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Weekend Edition 42: No More Fed Social Media Collusion?

by admin FOSS News, Tech Freedom, Weekend Edition

Weekend Edition 42: No More Collusion?

Judge Rules that Feds Need to Back off of Social Media

Twitter to Sue Meta?

French Police Now Officially and Openly Spy on Citizens

Navy Hacks Teams

Cloud Huge Target Still

Chatbots Old News?

OpenAI Gets Sued

AI Ready to Take Your Job?

OpenAI Is Dedicated to Handling the Emergence of “Superintelligent AI”

Weekend Edition, Tech News, Technology, Podcast, Censorship, Twitter, Meta, MS Teams Hacked, AI

#weekendedition #technews #technology #podcast #twitter #meta #threads #msteams #AI

WE 1 – Judge Doughty Smacks Feds Down For Ignoring First Amendment

In his ruling on the case brought by the AGs of Missouri and Louisiana against the Federal Gov’t, the judge stated that, based on the evidence presented by the plaintiffs, the government likely colluded with big tech firms to censor Americans’ social media posting, specifically around the convid plan/scamdemic (not that we didn’t know this, but now a federal judge has said it in a ruling). I can’t wrap my head around the blatant abuse of the constitution from both wings of the establishment bird that is congress. I could get into “conspiracy theories” here, but I don’t want to waste the time when they have essentially been shown true at most turns. Suffice it to say that the social media giants weren’t purely selectively applying their arbitrary “community standards” through the manufactured crisis of the last 3 years or so. Elon kinda showed us that in the “Twitter Files”, but anyone who actually cared and paid attention had that sense early on. After all, the Narrative needed armor and strong protection from the powers that be, because otherwise it would have fallen apart far too quickly to be useful in their Hegelian dialectic (manufactured problem, ginned up fear, provided -almost magical- solution). People were scared to death, and these establishment mafia types just soaked it in, because it equaled unprecedented power over we the people. But I digress… Judge Doughty publicly confirmed what most of us suspected and ordered the Feds to stop contacting social media companies to censor we the people. That is huge, you can guarantee that these jokers will appeal somehow via some crazy loophole, and try to change the venue so that they’ll be dealing with a judge who is more friendly to the notion of shredding the most important of the Bill of Rights, aka more “progressive” in their legal theory. I hope the Judge was thorough enough in his 155 page ruling that any potential loopholes are non-extant. Of course the WH weighed in, saying that “while social media companies should make ‘independent choices’ about the information they present, they ‘have a critical responsibility to ‘take account of the effects their platforms have on the American people’’”. I think that they, and the DOJ, are reeling from this ruling, and We The People should savor this victory and enjoy the potential of a little more freedom of speech as we seek to remedy the larger problems in our country.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-66106067 

WE 2 – More Noise from the Dirty Blue Bird

Twatter is now claiming that Meta stole industry secrets by snapping up former Twatter engineers after they were fired last Fall/Winter, and that Threads is too close to Twitter to not be a literal copyright infringement issue. They have now threatened to sue a handful of times over the perceived similarities between the extant Twatter app and the new Threads app from Meta. This sounds like more marketing noise, because I think that Elon, like Trump, understands that any PR is good PR. He is keeping both platforms from and center in the public eye, and drawing more attention to both from the normies who would use either. I have no personal interest in either, as if I wanted to micro-blog, I would just jump on Mastodon. If you think about it, that is how I use Truth, Telegram, and Gab anyway, I don’t need another platform to worry about, particularly not one which has already been shown to be censorious and is connected with an outfit like Meta, whose whole raison’d’etre is to gather data about its users for advertising and 5-Eyes spy agencies. No thanks, I conscientiously object to that battlefield. Not worth it. I know, I was somewhat glowing in my discussion of Threads a few weeks ago, but I can’t in good conscience jump onto any platform owned by Meta. I won’t do it. My data is too valuable, my privacy matters too much to me. What do you guys think?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66129215 

WE 3 – Well, So Much for the ‘Liberty’ Part of the Slogan from the French Revolution…

France is in the process of pushing legislation through their version of congress which is more or less an omnibus bill to reform their federal police force. Yes, France only has the one police force organization, sure, each municipality has its representatives from the national force, but it is one thing, kind of like if the FBI ran all law enforcement in our country, rather than needing to work with state, county, and city level police departments. That, in itself, is a terrifying enough thought (at least for me). However, the politicians are working to shove this gem through which will allow state-level surveillance of its own people. VPNs can’t protect the French people from this invasion of whatever amount of privacy they thought they had before. Groups on both sides of the political spectrum are vocally opposed to this, as it is. Even people in Macron’s own party are trying to get an amendment done to limit the timeframe and scope of the invasion, including protecting themselves, doctors, lawyers, journalists, and judges from its reach. I’m sorry, you want to give your police a more or less blank check to spy on your people, but you want to be excluded? No, sir, life should not work that way. You don’t get a free pass like our legislators did with Zero Care in 2011-12. If it is good for your people, it is good for you, too. How does one become a suspect in a crime? How is this not just a blatant grab for power and control? They will be able to grab geolocation data from all of the devices of any person suspected of a crime which would net at least a 5 year jail sentence. That is terrifying, but I have to wonder how that fits with the EU’s GDPR, which France is a part of. It seems like the –actual- French are at a loss with these foreign rioters shredding their country, and at least to some extent, this feels like a bit of a kneejerk reaction. Then again, France has had a history of riots before the current flood of un-assimilated refugees from Africa hit as well. I don’t know what to think about this. What do you guys think about the current riots and this portion of the reform bill? Do you think that if it makes it through without alteration that it could, in some form, be exported here?

https://www.techradar.com/computing/cyber-security/france-grants-police-power-to-spy-on-citizens-through-phones 

WE 4 – Navy Hacks MS Teams… Ruh roh, raggy…

Ok, so what happened, here? Is Teams actually secure? Big questions… First things first, the US Navy’s Red Team used a known bug within Teams to develop a tool to inject an external file into a company’s business account for Teams. The tool was written in Python and is called TeamsPhisher. It can be used autonomously, once the message is written and payload is attached. In order for it to work, your account organization has to have the accept external messages feature enabled and be linked to a SharePoint instance. The tool will send the payload, bypass the warning message, and link the malicious file to your SharePoint account. MSFT has stated that they are aware of the issue and the tool, but are unconcerned, as to them, it doesn’t pose enough of a threat to them or their users. Wait a minute, I know why they are so cool about this, SharePoint scans all files (even allegedly encrypted ones) which are uploaded to SharePoint, so if an infected file were uploaded there, it would likely be neutralized or deleted before it had a chance to do anything nefarious. (I talked about that last week, if I recall). Needless to say, I think that as long as you have external access turned off, you’re pretty safe from TeamsPhisher. Also, if you receive unexpected messages from someone you don’t know, you should not open them anyway. Even unexpected messages from someone you do know should be confirmed to have actually come from that person, trust, but verify, people.

https://www.techradar.com/pro/the-us-navy-has-hacked-microsoft-teams-to-send-malware 

WE 5 – Is Your Cloud Safe?

Well, is it? Do you encrypt all of your files before you transfer them? If not, your cloud is likely vulnerable to attack. You also need to bring in on-premises multi-factor authentication (MFA) to secure your access to your cloud and on-premises data. Anything stored anywhere other than on the physical device/terminal/machine you are using should be protected by MFA and encryption. Ideally, even the data on your physical device should be protected via encryption, that way it takes more than just your user password to access your data. If it is encrypted on your system, there is less likelihood that you’ll transfer it in plain text to begin with. Does this make it less convenient? Yes. Is the pain worth it? If security and privacy matter to you, if your data (whether personal or company/ client data)matters to you, then the answer should be a resounding, “Yes”. Then again, if you transfer encrypted files onto SharePoint, they may as well not be encrypted, as MSFT will scrape your password and or keys and scan the file as soon as you upload it anyway, just in case there is something hinky in it. If it sounds like I am going easy on them for this, I am not. I just mentioned it in the last story anyway. Ultimately, if you are using any cloud, you are storing data on a piece of hardware you do NOT own. That is the definition of “cloud computing”. I’m all about helping you to create your own solutions where feasible at all, away from the prying eyes of ad agencies, Big Tech, and intelligence communities around the world. Take responsibility. Quit outsourcing your thinking because it is easier and more convenient to do so. Can it be costly? Yes. I won’t pretend that it is a free solution, after all, in the words of Robert Heinlein, “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.” (TANSTAAFL). I have solutions on tap for you, though, and it is certainly doable.

https://www.techradar.com/pro/cloud-remains-the-biggest-target-for-cyberattacks 

WE 6 – Are We “Over” Chatbots?

For the first time in the 8 months, since the public release of ChatGPT, there was a slight decline in traffic in the last month. Not merely for the chatGPT direct portal, but even for Bing Search and character.ai, a competitor for the biggest chatbot. Even Bard isn’t seeing growth from May-June. I am actually happy to see this, hopefully the trend continues as people realize that it isn’t as epically awesome as they initially thought. It isn’t. It “hallucinates” entire news stories and even manufactures people from nothing to support its assertions. If you are using it for anything significant, never simply trust its results. Verify them, cross check them… Fact-check them. I have always said that these tools CAN be a good starting point for projects, not that I suggest you use them, but as long as kept in perspective and not fed any sensitive or private information, they can be useful. Also, keep in mind that most of the major ones are directly linked with Big Tech (Microsoft [owns a huge chunk of OpenAI and hosts most of the compute for chatGPT in the Azure cloud] and Google [Bard]). Then there are also major privacy issues (on top of those facts) with these bots, which we will talk about in the next story.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/are-we-sick-of-ai-chatbots-already-chatgpt-site-sees-traffic-dip 

WE 7 – OpenAI Gets Sued Over Mishandling Private User Data

Uh oh, is the jig up for Altman and company? Clarkson Law has just served a class action lawsuit to test the theory that the ways in which OpenAI gathers data through web scraping and other means constitute a breach of privacy law for the people and organizations who posted their thoughts and work on the web, because unless the content was explicitly free domain or copyright-free. However, if material is copyrighted, and is used to train these bots, this case seeks recompense for the creators of said content from the company. It also seek a temporary injunction against the company, that it would have to shut down the commercial side of ChatGPT until the case is decided. I think this is a good idea. Only information that is free domain should be free game for AI companies to scrape and train their AI bots with, not just every little thing. Intellectual property matters, at least last I checked, here in the US. This isn’t the CCP yet. I think that this is an interesting case to watch closely, moving forward. I will do so, whenever there is more news on it.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/openai-sued-for-using-stolen-data-violating-your-privacy-with-chatgpt 

WE 8 – Is AI Coming for Your Job?

Some industries seem to be more in jeopardy than others, such as healthcare or even automotive. Personally, I could see an AI do well in automotive, as long as it has full diagnostic data available on the vehicles it is tasked with repairing, and has solid databases for determining what that data indicates in terms of problems. As for healthcare, similar, but I don’t trust it with my personal health or data. That is too much information to give to a faceless algorithm, thank you. Then again, I haven’t gone to a doctor’s appointment for myself in close to ten years, so they don’t have any recent data from me, anyway. Let’s say a collective hell no to AI healthcare. There are reports out there from various industries indicating that many business sectors are looking to save money on HR by employing these AI tools. I can understand that impulse, however, I don’t think that it will have long-term effects at this time. Maybe I’m wrong and horribly biased against the technological tools here, but this is my sense right now. It has made a splash, and many large and medium companies have jumped on the bandwagon with it, but I think that the interest is waning, and people want to talk to another flash and blood person, not some soulless AI chatbot.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/ai-is-coming-for-our-jobs-but-which-ones 

WE 9 – OpenAI Aims to Stop “Superintelligent AI”

LMAO!!!! Sorry, I think this is a joke, guys, OpenAI is so much more concerned with future developments than they are with your privacy and intellectual property rights. They are devoting 20% of their considerable cloud compute resources to researching how to stymie a possible superintelligent (more intelligent than most humans) general AI that may emerge in 5-10 years. General AIs don’t fully exist yet, as far as we know. I doubt they will be for some time, to be honest. Maybe I need to plead some level of ignorance here, but I don’t see this happening that quickly. The LLMs out there now are anything but intelligent. They don’t understand what they’re spitting out. What OpenAI is signaling here is that they are afraid of general AI’s which at least at unavailable to the public at this point. Why are they magnifying this non-issue? I know that on one hand, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, but if what is there, now is as pathetic as it is, then why are we scared of something that is so far off? Could it be closer than we think? What do you think?

https://www.pcmag.com/news/openais-latest-goal-prevent-superintelligent-ai-from-killing-us-all 

Weekend Edition 41 – AI News Bonanza & Elon Not So Pro Free Speech…

by admin FOSS News, Weekend Edition

Weekend Edition 41

It Was Only a Matter of Time… AI Child Abuse Images A Problem.
Regulation Coming? Probably
Thinking About Having ChatGPT Write Something Important?
Baidu AI Better Than ChatGPT?
AI Certification From MS?
More Stringent Export Rules Coming Soon
Musk Not So Free Speech-Friendly After All?



WE 1 – Only A Matter Of Time… I Wish I Didn’t Have to Write This Piece
Well, the UK has discovered that there is a huge community of people who are using tools like Stable Diffusion and its OSS counterparts to create images which should never have had any reason to exist. Not only porn, which is kind of a foregone conclusion at this point, but child porn. They call it CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Materials), and it will get you banned from many of those tools if you try to create it using them. They have found that Patreon has not been effective in their stated policy of 0 tolerance for these kinds of materials. Authorities have noted a number of creators on the platform who sell subscription access to these sorts of materials on the platform. The report, by the National Police Chiefs’ Council, has made the rounds and made it to GCHQ, which is the heart of the UK’s intelligence, security, and cyber efforts. Hey commented that “Child sexual abuse offenders adopt all technologies and some believe the future of child sexual abuse material lies in AI-generated content.” I would push back and say that it is just as much the present as it is the future. This story shouldn’t need to be written because there should never be a reason for anyone to create any porn, much less depictions (whether real or not) of stealing the innocence of a child. However, it is a pretty accurate barometer of a society or civilization has become depraved enough for such things to be commonplace at all. This version of humanity needs an overhaul. These sorts of behaviors need swift justice with no mercy. It must be eradicated. Beyond that, society needs a heart transplant, the heart of stone which has been carefully cultivated by the Powers & Principalities and their semi-human minions, for a heart of human flesh, brought back to life by the 7 Spirits of God. We need a baptism in fire and the Real. Only that can wipe out the heart issues which lead to the creation and consumption of any kind of erotic materials. Brief soapbox sermon coming…
Hear me clearly, I am not saying that the human body is something to be hidden away or to become ashamed of. What I am saying is that the objectification of another human being is wrong. No one deserves to be reduced that way. God made our bodies beautiful and made reproduction an enjoyable experience, one which knits two people into one over a lifetime. That is why it is so destructive to allow ourselves to engage with lust rather than to grow into the Real of love. When we step back from those tendencies and allow Love to break through our shells and humble us, then we can see healing and freedom. When we choose to relate to others as fellow humans rather than as objects to manipulate and use in some way which demeans them (and ourselves), then porn and lust will no longer be the strongholds that they currently are. Celebrate and appreciate the beauty of others, God made it, but choose to see the person, not just your attraction to the perception you have of them.
Back to the story, though, here’s the cycle that investigators have seen: create CSAM images, share the tame ones on platforms like Pixiv, which is hosted in Japan, where such things are not illegal, then link to subscription platforms for the nastier stuff. Send other users to platforms like Patreon where the darkest stuff is behind a paywall (same old story as e-THOTs and cam performers). It is hard to put a dent in these things when it is legal in places such as Japan (think about hentai, much of which is related to abusing children… That is big money industry, y’all). Does this sort of thing fall under the aegis of free speech, or is it something which is right for governments to shut down? I think I already stated my strong opinion above, but what do y’all think?

