UK moving towards banning chat in games for under 16s
The UK Online Safety Act expands next year to ban social media for under 16s, but the government plan to expand it even further to target video game chat too.

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Read the full article on GamingOnLinux. ⌘ Read more

MPV 0.42 Media Player Brings Wayland Improvements, Improved HDR
MPV as the open-source, cross-platform media player originally based on MPlayer/mplayer2 is finally out with a new release… ⌘ Read more

This 👇 is fucking insane 😱 – Even though Picket is blocking this stupid fucking traffic from yet-another-botnet, I have to wonder, surely there’s a better way to handle this? LIke seriously wut da actual fuq?!

Snap Reaches Settlement In Social Media Addiction Lawsuit Ahead of Trial
Snap has settled a lawsuit brought by two teenagers who alleged Snapchat was deliberately designed to be addictive and contributed to their mental health problems, avoiding a trial that was scheduled to begin this week. Snap was the last defendant to settle after Meta, Alphabet and TikTok resolved claims in the same case. CBS News … ⌘ Read more

Meta Discussed ‘Whisper Strategy’ to Discredit Social Media Critic Jonathan Haidt, Files Show
The Guardian reports:
Meta staff discussed deploying a “whisper strategy” to undermine the influential US academic whose work has inspired a global social media crackdown, according to court documents. Employees at the parent group of Facebook and Instagram sought to discredit Jonathan Haidt, … ⌘ Read more

Xbox Manager: AI Already Being Used In Xbox Game Development - And Throughout the Game Industry
Should generative AI be used for videogame development? Brandon Stirrup, a strategy manager at Xbox, claims Xbox is already using AI, reports Engadget. And he also says that those who say they aren’t are merely “pretending.”

Stirrup deactivated his social media account shortly after … ⌘ Read more

Apple Is Entering Its Slop Era
In an opinion piece for 404 Media, Matthew Gault argues that Apple has entered its “slop era,” abandoning its reputation for innovative hardware in favor of recycled ideas and questionable design choices. Here’s an excerpt: My ears perked up when I heard Apple’s new foldable phones were cracking. I licked my lips when the company announced it’s releasing a touch-screen laptop. This was a company that once charged … ⌘ Read more

Meta Settles Another Social Media Addiction Case Just Before Trial
Meta has reached an undisclosed settlement in another social media addiction lawsuit, avoiding a trial scheduled for next month and leaving Snap as the sole remaining defendant. Engadget reports: The lawsuit was brought by an 18-year-old woman from Mississippi known as K.D.B who, according to Reuters, has “described staying awake for hours scro … ⌘ Read more

UK Social Media Ban May Lock Out More Than 100,000 Teens Without ID
Under the UK’s planned social media ban, more than 100,000 British teenagers aged 16 and 17 could initially be locked out of social media because they lack a passport or driving license that may be needed as a fallback for age verification. The Guardian reports: Ofcom, the UK’s online watchdog, said about 150,000 16- to 17-year-olds do not ow … ⌘ Read more

@maurice-renck.de@maurice-renck.de I hadn’t heard of that yet, very cool to see something like that formalized in an RFC.

I am for nearly anything that takes social media out of the hands of the corporate silos and returns it to the actual participants, doubly-so if it doesn’t swap the silo for something crypto-based, And the simpler the implementation is, the more likely that people will actually implement all of it (/me glances sideways towards ActivityPub).

Thanks for the rare bit of good news!

Proton CEO Is In ‘Full AI Psychosis’
According to 404 Media, Proton CEO Andy Yen is aggressively pushing AI adoption while fostering what workers describe as a culture of fear that discourages raising security concerns or challenging leadership. The investigation is based on interviews with eight current and one former Proton employees, as well as internal Slack chats, meeting recordings, and an AI manifesto written by the company’s CTO. Longti … ⌘ Read more

Here’s a pretty graph 📈

Intel IPU8 Support Upstreamed In Linux 7.4 For Nova Lake Laptops
The media subsystem changes have been merged for the Linux 7.4 kernel. Most notable is Intel IPU8 support being introduced for the next-gen image processing unit in high-end Nova Lake laptops.. ⌘ Read more

AV2 Video Codec Adoption Talked Up, SVT-AV2 Being Developed
Back in May the AV2 v1.0 specification was released for this next-generaton, royalty-free video codec. This week the Alliance For Open Media issued a press release talking up the early adoption of AV2… ⌘ Read more

Greece Enacts Social Media Ban For Kids Under 15
Greece has passed a law banning children under 15 from social media platforms beginning January 1, 2027. The legislation requires platforms to implement reliable age verification and parents to use government-backed apps to restrict access, with penalties for noncompliance under the EU’s Digital Services Act. Engadget reports: “It would have been very easy to do absolutely noth … ⌘ Read more

Since honesty is kindness, Microsoft is by far the worst company I ever had the displeasure of trying to communicate with. Getting them to fix the most basic of bugs always took years. In some cases it’s been over two and a half decades and it’s still broken.

