Smiles #7 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

Half of the US Now Requires You to Upload Your ID or Scan Your Face to Watch Porn Missouri’s age verification law, enacted on November 30, is the halfway mark for the sweep of age verification laws across the country.

cool milestone alert: half the country is under restrictive age verification law www.404media.co/missouri-age...

EFF Tells Patent Office: Don’t Cut the Public Out of Patent Review EFF has submitted its formal comment to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) opposing a set of proposed rules that would sharply restrict the public’s ability to challenge wrongly granted pate...

Developers, small businesses, nonprofits — they all rely on patent challenges called IPR to fight abusive patents. Don't let the thte U.S. Patent Office take that right away. Today's the last day to file a comment.

Special thanks to the developers building our decentralized future. Mastodon, Bluesky, Pixelfed, IPFS, Matrix, Solid, and countless other projects advancing open standards and keeping the internet weird, resilient, and truly shaped by its users.

Did Qualcomm kill Arduino for good? | Molecularist The maker community worried Qualcomm would kill the Arduino ethos. New T&Cs confirm the community's worst fears. Here's what's at stake, what Qualcomm got wrong, and what might still be salvaged.

GAAHHHH!! Why does Big Tech have to ruin everything?? I'm sick and tired of this pattern...

www.molecularist.com/2025/11/did-...

“We’ve activated Gemini on Android, Gmail, Chrome, Photos, and Google apps” With a reply, "No Thanks! Learn how to disable Gemini on Android, Gmail, Chrome, Photos, & Google apps on the Tuta blog. "

Turn off smart features in Gmail, Chat & Meet: Screenshot of the google settings you need to navigate to turn off smart features. Next to Smart features click the box to turn off smart features in Gmail, Chat and Meet. Click on Manage Workspace smart feature settings and toggle these setting off.

🚨 BREAKING #Google just activated #Gemini on #Gmail - without asking you.

Turn it off now; here's how!
tuta.com/blog/how-to-...

✊️ Fight AI & fight Google

You have to manually turn off Smart Features in the Setting menu in TWO locations.

Share so everyone is aware. ❤️

✍️ With the #EUSummit25 on Digital Sovereignty taking place today, we’re proud to join 100+ partners in signing the “Declaration of Digital Independence” led by @apell.info.

Open source is key to Europe’s sovereignty, innovation and competitiveness.

Participate by signing the declaration👇️

this! the AI industry and CS at large literally treats the human condition as a problem to be solved

what exactly is "winning the AI race? environmental destruction, labor extraction, ever more intrusive surveillance, mass manipulation, and unprecedented power for the handful???

How to Opt-Out of Airlines Selling Your Travel Data to the Government The Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC), owned by major U.S. airlines, collects billions of ticketing records and sells them to the government to be searched without a warrant. I managed to opt-out…

When you book a flight through major travel sites, a data broker owned by U.S. airlines will sell details about your flight—your name, credit card used, and where you’re flying to the government.

We found out how to opt-out of ARC selling your travel data. A guide:
www.404media.co/how-to-opt-o...

LinkedIn will use your data to train AI – how to opt out | Proton LinkedIn will share your public data with Microsoft to train AI. Find what this means for your privacy and how to opt out.

Reminder: Turn this off by Nov 3rd or LinkedIn will use your posts to train their AI. You can also formally object to this practice, as well.

And note to @Microsoft: opting people in, by default, for AI training is wrong.

proton.me/blog/linkedi...

Immigration Customs and Enforcement officers in camouflage surround and handcuff a person.

No, law enforcement should not be able to purchase our data instead of getting a warrant. 🚫 We're dedicated to closing this loophole: takebackctrl.org/get-a-warrant

Amazon Tells Driver to Keep Delivering Packages Amid Raging Wildfire Amazon is accused of controlling workers through a surveillance dragnet, while skirting responsibility for their wellbeing.

“Speaking to Futurism, DAIR director of research Alex Hanna said Amazon’s tech panopticon is ‘central to keeping control” over its workers.’”

‘AI psychosis’ discussions ignore a bigger problem with chatbots Don’t frame chatbot failures as human “insanity.”