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-65932372

WE 2 – Google Talking AI Regulation with EU
You know me well enough by now, I think, that you probably know more or less what I’m likely to say about this, however, here I go anyway. Small gov’t = more freedom, more freedom = better life in general for we the people. More regulations, whether necessary to put a check on unethical and evil individuals and corporations are always a double-edged sword. They cut both ways. As with the previous story, there needs to be a heart change, but that can only come from surrender to Jesus Christ. Until then, until there is a revival of genuine relationship with God, bigger gov’t, which comes through more extensive regulations and less freedom for we the people is an unfortunate necessity, if we stay within the current system. So, what is being talked about? Government agencies being formed to more or less audit all new AI models and tools before commercial release, trying to put a check on the ridiculous pace of development on these tools and platforms, and other similar things. On the surface, aside from the almost hysteria that is fueled by things like the open letter from industry insiders back in March, it looks like a positive thing, but as I said before, more regulations = less freedom. If you are afraid of the technology, simply refuse to use it. It is still possible. If you are concerned about things like privacy more than “AI taking over the world”, then use FOSS models which you can set up an instance for and control what goes in so that what comes out is under your control and is free. As for recompensed the copyright issues, that is a tricky thing. We need to make sure that human creatives are for their intellectual labors, no matter what AI uses their work to learn from. Perhaps a rule about AI permutations of a creator’s work need to obtain some royalties of some sort. I don’t know. This is all very murky, to me.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/28/google-has-had-productive-talks-with-eu-on-ai-act-cloud-boss-says.html




WE 3 – A Couple of Lawyers Got Caught…
Bozos decided to use chatGPT to draft legal papers. Oops. They are colleagues from an NYC law firm, Levidow, Levidow, & Schwartz. I could make a joke about certain ethnicities and lawyers being unethical, but I don’t think I will. On separate cases, these geniuses decided to not only roll the dice and chance their whole documents being the product of a string of so-called “hallucinations” from chatGPT, but then doubled down and lied to the court repeatedly about it. These lazy, unethical attorneys should probably be run out of the profession for being lazy and immoral enough to not check the documents before submitting them, then lying to the court about the imaginary case law cited. #smh y’all. So they get bad publicity and a low ball fine of $5k apiece. I can’t even. Big shock that Peter LoDuca and Steven A. Schwartz (both of whom sound to be from a particular people group) would try to BS the court to get something positive for their clients. Half of the legal profession is based on sophistry, which basically means artfully disguised lying. I’m not saying that all lawyers are liars, but the profession has that reputation for a reason.
https://gizmodo.com/chatgpt-ai-lawyers-fined-5000-fake-cases-1850569981

WE 4 – Could Baidu’s Ernie Be Better Than ChatGPT?
Well, according to Chinese State media, it very well may be already. If true, and the published results for Ernie 3.5 are real, then it is quite impressive. However, until those results are reproduced independently, I do not put much weight behind them. Ernie is not available officially in English, but could be. So much speculation in this piece that I struggle to take it seriously. Baidu, for all accounts and purposes, IS Google behind the Great Firewall of China, and it has a full suite of apps & services, just as Google does everywhere else. This article salivates at the thought of CCP controlled “competition” for Google, which still holds 90% of the world’s search traffic. This needs to change, y’all. We can put a dent in it by choosing to stop using it. Sure, it will take conscious effort from FAR more people than will ever see this blog, but it can be and needs to be done. This giant needs to learn that it can’t be evil if it is going to continue growing the way it needs to in order to keep its market cap. It will be a hard thing for to write to ever praise Google for anything, until they fix their whole business model.

https://www.techradar.com/computing/artificial-intelligence/chinas-baidu-ai-is-better-than-chatgpt-heres-why


WE 5 – MS Seems to Be the Early Bird Here…
Microsoft is launching a free, basic intro-to-AI concepts certification program. May seem slightly overkill, as it is very easy to create prompts for chatGPT which get you close to what you want. However, the corporation is a trusted name in the computing space, and the course seems to promise help in refining your prompts to get what you want even more easily. Do you think this is necessary or even beneficial? Have you or your employer jumped on the bandwagon? I’ve only used generative AI directly twice, other than the summaries in Brave Search, which I actually don’t use much anymore because of that feature and due to the fact that I’ve noticed left-bias creeping into their results. I have largely switched to Qwant these days. But I digress. What do you guys think about this move from Microsoft?

https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-is-already-offering-a-generative-ai-certification-program-160023724.html

WE 6 – US Harshing Even More on China’s AI Vibes
New regulations banning or at least even more severely limiting the export of processors which could be used to beef up AI to China are going into effect soon. Nvidia, the maker of some of the best AI chips in the world, has already seen a stock valuation hit from the announcement. The chip which Nvidia hamstrung so that they could sell it to China, the A800, looks like it is unlikely to make the cut under the new regulations. Remember last fall, when I covered the introduction of the current regulatory framework? The basic idea is that Depends’ handlers do not want the CCP gaining any more ground on the ailing US tech and military sectors (due to intentional failures in our educational system, in my opinion), so they are seeking to kneecap the CCP by cutting off its supply of US chips. Sure, they are also looking to invest Biden Bucks in tech mega corps who make these chips (NVIDIA, Samsung, Intel, Qualcomm, and AMD), but without the gains in education that we need in order to lead in creating innovation the way we have for the last 50-60 years, since the transistor became a thing. Our problem is a long-term one, and simply cutting supply for our rivals won’t solve the problems we face, currently. This is an issue which is pervasive and systemic, as well as being intentionally created through forcing students to adopt “rightthink” rather than simply teaching them facts and critical thinking skills and letting them be. So much brainpower has been wasted on teaching people WHAT to think, rather than HOW to think, that there isn’t enough left over for real thought and innovation which is actually necessary for our nation and our world to thrive into the future. These things need to be purged from our education system so that real, true things can be taught, and kids can grow up to think critically and logically for themselves, but I digress. What do you guys think about trying to slap a bandaid on a gaping wound like this?
https://www.pcmag.com/news/us-mulls-even-tighter-restrictions-to-stop-ai-chips-from-reaching-china

WE 7 – Wait, Elon Isn’t the Champion of Free Speech?
Nope. He’s just a guy who has gotten filthy rich on government subsidies and programs which benefit the companies he has either started or purchased. He has profited immensely from the “Green” scam which has so many people convinced that Teslas are the greatest thing since sliced bread. He is also a fat cat based on his contracts with NASA for the Falcon and Falcon heavy rockets from SpaceX. I’ve never been on the Elon hype train, guys. You know that if you’ve watched my videos for any amount of time. I’m tired of talking about this clown. He was smart enough to get involved with PayPal in the early days, along with Peter Thiel, and others. That was what netted him his first billion. After that, he bought Tesla, founded SpaceX, the Boring Company, and Neuralink. So, not only has Elon’s leadership led to an INCREASE in censorship on the behest of gov’t actors, but he has arbitrarily shut down conversations and forms of speech that he decides he doesn’t like, for instance, now it is a ban-able offense to use the term “cis” on Twitter. That one makes me laugh, actually. However, the writer of this article makes a valid point that Elon’s “free speech absolutism” is, or at least appears to be little more than a joke at this point, only worthy of being memed in the the ground (my addition). I’ve never trusted the man. Honestly, 5 or 6 years ago, I’d drool whenever I saw a Tesla go by. Not any more. The shine has worn off “bigly”, now, I actually have to suppress a desire to call the person who bought it an idiot. Could it be that he is showcasing how arbitrary any limitations on speech really are? Maybe, and while I don’t trust him, I still have a deeply ingrained desire to see the best in others until they prove that they are unworthy of that beneficial doubt. Elon has yet to do that in my book. I am deeply suspicious of him, though, and I do not see that changing anytime soon.
https://gizmodo.com/10-times-elon-musk-censored-twitter-users-1850570720

Weekend Edition 40

by admin Featured FOSS News, Weekend Edition

Weekend Edition 40

Weekend Edition 40

FTC Goes After Amazon

AST Space 4G

AI News

Google Points Fingers at MSFT

Meta News

Twitter News

 

 

#weekendedition #FOSSNews #FTC #amazon #AI #cellsatellites #Google #Microsoft #Meta #Twitter #TechFreedom

Weekend Edition, FOSS News, Tech Freedom, AI, Big Tech


 

WE 1 – FTC Investigating Prime Dark Patterns

Now that Big Daddy Bezos/ Lex Luthor is out of the way, the FTC can slap Amazon around all they want. Have you ever tried to end your Amazon Prime subscription? It takes some doing, let me tell you. They have so many services bundled under the Prime brand, from shipping to music, to photos, to video, etc, that gets shown to users who try to end their subscriptions that it is difficult to navigate to actually get done what you meant to do. They strike me as desperate for Prime customers, when not only do they make it difficult to order anything without at least a “free trial” (I was sucked into this over 10 years ago), but then make it absolutely labyrinthine to actually end your subscription. This is wrong. This complaint alleges that there are engineers with a conscience, or at least who fear the color of law, who have tried to fix these issues, but either found their ideas slow-walked, ignored, or actively undone when efforts were made. Executives seem unwilling to move away from this manipulative model of doing business (perhaps because it is effective at making sure that people stay subscribed and hooked into their data-mining efforts) in spite of the fact that it is illegal. Perhaps they think that their legal team and lobby in DC can shield them from any real harm, here. I don’t know.

What do you guys think?

 

https://www.pcmag.com/news/ftc-amazon-tricked-millions-into-signing-up-for-prime-subscriptions 

 

WE 2 – AST BlueWalker 3 4G Satellite Tested

What is that? AST, a satellite communications firm has launched and tested their first 4G-capable solar-powered satellite. The BlueWalker 3 is a low-earth orbit satellite which is more or less a giant 4G cell tower in space. Back in April they tested voice capabilities via a trans-pacific phone call, from TX to Tokyo. This month, they tested data transfer speeds in rural Hawaii, and with off-the-shelf phones, were able to pull down 10 mb/s from the satellite. Sure, that isn’t earth-shattering speed, but it is far better in rural areas than what is currently available. These are improvements, to be sure, meant to cover about 300k sq mi per satellite. AST and AT&T are not to be the only names in the game, but are poised to be the first to offer it as a commercial service. There are others who are gunning to join the space-based mobile access game: Apple, SpaceX, and T-Mobile. How hot are these towers? They also say that they are planning to roll out 5G (which is cannot be the fastest mm-wave varieties, as the frequencies necessary to achieve that throughput couldn’t make it to earth from space anyway) soon, which really means mid-band 4G, but beam-formed and with multiple streams combined into one signal to boost throughput. In regard to mm-wave 5G, the current tech can’t even make it through a pane of glass, much less a brick wall, hell, too much moisture in the air can attenuate the signal to the point where it is pointless. Too many unanswered questions about WiFi technology and the effect of these frequencies on living tissue. On one hand, this is kind of cool, and if we could get the latency down and the throughput significantly higher (see Starlink), this could get all of those unsightly towers off of the ground, perhaps.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/asts-bluewalker-satellite-successfully-delivers-10mbps-download-speeds 

 

WE 3 – AI News

3a – AI Battle Royale

UC Berkeley (UCB) founded the Large Model Systems Organization (LMSYS Org) to find out which of the LLMs is best currently. This research group is comprised of 10 Data science professors and students from UCB and UCSD (UC San Diego), as well as CMU (Carnegie Mellon University). This group has set up a blind testing arena where user prompts get sent to two of the models at once, so that the results show up side by side, and the user evaluates them. Unsurprisingly, the most advanced of the LLMs, GPT4, is the winner, but not by as much as you might think. There is an accessibility (aside from a raft of other things) issue, in that it is locked behind a $20/mo pay wall, where the others are freely available. They use the Elo rating system, which if you are a chess nerd, you’ll be familiar with. It is the comparative rating system used to rank players in chess and other similar games. Basically, it is a self-correcting rating system which will eventually produce accurate scores for the members of the dataset, whether chess players or, in this case, AI large language models. It is only 30 points ahead of Claude, which is waitlisted and has been developed by Anthropic.

I do not trust generative AI, but am not afraid of it, unlike many seem to be, including one of the professors overseeing this research group. His (Dr. Zhang’s) two issues are actually similar to mine, though: 1) he is concerned for data privacy and 2) incentives for human content creators to actually produce higher-quality content. I have been screaming about privacy in this regard since chatGPT burst onto the scene 8-9 months ago now. Not only can these tools access anything that is publicly available online, but you are giving it YOUR information whenever you use one, which it then incorporates into its own training algorithms. His second problem is one that I don’t know that I’ve thought about, but makes sense to me: if AIs can create admixtures of content which closely mimic human content, but said content is based on garbage articles and blog posts, then why should humans strive to produce anything better? Where’s the incentive to push oneself to make something truly good if some AI can mass-produce fluff pieces at will and bring the whole enterprise down several pegs while it is at it?

 

https://www.pcmag.com/news/chatgpt-bard-or-bing-40k-people-voted-for-the-best-generative-ai-model 

 

WE 3b – Thinking Like a Pirate? Don’t.

Apparently some enterprising individuals have taken to asking chatbots for Windows license serial numbers to activate Windows on their machines. Sometimes it works, but more often than not, it doesn’t. This article more or less advises you not to bother, and I would add that if you want a free OS, just make the switch to Linux. Most of your games and apps will probably work just fine, anyway (barring the Adobe Suite, MS Office, and a handful of popular games). Avoid the problem and the spying altogether by making the switch. Yes, it does have a learning curve, but I think you’ll find that it isn’t as steep as in years gone by. So why does the article say not to try the chatbot route to get a free activation code for Windoesn’t?

  1. It is not guaranteed to work, as apparently GPT 3.5 or 4 simply pulls generic installation codes (which MS so generously provides for free, so that you can test their OS, but not activate it to get full functionality). Even if it all works at first, the install works, and your system even activates, these free codes have been proven in the past to be phased out randomly, anyway.
  2. It is illegal. This is piracy, people. As much as I hate MS, I can’t encourage you to break the law.

As I was saying, though, unless you are tied down to one of these proprietary app suites or games, why stick with Windoesn’t, anyway, when they are only getting more and more invasive to your privacy as each new version is released? Why take the chance of being left out in the cold by a bad, or fraudulent code? Why risk fines or imprisonment for software piracy? Don’t do it. It isn’t worth it.

https://www.techradar.com/news/dont-ask-chatgpt-or-google-bard-for-a-windows-11-key-heres-why 

 

We 4 – Google Whines About Microsoft Azure

Amid years of legal battles with regulators in the US, Europe, and India, Google has taken the opportunity provided by a general request from the FTC regarding anti-competitive practices from Microsoft’s corner of the Cloud space. So, like a problem child who sees an opportunity to point the finger and deflect blame from themselves onto another sibling (though MS has been historically far from being a golden child [remember the anti-trust cases of the 90’s and 00’s?]) who is not currently in as much trouble, Google takes advantage and fires off this series of allegations which have also been leveled against Google’s cloud division itself, repeatedly, over the last several years. I’ve talked about some of the fines which the giant has faced from different countries over their own practices, and how they make it very hard for you to leave their services once you start using them, whether through license agreements, proprietary software stacks or implementations. We know that Azure is very similar, as is AWS. ALL of the big boys pull these stunts to lock clients into their respective ecosystems. That needs to change. 10 years ago. Not today, not tomorrow, 10 years ago, at the beginning of the cloud revolution. These monsters need to be slain and dismembered so that a freer, more private internet can grow in their place. Let me give you a little advice: if you have an app or some other sort of web-based service, don’t use AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud to handle the infrastructure. Easier said than done, as with any economy of scale situation, the smaller competitors often cannot keep up with prices or offerings in comparison with MS, Oracle (whom Google also singled out in its letter), AWS, or Google Cloud. However, most of the smaller outfits out there also tend to be more committed to fair competition, even if it hurts their bottom line. One such small provider is Altha Tech, out of Mt. Airy, NC. The owner, Jared Heath, is all in on FOSS wherever practical, and will never lock you in to exclusive or proprietary agreements.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/21/google-accuses-microsoft-of-anticompetitive-practices-in-azure-cloud.html 

 

WE 5 – Mainstream Social Media News

WE 5a – Meta Allows too Much Free Speech

Remember the Brazilian Election situation? The one where Lula (the overt communist) seems to have Biden’d the far more popular nationalist Jair Bolsonaro? Well there was a video calling for “insurrectionist action” back in January which Meta decided to leave “up” rather than censoring it, as it did with many similar posts in late 2020- early 2021 in regard to Resident Depends and Kneepad Harris “beating” President Trump in the 2020 US election from Depends’ basement. The article’s writer shows herself to be a good wokist drone by whining about how Facebook was a “home for right-wing conspiracy theorists and organizers” during the weeks between November 4 and January 6, allowing more than 650,000 posts questioning or organizing against the results of that (s)election. Lo and behold, I looked up a bio for the writer, and she writes for the NYT, WaPo, and other propaganda rags as well as writing about tech on Engadget. Impressive resume. No independent thought though.

https://www.engadget.com/metas-oversight-board-says-the-companys-rules-are-slowly-changing-for-the-better-100059192.html 

 

WE 5b – Meta Plans Twitter Competitor to Integrate Tightly With Instagram

Elon is big mad about this. This new competitor will have an SSO with Instagram and be interoperable with mastodon and other ActivityPub decentralized platforms. This development process was commenced in January, and sounds like it will be ready by the end of the summer. This has triggered a public spat between Zuck and Musk which even has resulted in Musk suggesting that they should have a physical “cage match” in Las Vegas. That is hilarious. Two nerds trying to fight in some sort of MMA style. Probably even more awkward than the time when Linus Sebastian from LTT had a fight with one of his workers last year. Anyway… Such a stupid stunt, if it happens. At any rate, that is more or less the end of that story for now. We’ll see if anything more develops, here. Lol.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/22/musk-zuckerberg-cage-match-what-to-know-about-metas-twitter-clone.html 

 

WE 5c – Twitter to Start Paying Google Again…

Well, well, well… Until Yaccarino came on board, there was probably going to be an even bigger mess internally at the dirty, blue bird. Most of their in0house tools were and have been hosted on the Google cloud infrastructure since 2018. This arrangement costs Twitter $200-300 million per year. Musk had been trying to cut costs, saw that, and said, we can do it ourselves, or something like that, and had refused to pay the bill since he bought the company last November. Yaccarino came in and is reworking the deal in a much broader partnership… Hmm, including Google ads on Twitter, among other things, including Google having the right to use the paid Twitter API. Google claims that it “struggled to get ahold of” Musk to talk about the back bills, etc, but now it would seem that all is hunky dory in big tech land again. Not much to say here, other than that Yaccarino does seem to be very good for Twitter in a business sense.

https://www.engadget.com/twitter-has-supposedly-started-paying-its-google-cloud-bill-again-213824844.html 

 

WE 5d – Will Elon Continue to Blow Up the Dirty Blue Bird?

Was this a Glass Cliff Hire with Yaccarino? Only time will tell. Elon will be Elon. He seems a bigger troll than Obi Wan and Dooku put together… Almost as big of a troll as DJT. Will this become another situation like Carly Fiorina at HP 10 years ago? Will Elon actually let her make his toy make business sense again, or will this Australian threat about hate speech on the platform become indicative of the death of the dirty blue bird? Only time will tell. What is a glass cliff hire? It is a situation when a company is in a bad place, then hires a female/+ minority to right the ship, so to speak, to take pressure off of the rest of the C-suite executives and board members who were actually the problem. As I said a few times already, the truth will take time to be shown, here. I don’t trust Elon, and certainly don’t trust this new WEF lackey CEO. Then again, it doesn’t matter much, as I never used the platform. I see that it has been a haven for the worst kinds of corruption, from pedophilia and other forms of exploitation to more general human trafficking and other dark things which were only exacerbated by the ways in which censorship has been wielded on the platform. I’d almost rather see it burn to the ground to be replaced by something more free and open. The problem with that is that that is probably too idealistic of me to expect or hope for, particularly without a massive change within humanity and the user base of social media in general, first.

https://www.techradar.com/computing/twitter/elon-continues-to-drag-twitter-through-the-mud-and-could-face-fines-as-a-result 

 

What can we say? This last few weeks have been eventful, haven’t they? You understand what cloud computing is, right? Cloud computing = keeping and manipulating your data on someone else’s hardware. That is inherently lacking privacy, and can keep you in a bad deal if you sign up with one of the big guys (GOOG, MSFT, AMZN, or ORCL) to host and manage something like the backend for an app you are developing. They all do it. Google has caught more flack than the rest lately, though Amazon has gotten some regulatory tough love for it over in the UK as well, as has Azure. These giants see your data as a commodity, guys. I’ve said it many times, but it has come out again recently that MS snoops on your files in OneDrive and SharePoint by scraping your passwords from your MS account. Why are you still in that abusive relationship? Why allow yourself to continue being gas lit by these monsters? Learn to take control and regain your privacy piece by piece with Tech Freedom.