I never thought it was even possible to make an operating system so broken, I’d have to manually restart my background services and set “network interface metrics” by hand, in advanced TCP/IP settings, while using it.

There are buttons that don’t even do anything when clicked and ones I’ve never seen do anything other than throw an error message.

The AI they rent to pretend to be an AI company, was for years outputting paragraphs, describing the beautiful and artful checkerboard pattern in the background, whenever trying to analyze transparent images. Transparent profile pictures work only on GitHub, the one product where the implementation was done prior to Microsoft acquisition.

Many engineers in their own forums, still manage to make that very AI sound smart, in comparison.

The design is an absolute shitshow, where no two things look like they belong in the same system — the only thing almost consistent, is excessive padding and rounded corners, placed wherever they fit the least.

But hey, 5000 engineers were fired, that will surely improve things!

wut da actual fuq?!

LinkedIn Fights AI Slop, Now 40% of Its Long-Form Posts
“Even LinkedIn is getting tired of your AI-written posts,” writes CNN, reporting that the Microsoft-owned, job-oriented social media site “is upping its fight against slop.”
A report published in July by Pangram, a research firm that tracks AI content online, found that more than 40% of long-form posts on the platform were AI-generated, compared to around 30% on X a … ⌘ Read more

Fedora 45 Will Not Be Released Next Week
For those eager to run the pristine Fedora 45 media, you will need to wait at least one more week… ⌘ Read more

I saw this circulating right afte the latest Microsoft event and it illustrates the current state of things perfectly

Even they bet everything on AI they are renting, not even developing and happily let everything else turn to mush, as evident by the current state of Windows 11, GitHub,…
Microsoft Azure AD, I mean “Entra ID”, still the same account management thing, rewritten three separate times, that since the year 2000, couldn’t manage to implement transparent PNG support.

apparently, we have to remind people that cash is still legal tender 😅 – at my local café

Texas City Demands $2 Million For Public Records On Flock Usage
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: As bipartisan backlash against Flock grows, some cities are asking anti-surveillance advocates and media outlets to pay eye-popping fees – including charging tens of thousands or even millions – to get information about how police departments are using and potentially abusing AI-enabled camera … ⌘ Read more

Meta Rushed To Fix Muse ‘VM Escape’ Vulnerability Soon Before Launch
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: In the immediate weeks before Muse’s launch, Meta engineers found several security vulnerabilities in the company’s viral AI agent product, at least one of which could have allowed malicious users to break outside of Muse’s intended environment and access Meta’s own sensitive databases and … ⌘ Read more

Made before the current profile pic, but posting it now for spooky month.

Surveillance Company Tells Cops It Wants to Add Facial Recognition to Flock Cameras
404 Media reports:

“We will not add facial recognition to our devices,” Flock CEO Garrett Langley said in a recent video. But other, third-party companies are telling cops that they are willing to add facial recognition to data gathered by Flock cameras in order to “close that gap.” A company called VIDIZMO i … ⌘ Read more

Judge Dismisses Chegg and Penske Antitrust Lawsuits Targeting Google AI Search
A federal judge has dismissed antitrust lawsuits from Chegg and Penske Media accusing Google of harming publishers by using their content in AI Overviews and other AI search features without compensating them or providing a meaningful opt-out. Ars Technica reports: The lawsuits were filed in 2025, and Google requested … ⌘ Read more

Social Media Harms Democracy By Spreading Rumors, Survey Shows
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A growing number of people think social media manipulates and divides people and harms democracy, Pew Research Center said on Thursday, echoing rising concern and tighter scrutiny across the world. Companies running popular social platforms, including Meta, Snap, and TikTok, have faced thousands of law … ⌘ Read more

Cops Can Bypass iPhone’s Automatic Reboot To Get Into Locked Phones
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: A company that makes phone hacking devices claims to have developed a solution that freezes iPhones in a state that lets cops more easily access sensitive data inside them, according to a video obtained by 404 Media. […] The new technology to get around inactivity reboot was developed by … ⌘ Read more

A few more pics if my trip 😎

Tech Workers Made ChatGPT Drive a Toyota Corolla
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Some tech workers in San Francisco hooked up ChatGPT to a Toyota Corolla and got it to drive around a parking lot. This may not sound impressive in the age of the self-driving car until you realize that the LLM driving the car was a general purpose chatbot running on a laptop and not the purpose-built driving system based on m … ⌘ Read more

Archinstall 4.5 For Arch Linux Brings AArch64 Improvements, RT Kernel Options
Ahead of the October ISO refresh of the Arch Linux media, Archinstall 4.5 released today as the newest update to this convenient, text-based Arch Linux installer… ⌘ Read more

Some more pics of where were staying 👌

Hey, folks. Sorry to disappear for the last couple of weeks.

