Medical masks were never designed to protect the wearer — and leading safety authorities are finally saying so. Only respirators (like N95s) qualify as Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). Read more: whn.global/whn-joins-in-the-ch….
Overview Throughout the COVID pandemic, there has been confusion from public health and medical leaders over which masks to wear to prevent transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Even if the House was fully functional, they're in session for an avg of 147 days and out for 218. But under Speaker Johnson, Congress has been in session only 12 of the last 97 days, and he still won't swear in Rep-elect Adelita Grijalva.
Meanwhile, these are the people who demand Work Requirements for ordinary Americans.😐
I'm pretty sure the House Speaker doesn't get veto rights over the voters of the 7th district of Arizona. Why does she need to be sworn in? What's stopping Rep Grijalva from just assuming the role and doing the job?
Or, if the Constitution is non-operable these days, wouldn't it be better if we all stopped pretending? The Trump cabal has terminated our republican system of government.
I am puzzled that the D doesn't play this as a labour grievance: she doesn't get paid until she is sworn in. Most people of any political stripe can connect with the concept that if you were hired to do a job then you should get paid.
"After five weeks, Grijalva has forfeited $17,000 of the $174,000 annual congressional salary, since she won’t go on the payroll until she formally joins the House."
House Speaker Mike Johnson insisted last week that Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva already has all the privileges and access of any House member.“ But without a salary, website, office budget or aides, she says she's hamstrung.
#Google trips over its own words, when they sell you #Android it's the best computing device in the world that does everything. After you bought it Google doesn't let you do anything *you* want to.
#Sideload is a made-up term. Putting software on your computer is simply called “installing”, regardless of whether that computer is in your pocket or on your desk.
What Do You Talk About When You Talk About Sideloading?
We recently published a blog post with our reaction to the new Google Developer Program and how it impacts your freedom to use the devices that you own in th...
arguably, it's Google who is sideloading. If the device owner wants to install some software in his or her device direcly, that is the front door, not some side entrance.
Hot take: Google can afford to do this chiefly for two reasons:
1. They're one half of a duopoly. 2. We all need a smartphone to function in modern society.
If people knew they could buy a KaiOS phone and use it for 2FA or payments, Google might not be so cocky. If governments everywhere didn't keep threatening to eliminate cash, Google might not feel too big to fail. Demanding regulation is all good and well. I hope it works. But they'll just try again, like with Chat Control.
Keep going on guys 🙏❤️ but we do know what Android not became, but always be : Google's Monopoly toy. Time to switch to another system. Urgently we do need projects like @postmarketOS or Mobian to go from testers to full daily use, with smartphones built with open hardware. No way to keep Qualcomm/Android in this deal because one forces you to use the other one... Nice hardware and software locking system that Microsoft would love too !
shouldn't sideloading actually mean applications that gets installed without your consent which google seem to be quite good at pushing applications I never asked for like Android System SafetyCore
I'm not absolving the A holes at Google but I think the Trump regime could have told them to do this. They don't want period apps that don't share information with them or apps that thwart ICE efforts etc. Verified developers will have to play nicely with the regimes wishes.
Quick question, if you donʼt mind, since I canʼt find this anywhere online. The 'outside of China' qualifier in your post: does this mean Chinese-spec, non-Google phones (which are still Android) will escape Googleʼs draconian measures?
@jackyan China distributions don't use Google Services, which are usually the way to enforce this. Then again some Chinese OEMs do things like this for a while now, maybe easier to disable but still problematic.
This is the last straw from google. I will go to graphene OS. However, if there will be such a monstrous monopoly owned by google without any solid competition, de-googling will be difficult for the average user. Unfortunately, most users don't care about this case.
no use of anything until u start ur own OS/device with the help of other foss community developers... Start collaboration with investors... Make a good product and sell it at very budget price...
Our nonprofit group's award winning, prosocial, non-violent video games were removed by #Google.
🤥 They claimed that we had misled them by classifying them as #educational. Google purported to know more about our work than we do.
🎮 Our free games about #consent and #healthyrelationships were unilaterally removed from Google Play, making it much tougher for us to reach and help young people.
🧡 The ubiquity of smartphones make game marketplaces a necessary channel for us to reach #adolescents directly.
Our games are free and can be shared freely; no DRM.
But, due to the nature of the games, we don't allow changes to the meaning and nature of the narratives.