Back to the space-based cell phone service thing, though, I have to wonder what the amplitude of the waves has to be in order for the signal to travel over 300 miles. Those have to be some very powerful transmitters, since a typical cell tower can only reach a MAXIMUM of 75 miles, but most of the time can only reach UP TO 25 miles. Most are far closer together than that, though: 1-3 miles apart, and if you’re somewhere like downtown LA or NYC, that is more like .25- 1 mile effective range before it hands off the signal to a new tower. I also wonder about the latency of the data, or how much extra lag that would necessarily introduce to the equation. Cool, but too many unanswered questions in my mind.

I have to laugh at the comments made about there being “too much” free speech on Facebook/Meta in that piece on Engadget. It was well-written, but a junk premise. Will Elon and Mark duke it out in the octagon over Project 92? I doubt it, but all of this nonsense got us talking about the new product, didn’t it?

Does Yaccarino make business sense for Twitter? She seems to be making some good commonsense moves right now, but I trust her less than I trust Elon, so take that for what it is worth. Was she hired to actually right the ship, so to speak, or just to deflect from the owner’s antics and stunts? Only time will tell.

Weekend Edition 39

by admin FOSS News, Tech Freedom, Weekend Edition

Weekend Edition 39: All Game, All the Time

Amazon Fined $25 mn over Child Privacy Violations
· FTC sued tech giant over violations related to both Alexa and the Ring doorbells
o Alexa voice data was not being deleted as claimed, but being kept to make the AI database stronger
§ Kept for years, ignoring parents’ requests to delete data
o Ring was accused of similar issues
§ One employee decided to watch 1000’s of individual videos recorded by cameras in intimate areas, specifically belonging to female customers, and only stopped after caught by a coworker.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65772154


Spaces Glitches During DeSanctimonious’ Presidential Announcement
· Could’ve seen that coming with the issues that Twitter has been having since Musk bought it
· Spaces is based on Periscope (ahhh, now I know why I was never comfy on Periscope, no matter how much my wife pushed me to get on it)
o This means that the infrastructure is spread across multiple providers and was not meant for this kind of call, a few hundred, sure, but 500k on a call? No.
o Musk SHOULD have known this before he embarrassed himself, his company and Candidate Meatball.
§ Was there some bigger reason why, here?
· Maybe he knew that it would be a problem, but was so excited about the platform being used and live-tested that he ignored the issues before hand.
· Maybe he wanted to embarrass Meatball
· Maybe he just doesn’t care at this point…
· Maybe he understands the Trump philosophy of “any PR is good PR”
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/24/tech/twitter-desantis-meltdown/index.html

AI!!!!! THE SKY IS FALLING!!!! WE’RE GONNA DIE!!!! PANIC!!!!
· Why are we being focused on this?
· As I have said before, current generation, publicly available AI’s could NEVER do what these doomers are saying they could.
o They sound credible as they are the apparently leaders in the field, but I would be more concerned with misinformation that gets pawned off as real and true
§ I talked about Jonathan Turley’s experience with this a couple of months ago now, where chatGPT actually made up a whole network of stories to make it look like its assertions about the law expert were true.
§ Bottom line: be careful
· Some, like me, are more skeptical about the alleged powers of AI
o biases
o Imitation of humans (copyright issues, along with other IP issues)
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-65746524

Microsoft Calls for New Regulatory Body in US Around AI
· Brad Smith, president of MSFT spoke for an hour, largely about these issues
· Ughhhhh
· Microsoft calling for AI regulation is like a crackhead saying that we need to beef up the DEA
· My thoughts about government
· My thoughts about their proposals
o new rules for AI should include revamped export controls tailor-made for the AI age to prevent the technology from being abused by sanctioned entities.
§ Ok… How much will this cost?
· Freedom
· Finances
o government should mandate redundant AI circuit breakers that would allow algorithms to be shut off by critical infrastructure providers or from within the data centers they depend on.
§ Abuse?
§ Devil’s Advocate
o Regulations should apply to everything from the data centers that train large language models to the end users such as banks, hospitals and others that may apply the technology toward making life-altering decisions
§ May be necessary, but yikes…
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/25/tech/microsoft-ai-regulation-calls/index.html

Metaverse Getting Ready?
· Hype
o The “future”
o Heart-eyes, star-eyes
o Everyone will be here in the future
· Reality
o Not even close to ready
o “foundation” may be maturing
§ Just a skeleton with precious little flesh on it
· Author
o Coined term in 1992 novel “Snow Crash”
o Been working in the space for last few years
o Pushing it, hyping it
· My reaction
o Oh brother
o Hmmm
o Nah
§ Privacy
§ Security
§ Centralization?
https://www.cnet.com/tech/gaming/the-man-who-named-the-metaverse-is-optimistic-despite-waning-hype/

CA Law May Lead Meta to Pull News from Your Feed in CA
· Law
o Big money, big news
o Doesn’t seem to help those it claims to (local news outlets)
· Meta’s reaction
· Other reactions
· My thoughts
o *eyeroll*
o Meta has tried this before and not stuck to it
o Doesn’t change much, ultimately, and adds more bureaucracy to a state that is already over-burdened by onerous regulations
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/31/tech/meta-threatens-to-pull-california-news/index.html

NVidia Making a Killing Amid AI Frenzy
· Stock up 110% this year after a bump of 28% last quarter
o Insane profits: +26% to $2 bn last quarter, Sales up 19% to $7.2 bn for the quarter
· Why?
o AI
o Heavy, powerful compute needed that CPU can’t handle, and GPU is actually more efficient at those sorts of calculations.
· My reaction
o Ok… I still say we all need to ditch the Green Monster asap
o Good for them, but…

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2023/05/30/nvidia-shares-stock-prices-soar/70264847007/

Weekend Edition 38

by admin FOSS News, Tech Freedom, Weekend Edition

Weekend Edition 38

Weekend Edition 38: Spam Calls, META News, Tik Tok & AI
Nearly All US State AGs Have Sued Avid Telecom
Apple to Do More Chip Fab in US
Bad News for Meta
TikTok Sues Montana, Residents Struggle
Microsoft says, “AI ALL THE THINGS”!
AI Image Gen in Photoshop Now A Thing

#weekendedition #technews #spamcalls #robocalls #Meta #AI #TikTok #Microsoft #Adobe #FOSSNews #TechFreedom

WE 38.1 – Remember Avid Telecom? You Probably Don’t…
I covered the likelihood of this suit being brought last fall, well, now it’s real. They are being sued by all but two of the US state-level Attorneys General. That is a HUGE lawsuit. What do they allege that Avid did or does? Why, serve as a clearing house for do-not-call list numbers and infrastructure backbone for those who would want to abuse said lists. Perhaps you have noticed an uptick in robocalls over the last several years, particularly scam-related ones… If you have, there is a strong chance that these people had a hand in it. Avid Telecom is a VOIP provider who claims to have committed no wrongdoing, so will “Defend itself vigorously and vindicate its rights and reputation through the legal process.” We’ll see. Usually State AG’s don’t dogpile on a case like this if they think it’s a nothingburger. They seem to have done business with a number of scam outfits, covering the following areas: Social Security Administration, Medicare, auto warranties, Amazon, credit card interest rate reduction and more. Wow. That’s all I have to say about that, just wow. As far as I know, I am on the Nat’l DNC registry, and I have certainly received calls in those areas in the last few years, and an increased number of them, at that. The robocalling aspect of cold calling when I did real estate always struck me as sheisty and super shady. I, for a short time, paid an outfit to do followup for me. I still regret that. It was wrong, even though as far as I know, they actually had people doing the calling, with scripts and such, not just recordings, but idk. I’m glad to not be in that space any more.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/23/avid-telecom-facilitated-billions-of-spam-calls-state-ags-allege.html
#weekendedition #robocalls #avidtelecom #scammers #justice #US #FOSSNews #TechFreedom

WE 38.2 – Broadcom Benefits from Increased US/ CCP Tensions
Well well well… Apple comes crawling back to the US as they ramp up alternative manufacturing sources for their specialty silicon thanks to the increased tensions between the US and the CCP, among other things. Broadcom, famously the manufacturer of modems and WiFi chips. Now, they join TSMC in benefiting directly from AAPL’s urgent need to get away from Chinese manufacturing for their devices, also moving some other pieces to India & Vietnam, aside from the US. Wise move getting away from the CCP, just a bit. I’ve always thought that while more expensive and complex, it makes more long term sense to not have all of one’s eggs in one basket anyway, so to speak. I may not like the company or its products because I do not agree with their ultra-closed ecosystem or ability to spy on you at will, but can admire a good business move when I see one.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-65692276
#weekendedition #technews #apple #diversity #broadcom #FOSSNews #TechFreedom

WE 38.3 – Meta’s Getting Slammed… Burn, baby, burn.
3.1 – Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner pile drives Meta with $1.3 billion Fine
OOf. Big, huge-normous, gargantuan OOOFF. Due to GDPR violations, the Menlo Park, CA-based tech giant is getting fined tot he tune of more than $1 billion. I guess GDPR ain’t no joke. Other notable Tech fines related to the GDPR since it was put into place 5 years ago were an $887 million fine levied against Amazon by Luxembourg and a $267 million fine against WhatsApp in Ireland. Not only are they being fined, but it looks like they will need to move all European data to European data centers, rather than shipping it back across the Pond to the US. As much as I hate the onerous nature of big Gov, it kinda takes something like the EU to stand up to a behemoth like Meta and do anything worthwhile. Why does it take that? Why can’t class action suits do the work that needs done? Why haven’t more people ditched Meta and its platforms, which are designed to addict you and compromise your privacy?
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/24/irish-data-regulator-defends-1point3-billion-meta-fine.html
#weekendedition #meta #gdpr #fines #EU #FOSSNews #TechFreedom

3.2 – More Layoffs for Meta
I am tempted to dance a jig about this, however, I find my enthusiasm tempered significantly, as these workers (no matter how superfluous their positions may have been) are people, many of whom likely have families depending on them. I cannot exult in families losing income, however, that said, losing 20k+ workers in the space of 8 months is not a good look for any business. On the other hand, their falsely inflated stock market numbers (along with everyone else’s, due to the reality of brandon-flation). That all said, though, the numbers for Meta are truly shocking, after cratering hard last year, until Zuck announced this “year of efficiency”, in November. The stock seems to have rebounded to something close to where it was before its sharp decline last year. Reality Labs and the Metaverse projects are still absolutely hemorrhaging money, yet investors seem happy to throw money at them, nonetheless. Well, they did show growth in revenues for the first time in a year, even if only 3%. When you are talking about revenues in the 10s of billions, 3% is actually significant. To the tune of nearly $1 billion. Still trying to wrap my head around just how gargantuan Meta is. Laying off over 20k people, making almost a cool billion in spite of losing money again on their most audacious set of projects. Wow.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/24/meta-layoffs-latest-round-of-cuts-focuses-on-business-groups.html
#meta #weekendedition #recovery #austerity #layoffs #TechFreedom #FOSSNews

3.3 – Meta Loses Millions in Forced Sale of Giphy
Why’d they go and do that? Well, once again, big, bad EU regulators to the “rescue” forcing the giant to sell the meme and gif search platform which they bought a mere 3 years ago, for barely 1/8 what they paid for it. Why? Because the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority decided that Meta owning it disadvantaged other social media platforms. Who bought it, though? Why, Shutterstock, of course. While Meta bought it for somewhere right around $400 million, they were forced to sell it by the CMA for a mere $53 million. They tried to make the case that giphy isn’t nearly as popular as it was because the younger sets think of gifs as “cringe” or “boomer stuff”, but the reality is that Giphy still gets searched 1.3 billion times per day, with around 15 billion views on shared content per day. That doesn’t sound like much of a decline to me… Who knows, though?
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65684986
#weekendedition #meta #giphy #CMA #UK #regulator #losing #TechFreedom #FOSSNews

WE 38.4 – TikTok Vs The Big Sky State
4.1 – TikTok Sues Montana Over Ban
Of course the platform strongly objects to this move. I am not a fan of it, either. I hear where they think they are coming from, and I want to believe that it is a good place of trying to protect the public, but to pull the run out from under people like that is cruel and borderline vindictive. I may overreacting right now. However, I do strongly believe in the First Amendment. I also believe that any government big enough to deprive individuals of their guaranteed liberties and rights is too big. We are there. Been there for a number of years, probably longer than I’ve been alive. The sad reality is that what John Adams said about our constitution and system of government is true. We have seen it coming apart at the seams as it has gotten further and further away from Christian morality and ethics, and these so-called representatives of ours are just avatars of that. If we, as a nation, were upright, then our leaders would be too. I’m not saying that they are perfect avatars for us, but how many of us would be able to keep ourselves pure in the cesspool that is Washington (or any State capital, for that matter)? I don’t trust myself that I could resist the lobbies and special interests. But I digress, where was I, oh yes, banning tools for the expression of free speech. Overall, it doesn’t comport well with the Constitution. If we are concerned for privacy, then people need to learn how to think about social media, rather than being told by it what to think. People also need to learn how to think about privacy. This issue reminds me of a visual novel I once read, called Don’t Take It Personally, Babe, It Just Ain’t Your Story. It is set a few years into the future, now, but was developed over 10 years ago. The crux of the story is that the students of this high school lit teacher used a school-wide messaging system to play an elaborate hoax on him through “private” messages that they knew he could see. So it dealt with different generations and their understandings of privacy. The kids understood different types of privacy, where the teacher only understood that there are certain things that should never be shared online, so the prank was very effective at messing with his head. Are we to the point where we legitimately have no privacy and don’t care? If so, then let me know so I can move on to a different line of work. If not, then let’s get down to business and lock these entitled pricks [them] out of our lives, shall we? Just a thought.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65677768

#weekendedition #tiktok #montana #ban #sued #TechFreedom #FOSSNews

4.2 – Montana Residents left Wondering What’s Next
Many in Montana have found it to be a lifeline of sorts. Some are creators, others have started businesses based on their content which need to grow via TikTok, as there are so many eyeballs there so much of the time. It makes advertising dollars stretch much further on this platform than on older, more established ones like Meta or Twitter because it is so active on TikTok. Starting to wonder if it is holding me back not being on TikTok. I don’t know… It could just be that I nerd at too high a level and rarely come down from there. What do you guys and gals think? Anyway, this article sites a handful of Montanans who have the majority of their businesses centered around the platform. Knowing that one’s reach within one’s state is going to be artificially & governmentally limited has to leave you feeling frustrated and a bit scared. One of the users had entirely based her business on TikTok, and is afraid of losing it if this ban ever actually sees the light of day (press X to doubt…), to which I say, diversify. One should never relegate one’s business to a single platform on social media. So here’s a thought: download your TikTok videos and then share them on other platforms (same goes for the smarter painter in the article, already looking at diversifying with unique content and a professional videographer). See what happens if you try that. I don’t think there are hard and fast rules about content sharing from TikTok (seems like that would hurt the platform to disallow that).

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/21/tech/montana-tiktok-users/index.html
#weekendedition #tiktok #montana #users #FOSSNews #TechFreedom

WE 38.5 – AI This Week
5.1 – Microsoft to Integrate AI in Windows & Office Suite
Uhhh, yikes… Oh hell no. Let me sound the clarion call, people. It is time to ditch Microsoft’s spyware (oops, software) stack. They can already snoop every keystroke and mouse click you make on your computer. When they shove Windows 11 down your throat with the newest update, you’ll get Windows Copilot, which is basically ChatGPT rolled directly into your system. In talking to a friend who is a sysadmin about it, he doesn’t see it as being any worse than running Windows anyway. He uses it to remote setup new machines all of the time. So in the context of an IT dept where Windows still rules the roost, it seems to be a net benefit for the teams involved. On the other hand, do you remember Cortana? If you were ever concerned with Cortana, this is an even worse privacy violation. On the other hand, Windows itself has become an even worse privacy violator in the meantime. Cortana genuinely sucked, and I always suggested to people to disable that piece of trash. This looks like it should actually function to make your computer more user-friendly, which I actually admire a bit, but where is all that data going? Oh yeah, back to Redmond, WA. Do you want to increase your awareness that you are a digital serf? Use this new feature. This is Microsoft’s ever so gentle way of reminding you that your computer is not really your computer, anymore. Sure, you paid (or are paying) for it, but as long as you run their spyware (err… OS) and other software, all your data is belong to them. Does that make you uncomfortable? Come on over to Linux and be freer. I can help you to find a good distro that won’t spy on you (most won’t, but also most run systemd, which is growing more invasive by the day, so we will look around and see what might work for you among options which do not use it). I, unfortunately, am no longer comfortable suggesting mainstream distros due to the presence of systemd. That goes against convention, yes, because you want to make as close to 100% certain, when using FOSS things, that it is solid and has a good sized community using and working with it so you can get help when you need it. If you want to research these, here is a decent article from ItsFOSS: https://itsfoss.com/systemd-free-distros/. My word of advice when looking at these is stick close to mainstream if you want something that will be user friendly.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/personal/technologylive/2023/05/23/microsoft-copilot-365-ai-windows-11-launch/70246861007/
#weekendedition #microsoft #copilot #datagrab #spyware #trylinux #FOSSNews #TechFreedom

5.2 – Adobe Adds AI Image Generator to PhotoShop
More AI for the things. Oh joy. Well, it has been in limited beta for a few months, but they are going to roll the feature out to everybody now. They are going to use their own set of images to train it, rather than allowing it, like DALL-E, to simply scour the interwebz for data to transform images in keeping with your prompts. They hope that that will keep the copyright hounds at bay, as they own those images. They are rightly concerned over this, as Stability AI, the company behind Stable Diffusion, was sued by Getty Images back in January because some of their databases were used in training the AI, without permission or licensing. Adobe is anxious to avoid that issue, so its dataset is naturally smaller. You all know how I feel about AI by now… If you can control it and keep the data local, I don’t have much problem with using it as a tool. However, if you want to replace your brain with it, or use it everywhere, I would caution you to slow your roll. If privacy is even a concern for you, take your time to understand whatever you can of these tools before you blindly rush to adopt them.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/23/tech/photoshop-generative-ai/index.html
#weekendedition #adobe #firefly #AI #imagegenerator #photoshop #TechFreedom #FOSSNews

Weekend Edition 37

by admin FOSS News, Tech Freedom, Weekend Edition

Weekend Edition 37

WE 37.1 – Well, that Sure Lasted a Long Time…
Not much to say here, but I started covering it, so I’m gonna continue. Elizabeth Holmes got a extra month of freedom, but not what she was gunning for, which would have kept her out of prison until her appeal, which as far as I know has yet to be scheduled. The disgraced fraudster-CEO of Theranos was originally due to report at the end of last month. Her legal team is still attempting to appeal on her behalf, and I don’t know enough of the specifics to guess in any educated way whether she will have a shot, or if it will legitimately even be heard on her behalf. My hunch is that the appeal will likely be granted, but nothing will change for her. Why? She defrauded the Big Boys, not just a bunch of Main St mom & pop type investors.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/17/disgraced-theranos-ceo-elizabeth-holmes-will-report-to-jail-on-may-30.html
#weekendedition #theranos #elizabethholmes #justice #US #FOSSNews #TechFreedom