Last weekend, I took the family to Atlanta, GA for a visit to the Georgia Aquarium and the Center for Puppetry Arts, both of which were fantastic (pics forthcoming). Unfortunately, amongst the souvenirs we brought home was the worst sickness my wife and I have had in years, which basically laid us both out until Thursday, and we’ve been recovering since.

On top of it, just before we left, I accidentally broke TwtStrm (my WIP TwtTxt reader), so I didn’t even have a functional way to keep up with the only “social media platform” I actually give a hoot about (nor a functional brain to try and fix it).

As of this morning, though, I’m happy to report that we’re basically all better, and TwtStrm is back to working. I’m actually hoping to get some code written this weekend (and maybe even try to get Parley running), but we’ll see how things go. 🙂

we’re here now 👌

People Training OpenAI’s AI Fired For Using AI To Train the AI
404 Media reports “multiple contractors hired to improve OpenAI’s models have been fired for using AI to train the AI:

That’s not great for the models themselves, but there is also obviously a great irony in AI training companies working for OpenAI firing people for using AI when OpenAI’s whole thing is to make people use AI at work… OpenAI declined to … ⌘ Read more

Stop over in a place called Gin Gin 😅

@david@daiwei.me Hmmmm²

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So, this is happening:

And this:

To Enforce Its Proposed Social Media Ban for 450 Million Pre-Teens, EU Builds an Open Source App
The European Commission “proposed on Thursday banning children under 13 from social media, with parent-supervised accounts until 15,” reports Reuters.

“Enforcement would rely on a tool Brussels built itself” — a free, open-source age verification smartphone app “that tells a platform … ⌘ Read more

Hackers Stole Flock’s Camera Software, Revealing How the Company Tracks Cars and People
“Hackers ripped down a Flock camera above a roadway, made a near-complete copy of the data stored inside it, and shared the files with 404 Media and WIRED,” according to an article published on both sites.

Though Flock has described its system as protected by on-device encryption, “The hackers were able … ⌘ Read more

‘Zuckoff’ App Detects Meta Smartglasses, as Meta Plans Camera-Free Version, Loses Money, and Offers Social Media Subscriptions
The New York Post reports:

A new app called Zuckoff can detect if a user is near someone with Meta’s creepy AI-powered glasses, which have drawn criticism for enabling creeps to record video of women without their consent. Progra … ⌘ Read more

Simplified logo doggo

Cops Searched Thousands of Flock Cameras for Reasons of ‘LMAO,’ ‘IDK,’ ‘Hehe,’ And ‘Asdfg’
404 Media reports:

Last summer, a cop with the Lake County, Indiana Sheriff’s Department used Flock’s surveillance search engine to look for a license plate across more than 19,000 cameras in 1,558 cities and towns. The cop’s stated reason for the search, according to a record of Flock’s system, was “LMAO. … ⌘ Read more

We are the woooorld
We are the childreeeen
We are the ones, who make a briiiiighter daaaay…

La, Laaa lalaaaa;
La, Laaa lalaaaa…

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Automattic’s Matt Mullenweg Claims He’s Back ‘In Control’
Less than 48 hours after Automattic’s board placed Matt Mullenweg on leave, Mullenweg told employees he was back “in control” of the company and that the board was again in agreement. 404 Media cited Slack screenshots late Thursday evening where Mullenweg posted “Don’t call it a comeback” and linked to LL Cool J’s music video for “Mama Said Knock You Out.” “Mullenweg’s … ⌘ Read more

Debian 13.7 Released With Many Bug Fixes
For those wanting the freshest Debian 13 “Trixie” install media, Debian 13.7 is out today in bundling up all the latest bug and security fixes… ⌘ Read more

California Governor Signs Laws Protecting Kids From Risks of Social Media, AI Chatbots
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a sweeping package of laws Thursday aimed at protecting children from the risks of technology, including social media and AI chatbots. The laws will penalize large social media companies up to $1 million per … ⌘ Read more

I have (finally) built a fully e2e working purely decentralised and federated IRC-compatible chat server. It is currently a PoC, but it’s already working quite well. It’s inspired partly by the work we did with Salty Chat in terms of Discovery and Federation. Some screenshots of a normal IRC client irssi showing off how it works in a local e2e setup:

@prologic@twtxt.net @david@daiwei.me @movq@www.uninformativ.de No, I dig it - I absolutely love the slower pace here compared to even the Fediverse (and especially compared to corporate social media, which is always trying to sell something).

I did have a bit of a “down or just me” moment, thinking I might have broken my client (since it’s still WIP and it’s happened before), but beyond that, it was no worries. 🙂

maximum nostalgia slop (themed SpaceHey profile + QMMP with a bad Winamp skin)