The games are non-violent, trauma-informed, and designed for ages 11-15. Topics include #consent and #abuse #prevention. We won't allow the games to be adapted into something violent or harmful.
This approach limits our reach - but helps us protect students from harmful content.
Overview Local Demo Repo HOWTO Customization App Metadata Real World Setup F-Droid.org is the default package repository (repo) in the F-Droid client, but it...
And to make it even worse, most of the Federal Government's money comes from Democratic-led states. So, it's literally money we've put into the pot, being given to Republican-oppressed states that don't contribute as much and love to badmouth our states. 😠
When I first heard about the lost aircraft from the Nimitz my first thought was "Did they bring the F-14 Tomcat out of retirement?" My thought after reading the article is "Is my old CO training new flight officers?"
Pete's liquor and shuddup budget hadda come from somewhere. Looks like it was maybe the cute little clippies or whatever it is orders-followers use to hold the planes down on the boats when they go. Dang. Next round's (also) on US!
It is the moral, ethical, and yes legally right for Democratic States and Cities to engage in Soft Secession by withholding federal taxes—and instead spend those funds on their own residents.
This would not violate the Supremacy Clause, has immense precedent in American history, and the time to act is NOW. The real question is given the Federal government's complete failure—what are Democratic leaders waiting for?
when I get paid my federal taxes are taken out of my paycheck by my employer and are sent directly to the federal government. The state does not take this money and then forward it to the federal government. So how can my state stop the federal government from getting those withheld taxes?
you'd have to regulate employers to give withheld fed funds to states instead of the irs, and then enforce that regulation on them
I think something like this needs to be done, but the logistics are... Difficult. This paired with a national strike may be necessary to make America more Democratic, as the slaver's Senate still wields powers on behalf of neo-confederates
America's infrastructure, from power to water etc, doesn't really lend itself to a breakup (esp along state lines)
But Democrats can't tie their own shoelaces, Schumer and Gillibrand are floating around islamophobic memes...
Is there any hope left for a Democratic Party that doesn't perform any functions of genuine opposition, but it does perform quite a few functions of controlled opposition?
For those asking "HOW" Soft Secession could happen—important question.
The above article is on the WHAT, WHY, & LEGAL basis for Soft Secession. I'm co-authoring a joint piece with a Tax Lawyer on the HOW. Publishing it soon on my Substack (no paywall): qasimrashid.com/subscribe
As a human rights lawyer I bring the receipts to disentangle fact from fiction and advance the fight for universal human rights. Click to read Let's Address This with Qasim Rashid, by Qasim Rashid, Esq.
exactly blue states should keep Federal tax money for their own states If Trump has 17 trillion from Tariffs where's the money? Democrat govs keep the Federal taxes for the people screw the Trump states
Rather than violent rupture, soft secession offers states a path to quietly walk away. The legal precedents are established, the economic leverage exists, and the political will is evident.
As states increasingly choose their own paths on fundamental issues, we may be witnessing the emergence of something unprecedented: a United States that’s united in name only.
Minor rant on how hard it is to buy replacement parts for everyday things these days. Especially when new models are released and companies stop making spare parts for their older ones. Everything's so disposable now and it's irritating.
Signal's president claimed it takes billions to replicate the availability and reliability of "hyperscalers" (AWS/Google/Microsoft/Cloudfare) that Signal uses.
@tomli what does IP address hiding have to do with the topic of the post? :) Anyway, Cloudfare probably sees all signal group members by the access pattern to in-chat media, including their IP address. Each #chatmail relay only sees IP addresses of its users but not of users of other relays.
@tomli Depends in your MTA. Chatmail does, most MTAs do. The ludacris X-Originating-IP is mostly a ghost of the past. And unless you are acting as an MTA you are likely safe.
@tomli @h3artbl33d right now you can't change the address. The 2) point in the post will take a release or two to arrive and then you can meaningfully change/add addresses. Stay tuned.
(Non gender specific) Dude! I had to fight to get people to use Element/Matrix and when the jank got too much I had to fight to move them to Signal. I'm tired and done with all that shit.
But you're saying all the right things so I'm looking at my soapbox and megaphone and thinking I may have to drag them out again... 🙂
dumb bait post, if you've figured out a way to cheaply (for open source projects) provide high quality group video calls internationally (the specific scenario Signal was talking about) without hyperscalers and also , please let us know, otherwise don't strawman them
@jackie i dont get why to promote your service you need to bad mouth other alternatives? Isn’t your service better, without the need to denigrate Signal?