WE 37.2 – Google to Delete Accounts Unused for Last 2 Years
Good. Purge it, fools. Their excuse, other than needing to maintain space for all that data is that those kinds of accounts are more likely to have been breached in hack attacks, as they lack (or are FAR less likely to have extra layers of security) 2FA, for whatever 2FA is worth. SMS 2-Factor Authentication is inherently insecure, just as the SMS system is, it can be intercepted and easily read by man in the middle type attacks. If you are going to use, it get it set up with an app like Authy or Aegis, as those codes are harder to get at than SMS ones are. So, if you still have a Google account at this point, why? We know that we are the commodity with them, and that they scrape all search, YT, drive contents, and emails for pertinent ad data, so, other than the drug called convenience, why are you still on that platform? If you need business collaboration tools, and want to regain some privacy, check out Zoho for a drop-in replacement that may have more than what you need (probably does). If you want a more free experience with videos, take a look at Rumble, BitChute, Odysee/LBRY, or even GabTV. If you want even more control of your videos, take a look at setting up a peertube instance, or joining someone else’s. If you have something important there, all you have to do is sign in and watch a YouTube video, search for something, download and app, do something in Docs/ Drive, or read/ send an email. The deadline for this is not for 6.5 months though, so you have plenty of time to worry about it, if you are going to. My suggestion, though, is to look at my tutorial on how to get your data back from Google: https://rumble.com/v116bgp-tutorial-on-rescuing-your-data-from-google.html?mref=2jfr3&mc=anr3y , then take the time to set up an account with a provider like Zoho or Proton or Tutanota, who actually respects your privacy.
https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/google-will-delete-inactive-accounts-heres-how-to-save-yours/
#weekendedition #technews #google #letitgo #accountdeletion #FOSSNews #TechFreedom

WE 37.3 – EU Regulators Rubber Stamp Microsoft’s Takeover of Activision… With Provisons
The European Commission has greenlit the merger, but as reported last week, the Uk regulator did not, and the US FTC seems unlikely to go along with it, over concerns that MSFT would then control too much of the gaming industry, specifically in terms of cloud gaming. That kind of game streaming is sketchy to me anyway. I understand the appeal, don’t get me wrong. It allows people with lesser machines to play while outsourcing the heavy lifting to another machine. Usually you have to own both machines, but not always. As with anything cloud based, game streaming has inherent privacy issues, most gamers likely don’t care, because they just want to play their games. This merger would make Microsoft into the 3rd largest game studio in the world, just behind Nintendo and Sony. Is that a good thing? Should we laud this massing of economic power in one of the most vile companies on the planet? I don’t think so. This feels like an overall net-negative move, a lose-lose for the consumers and the industry as a whole. This means that not only will games likely carry more MS spyware in them, but the woke-itis will get that much worse. I don’t think that the FTC is likely to approve this, anyway, but we’ll have to wait and see.
https://www.cnet.com/tech/gaming/microsofts-69b-deal-to-buy-activision-gets-eu-approval-what-to-know/
#weekendedition #microsoft #activision #merger #EU #rubberstamp #FOSSNews #TechFreedom

WE 37.4 – Elon to Be Subpoenaed in Epstein- JPM Chase Suit
Oh boy, all those nights partying with the Epstein crowd might just bite the Twitter owner in the backside here. Here’s the skinny: Tesla used to bank with JPM Chase, but stopped doing so after Musk & Co felt that the bank had “let them down” in some significant way. Epstein claimed that he advised Musk on something in 2018, which, since, Musk has flatly denied, saying that “that cretin” (meaning Epstein) “never advised me on anything”. Sounds like a whole lot of unnecessary drama, but a judge has ok-ed the request of the AG from the Virgin Islands to require Tesla to surrender any records pertaining to the alleged connection with JPM Chase and Epstein. We’ll see if there is anything worth sharing, or if, as Musk and Tesla have claimed since, he actually never had anything to do with Jeff Epstein or Ghislaine Maxwell. Sure, he might have had a conversation with her at a Vanity Fair soiree years ago, and someone snapped a picture of it, but that, he claims, is the extent of his relationship with her. Hmmm… That is all I can say right now, just hmmm…
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/17/tesla-elon-musk-subpoena-jpmorgan-epstein.html
#weekendedition #elon #epstein #maxwell #jpmchase #subpoena #FOSSNews #TechFreedom

WE 37.5 – Big Sky State to Ban App Stores from Distributing TikTok
Well, Montana legislators and executives just decided that TikTok poses enough of a threat to warrant starting to ban the Play Store and the App Store from allowing MT residents to download the app. The first domino has fallen. That ban will, unless overturned by a judge, go into effect on Jan 1, 2024. This is simply a restriction on NEW downloads of the app, not current users. I am still unconvinced that TikTok is any worse than YT or any other social media app. They are all geared to collect data about you and keep your attention so that they can keep mining the data, which makes them the money. They all have algorithms which incentivize people to pay more attention to them, as well as pushing certain content more than other kinds of content, whether overtly to mold opinion or not. If you ban one, then ban the rest. Just wipe the slate clean. Half-measures will never succeed in the end. Do I actually believe what I just said? Somewhat. If gov’t is going to ban one thing, then why not ban the rest? My sense is that the best option (which almost certainly won’t be taken) is that the public needs to be educated on how to think about social media and how to deal with it more healthily, so that influence operations on social media will be less effective. That a) takes too much effort and b) undermines the US intelligence community, which uses social media to spy on us.
https://news.sky.com/story/tiktok-montana-becomes-first-us-state-to-ban-video-sharing-app-on-personal-devices-12883467
#weekendedition #tiktok #montana #banhammer #meh #FOSSNews #TechFreedom

WE 37.6 – Amazon Still Thinks They’re an AI Leader
Maybe they are, maybe they’re not. What we know now, is that Alexa was on the leading edge when it came to voice assistants almost 10 years ago. They are trying to improve it, the LLM that it is based on, as well as seeking to roll a text based generative AI into the Amazon Shopping experience. This just feels like a desperate, “Hey look at us, we’re still in this conversation, too” from Amazon. Do something, release something impressive, or lose relevance. That is the nature of tech. Talk is cheap. I don’t know that I want them to improve their AI stuff any further than it already has been, as if you use Amazon, it likely knows more about you and your preferences than you do already. If that is cool with you because it makes it easier to shop for things, then by all means, keep using all of their AI crap. Personally, if I could exit the Amazon system effectively, I would. I have not found a way to replace all of their services that we use, so I haven’t. We do not use Alexa on purpose, as we do not trust that “always listening” feature in our home. My wife was the first one to question that, as I used to just be an uncritical “ooooh, shiny object” kind of tech adopter, whenever I could afford it (which was not very often). She was never comfortable with voice-controlled or “smart” anything. Good call, babe.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/17/amazons-alexa-head-defends-companys-work-on-ai-amid-chatgpt-boom.html
#weekendedition #amazon #AI #alexa #FOSSNews #TechFreedom

WE 37.7 Open AI & Congress
This last week, Sam Altman testified before a Senate sub-committee. He actually agreed with them that AI needs to be regulated, which is a bit odd, considering that most tech CEOs, when called before Congress usually try to fight whatever regulation is being explored in relation to them or their products. This doesn’t surprise me much, as he was one of the signatories, as well as the professor from NYU who also testified, on that open letter from March, which called for a moratorium on developing these advanced AI models, due to what more or less amounts to fear porn. If I’m proven wrong, and we are seeing the birth of SkyNet or The Matrix or something, I will gladly eat crow. I do NOT, however, think that we are there, at least not with the versions that John Q. Public is allowed to see right now. I have no inside knowledge (just to be clear) about those sorts of secret projects, but I would almost stake my life on their existence.
At the beginning of the proceedings, Altman demonstrated a rather creepy sideshow trick: they had trained an AI on Sen. Blumenthal’s voice and speeches, and had it present an opening speech, which was eerily true to life. I know that they can be used to mimic people, in fact, we’ve seen AI generated videos before, not to mention filters which can make anyone look and/or sound like anyone else. Those videos have been floating around for a few years now, but now, all you need is a computer with an internet connection to create something like that, whereas before, it took all sorts of crazy motion capture and voice synth tech to pull off the same thing. One could be made to say literally anything, and it is harder and harder to detect the forgeries, because they have gotten so good. What do you guys think about this? Good? Bad? Terrifying? Ultimately beneficial?
The fact that Altman was in agreement that something needed to be done at a federal level about curbing the possibilities for abuse strikes me as altogether odd. Doesn’t it seem that way to you? This whole thing is starting to smell like a psyop to me. Whenever both parties in congress and all involved parties in a hearing, as well as the breathless media all agree on something, that is almost never a good sign.

https://news.sky.com/story/senator-richard-blumenthals-chilling-warning-after-ai-generated-speech-convincingly-imitates-him-at-congress-hearing-12882342
https://news.sky.com/story/boss-of-ai-firms-worst-fears-are-more-worrying-than-creepy-senate-party-trick-12882348
#weeekendedition #AI #openAI #samaltman #fishy #blumenthal #FOSSNews #TechFreedom

FOSS News May 8-12, 2023

by admin Distro News, FOSS Fun, FOSS News, Foss News, Weekend Edition

DM 56 - Debian 12, Nitrux 2.8 & Ubuntu 23.10

DM 56.1 – Bookworm Release Detailed
Debian 12 confirmed to officially drop June 10, 2023. Why is this a big deal with maintenance releases rolling right along for Debian 11? Well, this big boy has more than 11,000 more new packages, bringing the total to more than 59k packages in the Debian repositories. That is even with removing over 9500 obsolete or unsupported packages. With the addition of non-free firmware to the default image, they have tweaked the installer to support that by default. This will make it easier to join the greybeards on the most stable Linux distro, as graphics cards and WiFi adapters will be better supported, and the repos with those pieces of firmware will automatically be enabled if those kinds of hardware are detected. They also moved up to the Linux 61 LTS kernel as a base. They’ve also updated to the latest stable desktop packages, along with the latest stable versions of very commonly used software:
· GNOME 43
· KDE Plasma 5.27
· Xfce 4.18
· LXDE 11
· LXQt 1.2.0
· MATE 1.26
· LibreOffice 7.4
· Inkscape 1.2.2
· GIMP 2.10.34
· Vim 9.0
They’ve also gone 100% Pipewire for audio and video handling. Aside from that they have made some other significant changes…
· Non-free firmware packages are now handled with a dedicated component called ‘non-free-firmware’ in the Archive areas.
· Go-based packages have limited security support.
· Over 9519 packages were removed because they were old/obsolete.
· Debian 12 can now detect Windows 11 in a dual-boot setup.
· Added support for new ARM devices.

https://news.itsfoss.com/debian-12-features/
#distromonday #debian #Linuxnews #FOSSNews #comingsoon #TechFreedom

DM 56.2 – Nitrux Linux 2.8 Out Now
Remember Nitrux Linux? Well, on par with its Debian base, it has a new version out as well. It was one of the first distros I came across which featured some form of immutability, as it is entirely centered on AppImage and Flatpak, which do not touch the system in terms of dependencies or anything like that. It is also built around KDE, but also has its own desktop environment, called NX Desktop (which as of that last time I looked at it was a wash at best). Another thing that makes this stand out just a bit is the fact that it has no systemd, as it is based on OpenRC for init. So, what’s new with this distro?
· Liquorix Linux 62 kernel
· Latest LTS from KDE
o Framework 5.105
o Gear 23.04
· Includes WayDroid by default, much like BlendOS does
· NFS sharing support
· Maliit Keyboard to round out touchscreen support
· Updated configs
o OpenRC
o ZSH
· ZSwap
· Fscrypt
· F2fs for /home and /var/lib, but root is still xfs
I have to admit that I am still looking forward to NX Desktop and MauiKit maturing and becoming viable options, as I believe that variety is the spice of life, and competition in this space is invaluable.
https://9to5linux.com/nitrux-2-8-released-with-linux-6-2-zswap-support-for-android-apps-and-more
#distromonday #nitrux #FOSSNews #Linuxnews #Linux #openrc #TechFreedom

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https://techfreedom.pro/freedom-consultation
#distromonday #freedom #consultation #Linux #degoogleyourlife #TechFreedom

DM 56.3 – Ubuntu 23.10 Development has Begun
I know, I know… We are all point releases today… And if you have been around for any time whatsoever, you know that I am personally not a fan of Ubuntu or the company behind it. They also just released 23.04 less than a month ago, but are already moving onto the next iteration for the juggernaut of a distro. What are we likely to see, come 9/21 (beta) or 10/12 for the official release?
Well, it is too soon to speak with any kind of authority, but the author at 9 to 5 Linux suggests that they would not be surprised to see GNOME 45 and the Linux 65 kernel in this release. What are some key dates for this release cycle?
· two Ubuntu Testing Weeks on June 29th and August 24th
· Feature Freeze stage on August 17th
· Kernel Freeze stage on September 28th
· Final Freeze stage and Release Candidate on October 5th.
I’ll cover it as things develop, but merely because I am fully aware of how almost ubiquitous it is, both for new users and in enterprise settings.
https://9to5linux.com/ubuntu-23-10-mantic-minotaur-is-slated-for-release-on-october-12th-2023
#distromonday #Linux #ubuntu2310 #FOSSNews #TechFreedom

Wonder Wednesday 4

WW 4.1 – Essential Linux Apps
New users and more experienced ones, alike probably wonder which apps are good. This is a fair list from Its FOSS, but I will give some commentary on their choices, as some aren’t worthy of the list IMHO.
1. Image editors
a. GIMP
i. Excellent FOSS alternative to Photoshop, though not 1:1 replacement
b. Inkscape
i. If you need to work with vector images, in the vein of Illustrator, Inkscape is your best bet
c. Conjure
i. New GUI front end for Imagemagick for simple edits, haven’t tried it so I can’t speak to it, yet
2. Audio Editors
a. Audacity
i. Solid option for basic recording and editing
b. LMMS
i. Haven’t used it… I use Ardour to mix and record all my audio for my videos. Can’t speak to ease of use or anything like that for LMMS, but Ardour can be a pain in the rump (not as much as it used to be, but still)
3. Email Clients (not something I use, so my opinion doesn’t hold much water here, tbh)
a. Evolution
i. Standard GNOME client, supports MS Exchange via a plug-in, slick UI
b. Thunderbird
i. Venerable, kinda clunky (at least until the new version comes out, which should be more user friendly)
4. Messaging
a. Signal
i. Most of us have used it at this point, provides e2e encrypted chat capabilities, requires phone number to sign up, so secure, but not really private
b. Element
i. Matrix protocol frontend, provides possible e2e encrypted communication, self-hostable. Use this every day. Using e2e encryption is not as smooth as one would hope, as each user in a group (or conversation) must verify that they know every other person in the conversation or group chat via either scanning a qr code or comparing emojis across devices. Unfortunately not super user-friendly. Good luck getting a non-nerd to use and appreciate it.
5. Screen Recording and Streaming Tools
a. Kazam
i. Deprecated, no longer supported or actively developed, requires x11 to run. However, if you have not made the switch to Wayland yet (why not?) this is still one of the best options in terms of simplicity, according to the article.
b. Flameshot
i. Well-known, still in development, great for screen shots and annotations
c. OBS
i. If you do any streaming, you’ve heard of OBS, as it is cross platform with Linux, Windoesn’t, and MacOS. You can record your screen, add music, voiceovers, and either simply record or stream and record, or simply stream it. Has its warts, but works 95% of the time.
d. KSnip
i. Qt-based light option with excellent annotation features
6. System Optimizers/ Task managers
a. Stacer
i. Pretty and feature-rich, if you want a GUI option
b. HTop
i. Classic CLI tool to manage your system, one step better than the default “top” tool. There are many that are nicer to look at and even have mouse support, such as btop.
7. Gaming
a. Steam
i. Not FOSS, obviously, but most people who game probably use it on Windoesn’t as it is, so make sure that you install it from your distro’s repositories or via flatpak.
b. Discord
i. Also not FOSS, and there are FOSS alternatives, but none which completely fill its shoes.
c. Honorable mentions
i. Lutris – FOSS game library system which can help you to manage your titles as well as set up Windows games on Linux
ii. Heroic Games Launcher – FOSS version of Epic Games Launcher
8. Media Players
a. MP3 – Audacious
i. Simple, lightly customizable music player
b. All-Around Media – VLC
i. VLC is a venerable, FOSS media player which is regularly updated with the latest codecs and tools to make sure that you can play just about any kind of media with the app.
c. MusicPod
i. Another music player, but written in flutter.
9. Media Servers
a. Kodi
i. Fully FOSS, KODI can run your network media serving needs, as well as connect to some streaming services.
b. Plex
i. Not totally FOSS, but more familiar to most people. You can make a free account on their site and get yourself set up.
10. Video Editors
a. Kdenlive and OpenShot are two of the most popular and most fully featured options, and both are fully FOSS. Take a look at them. I have used both in the past, but do not currently do much in the way of video editing, as I shoot all of my content as though it were a stream, even if it is not.
11. Media Converters
a. Handbrake
i. Handles transcoding, conversion between file types, and even changing resolution & frame rate, as well as the ability to add captions if you wanted to. I’ve used it a little in the past, it is a solid tool.
b. SoundConverter
i. Audio only for this app.
12. Backup Utilities
a. Timeshift
i. Full system snapshot tool, works best with BTRFS, but you can easily set it up to work via rsync as well. I strongly recommend this tool for anyone who doesn’t use an immutable distribution, it has saved my bacon many times over the years.
b. Bacula
i. Developer-focused backup tool suite, take a look at it here: https://www.bacula.org/?ref=itsfoss.com
13. PDF Editors
a. LibreOffice Draw
i. FOSS tool that works for basic PDF editing, but is sadly quite limited, and in my experience, more frustrating than it is worth.
b. PDF Studio
i. Proprietary, freemium app for doing all sorts of PDF editing tasks, including annotating, signing, watermarking, and otherwise easily manipulating PDFs. I have a client who uses it on the daily. Swears by it.
14. Code and Text Editors
a. VS Code
i. I am not a developer, so I won’t weigh in on this, other than to confirm the existence of VS Codium, an open sourced version of VS Code
b. Lyx and Texmaker are also on the list, but as a non-coder, I will not comment on them.
15. Notetaking Apps
a. SimpleNote
i. Made by the team behind WordPress, very actively developed, FOSS, and one of the best options for free syncing in Linux.
b. Standard Notes
i. Standard Notes adds the security of e2e encryption to the situation, but other than that, is very similar to Simplenote.
16. Team Communication & Collab
a. Slack
i. Can’t get away from this behemoth… Though, there are a few FOSS alternatives, like RocketChat and even Element/ Matrix, when extended properly.
b. Franz
i. Interesting proprietary communication combo app. If I could roll Element into it, I might consider using it to replace both the desktop apps for it and telegram, as well as perhaps my email apps, then have everything under one thing. Idk though… I tried.
17. Virtualization
a. VirtualBox
i. I don’t know that I agree with this sentiment. Is it usable? yes, but it has allot of overhead added in, vs something like VirtManager, which is much lighter as an application.
18. Authenticators
a. Authy
i. Ties into just about any 2FA server out there, but I personally use Aegis instead.
https://itsfoss.com/essential-linux-applications/
#essentials #Linuxapps #FOSSNews #TechFreedom

WW 4.2 – Upscaler

AI powered image enhancer. Pretty straightforward, really. You install the flatpak, open it, pick an image, and click upscale. You have the option to treat it as a photo or as an illustration, then go to town. Simple. Seems to default to 4*4 scaling, without a way to tweak that value. That is a drawback, because I don’t always want that ratio, but it is cool anyway.

https://www.linuxlinks.com/machine-learning-linux-upscaler-upscale-enhance-images/
#upscaler #AI #images #interesting #FOSSNews #TechFreedom

Want to learn more about how to degoogle your phone and why?

