verge@mastodon.social it’s a distraction alright.

https://blog.cubed.run/driven-to-distraction-by-distractions-fd0419fd21b7

Swedish Pirate Bay backer Carl Lundström dies in Slovenia plane crash.

Swedish entrepreneur and early backer of file-sharing website The Pirate Bay, Carl Lundström, died in a plane crash involving his own private aeroplane in Slovenian mountains on Monday.

The right-wing party Alternative for Sweden, for which Lundström ran in the 2021 elections, confirmed his death on Tuesday.

https://mediafaro.org/article/20250312-swedish-pirate-bay-backer-carl-lundstrom-dies-in-slovenia-plane-crash?mf_channel=mastodon&action=forward

#CarlLundstrom #ThePirateBay #PlaneCrash #Sweden #Slovenia

Sunday doodle:

Every time someone launches an Android phone, they fork (copy-paste) the entire code-base for each and every device and Android version. Keeping it up to date is a lot of effort for the vendors, but don't worry - they only do so for a limited amount of time, so that you have to buy a new phone instead!

Source: https://postmarketos.org/blog/2017/05/26/intro/

Sagaliciouzzz@fribygda.no owl@gts.u8.is no, Molly will work on the normal Google Android too. Molly is to the official Signal Android app what Librewolf is to Firefox. It's a community variant of the app that removes the proprietary (closed) parts, and adds some security features. I particularly recommend it for degoogled phones because it can send notifications better in those phones, but it's usable generally and works well.

https://molly.im/

All of Molly, the official Signal Android app, and the Signal-desktop app will be talking with the same centralised Signal server and using the same account validated by phone number.

Personally I really dislike both of these defects (centralisation—in USA servers no less—and demanding a phone number), but there's no usable alternative currently, and at least Signal is encrypted and has open source apps. It does match all of your OP requirements, and has a good momentum with their userbase.

So it turns out the geniuses over at Bluesky trust the client app to fetch, and honestly report, webpage metadata for preview cards, so with a little tinkering in the debug tools you can post whatever news stories you like and they look exactly the same as real ones.

https://bsky.app/profile/andrewt.net/post/3ljo2dja62224

Valve could be about to release SteamOS for any device, says leaker

https://www.pcguide.com/news/valve-could-be-about-to-release-steamos-for-any-device-says-leaker/

Discussions: https://discu.eu/q/https://www.pcguide.com/news/valve-could-be-about-to-release-steamos-for-any-device-says-leaker/

#gaming #linux #unix

#CloudFlare's denial of service against #PaleMoon, #Basilisk, and other small and independent web browsers is still ongoing, and has been going on since the end of January this year. Here is an official forum thread you can follow for the current summary and status of the situation.



We ask you to (kindly and politely) pressure webmasters whose websites are behind CloudFlare to at least disable their "I'm under attack" mode which indiscriminately blocks web users and consider switching to another CAPTCHA solution. (It's very telling when even Google's reCAPTCHA works better than #Turnstile)



https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=32127



#OpenWeb #AntiTrust #CDN #browser #browsers

Friendly reminder that you should consider everything you say on the Fediverse to be publicly available and archived by your adversaries, who can and will use it against you.

"Quiet public" isn't saving you from that. "Followers-only" isn't saving you from that. Don't assume your DMs are private either.

Tutto ciò che fate sul Fediverso è pubblicamente disponibile e archiviabile da Meta, dalle AI, dai Big Tech che possono usarlo in qualsiasi modo.

Meta ha archiviato illegalmente 160TB di libri per adestrare l'AI, scaricandoli online.

Il “silenziare” o "bloccare" istanze non vi salverà mai dai predatori di dati online, serve che tutti facciano in modo di non lasciare troppi dati personali su mastodon.

Cancellare automaticamente i vecchi post può aiutare: https://mastodon.uno/statuses_cleanup

@fediverso

If you run a Nextcloud instance and you also use it for writing notes/to-do lists/tasks, etc. you should really try QOwnNotes.



It's a really good and underrated piece of software, and it even has vim mode.

GIMP 3.0 is released, check it out!

https://www.gimp.org/news/2025/03/16/gimp-3-0-released/

A huge THANK YOU to everyone who contributed in any way - from testing and submitting bug reports through to designing, coding, fixing, packaging, testing some more, translating, documenting, hosting, administration, so many people, so much work, so much to be thankful for!

Welcome to GIMP 3.0!

Hah, the French govt, with some help from Germany, is building an open source Notion clone. Fun!

https://github.com/suitenumerique/docs?tab=readme-ov-file

AI #search engines cite incorrect sources at an alarming 60% rate, study says

Misinformation has always been present on the internet, but #AI certainly isn't helping here.

Additionally, many AI tools ignored Robot Exclusion Protocol settings. AKA they said that robots.txt doesn't apply to them.

(Grok 3's error rate is 94%, lol.)

#misinformation

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/03/ai-search-engines-give-incorrect-answers-at-an-alarming-60-rate-study-says/

You may not care about this for stock photos but for any artists out there I encourage you to come up with a way to inject your watermark into your art. I've seen a few people who use there signature as part of how they draw hair, it'll take some effort but it's probably worth it

"The problem isn’t that the fediverse isn’t viable. The problem isn’t that it’s “too complicated.” The problem is that the giants of Silicon Valley have spent 20 years convincing us that anything outside their control isn’t worth our time."

"The internet was meant to belong to everyone. And it still fucking can."

By Daojoan@mastodon.social

https://www.joanwestenberg.com/the-fediverse-isnt-the-future-its-the-present-weve-been-denied/

With GIMP 3 releasing of course the stupid name arguments start up again, if they want to change it they will, if they don't they won't. A name change won't make the application any more popular, it'll still be GIMP and it'll still be in the same state functionality wise. But it's so much easier to argue about a name than it is to address the hard stuff. Regarding the projects stance have a read of the FAQ https://www.gimp.org/docs/userfaq.html#i-dont-like-the-name-gimp-will-you-change-it

This is the last I'm going to say on it, see you in a few years.

The new Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop Edition webpage, I made is online. Currently only the beta is released but the final release is afaik planned mid April.

https://fedoraproject.org/kde/

#kde #fedora

Ever heard of "Federation-Washing"?



https://tube.kockatoo.org/w/kSCtZK8HVhK1xGhf54d6kJ

Microsoft sent me an email telling me to throw my computer in the trash. 🤷

Happy Jellyfin user here! ;) https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2022/why-i-use-jellyfin-my-home-media-library