@jaystephens @jackie thanks for correcting and the precision -- we didn't quite follow the evolution of signal's call support. The point stands that video calls were not moxie's original key reason to go for hyperscalers and centralization (see signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-… )
At Open Whisper Systems, we’ve been developing open source “consumer-facing” software for the past four years. We want to share some of the things we’ve learned while doing it. As a software developer, I envy writers, musicians, and filmmakers.
been part of projects that used nextcloud talk, jitsi, bigbluebutton, and so many more
this is basically the one thing webrtc is really good at without too much bullshit involved
integrating that into a larger chat platform is certainly a lift, but webrtc plus turn/stun basically obviates the need for massive iron. you'd definitely need relays for the people trapped behind carrier-grade nat, but most mobile data is direct ipv6 these days anyway
@tomli now that's a stupid claim, only telegram is susceptible to network analysis due to plaintext message headers. cloudflare couldn't possibly figure out who you are sending Signal messages to
@morganist @tomli is Cloudfare not used for hosting encrypted attachments anymore? if you put a picture into a signal group, is it not accessed by the members of that group? Are the IP addresses not seen by Cloudfare ops?
I don’t think that spreading poorly substantiated accusations of technical infidelity against signal helps your mission, or anyone else.
I think it’s cool that you’re writing your own messenger software, but please spread the word about it by advertising how it is good, not by trying to push others down who fight for the same causes as you.
@jaseg what exactly is "poorly substantiated accusations" in our post? We have often applauded signal for their cryptography achievements but their infrastructure choices are a different thing. Infrastructure matters. And we were laying out what we are doing in the same post.
they’re poorly substantiated in that they boil down to “large cloud provider bad” without considering why signal chose a large cloud provider, and what they have done to mitigate the centralization. The latter is the interesting bit, since they structured their protocol considering the cloud provider untrusted. This means the provider learns very little about their users, and their main role is providing uptime.
By over-reducing your point to “cloud provider bad” you’re circumnavigating a whole informed discussion and effectively spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt to people who don’t understand how signal works at a technical level.
@jaseg well, even signal's president started off by viewing hyperscalers as problematic. We then layed out how we want to address the reliability and uptime challenges (through using cheap relays redundantly). It's tough technical challenges to realize the plans. But discussing infrastructure and different ways than giving 20+ millions to hyperscalers yearly is not FUD.
I'm not saying you don't have a point. I'm not a fan of these providers either, and I think @Mer__edith is uniquely qualified to understand the risks and benefits they have. My issue is with the reductionist view you were broadcasting in the first toot in this series, which didn't go into any of that nuance and read like FUD to me.
@blazr with 2.22.0 you can try out calling, look for "Debug Calls" in the experimental settings :)
Instead of big email providers, we actually recommend self-hosting chatmail.at/relays, or using one of the existing public ones. This is basically how we aim to do scaling, horizontal instead of centralized.
Chatmail provides FOSS infrastructure for interoperable, secure, speedy and reliable end-to-end encrypted messaging. Check out clients as Arcane Chat, Bots or Delta Chat today!
I really hope you can pull this off. However, having worked with distributed, decentralized systems, I think the difference between a centralized system and yours will always be a limitation to adoption.
But I hope you'll write lots of blog posts for others to build upon :)
Both are right. Republicans control the courts, the House and Senate, and the White House. But Donald Trump controls the govt and the Republican Party. It won't do anything that displeases the Don.
If the democrats cannot pass a bill themselves all voting one way, they aren't in charge. Even if they had the numbers, they could literally pass a bill that Trump would not sign anyway, so that's where we're at. Republicans only need to convince a few democrats to vote with them, and have made zero effort to change anything that would make this happen.
in a way grindr mike is correct.the republican party doesnt have the brains or the balls to run the govt.trump is doing it all( along with mein miller) and the g.o.p. are too scared to stand up and do their jobs.
The most annoying thing about donating to a #charity is the follow-up messages that usually start within a week asking for more money. For Chrissake! I gave you the money I can give you now; what makes you think I can give you more money a week later?
If you run a charity, don't fucking do this. Wait at least a month or two. A reminder once a year would be ideal for me because I only give to each charity once a year.