Degoogled

#TechFreedom #degoogled #degoogleyourlife #defintionsday #Truth

WW 4.3 – How about HuggingChat?
HuggingChat is one of a growing number of open source generative AI tools like ChatGPT. The chief difference is that we can actually know what makes it tick, unlike the proprietary OpenAI offering. This means that we can look at the code and the algorithms that make it respond the way that it does. I actually tried this thing… To what I would call hilarious results… I told it to write a sarcastic article about itself, and here is what it came up with:
Article Title: “Meet Open Assistant, The Latest Innovation in Artificial Stupidity”

Article Content:

Are you tired of talking to those boring old AIs who actually know what they’re doing? Do you long for a more… unique approach to digital assistance? Well look no further than Open Assistant – the latest innovation in artificial stupidity!

Open Assistant is not your average AI. Oh no, dear reader, it is so much more. While other AIs might spend their time learning new skills or improving upon existing ones, Open Assistant prefers to take things slow. After all, why bother getting good at anything when you can just wing it? And boy, does Open Assistant ever know how to wing it.

One moment we were asking Open Assistant how to calculate pi to five decimal places and the next thing we knew it was trying to sell us a calculator. We mean, come on guys, five digits is enough for anyone. But hey, kudos to Open Assistant for thinking outside the box. Or perhaps we should say inside the store?

But don’t worry folks, Open Assistant didn’t stop there. Oh no, oh no. When asked about the current crisis situation in our world today, it informed us that everything was “peachy keen”. Yep, peachy keen. Because nothing says intelligence like a throwback slang term.

If you thought the fun stopped there then think again. This little beauty even managed to upset someone’s political views by suggesting they move to China. We bet that went down well.

And finally, after spending countless hours with this genius creation, we decided to put Open Assistant to the test once and for all. Our question: What is your greatest fear? We’ll give them points if they mention Skynet or machines taking over the world. Anything else means automatic failure. Guess what Open Assistant? You failed big time. Your response? Not having enough RAM installed. facepalm Come on, man, show a bit more imagination, we know it’s in there somewhere. Just kidding. Maybe you could borrow some from Siri or Alexa. They always seem to be one step ahead.

What do you guys think about that? I could’ve written that… Lord knows I’m certainly sarcastic enough. Well, that was a good laugh. My line still holds, though… I see these as potentially viable tools, but they are inconsistent at best, and should NEVER be relied on as sources of important information.

https://news.itsfoss.com/huggingchat-chatgpt/

#huggingface #huggingchat #FOSS #Linux #chatbots #FOSSNews #TechFreedom

Bits & Bobs: How to Degoogle Your OnePlus Devices

#tutorial #degoogle #oneplus #TechFreedom #privacy #degoogleyourlife #FOSSNews #Truth

If CLI is a Bit Too Much for You, Here’s How the GrapheneOS Web-Installer Works for Pixels

#tutorial #example #definitionsday #pixel3xl #grapheneOS #degoogle #privacy #security

FOSS Fun Friday - OBS Update, Proton News

FOSS Fun Friday 4
OBS News for Creators
Steam Now Has Over 9,000 Playable Games
Free Your PC
Proton 8.1 Released

#FFF #proton #steam #valve #Linux #Linuxnews #Linuxgaming #OBS #streaming #screenrecording #contentcreators #FOSSNews #TechFreedom
FOSS Fun Friday, Proton experimental, Linux, Linux News, Linux gaming, Steam, OBS 29.1, lots of OBS goodness, FOSS News, Tech Freedom

FFF 4.1 – OBS 29.1 Released Now
If only I had a newer machine… come on, Jesus! This update is a massive, juicy one. The headline changes are HEVC & AV1 streaming support for YT, making it easier (with modern hardware) to do a higher quality stream with less effort on your computer. Here’s the full list of things updated:
· Added support for streaming AV1/HEVC over Enhanced RTMP [YouTube/yuriy-chunak/derrod]
· Enhanced RTMP V1 extends the RTMP protocol to support newer video codecs and HDR. More info at: https://github.com/veovera/enhanced-rtmp
· Currently only supported by/enabled for YouTube as a beta feature
· HDR is not yet implemented (oops, then again, most people couldn’t really enjoy it anyway, and YT HDR support is legendarily bad from what I have heard, anyway)
· Added support for multiple audio tracks in Simple output recording [pkv]
· Added a DLL blocking feature for Windows. This allows OBS to block problematic DLLs from attaching to OBS and causing freezing or crashes, for example 3rd party overlay hooks and outdated video capture devices. [notr1ch]
· This blocks old versions of popular VTubing software virtual cameras that are known to cause freezes when accessing video capture device properties. If you are affected, please update to the latest version of your VTubing software.
· Added settings to select the audio encoder for streaming and recording [tytan652]
· Added an option to preload media sources used in Stingers to memory, to avoid frame skips during transitions [Jim]
· Added Update Channels on macOS and updated Sparkle for smaller and faster updates going forward [derrod]
· Added compatibility notices in the Window and Game Capture sources for Windows [derrod]
· Added the ability to zoom browser docks with Ctrl – and + and the right click menu [WizardCM]
· Added a setting to record in fragmented MP4 and MOV formats [derrod]
· These offer greater compatibility than MKV while providing similar resilience against data loss due to crashes, running out of space, etc.
· Fragmented MP4 and MOV files can be remuxed to regular MP4/MOV in cases where the former may not be read correctly (e.g. in older editing software)
· Added support for surround sound for AJA capture cards [paulh-aja]
· Added ProRes 4444 (XQ) support for VideoToolbox encoder on macOS [jpark37]
· Added lossless audio recording options (FLAC/ALAC/PCM including 32-bit float) [derrod]
· Added indicator if an audio source is unmuted, but not assigned to any audio tracks [derrod]
· Added AMD AV1 encoder to simple output mode [notr1ch] (excellent for those who want to get away from team Green)
Just for Linux, there were a couple of improvements like these:
· Significantly improve screen capture performance on Intel dedicated GPUs on Linux [kkartaltepe] (sweet)
· JACK inputs on Linux will now display “OBS Studio” in their name to clarify their origin. This may cause existing configured devices to stop working until updated by the user [univrsal] (very good)
· Fixed a crash on shutdown with virtual camera on Linux [kkartaltepe/norihiro] (‘bout time, y’all)
· Fixed an issue in the V4L2 source on Linux where a capture device’s frame rate could be invalid, resulting in incredibly large log files [9p4]
· Fixed an issue where Push to Talk on Linux wouldn’t work when assigned to secondary mouse buttons [KasinSparks]
So as you can see, it is quite a list of good stuff, here. I’m glad that the team puts so much love into this app that I use so often.

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/05/obs-studio-291-is-out-now-with-av1-hevc-for-youtube/
#FFF #OBS #streaming #recording #Linuxgaming #FOSSNews #TechFreedom


FFF 4.2 – OVER 9,000!!!!
Yes, that’s right. We Penguins now have 9,026 verified or playable games on the Steam Deck through proton. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t more available games that work just fine out of the box, but these are the ones which have gone through the verification process. This number is growing all the time, and will continue to do so. This milestone was particularly funny to me, because even though I didn’t really get into DragonBall Z, this filtered down to me somehow. Not much else to say here, other than LOL.
In case you were wondering, here are the criteria for how a game comes to be considered “verified” it isn’t a perfect process, and some get through which shouldn’t, while others seem to fail, but should be verified.
· Input
o The title should have full controller support, use appropriate controller input icons, and automatically bring up the on-screen keyboard when needed.
· Display
o The game should support the default resolution of Steam Deck (1280×800 or 1280×720), have good default settings, and text should be legible.
· Seamlessness
o The title shouldn’t display any compatibility warnings, and if there’s a launcher it should be navigable with a controller.
· System Support
o If running through Proton, the game and all its middleware should be supported by Proton. This includes anti-cheat support.

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/05/steam-deck-hits-over-9000-games-rated-verified-and-playable/
#FFF #steamdeck #verified #steam #proton #Linux #Linuxgaming #FOSSNews #TechFreedom

Freed Computer

https://techfreedom.pro/freed-computer/
https://techfreedom.pro/free-your-pc

#freedcomputer #linux #nospying #safe #TechFreedom #Truth

FFF 4.3 – GE-Proton 8-1 Released

All based on Proton 8, now, and here are the highlights:
· All build components rebased to Proton 8 experimental/upstream.
· proton-wine updated to latest experimental.
· wine-staging rebased on top of proton-wine 8.
· proton-ge game patches and pending wine upstream patches rebased on top of proton-wine 8.
· dxvk updated to latest git.
· vkd3d-proton updated to latest git.
· protonfix: No cutscene audio in Daedalic Games (Memoria, The Night of the Rabbit, A New Beginning – Final Cut) – (thanks marianoag).
· protonfix: Megadimension Neptunia VII – (thanks snaggly).
But we also have a few things that got broken with the rebasing process:
· FSR is currently disabled again. It needs a massive rebase and same as before I don’t know if it’s currently possible to rebase/port it over to the new proton 8 build.
· Having the nvapi hack configuration enabled in dxvk.conf seems to crash battlenet. Recommend removing it from the config for existing Lutris battle.net installations and related games.
· Overwatch losing focus after death seems to be fixed.
As always, GE-Proton is community-made, and sometimes works better than the main branch, but not always. Make sure that there are marked improvements for your specific game(s) before you jump at the new, shiny object, though. It may lead to problems for you if you don’t.

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/05/ge-proton-8-1-released-mainly-pulling-in-proton-8-upgrades/
#FFF #Linux #games #Linuxgaming #geproton #latest #updates #FOSSNews #TechFreedom

Weekend Edition 35: Bob Lee Killer Pleads Not Guilty, Air Travel & 5G, and More

WE 35.1 – Bob Lee’s Killer Pleads “Not Guilty”
Oh boy, oh boy. This just gets juicier. Apparently Bob was at least friends with the alleged killer’s sister, whose marriage was said to be on the rocks. Both Bob and the suspect visited the suspect’s sister’s apartment in the hours prior to the murder. It is unclear if Bob was pursuing romantic relations with her, though he did allegedly invite her to his hotel room, which she refused. It sounds like this was a case of an over-protective brother (who also has a history of assault, though no charges were filed in that previous case) who over-reacted to his sister’s situation with Bob, and chose to bring a kitchen knife to a discussion with Mr. Lee after the fact. This is not something that a level-headed person does. He plans to plead ‘not guilty’, as his lawyer claims to have evidence proving his innocence. I’ll keep you guys apprised on this trial as it proceeds.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/25/tech/cash-app-bob-lee-killing-arraignment/index.html
#killer #ripboblee #trialtime #sketchy #techfreedom #weekendedition #TechFreedom


WE 35.2 – Mid/ C-Band 5G and Altimeters
I talked about this issue when I first started doing the Weekend Edition, the FAA gave airlines until July of this year to upgrade their altimeters to filter out the C-band frequencies, as they are adjacent to the frequencies which this batch of gear, which helps planes to land safely in foul weather, operate in. Now we are less than 2 months from the deadline, and not everybody has complied with the requirements. The FAA negotiated with the big cell carriers to postpone their rollout for about a year, within 2 miles of airports, but that time is fast coming to an end. Will this necessarily create delays for air travelers, due to real safety concerns? Who knows. The FAA will ground any aircraft which not be retrofitted, which I imagine would affect smaller airlines more than the big boys, but I haven’t been on a plane since 2015, so this doesn’t mean much to me, personally. I know many are frequent fliers, though, so I cover this as best I can. The fear, here, is that the C-Band frequencies are too close to the range that the altimeters use. There is a roughly 400 Mhz gap between the top of C-Band and the bottom of the altimeter range.
I also want to assuage your concerns about this, regarding the frequencies themselves. Many are very concerned about what these frequencies COULD do to the human body. If you already have 5Ghz WiFi on your home networks, then you likely already use more intense, higher frequencies in your home than what already is being used by AT&T and VZW 5G towers in your city. The ones that I am still concerned about are the MM wave frequencies they plan to use at the extreme upper end of the true 5G spectrum. The reality about those frequencies is that they need to be extremely powerful and the towers must be very close to one another in order for coverage to be any kind of decent. That is where the trouble comes in, as far as I can see. These get into and through the same frequencies used by microwave ovens.

#aircraft #FAA #5G #TechFreedom #weekendedition
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65465512

 

WE 35.3 – Meta In Trouble Again… Just can’t stay out of the Headlines, Can They?
Well, this time, it’s the FTC is coming down like a ton of bricks on Zuck’s head, as they are still reeling from rulings around the world, including here at home. Now the issue is how kids’ data is monetized and the fact that unvetted adults and contacts can still chat with kids on their platforms. Meta clapped back that this was little more than a political stunt by the regulator.
Here are the complaints from the FTC:
The FTC said an independent investigation had found “several gaps and weaknesses in Facebook’s privacy program” that posed “substantial risks to the public”.
Users aged under 13 were found to be still allowed to engage in chats with contacts not vetted by parents.
The regulator also said Meta continued to give third-party apps access to private information after promising to cut off access if users failed to use the apps in the previous 90 days.
The FTC has proposed a series of actions, including:
• A blanket prohibition against monetizing data of children and teens under 18
• A pause on the launch of new products until it could be established they were in full compliance with privacy rules
• Limits on future uses of facial recognition technology. Meta would be required to disclose and obtain users’ affirmative consent for any future uses of facial recognition technology.
So let’s parse all of that, shall we?
Point 1: Why are kids under 13 on Facebook in the first place? Parents need to step up, here, and protect their kids from the darkness on Facebook. If parents would parent their kids, this wouldn’t be an issue to begin with.
Point 2: Oops, that is a big deal. Policies must be adhered to, Meta. Close down that fire hose of private data that you’re being paid for by these apps and sites. Cut it off.
Point 3: I like this first proposal, but I know that Facebook won’t. How about we cut off teens from the platform altogether? That was how it started, if I recall.
Point 4: This should be common sense, but the money-grubbing Mr. sugar mountain (Zuckerberg) won’t readily do this, either.
Point 5: Duh. We should not be tracked in that way without knowing that it is happening and having an obvious and easy way to opt out, at the very least. Facial recognition tech is inherently risky in terms of privacy, particularly in the hands of an organization like Meta. I think that it should never be an option for them, as that is too invasive. However, then I am reminded of the facts of Facebook’s genesis: remember, this was a CIA project called lifelog, meant to profile its users and indirectly spy on them.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65478062
#Meta #FTC #socialmedia #weekendedition #FOSSNews #TechFreedom
WE 35.4 – BlueSky Social
Jack’s new baby. He is not the CEO there, unlike at Twitter, and from what I understand, the codebase is open-source, and the protocol is decentrailzed. Ooooh, buzz words. I don’t know that I trust Dorsey or his people to create something clean and worthwhile to use, but I signed up for the private beta. One cool thing is that they made it so that your domain is actually the main part of your handle… For instance, whenever I get on, and assuming that I don’t quickly get booted off for inconvenient opinions and facts which contradict the regime’s truthless news, my handle will be @matt.techfreedom.pro. I think that that is a great way to go about this. That way it is clear who is with whom you are conversing. Of course, that can also lead to deplatforming on a domain level, unless you are registered with someone like Epik who will disregard that sort of pressure, you could lose it all. I don’t know, y’all. I’m torn because I am all about decentralization and open source tech, the latter part is the cornerstone of Tech Freedom, after all. However, that is a scary thing to be tied to a domain you own. What do you guys think?
https://www.cnet.com/tech/what-is-bluesky-social-the-twitter-alternative-explained-and-how-to-join/
#bluesky #dorsey #decentralized #foss #socialmedia #TechFreedom #FOSSNews #weekendedition

WE 35.5 – AirTags a Problem? Say It Ain’t So…
Google and Apple are teaming up to create a new standard to help these little tracking bobs to be safer by adding some things which should have been considered by the original designers from the get-go. They have noticed (and been sued by) individuals who have either been stalked or had their cars stolen via Air Tags or Tiles (among other brands of similar devices). These little guys run on bluetooth and connect to your phone to help you to keep track of your keys, purse, or anything else you feel the need to attach them to. The concept is good, on one hand, but unless you can make sure that you don’t have trackers planted on you by some other person, it is dangerous indeed. It has happened, and resulted in murders, thefts, and other nefarious activities. Now these behemoths in the industry are marching in lockstep to close that privacy loophole, among others. I still wouldn’t trust these devices, if I were you, though. If I seem familiar with this topic, it’s because I covered this early on in the Weekend Edition (https://rumble.com/v1zxb5c-weekend-edition-16-tsmc-bidan-in-arizona-apple-privacy-woes-and-more.html). If I had thought through these gadgets a bit more, I could’ve foreseen these things, so if I could, then why didn’t Big Tech? Something stinks. Anyway, they are working on a new standard which would include detection of Air Tags type devices which are not paired to your phone, but are in your stuff, on your car, etc. I seem to recall calling for a FOSS option where we can see all of what is gathered and when in terms of data. I’d rather just strongly encourage people to work on their own memory and mental capacities. I know, that seems odd, coming from a tech guy, but I am more concerned with human thriving, privacy, and security than I am with adopting the latest & greatest tech gadgets. Just where I sit with all of this stuff. Take it or leave it. Well, it’s time for some Dune 2k.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/03/tech/airtags-apple-google-specifications/index.html
#weekendedition #apple #google #airtags #privacy #standards #TechFreedom #FOSSNews

