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Submission + - Meta Staff Notes Discussed a 'Whisper Strategy' Against Jonathan Haidt

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Meta Staff Notes Discussed a ‘Whisper Strategy’ Against Jonathan Haidt

“Notes from Meta meetings in March 2023 show staff discussing how to “turn academics against Haidt”, meaning Jonathan Haidt, the social psychologist who blames social media for rising anxiety and depression among teenagers.”

‘The notes, headed “Well-being Meeting Sound-check Notes”, were filed in public on 23 October as Exhibit E in the large US federal case over social media and young people’s mental health. ’
--

"How do we get the academic community to disavow Haidt?"

"Can't co-opt them, so how do we enrage them... So the media finds him not credible."

"Whisper strategy – turn academics against Haidt."

Submission + - The Tragedy of Losing Your Wikipedia Page (wired.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: What do you need to know—need to know—about Xavier Trudeau? The eldest son of former Canadian prime minister Justin, the teenage Trudeau has recently begun performing R&B under the mononym Xav. But, with all due respect to Xav, do those facts make him a person of note? Should you expect to be able to read about him on Wikipedia? What about Evanescence guitarist Tim McCord, or 2012 Yachtmaster of the Year Rainer Holtorff? All three have had a biography on Wikipedia; all three of those biographies were considered for deletion this year on the grounds that the subjects were not notable enough to warrant a biography at all. Every day, dozens, sometimes hundreds, of Wikipedia biographies—of child actors turned LA realtors, retired ambassadors, soccer players who have played less than 10 minutes of professional soccer—are purged from the world’s free encyclopedia.

It’s not as though Wikipedia, which hosts over 7 million articles in the English language, doesn’t have the space. But Wikipedia has only so many volunteers to monitor its contents. To this day, Wikipedia editors are discovering hoaxes that have gone undetected for decades. The time it takes to verify the release dates of Xav’s three singles is better spent—the logic goes—by asking whether the American Civil War officer Nathaniel Lyon really drank mustard during battle, as was claimed in his Wikipedia biography for 17 years. Wikipedia removed the mustard claim, not because it was proven wrong, but because there was no reliable evidence for it. “We’re not really looking for what’s true,” Britta Gustafson, who has been editing Wikipedia since 2001, told me. “We’re looking for what’s verifiable.” Wikipedia editors do not themselves decide that a person is not notable, only that there is a lack of reliable evidence to support the claim...

Comment Re: Maybe (Score 2, Insightful) 92

by Luckyo (#66400340) Attached to: Alphabet Heads For a $500 Billion Drop In Market Value

Google's fundamentals are web ads on its search.

AI search is more relevant and popular than ever, whereas web search results are less and less so. And AI search is proving to be less monetizable than web search.

Ergo, fundamentals have changed. More monetizable search is slowly getting deprecated, whereas less monetizable one is replacing it everywhere.

Comment Re:Incredible but doubtful about priorities. (Score -1) 223

by Luckyo (#66379494) Attached to: Tesla Reveals SpaceX-Powered 'Flying' Roadster

These are not systems intended for economic every day drivers.

This is a supercar. You use features like this on an autobahn or similar road where there are no obstacles of that nature.

This is a feature like a maximum speed unlock on Veyron. You don't use it unless you know exactly where you are.

Comment Re:Incredible but doubtful about priorities. (Score -1) 223

by Luckyo (#66378564) Attached to: Tesla Reveals SpaceX-Powered 'Flying' Roadster

I'm unconvinced that rear and side facing thrusters will be road legal due to problems they will cause to other cars around you. As for jumping thrusters, I can already see some old rich boomer stuck in an overhead road sign because he thought he was adjusting music when he told the car to jump.

Fans sucking car to the road on the other hand are an excellent idea.

Submission + - 25 Years Later, a Palm OS Developer Opens His Development Archive (github.com)

Submitted by ardiri
ardiri writes: Palm OS developer Aaron Ardiri (slashdot.org/~ardiri) has released approximately 1 GB of historical Palm OS development resources, accumulated during the early days of handheld computing and preserved on hard drive backups for more than 25 years. The collection includes historical SDKs, developer conference presentations, technical documentation, programming examples, limited source code, and development utilities. ROM images, commercial applications, and simulator binaries have deliberately been excluded.

Ardiri previously published the source code for his Palm OS and VTOS projects, including work exploring the capabilities of early handheld devices. This latest release expands those preservation efforts beyond his own software, making a broader collection of development resources available to the retrocomputing community. The archive is available at https://github.com/ardiri/dev-... and is intended for historical preservation, education, and research, particularly as enthusiasts continue working to maintain, emulate, and revive the platform (available at https://www.ardiri.com./

Ardiri has also written an auto-biography and shas started explored the engineering principles behind these systems in his books, including Inside the Machine, which examines computer architecture from fundamental logic through modern computing systems. At a time when much of the early mobile development ecosystem has disappeared into defunct websites and aging backups, this collection offers another opportunity to preserve the tools and knowledge that helped define an important era of personal computing.

