falktx @falktx@mastodon.falktx.com

It's official. After 3 months of back and forth, a major medical provider has elected to drop me as a patient for not having a Google or Apple device.

It is unclear if this is legal, but it is very clearly discriminatory and unethical.

Any tech journalists or lawyers interested interested in this?

I would like to do anything I can to ensure this never happens to anyone else.

ok, I'm kinda confused where does idea of @-ing the booster in a reply come from and which apps do that (mastodon web-ui and tusky surely don't)

do you think it's normal/desired that a reply to a post/toot also includes @ of the person who boosted it?

(please... eermmm uh.., boost this for reach)

China: “Remove all VPNs”
Apple: “Sure thing”

China: “…and podcast apps”
Apple: “Can do boss!”

China: “…and also hand over all iCloud data for our citizens”
Apple: “I mean why wouldn’t we? Here you go!”

EU: “Allow alternate app stores, and do it fairly”
Apple: “Ahhh hell no! This is so unfair you guys are bullies! Malware! Privacy! We have standards! Unlike you we care about our users!”

“I’m a Google Cloud software engineer, and I refuse to build technology that powers genocide [and] apartheid”

https://www.dailydot.com/debug/google-protest-israel/

Watch the others in the room. The assholes who jeer and manhandle the protestors. These are your peers in the tech industry. These are the “acceptable folks” in tech. Fuck these people.

Look at their faces. They know exactly what they’re complict in. Look at their smug smiles. Dickheads each one.

#tech #google #ai #ProjectNimbus #israel #genocide #palestine

@falktx https://heathermeeker.com/2024/02/17/french-court-issues-damages-award-for-violation-of-gpl/

Docusign just admitted that they use customer data (i.e., all those contracts, affidavits, and other confidential documents we send them) to train AI:

https://support.docusign.com/s/document-item?language=en_US&bundleId=fzd1707173174972&topicId=uss1707173279973.html

They state that customers "contractually consent" to such use, but good luck finding it in their Terms of Service. There also doesn't appear to be a way to withdraw consent, but I may have missed that.

The Open Collective Foundation is shutting down https://lwn.net/Articles/963958/ #LWN

Some important context as this news breaks:

#WordPress is an open-source project, available at WordPress.org.

One of its co-founders, Matt Mullenweg, is CEO of #Automattic, which runs WordPress.com and owns #Tumblr.

They can’t sell what they don’t have, so “WordPress” here refers to WordPress.com, *not* self-hosted WordPress instances.

BUT many self-hosted instances use the Jetpack plugin, which does send data to WordPress.com, so that might be sold 🤬

https://mastodon.social/@404mediaco/112004850884204466

Ardour 8.4 is out with experimental AAF importing, new Adwaita theme, midnam files for Lexicon MPX100 and Yamaha SY85, MIDI maps for Donner DMK25 and Arturia MiniLab 3, but mostly with a bunch of bugfixes

https://ardour.org/whatsnew.html

You steal from one person and you’re a thief. You steal from everyone and you’re an AI company.

#ai

Silicon Valley: Introducing Fuck You and The Planet as a Service™ 2024 Edition!

Mozilla: Introducing Fuck You and The Planet as a Service™ 2024 Trustworthy Edition!

#Mozilla #SiliconValley #BigTech

Mozilla fires 60 people to “focus on bringing ‘trustworthy AI into Firefox.’”

Fuck you, Mozilla. No one is asking for AI in Firefox. Sadly, you’re the best we can hope for under capitalism. So if we want something better, we should look into alternative models.

https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/13/mozilla-downsizes-as-it-refocuses-on-firefox-and-ai-read-the-memo/

#mozilla #firefox #ai

Why @obsidian is 100% user-supported and not backed by VC investors

Boosts appreciated.

Looking for support, tips, and commiseration regarding book bannings now underway in my home school district. There's a really great book on the chopping block due to, ostensibly, profanity (it's not really about the profanity). I'm livid and feeling a bit helpless about it. What's the best way to make a fuss? What kind of pressure works?

#bannedbooks #ReadBannedBooks #academic #bookstodon

If your only options for interacting with a technical, sysadmin-/developer-focused project's community are these, which would you go with?

Boosts appreciated 🔄

1: an XMPP MUC that requires you to have an account on some XMPP server

2: an IRC channel that requires enough knowledge of IRC to join the channel

3: a mailing list that requires an email account and rejects HTML email

4: a ticket tracker that you can interact with from either your email address (rejects HTML email) or from the web UI but the web UI maybe requires creating a new account

5: none of the above (just don't interact with the community)

My video on the Fediverse is now live on YouTube as well!

A new internet is forming (& Meta wants to control it)

YouTube: https://youtu.be/R3ptZ1W-FRA

Nebula: https://nebula.tv/videos/techaltar-a-new-internet-is-forming-meta-wants-to-control-it