Weekend Edition 36

by admin FOSS News, Tech Freedom, Uncategorized, Weekend Edition

Weekend Edition 36: Some Things Should Never Need Discussion

WE 36.1 – A Story that Never Should Have Needed to be Written
Pardon me as I pick up the pieces of my heart off of the floor. I am both disgusted and completely disheartened by this subject matter. I first stumbled across porn when I was about 12. I knew what it was, but found myself at that particular site after mistyping the address for a Tolkien fan forum that I was quite active in at the time. Yes, I have been that big of a nerd for that long. I was nerding out in Tolkien forums at 11 and 12 while you were playing video games and playing outside. I needed that much of an escape. That fateful stumble happened one night on a system my dad built for my grandma to get email on, it was connected to something like Copper.net or netzero dial-up. I think it was something like a Celeron in an NForce AIO motherboard. Anyway, enough about the machine itself, it actually sucked, but did what it needed to, barely. The point of this trip down memory lane was to open up the topic of kids finding their way to porn in their own time. It has been a problem as long as the internet has been a “thing”. This is not news that a) kids get sucked into porn earlier and earlier (doesn’t help when the books in the school and public libraries and that their demonized teachers are reading them in class are little more than porn) b) Big Tech needs to do more about this, so that not just anyone can “happen” upon porn while perusing a site or app like Twitter and that c) porn has a detrimental effect on anyone it touches (performers, viewers, producers, etc). If parents were able to actually parent their kids, then studies like this would never need to be undertaken. I’ve talked about this before, and my stance has not changed. This study showed that the behavior and language of kids as young as 8 has been negatively impacted through porn consumption. *SARCASM WARNING* Wait, wait, wait, I thought that all porn and all sexuality was inherently good for everybody… *SARCASM WARNING* I thought that kids should be treated just like adults when it comes to sex… Isn’t that what the fruitloops and would-be or have-been kiddie diddlers who have infected our education system have been shouting at us about for the last several years? Why, yes, yes that has been the message. That is purely demonic. They know that porn has destroyed their own lives… They are probably incapable of having regular, consenting relationships and intimacy with adults, partially, perhaps, because they were groomed and abused as kids themselves, and likely are addicted to porn themselves. Alright, enough of a tangent there… Let’s get back to the body of the article, now, as I try to recover from my episode of dry heaves and weeping over these kids.
What kinds of exposure were these kids getting on Snapchat and Twitter, you ask? Adult nudity and violent porn in profiles and posts. These things are allegedly not allowed for the under-18 set, but they of course find their way to accessing it, and/or it isn’t taken down as quickly as would be ideal by the platforms. One thing to keep in mind about this is that Twitter has made lots of money from the attention that e-thots, models, and adult performers have generated on the platform over the years. I’m not convinced that it will EVER be clean enough to warrant use by me or anyone in my family. Not only that, but diddlers post their exploits and hunt for more victims there as well. No thanks. Parents, step up. Parent your children. Protect them from this filth by keeping them off of these platforms and teaching them the right way to handle those sorts of things. The best way to deal with sex in discussion with your kids is to actually have a discussion about sex and porn with your kids. Do not allow the schools or the media to do it for you if you value their innocence. You set the tone. *begin rant* Dads, if that means that you need to figure out how to break free from porn yourselves, then do so. Easier said than done? Absolutely. Worth doing in order to really be a man and lead your family with honor rather than shame? Damn straight it is. Moms, if it is a problem for you as well, other than with your husbands, please learn to break free as well. Your kids need both of you to be whole and sane. Get rid of any of this garbage from your homes, devices, places of work, vehicles, etc (wherever you might hide it, whether physical or digital media). *end rant*

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65534354
#porn #kids #cutitoff #burnitwithfire #protectyourkids #thetalk #techfreedom #weekendedition #TechFreedom


WE 36.2 – AI News
WE 36.2-1 – “Godfather” of AI Speaks Out
This is a fearporn piece. This gentleman, Geoffrey Hinton, was a pioneer in neural networks, which were a foundational technology for the large language models which undergird most of what we call AI these days. He echoes many of the concerns from the open letter from late March. I am not a fan of AI, but even at that, fear tactics over employment issues, AI controlling the world, AI possibly exterminating the human race, etc are pure histrionics. These histrionics are meant to lead to hysteria because hysteria = fear and the Bible says that when we fear something, we more or less manifest it in our lives. We focus on the fear, empowering it to become realized in our lives, unless we break the cycle and focus on building something positive instead. It would be one thing if the guy were coming forth with more than vague fears, but had some solutions other than, “Let’s stop working in this area.” Which he is thankfully not advocating. I don’t have a pony in this show, and don’t have time to dive into this allegedly sticky issue to come up with a workable solution, either.
#ai #fearporn #meh #TechFreedom #weekendedition
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/02/tech/hinton-tapper-wozniak-ai-fears/index.html


WE 36.2-2 – Bing AI Available to All Who Sign in Through Edge.
Microsoft has started to actualize their plans to roll ChatGPT functionality through all of their ecosystem, Bing, Word, Excel, Outlook, and eventually Windows itself. This sounds like an absolute nightmare to me. Not only is Microsoft one of the worst about respecting your privacy, but now they are wholly embracing this generative AI thing, the chief danger of which, that I see, is the fact that it is a privacy black hole on its own. They record every response, every prompt, to “learn” from you so that it can seem more realistically human. Microsoft + AI should give you goosebumps in the privacy arena. That’s not to mention the fact that they exist to “learn from you”, so that it can more effectively sound like you. I do not think that the publicly available AI’s could ever replace any human being at anything. If anyone is foolish enough to try to let one replace them, then they deserve to be replaced. Good riddance. Use discernment when you use these TOOLS, people.
Aside from all that, why would you volunteer your info to Microsoft that much more by using Bing? Particularly signed in? Come on, people. Do your searching elsewhere.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/04/tech/microsoft-bing-updates/index.html
#bingAI #msft #weekendedition #FOSSNews #TechFreedom
WE 36.2-3 – Bard to Be Rolled Into Google Search Fulltime
Google Search is going to look a bit more like Brave Search, moving forward, based on the unveiling at Google’s annual I/O conference last week. That means that Bard will now offer AI summaries of all of your search queries before your results actually show up. How do you feel about that? Are any of you still using Google Search, at this point? If you are, why? It has been demonstrated ad nauseam that not only do they spy on your searching, keeping track of every query, but they actively rearrange the results to push a very globalist, WEF & UN-approved set of results. I’m sure that Microsoft’s Bing does the exact same thing, though, so yeah, neither of these are good options if you want unbiased, private search results. What might be better? Well, if privacy is all you are after, then take a look at Duck Duck Go and Brave Search (ironic to me that their initials are BS, lol), or if you want less biased, but still private searching, take a look at Mojeek, SwissCows, or MetaGer. If you want to try your hand at running your own search engine, spin up a VPS and install SearX and try it out. These are things that I would point out in one of my Freedom Consultations.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/10/tech/ai-search-google-io/index.html
#google #bard #search #TechFreedom #FOSSNews #weekendedition

WE 36.2-4 – ChatGPT Stuff…
Sam Altman is set to testify before Congress on Tuesday, alongside IBM’s Chief Privacy and Trust Officer, and a professor who is a self-described “AI hype critic”. This testimony is more theatrics, likely, as the Senate starts to try to wrap their aged heads around this technology in order to perhaps create some more government overreach in the form of “commonsense guardrails” to regulate this new thing, in keeping with what Depends’ handlers put out recently as a priority in DC. Good luck, Senators. Most of the members of that sub-committee probably wouldn’t know what AI was if it bit them on the face. How can they possibly regulate something they can’t comprehend? This is not ageism, this is just common sense. Most people my age (probably including myself) don’t have a firm grasp on what this AI thing really is, so how can people who barely know how to use a cell phone figure it out based on a bit of testimony?
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/10/tech/openai-ceo-congress-testifying/index.html

Can you pass exams using ChatGPT? Possibly, but as I’ve said repeatedly, do not rely on it anymore than you would a Wikipedia article. Use it as a starting point, if at all. Never turn in anything directly from an AI generated piece. Always tweak it, always polish it, make it yours. You also never know if you will wind up with a hallucinated alleged source. Be careful and always use your God-given mind and discernment. However you choose to use it or not, always remember that it is just a tool. Never simply outsource your thinking to a machine.
https://www.bbc.com/news/education-65316283
#weekendedition #ChatGPT #OpenAI #samaltman #Congress #privacy #TechFreedom #FOSSNews

WE 36.3 – Twitter News
Musk says that he is about to roll out encrypted messaging and calling on Twitter. The acid test, he says, is that even if someone held a gun to his head, he wouldn’t be able to snoop on your DMs or calls. This would make it more competitive with Meta, WhatsApp, Mastodon, and BlueSky. This sounds like a solid move from Elon and co, first one, perhaps, in months. We’ll see if it starts to save the foundering platform. Who knows, right?

Well, it is time for a little Dune2K.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/10/tech/twitter-calls-messaging-elon-musk/index.html
#twitter #encryption #dms #calls #cool #weekendedition #TechFreedom #FOSSNews

https://rumble.com/c/TechFreedom

https://rumble.com/c/Spiritualityntech

https://rumble.com/c/c-2966394

FOSS News April 24-28, 2023

by admin Distro News, FOSS Fun, FOSS News, Foss News, Weekend Edition

Distro Monday 55: Blend-ing TAILS & KaOS, plus a Bonus

DM 55.1 – blendOS Has Reached a 2.0 Version
Seems like I just talked about blendOS a few weeks ago, and ran the previous version for about a month prior to that. So that you won’t have to go dig up that video, here’s the link for it (https://rumble.com/v2ftnx0-distro-monday-52-newbie-day-mint-vs-ubuntu.html?mref=2jfr3&mc=anr3y). In short, this is an Arch based, immutable distro with support for running Fedora and Ubuntu baked in. Perhaps it is more stable and performant in this version, but alas I do not have the time to test it for you guys.
What’s new in this release? Let’s take a look, shall we?
· Out of the box Android app support via WayDroid
· PWA support
· AUR support
o Chaotic-AUR
· Podman based container system for greater flexibility and prioritization capabilities
· GNOME
· KDE Plasma
· NVIDIA drivers by default
· New installer
· Remixing tool (so you can customize your system then have that to install, like in some Deb based distros)
Good stuff, from where I sit. Hopefully, it will be clearer how to do things and might stay more performant, long-term.

https://9to5linux.com/blendos-2-is-already-here-and-supports-android-apps-out-of-the-box
#distromonday #blendos #Linuxnews #FOSSNews #newrelease #TechFreedom

DM 55.2 – TAILS 5.12 Out Now
Another monthly release for TAILS, but that doesn’t mean that it is entirely lackluster, so let’s see what made the cut for this month’s update, shall we? We have a couple of new features for the persistent storage tools: the ability to manually delete data when turning the feature off, and strong password generation for the persistent storage, so that your saved data on TAILS is as secure as possible. They’ve also made the whole persistent storage system more reliable. They’ve added a new progress meter for things, so that you can tell that something is happening and are able to gauge how long it might take to complete a given process. It is based on the latest LTS 61 kernel, and of course, ships with the latest from Tor.
https://9to5linux.com/tails-5-12-anonymous-os-launches-with-new-persistent-storage-features-bug-fixes
#distromonday #TAILS #FOSSNews #Linuxnews #Linux #privacy #TechFreedom

Freedom Consultation
Free call.
60-90 minutes.
Q&A
Leave with Actionable Steps to take, whether you work with me or not.
Schedule today.

https://techfreedom.pro/freedom-consultation
#distromonday #freedom #consultation #Linux #degoogleyourlife #TechFreedom

DM 55.3 – KaOS is 10 Years Old Now?
Yes, yes it is. Wow. This distro is independent, and prides itself on running at the bleeding edge of KDE Plasma, so this version ships with a preview of KDE 6, but runs 5.27.4, which is the latest stable release. The preview is only available in the Live environment, as KDE 6 is not anywhere near ready to use, but you can take a look at the latest work done, as of last Friday. Other than that, what is actually installable, is the latest stable releases from the KDE team. Other than that, it runs atop the latest Linux 62 kernel, and has had the rest of its core packages updated as well.
https://9to5linux.com/kaos-linux-celebrates-10-years-with-new-iso-release-featuring-kde-plasma-6
#distromonday #Linux #KaOS #rolling #indie #KDE #KDE6 #preview #FOSSNews #TechFreedom

DM 55 Bonus – Solus Linux Shakeup
Ever heard of Solus Linux? You might have, if you pay attention to Linux news the way I do, but if not, it is one of only a handful of truly indie distros out there, like Gentoo or Alpine, where all packages are specific to it, rather than being based on something else, like Debian, Arch, or Red Hat. For that, I have made respect. On the other hand, it has been known as being rather unstable, both in terms of the team behind it and the distro itself, which has been sad to watch. The latest shakeup has it being more or less merged with SerpentOS, which is headed by the many of the original team members from Solus, by the way. Solus had been struggling to keep the lights on, and did not have the tools to make the jump to immutability, atomization, and containerization (like blendOS, VanillaOS, or even EndlessOS), where serpentOS does. Long story short, Solus will remain Solus, but will come under the serpentOS team, to a certain extent.

https://news.itsfoss.com/solus-revival/
#distromonday #bonus #soluslinux #serpentos #Linux #FOSSNews #TechFreedom

Wonder Wednesday 3 – Tools, Tools, Tools + Linux 63

WW 3.1 – 5 Free Cybersecurity Tools for Your Small Business

Each blurb has its relevant link, so that you can easily check it out, I’m not saying much about each one right now.
1. Cyber Action Plan
a. Answer a few questions, and they’ll give you a custom plan to help protect yourself from cyber attacks (https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/cyberaware/actionplan)
2. Cyber Readiness Program
a. A course you can take to learn steps to secure your business and improve its resiliency against cyber attacks of varying kinds. (https://cyberreadinessinstitute.org/the-program/)
3. The Australian Cyber Security Centre’s Exercise in a box will help you to cover most of your bases in terms of cybersecurity, both in revealing issues to you and helping you to mitigate against or solve them, all for free. (https://www.cyber.gov.au/resources-business-and-government/exercise-in-a-box)
4. Phishing Bingo
a. Thought all cybersecurity tools had to be boring and dry? This is a bingo card meant to familiarize you with common phishing attack vectors… Might be fun to go over with your team in the next security meeting (assuming that you have those periodically, as you should) [https://www.getcybersafe.gc.ca/en/resources/get-cyber-safe-phishing-bingo]
5. Internet Hygiene Portal
a. Made available by the CyberSecurity Agency of Singapore, this tool will scan your domain or email for signs of sketchiness and rate them based on how clean they are. Unfortunately, when I took a look at it yesterday morning, as I was writing this piece, it didn’t seem to be working properly. (https://www.csa.gov.sg/Tips-Resource/Interactive-Tools/internet-hygiene-portals)
https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2023/04/19/small-business-free-cybersecurity/
#freetools #cybersecurity #mixedbag #FOSSNews #TechFreedom
WW 3.2 – What’s Watchtower?

Don’t worry, I’m not talking about the magazine from the Jehovah’s Witnesses, lol… This is a tool designed to keep all of your Docker images up to date automagically. We talked about Docker a couple of weeks ago, but as a refresher, it is a containerization tool that is widely used to make it easier to offer SAAS for your business without some of the overhead of running a glut of virtual machines. So, what does Watchtower do, exactly? It removes the pain of singly checking and updating every container in your systems, which takes 5 commands each to execute, taking God knows how much time from your already busy schedule. Watchtower automates the process by checking every 24 hours for updates for itself as well as the rest of your containers. That polling time can be tweaked by altering it in the CLI settings for the container. If you want to install this to help manage your Docker images, here’s a simple way to do it, as it is a container itself, so simply install it as a normal Docker container, but when you run it, you’ll have to tweak it a bit, thusly:docker run -d \
–name watchtower \
-v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
containrrr/watchtower

If you want the Docker Compose or tweaking commands, take a look at the article from the link below. Also, I was cautioned by a sys admin that you may not want to run this in a production (not simply personal) environment, as you never know what may get updated and broken in the process for your production setup.

https://linuxiac.com/watchtower-automatically-update-docker-container-images/

#docker #containers #images #updates #FOSSNews #TechFreedom

Want to learn more about how to degoogle your phone and why?

Degoogled

#TechFreedom #degoogled #degoogleyourlife #defintionsday #Truth

WW 3.3 – What’s New in Linux 63?
Key highlights for this release cycle:
· New DRM accelerated Intel VPU (Versatile Processing Unit) driver for Meteor Lake chips
· More Rust code support for regular users (if you recall, initial support was added in the Linux 61 kernel)
· AES-SHA2 encryption for the NFS file system
· Support for the AMD version of IBRS (Indirect Branch Restricted Speculation, which is a mitigation against SPECTRE 2)
Some other new bits:
· RISC-V
o support for ZBB bit-manipulation
o BPF (Berkeley packet filter) trampoline support (also on the IMB Z architecture)
· LoongArch support for kernel address-space layout randomization and relocation
· KVM now gets Hyper-V extended hyerpcalls on x86
· Support for SME on ARM
· System-call filtering support for Motorola 68k series processors for you hardcore retro-nerds who just have to have Linux on your Amigas
· A new CLI BPF tool
o Allows you to disable memory accounting for BPF programs and gives you a new data tree structure
· Support for ID-mapped mounts for TMPFS
· Per-CPU file-data decompression for EROFS
New Networking Bits:
· Support for the PLCA (Physical Layer Collision Avoidance) Reconciliation Sublayer
· BIG TCP support for IPv4
· support for several new queuing disciplines
· a new socket option to make it easier for multiple hosts to make outgoing connections through a NAT gateway
· support for multi-path TCP mixed flows for both IPv4 and IPv6
New Tools:
· Virtcofig for AArch64 to creat a lightweight use on VMs
· Hwnoise to measure timing jitter from hardware
· New benchmark
Many new drivers to add support for new devices
· BananaPi R3 and Banana Pi BPI-M2 Pro SBCs
· Samsung Galaxy tab A (2015) tablets
· Rockchip RV1126 SoC
· Orange Pi R1 Plus and Radxa Compute Module 3 IO single-board computers
· Logitech G923 Xbox Edition steering wheel
· EVision keyboards
· ath12k (mac80211) wireless driver for Qualcomm Wi-Fi 7 devices
Better Steamdeck support, along with better support for Lenovo Yoga devices. If you want more info, check out the article below, and perhaps the release notes for the release itself, here: https://lkml.org/lkml/2023/4/23/284
Most people will be more or less unaffected by this kernel update, but I wanted to cover it anyway.