Submission + - Dutch Tax Authorities Cancel Microsoft 365 Cloud Rollout (zdnet.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Netherlands’ Tax and Customs Administration has abandoned its planned Microsoft 365 public-cloud rollout. Why? The reasons were clear at the Open Source Summit Europe conference, where the Linux Foundation (LF) released the 2026 State of Open Source in Europe. In it, the nonprofit, pro-open-source organization revealed that 94% of European Union (EU) organizations say digital sovereignty is important, with 61% considering it very important. As Thierry Carrez, the Linux Foundation Europe GM, said in his keynote, “Europe has clearly heard the message on digital sovereignty.”

In an interview onstage at the summit, Nithya Ruff, chair of the LF board, added that it’s not just Europe: “Digital sovereignty is a need that the entire world feels, whether it’s Sierra Leone or the US or China.” It’s not just the Dutch tax collectors, though. The Netherlands is also exploring switching from Windows and proprietary software to Linux and open-source programs across the board. [...] The Netherlands had planned to switch to Microsoft 365 in 2025. The idea then was to complete the rollout by the end of 2026. About 5,000 employees had already migrated when the Dutch Advisory Council on ICT Assessment recommended reversing the public-cloud rollout in June. The government paused the plan in July; the latest announcement replaces that rollout with an on-premises/open-source approach.

The Tax and Customs Administration isn’t replacing all of Microsoft Office with a single open-source suite, at least not yet. Instead, the government will keep the existing Microsoft software for now. Looking ahead, State Secretary for Finance Eelco Eerenberg set out the replacement timetable in a letter to Parliament: “In 2027, the provision for mail and calendar will be realized on-premises. Later in 2027 and 2028, European open-source solutions for personal storage and collaboration will follow. This allows us to work toward a sustainable and more autonomous solution for these functionalities.” [...] For now, the on-premises email/calendar environment will still use Microsoft software, including Outlook. The open-source portion concerns personal storage and collaboration, not a wholesale replacement of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or the entire desktop environment.

Comment Re:Rural populations mostly vote red (Republican) (Score -1) 63

by Luckyo (#66368504) Attached to: Rural Data Centers Are in for a Big Federal Tax Break

Just imagine, if you could be taxed more for unproductive infrastructure. Everything in the world would be solved, if you would just pay everything to the government, and they could re-distribute all of your income to others.

The entire reason why industrialization has delivered the promises of socialism, while socialism brought mass scarcity everywhere, is that productive activity generates resources that can be spent elsewhere.

Meanwhile taking more and more from existing industries, only to fund unproductive things (i.e. electric lines that don't allow for more production to offset their costs) improvershes everyone. It's why PRC has as many problems with useless infrastructure they built as they do. It's why their property market collapsed a few years ago.

Comment Re:Rural populations mostly vote red (Republican) (Score -1) 63

by Luckyo (#66368500) Attached to: Rural Data Centers Are in for a Big Federal Tax Break

Loudoun county is a well known example. There are several others.

https://progresschamber.org/in...

This isn't really new or interesting. If you manage to get a lot of new industry in, you can tax that industry instead of your residents. Meaning you can fund more services, while taking less tax.

Submission + - Cloudflare Keeps 1.1.1.1 Out of Piracy Blocking, Escapes Penalties in France (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Cloudflare doesn't block pirate sports streaming sites through its 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver in France, only through its CDN. The Paris Judicial Court has now accepted that stance, rejecting [French pay-TV provider] Canal+'s request for penalties of 50,000 euros per site, per day. Interestingly, the court's conclusion relies on statistics provided by Canal+ itself. [...] As a result, Cloudflare will not be penalized under these orders, even though its public DNS resolver is not blocking the sites in question. That is in line with the company’s long-standing claim that it doesn’t interfere with its DNS.

In its recent transparency reports, Cloudflare repeatedly stated that it hasn’t blocked any content through 1.1.1.1, despite orders from French and Italian courts. “To date, Cloudflare has not blocked content through the 1.1.1.1 Public DNS Resolver,” the company’s latest report reads. [...] Blocking through the CDN is another matter. According to the same report, Cloudflare geoblocked 1,238 domains in France in the second half of 2025, all under a single court order. In the first half of the year, it geoblocked 662 domains under seven orders. Cloudflare recently explained its position to the European Commission, in a submission (PDF) to its Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List consultation, stressing that global public DNS resolvers should not be used to block or restrict access.

Instead, it highlights its real-time pirate stream blocking program, which allows vetted rightsholders to flag pirate streams that run through its network. These streams are disrupted "within seconds," Cloudflare says, without any DNS or IP address blocking. "For live content, where speed is crucial, Cloudflare has built real-time mitigation mechanisms that allow vetted rightsholder partners to flag infringing streams. When those streams are running through our network, we act on them in seconds," Cloudflare informed the Commission. For now, Cloudflare can continue to block pirate sites through its CDN only, while its 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver remains untouched. Canal+ can still appeal the rulings, so it may not be the last we hear of it.

Comment Re:Rural populations mostly vote red (Republican) (Score -1) 63

by Luckyo (#66367106) Attached to: Rural Data Centers Are in for a Big Federal Tax Break

Air quality collapses. That's a new one. What exactly do they do to the air?

Gas turbines? Water vapor poisons the air now? Man, people living near oceans must be all dying from water vapor poisoning. Reminder that methane burns into H2O and CO2.

Chinabots are going really hard nowadays.

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