I totally unsubscribed so now I'll never hear from them again. Hopefully.
@magpie I always open the envelopes and take a look for treats. 🤣 But email! That pisses me off to no end. Right now I'm also dealing with text messages from politicians. Everyone has their hand out while the world burns around us.
At least it sounds like it was just email, not physical mail. I have given to charities before that I swear spent more than my gift in printing and postage mailing me more giving appeals.
“It was so unnecessary and misguided that you have to wonder if it isn’t caused by her near-sociopathic certainty that she is right about everything and her way is the only way.”
Overreach, anyone? Since the start of the legal strike by 51,000 Alberta public, francophone and Catholic schoolteachers on October 6, elements of the province’s United Conservative Party Government have been chomping at the bit to use the Notwithst…
The likely place to check on status of Jamaica if all communications goes down after Hurricane Melissa hits is the C.E.W.N: Caribbean Emergency and Weather Net. It's likely an SDR in the Caribbean or RemoteHams will be necessary to hear traffic, although the SDRs in Florida can usually hear some of this.
"C.E.W.N: Caribbean Emergency and Weather Net Serving Caribbean nations with Amateur Radio Communications for Sixty five years and counting
The Amateur Radio network now known as the Caribbean Emergency and Weather Net was established in 1958 by Colonel Henry Frew, KV4BZ, for the purpose of having a general calling frequency for the Caribbean Islands and our North and South American friends.
The net’s original name was the Antilles Emergency Net. Main Frequency is 3.815 Mhz LSB and secondary Frequency is 7.162 Mhz LSB
The purpose of the net is to handle emergency and weather traffic at all times. CEWN will be activated to 24 hour operations in case of an emeregency such as hurricane or earthquake per example. The CEWN will then handle all emergency traffic and relay as needed and required to the relevant authorities."
The loss of support comes at a time of uncertainty for one of Arizona’s largest homeless services providers as the Trump administration calls for reducing and restructuring homelessness assistance grants.
SNAP “is the most effective anti-hunger program in the United States.”
It will be gone November 1st . That's 44 million Americans left to forage for food over Thanksgiving. Frankly the federal government has contingency's to continue SNAP during shutdowns but #Trump is using this as a gun against Democrats heads because they know Democrats care-GOP guys are mocking the poor as one MAGA did last week. Christians I tell you.
This is a really unique position I'm beyond lucky to be able to hire for, because all we do is create educational content with no conflicts of interest about privacy, digital rights, and FOSS. Who else even does anything like us? 😎
If this isn't a fit for you, but you see value in what we're doing at @privacyguides and want to support our future hire, please consider becoming a monthly member of our site or sending us a donation. Any little bit helps make all this possible 🙏
Digital Content Producer Location: Remote (United States Preferred) Classification: Full-Time, Salaried (Exempt) Pay Range: $900/week – $1280/week ℹ We aim to move very quickly with this position and want to hit the ground running with new video…
To all those “Let them go without food for a month, maybe they’ll get a job” people: Most SNAP recipients have jobs. Exploitative jobs that keep them living just below the poverty line. — Should they starve to death? And then what?
In a picturesque town on the U.S.-Canada border, workers under dark clouds were building a new entrance for Canadians into a library to replace one that had long symbolized bilateral closeness.
jmjm
in reply to Qasim Rashid, Esq. • • •I'm pretty sure the House Speaker doesn't get veto rights over the voters of the 7th district of Arizona. Why does she need to be sworn in? What's stopping Rep Grijalva from just assuming the role and doing the job?
Or, if the Constitution is non-operable these days, wouldn't it be better if we all stopped pretending? The Trump cabal has terminated our republican system of government.
acffh morst
in reply to Qasim Rashid, Esq. • • •Ruth O'Day
in reply to Qasim Rashid, Esq. • • •I am puzzled that the D doesn't play this as a labour grievance: she doesn't get paid until she is sworn in. Most people of any political stripe can connect with the concept that if you were hired to do a job then you should get paid.
"After five weeks, Grijalva has forfeited $17,000 of the $174,000 annual congressional salary, since she won’t go on the payroll until she formally joins the House."
Source: cronkitenews.azpbs.org/2025/10…
House Speaker says Grijalva fine without oath, but she’s hamstrung
Nick Karmia (Cronkite News)