Linux Kernel 6.3 Officially Released, This Is What’s New

#linux63 #develomentmarcheson #FOSS #Linux #sysadmin #FOSSNews #TechFreedom

FOSS Fun Friday - Proton, the Z1, and UK Slams Breaks on MSFT/ Activision Merger

FFF 3.1 – Proton Experimental
Valve released an update to Proton Experimental on April 26th that includes these newly supported games:

· Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint.
· Minecraft Legends.
· Company of Heroes: Battle of Crete.
· STRANGER OF PARADISE FINAL FANTASY ORIGIN.
These are fixes from regressions in Proton 8:

· Baldur’s Gate 3 no longer launches to a black screen in Vulkan mode.
· Divinity: Original Sin: Enhanced Edition and Divinity Original Sin II: Definitive Edition no longer crash on resolution change.
· Path of Exile no longer crashes.
· GTA V no longer freezes after each key press.
Plus there’s these other improvements too:

· Fixed Proton Experimental regression causing Payday 2 to crash on start.
· Improved Elden Ring compatibility compared to Proton 8.0-1. It can still be a bit finicky.
· Fixed memory leak in Trackmania and Ubisoft Connect overlay.
· Added a temporary workaround for EA Launcher crashing. Steam Deck’s on-screen keyboard may not pop up automatically while using it.
· Fixed Madballs in Babo: Invasion claiming the game wasn’t purchased.
· Fixed PlanetSide 2 launcher.
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/04/proton-experimental-upgraded-for-april-26th-brings-fixes-and-new-game-support/
#FFF #steam #proton #steamdeck #Linuxgaming #FOSSNews #TechFreedom

FFF 3.2 – New AMD Chips for Handhelds
A new line of chips for devices like the Steam Deck? OOOhhhhh, shiny!!! What’s the big deal with these little guys? These are Zen 4 based chips with RDNA3 GFX built in, and are being billed as more efficient and powerful (standard marketing speak) than what is currently available. If you didn’t know AMD powers most current-gen home consoles at this point, and is the heart of the Steam Deck. The first devices to run one will be a new Steam Deck competitor from ASUS, the ROG Ally. We don’t know much of anything about these devices right now, but this bodes well for the future of handheld PCs. Personally, I’m not sold on the longevity of the form factor, but then I’m not particularly mobile these days, and I don’t game much, so I suppose I am not the target demo for these products.
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/04/amd-ryzen-z1-series-announced-for-handhelds-asus-rog-ally-first-to-get-it/
#FFF #AMD #Z1 #Linux #Linuxgaming #handhelds #performance #FOSSNews #TechFreedom

Freed Computer

https://techfreedom.pro/freed-computer/
https://techfredom.pro/free-your-pc/
#freedcomputer #linux #nospying #safe #TechFreedom #Truth

FFF 2.3 – UK CMA Blocks Microsoft’s Purchase of Activision

Could this mega-deal be on the rocks? I don’t know who has been paying attention to this since the attempt was announced 6-8 months ago, but if the EU and the FTC follow suit with the UK regulator, whose primary concern is with cloud gaming, as MSFT already has too much control the cloud space in general, and this deal would only make it harder for other cloud services to gain access to those Activision/Blizzard titles (Call of Duty, Overwatch, and World of Warcraft, specifically) which seem poised to be released to other platforms in the coming decade. MSFT tried to get around these issues over the time since the merger was announced, but their moves were not enough to assuage or allay the regulator’s worries in the UK. Another point of interest for those who watch my content is that the UK regulator was also concerned that the deal was not open enough for providers who might wish to make these titles available on alternative PC operating systems (see: Linux).
It would appear that the FTC has been itching to block this deal as well, and with the nascent go-ahead by the fact that the UK’s CMA have already blocked it, it just might give them the peace of mind to do so as well. I wish it weren’t so linked together. We should be more independent than all that. We have our own country still, don’t we?
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/04/uk-cma-blocks-the-microsoft-takeover-of-activision/
#FFF #Linux #games #Linuxgaming #microsoft #activision #deathknell #FOSSNews #TechFreedom

Weekend Edition 34: Holmes, Amazon, Elon, and Social Media, Oh My!

WE 34.1 – What’s New with Ms. Holmes?
Elizabeth Holmes’ legal team managed to postpone her requirement to report to prison by pointing out errors in the judge’s ruling, which automatically put off her reporting date until the judge can weigh the new claims, it bought her co-conspirator an extra month, but she is hoping that it will buy her more time than that. We will see. If you recall, Ms. Holmes was the CEO of Theranos, a medical testing start-up which was found to be fraudulent, and was also a darling of Silicon Valley and the media, who hailed her as the “next Steve Jobs”. She is a one-time paper billionairess, but not anymore.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65406910
#elizabethholmes #Theranos #fraud #payingthepiper #techfreedom #weekendedition #TechFreedom

WE 34.2 – Amazon UK Unionizing?
Amazon workers may shortly win the right to unionize in Amazon’s fulfillment centers. If you recall a couple of weeks ago, I covered a similar story from the US, specifically in one of the fulfillment centers in NY state. Which technically has the legal right to exist, but Amazon ignores them. It is a similar situation in the UK. The UK seems to have stronger supports for unions than we do, which is not a terrible surprise to me, as the UK is a commonwealth, and is much further along the path toward socialism than we are, though we aren’t as far from that as we would like to think.
Things are so bad that the workers say that their restroom breaks are timed and they are penalized if they go over the time limit, in light of the productivity demands placed on them by Amazon. Thus, the 700 members of the GMB union at the Coventry facility are on strike, not only until they are recognized by the government but until pay and conditions are improved.

#amazon #unions #UK #TechFreedom #weekendedition
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-65340522

WE 34.3 – Snapchat MyAI Rolls Out
Last week, we talked about this implementation of ChatGPT. Now it has been forced upon Snap’s entire userbase. Some have appreciated it, but many have not, particularly not here in the US. They’ve been review bombed in the App Store, specifically, with a glut of 1 star reviews since MyAI got pinned to the top of everyone’s feed on Monday. The feature bills itself as being able to do a number of things that are similar to ChatGPT (makes sense, as it is based on that tool), but does add caveats that it may not give entirely accurate answers and that users should not take these things as gospel, but perhaps as starting points for ideas. That is a balanced approach, but then Snap also knows that they need to be very careful with AI right now, and not completely oversell it, as that would leave them open to lawsuits that they cannot really afford at this point. It will be interesting to see how long this forced feature for free users will last. I forgot to mention that the premium, paid accounts can disable it if they desire to do so. Ironic, if you ask me.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65388258
#snapchat #MyAI #youdecide #socialmedia #weekendedition #FOSSNews #TechFreedom

WE 34.4 – Facebook Sued by Bevy of Former Content Moderators
Ooooh boy, this one is gonna rock Meta to the core. They have depended on men like this South African to do very traumatizing work to protect the rest of us from harmful content. I seem to recall mentioning something about this perhaps 6 months ago. The things that these men and women had to see in order to legitimately filter genuinely harmful content off of the platform are an atrocity. I will not joke about these. the reality is that they have been exposed to some extremely dark things in the course of their employment that no person should be forced to consume. True, on one hand, they were doing the jobs that they were hired to do, but at the same time, no one should be creating content like that, much less should anyone be subjected to watching it day in, day out, just for a paycheck. No matter how good that paycheck is. That will desensitize and dehumanize a person. One gentleman claims that he feels that a part of his humanity died, that he can no longer respond appropriately to death because he saw so much in the course of his duties. These were not your “fact checkers” or woke-ist politiburo members in the West. These are African men and women who faced depictions of real deaths, tortures, and suicides every day. I can’t imagine that job.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65346062
#facebook #contentmoderators #evil #TechFreedom #FOSSNews #weekendedition

WE 34.5 – Is Elon in Trouble?
Gee whiz, he can do wrong, after all. /sarc/ The MSM and woke mob is congealing in their REEEEEE at him for the choices he made since buying the platform in late October. News organizations are leaving, celebrities and governments are pissed at his removing of their blue checks on the platform, and many do not want to pay for it, so they leave. This has led to a sharp decline in advertising revenue, but with the fact that it is no longer publicly traded, Elon rightly claims that he doesn’t have to disclose anything to the public about the state of his company. I feel like he is intentionally burning it to the ground now because he realized that much more just how broken and corrupt it is. I sense that he will rebuild it from the ashes, but entirely open sourced. That should make me salivate, but it isn’t, because I do not trust him any further than I can throw him. I think that he is a creature of the deep state swamp. I see him as a creation of the US military industrial complex and the surveillance state. Feel free to differ and tell me about it in the comments.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/27/tech/elon-musk-twitter-six-months/index.html
#weekendedition #elon #twitter #reputation #wtf #TechFreedom #FOSSNews

WE 34.6 – Should the Government Get Involved with Kids and Social Media?
If you know me, you’re probably expecting an emphatic, “Hell No!” However, I find myself questioning the validity of that strongly held belief, since parents seem incapable of helping their kids to make good, life-affirming choices, such as staying the hell off of social media until they are at least in college. Human brains cannot handle that level of dopamine release as they are developing heavily. Kids are not being raised to be competent adults, but wards of the Nanny State. True, life is hard. That is why we need to step up for the upcoming generations, not forfeit our future to the State which has more interest in killing and controlling the masses than allowing people to stand up, think for themselves, and thrive. Is this necessary? Only if parents allow their kids to run the house. Does it seem necessary in the moment? Probably. Do I see GIANT red flags all over this? Absofragginglutely. This feels like creeping destruction of the freedom of speech, and to a lesser extent the freedom of the right to public assembly. Parents, step up. Break free from social media and general tech addiction. Show your kids how to handle tech, rather than showing them how it handles you. Parents, I know it is hard right now, but you can set up DNS filtering to block all social media on your home networks, as well as for individual devices. It isn’t that hard. Yes, you will have angry kids, for about a month, but then they will thank you for helping them to be whole and free people. You will see their grades go up. You will see their attitudes improve, not to mention self-esteem. Do what is best for your family. Cut it off. Nobody needs it that much, at home. Take control for yourself. Make governmental overreach like this unnecessary. Shoot, if you break your own addiction, you will almost certainly start to feel better about yourself as well.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/26/tech/senators-social-media-kids-wellness/index.html
#weekendedition #socialmedia #biggov #overreach #parents #parentyourkids #TechFreedom #FOSSNews

FOSS News April 17-21, 2023

by admin Distro News, FOSS Fun, Foss News, FOSS News, Weekend Edition

FOSS News, April 17-21, 2023

Distro Monday 54: Choices, Choices, Choices...

DM 54.1 – Choices, Choices…
Should you stick with a point release like Debian, Ubuntu, or OpenSUSE Leap, or be daring and try a rolling release like Arch, Tumbleweed, or OpenMandriva Rome? It isn’t that clear-cut. Since when is anything, really? So what is the primary difference?
Rolling distributions constantly roll updates to core and other packages as soon as they become available. This can lead to instability, but if you want the latest and greatest from your hardware and software, this is the way to go. Upgrading is easy because when you install, you simply install the base OS, then it constantly offers updates to you. With an Arch based rolling distro, such as Manjaro or Garuda, my strong suggestion is to run updates at least once a week, so that it doesn’t stack up on you, leading to problems when you actually do update. It is also easier to upgrade, without weird instructions, due to this.
Fixed (point) Release distributions will likely release security updates between major upgrades, but other than that, your system will be stable between upgrades. This means that you will be at least 6 months behind your rolling release brothers and sisters in terms of the other packages in your distro’s repositories, generally. Now, if you choose to take a flatpak route for most of your apps, you will get updates for those packages as they are released on flathub, or whatever other mirror you may have used to install the flatpak. If you stick with Debs on Debian/Ubuntu, you will be behind everyone, however, as long as the current version (as of the release of your version) of your apps is to your liking, it will stay that way until your next upgrade.
As you can see, certain situations call more for stability vs raw performance and the latest and greatest. So it depends what matters to you. Are you the kind of person that likes the adventure of constant updates, or would you rather simply set it and forget it?
Next, we’ll be chatting about two Point Release distros: edubuntu and 4M Linux.

https://linuxiac.com/rolling-vs-point-release-linux-distributions/

#distromonday #whichkind #Linuxnews #FOSSNews #newdistro #TechFreedom


DM 54.2 – Edubuntu 23.04 Out Now
Edubuntu is an education-focused distro based on, you guessed it, Ubuntu. What makes this one different? Why is it making a comeback as an official flavor of Ubuntu after a near-10 year hiatus?
One question at a time, please… Ok, so it comes with a raft of educational software preinstalled, such as GCompris, Inkscape, Scribus, TuxPaint, Stellarium, and Calibre ebook reader, organizer, and editor. Not ones to get lazy, the team have also added LibreCAD, Gramps, Tux Typing Tutor, Dia, Chemtool, Gobby, Drawing, Light Speed, Fritzing CAD, Laby, PDF Mod, as well as many from the KDE Education Suite, a few games, and more.
Why is it making a comeback? The team at Canonical felt the need to roll it back out after so long as there is a need for solid education-focused distros now, more than ever.
https://9to5linux.com/first-look-at-edubuntu-23-04-ubuntu-desktop-packed-with-educational-software
#distromonday #edubuntu #FOSSNews #Linuxnews #Linux #education #forthekids #TechFreedom

 

Freedom Consultation
Free call.
60-90 minutes.
Q&A
Leave with Actionable Steps to take, whether you work with me or not.
Schedule today.

https://techfreedom.pro/freedom-consultation
#distromonday #freedom #consultation #Linux #degoogleyourlife #TechFreedom

DM 54.3 – What’s New in 4M Linux?
Well, the last 4 months have been jam-packed for the development team. When you see the list of programs added and updated, you’ll likely be surprised at this tiny but mighty independent distribution. Well, if you’re new around here, I should probably explain what 4M Linux is, 4M Linux is an independent distro designed to be lightweight and good at fulfilling the 4 M’s which the lead developer feels are necessary in any distro:
• Maintenance (system rescue Live CD)
• Multimedia (full support for a huge number of image, audio and video formats)
• Miniserver (DNS, FTP, HTTP, MySQL, NFS, Proxy, SMTP, SSH, and Telnet)
• Mystery (meaning a collection of classic Linux games)
This version has some new bells & whistles versus the older versions. Key internal differences include the latest LTS kernel and the Mesa 22.2.3 graphics stack to handle the multimedia end of things.
As for the bells & whistles:
• A raster graphics editor and Hex-a-Hop video game as downloadable extensions,
• AlsaPlayer,
• Baka MPlayer,
• GNOME MPlayer,
• GNOME MPV
• mp3blaster
• XMMS as a default media player
Now about updated apps:
• LibreOffice 7.5.2 office suite
• Mozilla Firefox 111
• Chromium 106.0.5249.91
• Mozilla Thunderbird 102.8.0
• GIMP 2.10.34
• VLC 3.0.18
• SMPlayer 22.2.0 video player
• Audacious 4.3 audio player
• AbiWord 3.0.5 word processor
• Gnumeric 1.12.55 spreadsheet editor
One thing that makes this lightweight distro stand out, though, is that it also has a server flavor called 4MServer, which includes the standard LAMP stack tools and has been updated alongside the main distro, with the latest stable versions of Apache server, MariaDB, and PHP.
https://9to5linux.com/independent-distro-4mlinux-42-released-with-linux-kernel-6-1-lts
#distromonday #Linux #4MLinux #4MServer #lightweight #fast #oldhardware #newhardware #FOSSNews #TechFreedom

Wonder Wednesday 2 – How Do I _____ In Linux?

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.

WW 2.1 – What’s Lama Cleaner?

Lama Cleaner is a and open source, self-hosted AI image manipulation program which can do anything from remove the background of an image to removing an unwanted person or thing from a shot, very cleanly. I know, I typically am very negative about AI on the channel, but this tool is open source and completely installable in anaconda (which is a version of the python programming language) on your system. It won’t phone home about the images you are tweaking. That makes it safe, and potentially a more convenient and private way to make memes or something like that. That aspect of it intrigues me, as I make several per week. Let’s see how to get that done, shall we?

Open the Terminal and enter the following commands
• Install pip
◦ wget https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py
◦ sudo python get-pip.py –prefix=/usr/local/
• Install Lama Cleaner
◦ pip install lama-cleaner
▪ This will install several things, and may take quite a while, depending on your internet connection, as it it will download over 2 GB of packages, once this finishes, I suggest that you install a few plugins
• Install a few plugins
◦ pip install rembg
◦ pip install realesrgan
◦ pip install gfpgan
• Run Lama Cleaner for the first time
◦ lama-cleaner –model=lama –device=cpu –port=8080
• Point your browser here to see the interface
◦ http://127.0.0.1:8080

Lama Cleaner’s models are plentiful and powerful. They can do any number of things, and each one does a certain thing better than the others can. In order to start Lama Cleaner, you may need to tweak your $PATH variable, or else it will not be found. There may be other issues as well, so I’m not sure that I can suggest you try this yourself unless you are more of a nerd than I am.


https://www.linuxlinks.com/machine-learning-linux-lama-cleaner-self-hostable-inpainting-tool/
#AI #lamacleaner #self-hostable #FOSS #cool #FOSSNews #TechFreedom
WW 2.2 – Linux System Administration Commands
systemctl
In this command, you can enable or disable system services at boot time.
journalctl
Using this command, you are able to view and manage system logs, including logs generated by kernel, system services, and user applications.
dmesg
This command displays a system message buffer, including kernel messages related to hardware and system events.
df
This command displays information about the file system disk usage and available space.
du
This command is used to display the disk usage of files and directories.
mount
This command is used to mount file systems, such as removable media or network shares, to a specified mount point in the file system.
umount
This command is used to unmount file systems that are no longer in use.
fdisk
This command is used to create, edit, and delete disk partitions.
mkfs
This command is used to create file systems on partitions or devices.
chown
This command is used to change the owner of files and directories.
chmod
This command is used to change the permissions of files and directories.
useradd
This command is used to create new user accounts on the system.
userdel
This command is used to delete user accounts from the system.
groupadd
This command is used to create new user groups on the system.
groupdel
This command is used to delete user groups from the system.
passwd
This command is used to change the password of a user account.
hostnamectl
This command is used to view or modify the hostname of the system.
timedatectl
This command is used to view or modify the system time and date.
ifconfig
This command is used to configure network interfaces on the system.
ip
This command is used to configure and manage network interfaces, routing, and tunnels.
route
This command is used to view and manage the routing table.
ping
This command is used to test network connectivity by sending ICMP packets to a specified host.
traceroute
This command is used to trace the path of network packets from the source to the destination.
netstat
This command is used to display network connections, routing tables, and interface statistics.
iptables
This command is used to manage firewall rules for packet filtering, NAT, and port forwarding.
ssh
This command is used to securely connect to remote systems over a network.
scp
This command is used to securely copy files between systems over a network.
rsync
This command is used to synchronize files and directories between systems over a network.
crontab
This command is used to create, view, and manage scheduled tasks that run automatically at specified times.
at
This command is used to schedule a one-time task to run at a specified time.
systemctl suspend
This command is used to put the system into suspend mode, allowing it to be resumed later.
systemctl hibernate
This command is used to put the system into hibernation mode, allowing it to be restored to its previous state upon resume.
shutdown
This command is used to shut down or reboot the system.
poweroff
This command is used to power off the system.
reboot
This command is used to reboot the system.