“Relying on chatbots isn’t fringe — it’s the predictable result of care made scarce, stigmatized, and costly. Recognizing that doesn’t mean uncritically embracing chatbot care, but it’s past time to name what’s happening: Privately owned chatbots are functioning as public health resources.”

Man Alarmed to Discover His Smart Vacuum Was Broadcasting a Secret Map of His House One man's robot vacuum was constantly communicating with its manufacturer, sending a detailed 3D map of his house halfway across the world.

Roomba should have been a warning.

a16z-Backed Startup Sells Thousands of ‘Synthetic Influencers’ to Manipulate Social Media as a Service Andreessen Horowitz is funding a company that clearly violates the inauthentic behavior policies of every major social media platform.

NEW: an a16z-backed startup called Doublespeed promises clients can “orchestrate actions on thousands of social accounts through both bulk content creation and deployment.”

Essentially an AI-powered bot service in violation of all major social media platforms

www.404media.co/a16z-backed-...

AI Chatbots Operate As Confirmation Bias Machines new study confirms

Largest study of its kind shows AI assistants misrepresent news content 45% of the time – regardless of language or territory An intensive international study was coordinated by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and led by the BBC

built on theft and at massive environmental cost and most importantly, numerous studies keep demonstrating that genAI tools often work a little better than by chance. how is it that we can’t expunge these slop machines out of our institutions and communities

www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/...

this group built a data center tracker www.distilled.earth/p/these-data...

🚨 Another massive AWS outage just took down Roblox, Fortnite, Coinbase, Snapchat, and all Supercell games.

Half the internet has gone dark because of one Big Tech company. This is not innovation, it is monopoly risk.

💡It’s time to choose alternatives.

#GoEuropean #DigitalSovereignty #AWS #Outage

Kohler Wants to Put a Tiny Camera in Your Toilet and Analyze the Contents The company's new Dekoda toilet accessory is like a little bathroom detective.

“At toilet time, you sign in via a fingerprint sensor so that the device knows who's using the facilities. (Please wash your hands before signing out or tracking your progress.) Then, check in with the app for the day's analysis and trends over time.”

Great to see this open access "Digital Africa" series taking shape. It provides a platform for African scholarship, expands African case studies and foregrounds African theorisation of the relationship between digital technologies, rights and power interests.
www.bloomsbury.com/uk/series/di...

Please believe OpenAI when their research confirms that LLMs will always inevitably produce plausible but false outputs. #AIforDummies

🚨⏳ Act now! You have until 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝟑, 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟓 to prevent Microsoft from using your LinkedIn data to train AI.

You're opted in automatically, unless you take action and turn it off.

OpenAI is trying to clamp down on ‘bias’ in ChatGPT GPT-5 is better at resisting liberal ‘pressure,’ the company says.

The administration “is currently pressuring OpenAI and other AI companies to make their models more conservative-friendly.”

"Ignorance isn’t always innocent. A lot of the time, it’s strategic. ... White ignorance doesn’t persist bc there’s a lack of information—it persists bc there’s a refusal to engage... once you admit you knew & did nothing... you’d have to admit you were fine with it. You have to admit complicity."

How AI is fueling surveillance capitalism and undermining democracy YouTube video by Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

How AI is fueling surveillance capitalism and undermining democracy
youtu.be/cn8_lmWfXkQ?...

More of this!

Apple Shelves Vision Headset Revamp to Prioritize Meta-Like AI Glasses Apple Inc. has hit pause on a planned overhaul to its Vision Pro headset to redirect resources toward a more urgent effort: developing smart glasses that can rival products from Meta Platforms Inc.

“These developments signal a broader realignment across major tech firms toward wearable devices driven by generative AI, always-on connectivity, and seamless user interfaces.”

From “glassholes” to “slopfacer.”

Smart Ring Swells Up, Crushes Man's Finger and Sends Him to the Hospital A faulty Samsung Galaxy Ring battery caused the smart ring to swell up, sending its wearer to the emergency room for removal.

Today in luxury surveillance.

New York Knicks condemned for digital surveillance of fans and discrimination against trans fans
mailchi.mp/stopspying/p...