cream and let everyone in the city jump in?

Where's the "giving 100 homeless people houses just to see them smile friday"?

You have enough money to explode god, but you'll buy things that make more money, yachts you barely use and houses that are much too big for anyone to sensibly live in.

How fucking empty a person do you have to be for that?

@jpkolsen @simonjust FreeCad har en fin BIM workbench! Har tegnet en model af en hel staldbygning vi er ved at renovere, og det fungerede fint! Også bedre end SketchUp...

https://wiki.freecad.org/BIM_Workbench

Bank of England warns AI stock bubble rivals 2000 dotcom peak

Central bank says market concentration hasn't been this extreme in 50 years.

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/10/bank-of-england-warns-ai-stock-bubble-rivals-2000-dotcom-peak/

Are you coming to #WISPAPALOOZA 2025 by #WISPA Meet #LibreQoS at booth 630 - we are bringing also #DaveTaht's scrapbook - come and say Hi! 👋 and share your thoughts if you feel like it.

cc @toke

#bufferbloat #latency #jitter #BandwidthIsALIE #RFC8290 #QoE #FQ_CoDel #sch_CAKE #OpenSource
#FLOSS #QualityOfExperience #QoS #broadband #Linux #LinuxKernel #Kernel #OpenWrt #ISP #WISP #FISP #InternetServiceProvider #FQCoDel #schCAKE #TokeHoilandJorgensen

My friend David Adler (@davidrkadler), a Jewish-American who was on the flotilla and was kidnapped by the Zionist regime, is detained illegally in an Israeli prison and no one has had contact with him for four days.

Shamefully, the US government has done nothing to help him.

Don't let anyone ever tell you that Zionism is about the protection of Jewish people. Zionists reserve special hatred for Jews who reject their genocidal project and who insist on the equal humanity of Palestinians.

@ekis I have not heard anyone talk about "military grade" drones specifically. At least in Denmark, AFAIU it has been "normal" (commercial) drones hovering over our infrastructure (airports etc).

So it's more like, "someone is looking closely at our infrastructure and we don't know who, so it's probably Putin", than it's "we followed these drones' trajectory as they flew in from Russia".

X is where you find the people who think they run the Internet.

Bluesky is where you find the people who think they ought to run the Internet.

Mastodon is where you find the people who actually do run the Internet, and kind of wish they didn't.

(WIth apologies to Yes, Minister)

Tell me you've never seen Blade Runner or Star Trek without telling me you've never seen Blade Runner or Star Trek

"Amid the rise of artificial intelligence, technophobes and Luddites have continued to insist that machines “can’t really write”—at least not the way humans can. Those naysayers will be hard-pressed to wave away The Great Gatsby, the debut novel from the super-advanced Xerox 914 photocopier—an exciting new voice that wrote Gatsby after being trained on a data set comprising a paperback copy of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby." https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/book-review-the-great-gatsby-by-the-xerox-914-photocopier

I use Tailscale for home purposes, mostly so I can access movies from other locations without having to deal with reverse proxies and security. It's great software. I'm just saying this as preface: I would recommend it to anyone looking for a remote networking solution.

Yesterday they sent out an email about various events they would have a presence at, general marketing stuff, mostly in tech hubs and cons. Nothing remarkable. One of the events was that they were sponsoring a family movie night with another company. The movie picked was Harry Potter, but most people don't care, and it's a fine family movie. I shrugged and moved on with my day. Life's too short to get pissed off about stuff like that.

Well, today they sent out an email apologizing for the choice of movie and promising to do better in future.

I'm not stanning a corp. I wish there were a decent open-source option (well, they're built atop the open-source option, but goddamn do they make it easier). But it was nice to see. In a world which has gone full-on transphobia and doesn't seem to think that Jowling Kowling Rowling is worthy of comment, I guess enough technical people who use Tailscale aren't assholes and complained, or who knows, maybe someone at the company pointed it out, but whatever the reason, they rethought the movie choice. And they didn't just do it, they apologized for it to everyone on their mailing list.

It's a small thing, but I thought I'd share it both to say that I will continue to use Tailscale because it really is good software, but also if you need a nice thing, I guess this is a nice thing.

"These rent-seeking chokepoint obsessives have one move: corner a market and squeeze. They've been ratfucking renewables for decades because it competed with their existing racket.

But they aren't emotionally committed to setting fire to old dead things – they're just nature's most compulsive toll-booth operators, and they're sure as shit going to be looking for ways to stick toll-booths in our renewables future." - @pluralistic

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/115254037095248107

#energy #sustainability #politics

Are you working on Free & Open Source technologies that benefit other people too? Consider to apply for funding in our open calls.

• You can ask for between 5k - 50k euro
• Anyone can apply: individuals, SMEs, institutions, collectives, etc.
• There is little administrative overhead: no reporting-the project is the proof of work. And the application form is simple & straightforward.
  The next deadline for the rolling open call is October 1
  https://nlnet.nl/news/2025/20250801-call.html
  #FOSS #NGI #NGI0 #fossfunding