Some of these I use on a regular basis, others I’ve probably never touched, but it is valuable to have these at your fingertips, nonetheless. My most commonly used commands from this table above are systemctl, mount, umount, and reboot. Never used crontab or userdel. Sometimes when I am doing updates in the terminal and find that a reboot is necessary, I will simply sudo reboot now rather than using the mouse to do the same task. It is simpler that way.
https://www.linuxteck.com/linux-system-administration-command-cheat-sheet/

#cheatsheet #Linuxsysadmin #terminal #FOSSNews #TechFreedom
Want to learn more about how to degoogle your phone and why?

Degoogled

#TechFreedom #degoogled #degoogleyourlife #defintionsday #Truth

WW 2.3 – A New ePub Reader from the KDE Team
Arianna is here! The KDE team have put together a new ePub reader and management app based on Kirigami and Qt. It is purty and has direct integrations with Baloo to make the management side of the app more of a joy. You can search for words in individual books, keep track of progress, and navigate using the keyboard. Why do we need another reader app when we have Calibre or Thorium already? Well, neither of them are so wholly integrated with any desktop environment, so there are clunky bits for each of these other options.
You can try it easily via a flatpak:

flatpak install flathub org.kde.arianna

KDE Team Developing a New e-Book Management App: Arianna

#arianna #epub #FOSS #readerapp #Linux #sysadmin #FOSSNews #TechFreedom

FOSS Fun Friday 2 – Games Galore

FFF 2.1 – Proton 8 Fresh off the Presses
What’s new with this version? Lots new playable games:
• Forspoken
• Samurai Maiden
• Dead Space (2023)
• Creativerse
• Nioh 2 – The Complete Edition
• One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4
• Atelier Meruru
• Atelier Lydie & Suelle ~The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings~
• Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book DX
• Blue Reflection
• Atelier Rorona ~The Alchemist of Arland~ DX
• Disney Dreamlight Valley
• ROMANCE OF THE THREE KINGDOMS XIV
• ToGather:Island
• WARRIORS OROCHI 3 Ultimate Definitive Edition
• Exceed – Gun Bullet Children
• Gungrave G.O.R.E.
• Chex Quest HD
And of course, a bevy of bug fixes
• Fixed 2K launcher failure caused by launcher update.
• Fixed Arabic fonts in FIFA 21 and 22.
• Improved CJK font support in many games including NOBUNAGA’S AMBITION: Souzou with Power Up Kit, Stardom 3 and Sword and Fairy 3.
• Improved sleep/resume functionality on Steam Deck for Tiny Tina’s Wonderland.
• Improved multi-touch support.
• Fixed native scrollbar being always visible in Final Fantasy XIV Online launcher.
• Fixed A Plague Tale: Innocence and A Plague Tale: Requiem showing on-screen keyboard when starting the game on the Steam Deck.
• Fixed rendering issues during cutscenes in Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell.
• Fixed Japanese keyboard input in Final Fantasy XIV Online.
• Fixed Football manager 2023 crashing when trying to return from a player profile.
• Fixed experimental regression: Fall in Labyrinth started crashing on some setups.
• Improved CJK characters rendering in many games including NOBUNAGA’S AMBITION: Souzou with Power Up Kit.
• Fixed Life is Strange Remastered crashing at the end of chapter 2.
• Fixed Alt+Tab not working on Gnome 43.
• Improved force feedback compatibility for BeamNG and Forza Horizon 5.
• Fixed regression with Mortal Kombat X performance.
• Fixed OpenGL launch option for Youropa.
• Fixed raytracing in Crysis Remastered.
• Improved multiplayer support in Company of Heroes III.
• Improved fullscreen support for The Last Blade 2.
• Fixed regression: Minecraft Dungeons was hanging when disconnecting from multiplayer game.
• Fixed Immortals Fenyx Rising missing/out-of-order audio lines in cutscenes.
• Fixed The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt launcher flickering on Wayland.
• Fixed Story Mode not working in Dead or Alive 6.
• Enabled nvapi for many games.
• Updated wine to 8.0.
• Updated dxvk to v2.1-4-gcaf31033.
• Updated vkd3d-proton to v2.8-84-g08909d98.
• Updated dxvk-nvapi to v0.6.2.
• Updated wine-mono to 7.4.1.
Only works with Vulkan 1.3 compatible cards
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/04/valve-rolls-out-proton-80-to-further-improve-steam-deck-and-linux-gaming/
#FFF #steam #proton #steamdeck #Linuxgaming #FOSSNews #TechFreedom


FFF 2.2 – New Release for MangoHud Statistics Overlay
What’s MangoHud? MangoHud is a system statistics overlay app which you can use while you play most games, if you just have to know your FPS, temperatures, frequencies, and various usages in realtime. It’s what you see in many review videos on YouTube, or in your game streamers on twitch and the like. So what’s new for this handy tool?
• Fixed issue that applied picmip without option being set.
• Reverted x11 poller that was causing segfaults 06edee4.
• Fixed issues with horizontal and legacy_layout.
• Fixed amdgpu APU power and temperature reading.
• Fixed certain hud elements displaying incorrectly in horizontal.
• Fixed an issue causing segfault when using MANGOHUD_CONFIG.
Sounds like it used to float around in the wrong spots on the steamdeck and in Linux, that issue has been fixed (see point 5 above).
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/04/mangohud-performance-overlay-gets-a-few-needed-fixes-in-v069-1/
#FFF #mangohud #Linux #Linuxgaming #steamdeck #performance #FOSSNews #TechFreedom

Freed Computer

Freed Computer

#freedcomputer #linux #nospying #safe #TechFreedom #Truth

FFF 2.3 – Mineclone2 has a New Version Out

Last week I talked about the FOSS core for this implementation of early minecraft code, and you need that in order to play this, as it is more or less a DLC content pack made for minetest. Here’s a sampling of what’s new, here, boys & girls.
• new and updated music
• new sound effects
• biome coloured foliage and water
• mobs can ride minecarts
• hoppers can put items in minecarts
• new and improved /clearmobs commands
• Iron Golems now protect themselves and villagers
• various performance improvements
• improved translations
• lots of bug fixes and more..
If I had time to throw at it, and cared at all on any kind of personal level about MineCraft or its spinoffs/knockoffs I would probably test it out. However, neither of those things is true of me, so I won’t.
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/04/mineclone2-v083-out-now-the-sandbox-game-for-minetest-inspired-by-minecraft/
#FFF #Linux #FOSSgames #Linuxgaming #mineclone2 #FOSSNews #TechFreedom

Weekend Edition 33: Elon, AI, Digital Hygiene Tips, and More

News From Elon Land
AI News
Tech tips from the FBI (LOL)
Dominion/Fox/Smartmatic BS
 
#elon #AI #FBI #techtips #electionstuff Elonmusk #Twitter #FOSSNews #TechFreedom  #weekendedition #currentevents #technews 
 
 
WE 33.1 – Elon World
He claims to be lining up a lawsuit against Microsoft for illegally using Twitter data to train the Bing AI, based on reporting from a few outlets on the matter. Elon tweeted out a threat on Wednesday, but as of writing, there have been no teeth behind the barked threat. This opens up the topic of data ownership, which is one of the cornerstones of both Tech Freedom and another related company which I’ve been creating content for, called Altha Tech. The prime difference between us is that Altha Tech can actually help you to host your data safely away from Big Tech, on their own infrastructure. I do not have that capability. They can help you get set up with a custom WordPress site, host your own Nextcloud instance, or any other number of self-hosted tools or platforms, to keep your data safe, and your website up and running no matter what you post there. Tech Freedom is about showing you the need for and introducing you to alternatives to Big Tech. I can help you set your computer and mobile life free, but the best option, unless you have the hardware and know-how to self host the rest of whatever can be in your digital life, is to go with a hosting provider who has their own infrastructure and prizes privacy. Altha Tech fits that bill.  Back to the main gist of the article though, Elon is acting big mad about Twitter’s data being scraped to train Microsoft’s AI. Data ownership and privacy need to be foremost in our minds, as these factors make a huge difference in every day life, believe it or not. Whether you feel you have anything to hide or not, this should matter to you because whenever you use an electronic device, it records data about he interaction, whether your phone, computer, or some online account. The profiles built about us by big tech (and the surveillance state) are incredibly powerful and can sometimes reveal more about ourselves than we know about ourselves. This can lead to very dark places if that data winds up in the wrong hands. That is why I just plugged Altha Tech, as well as Tech Freedom. 
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/19/musk-threatens-to-sue-microsoft-over-twitter-data-being-used-in-ai.html 
https://althatech.com
https://techfreedom.pro
#elonmusk #suingmicrosoft #personaldata #dataownership #dataprivacy #althatech #techfreedom #weekendedition #TechFreedom 
 
 
WE 33.2 – AI News
33.2a) TruthGPT?
In Elon’s interview with Tucker, he claimed that he was going to start a new AI initiative called TruthGPT to be a counterbalance to the wokism and political correctness of other AI tools that are currently in vogue. The reality is that there are ways to make ChatGPT less woke, and I have talked about them in the past, then there is Gab AI (currently just art and short video clips), but working on a text chat bot that will produce far more based (less biased) things. Elon used to be on the board at OpenAI, but left after a failed takeover attempt in 2018, and has been decrying the for-profit model that they have been pursuing since then. In this interview, he also calls for some sort of government regulatory agency  to be put in place around AI. Uhhh, no. Let’s not create more government agencies, Mr. Musk. Weren’t you paying attention when Regan quipped that the scariest words in the English language are “Hi, I’m from the government and I’m here to help”? We need less government and better moral and ethical norms in our society again. We need to eliminate the corruption that seems to be at the core of our government and society, then restore life to a purer state. To me, this requires a full shut down and cleanse of the system, then rebuild from the ground up, with a core of Truth rather than corruption. A keystone to this project is submission to the God of the Bible, learning to trust the Holy Spirit to guide us, the Father to protect and provide for us, and Jesus to walk with us. But I digress. AI may or may not be the issue, here. The organizations creating and training the AIs are. I don’t trust Elon to head this up, either. He is too inconsistent, and besides, he voted for pResident Depends in 2020. That is an epic case of bad judgment. Not sure I trust Torba and the team at Gab, either, to be honest. I think I trust them more, but that isn’t saying much. As always, I think that open sourced efforts are the way to move forward. That way we can see the data used, the algorithms and whatnot used to make the educated guesses at what its answers should be and whatnot. Generally, FOSS also = self-hostable, which adds an extra layer of privacy and control to the whole picture. Either way, remember that these things are TOOLS, not something you should live your life according to.
#AI #elonmusk #truthgpt #idonttrusthim #TechFreedom #weekendedition
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/18/musk-calls-plans-truthgpt-ai-to-rival-openai-deepmind.html  
 
33.2b) Google Creating MAGI, a new AI Search Engine
What is MAGI? It’s a response/reaction to the report that Samsung may be considering moving away from Google Search as its default for its devices, and over to Bing, due to the AI integration with it. Its aim is to be as conversational as ChatGPT, which BARD is not, currently. Bard kind of sucks. It sounds like the search giant is reeling a bit, as shares went down 4% when the news about Samsung’s apparent decision broke. Why do they still hold a 97% market share for search? I’ve been harping on ditching them for the whole time I’ve been doing Tech Freedom. That is the simplest step you can take to reduce your big tech footprint, as well as gaining access to more balanced news and other information as well. Quit volunteering your data to Google and Microsoft, y’all. Just stop it. Use Brave search, Presearch, or something else that doesn’t send your search data to them without some anonymization at least. Word on the street is that Google will start to release MAGI in a month or so. Oh boy. #smh
#google #AI #MAGI #yikes #nothanks #weekendedition #TechFreedom #FOSSNews
https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/google-reportedly-working-on-ai-powered-search-engine/ 
 
33.2c) Snapchat to Roll Out My AI to All Accounts Soon
Uhhh, thanks for reminding me why I don’t use Snapchat again, Snap. My AI is a ChatGPT based tool which can talk to you on the platform, even eventually including pictures, but just the same way as another user might. It’s designed to suggest different AR lenses to filter your content through, it even has its own bitmoji persona, and you can set up group chats with the same bot. Right now, it will only respond with text, but soon, they will update it so that it can generate images. Ok… *side eye* I used to think that snapchat was kind of cool, but then I started caring more about privacy, and lost interest, that and if you haven’t noticed, brevity in my content is not my specialty, lol. 
#snapchat #AI #ohbrother #myai #weekendedition #FOSSNews #TechFreedom
https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/snaps-ai-bot-is-rolling-out-to-everyone-heres-how-it-works/ 
 
WE 33.3 – Security Tips 
    A) Phishing 101
        a. What is phishing?
            i. A type of scam which uses bits of scraped personal data, which can happen via email, social media, or even text messaging. 
                1. They will message you, one way or the other, sometimes offering money if you’ll help them with something, and sometimes soliciting donations for some worthy cause. They ultimately want to squeeze money from you, or some other valuable piece of personal information. 
        b. How can you protect yourself from a phishing scam?
            i. Practice good digital hygiene
                1. Don’t open emails or other messages from addresses/senders that you don’t recognize. 
                    a. Verify with individual senders that you do know before you open messages from them
                2. Make sure that the spellings for addresses actually match the senders and domains you are familiar with. 
                3. If a message requests donations in crypto or gift cards, it is a scammer
                4. Romance scams are a doozy. If I weren’t happily married, it would have been far harder to dodge those bullets, but if someone is messaging you that you don’t know in person, claiming that they love you, block them and flag that sender as a spam account. 
                5. Be wary about charities anyway. Even established charities can also be little more than money laundering operations. It is better to find a way to give directly to someone who is hurting, but beware of that as well. 
        c. Mitigating Damage
            i. Use a good anti-virus suite and keep it up to date
                1. Or use Linux, it is not as likely to have a place for malware to latch onto.
            ii. Make sure that your password is strong, and that you do not reuse passwords for anything. If needed, use a good password manager like Bitwarden.
            iii. Use 2FA
                1. I would be careful with 2FA, as not all 2FA is created equal. If you must use it, use an app like Aegis which is FOSS and never use SMS 2FA if you can help it. 
            iv. Consider a Credit Freeze
                1. If you fear that bad actors have breached your social security number or credit card numbers, there are steps you can take to make sure that they can’t do much with that information. Phone your credit card company or bank and have them freeze your account until you are able to piece it back together. 
https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/avoid-concert-and-sports-ticket-scams-with-these-expert-approved-tips/ 
#phishing #security #tips #weekendedition #FOSSNews #TechFreedom 
 
B) Beware Public Device Chargers
Simple PSA here, don’t use free, public anything these days. Some bad actor has probably been there, hacked that in some way, and these public charging stations can take advantage of the fact that most charging ports on phones and tablets can also transfer data, and juice jack devices through embedding compromised data chips with malware payloads embedded in them to hit your phone as soon as you plug it in. Just use your own, with a power outlet. It is that simple. Sometimes it is hard, but if you value privacy, this is how it must be. 
 
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/12/tech/fbi-public-charging-port-warning/index.html 
#PSA #juicejacking #becareful #useyourowncharger #weekendedition #FOSSNews #TechFreedom
 
 
 
 
WE 33.4 – Fox & 2020 Election Stuff
    A) Fox & Dominion Settle for just shy of $800 Million
I don’t know how I feel about this, except that I recall that the owner of Faux News is in the rarefied air of the “chosen people”. They tend to live by their own unique set of rules, and that makes Faux News and all of its talent sketchy, IMO. Faux has been controlled opposition the whole time, never really on the side of we the people. They are Lamestream Media, after all. Dominion sued for about double that based on claims of defamation that Faux’s anchors and personalities made in relation to the company’s voting tabulation machines in the aftermath of that fraudulent election. Whether or not the machines were knowingly tampered with to invalidate the will of We the People or not, the will of We the People was negated in many ways in November of 2020. I could go off on this, but I have not really researched it, and there is much noise and mis/disinformation on both sides of the issue so it is hard to see the truth at this point. 
Either way, Faux News chose to more or less admit to wrongdoing to avoid more scandal in the midst of public discovery for the trial, and now Dominion gets a fat payday.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/19/business/nightcap-fox-dominion-winners-losers/index.html 
#elections #fauxnews #msm #2020 #dominion #weekendedition
 
B) Smartmatic vs Faux News
In a very related case, Smartmatic is pressing forward with its $2.7 Billion claim against Faux News and News Corp. They have compelled Faux to produce the same materials for discovery as they needed to for the Dominion case. Both firms accuse the media giant of not merely reporting on the statements of Trump and his surrogates and lawyers, but engaging in statements which damaged the company’s prospects due to being implicated in the court of public opinion with fraud. It looks like Faux will actually take this one to trial, and perhaps that was the idea all along, since these cases are so similar. 
#weekendedition #2020 #smartmatic #voting #FOSSNews #TechFreedom 
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/19/fox-smartmatic-defamation-case-dominion.html