Posts by leighelse@mastodon.nz
(DIR) Post #AxkS68Kabx8K7anCjI by leighelse@mastodon.nz
2025-08-31T20:02:21Z
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Moving Radio New Zealand's "centre of gravity" to Auckland is an ill-considered strategy.Even if I did live in Auckward, I would favour a radio broadcaster which was a distributed network, integrating input from around the country.https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/mediawatch/571584/rnz-s-high-stakes-national-planSure, have a couple of shows based in Auckland, a couple in Wellington. But what about Christchurch? Tauranga? Dunedin? Nelson?Unlike television, radio can originate its broadcasts from anywhere with minimal expense, especially in these days of digital audio and the internet.
(DIR) Post #AxuHDpd4s7CkWKVXyi by leighelse@mastodon.nz
2025-09-05T19:59:14Z
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Cory Doctorow on why Wikipedia works.https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/05/be-the-first-person/#to-not-do-something-that-no-one-else-has-ever-thought-of-not-doing-before'conservatives have turned their sights on Wikipedia. Conservative publications are – empirically speaking – the most falsehood-strewn and conspiratorial branch of the press ...The fact that reality has a pronounced left-wing bias means that many popular conservative publications have been disqualified as reliable sources on Wikipedia, starting with the Daily Mail in 2017. This has the Maga right spitting feathers about "anti-conservative bias on Wokeapedia," and has Maga Congresstrolls demanding that Wikipedia unmask its editors and disclose their identities, a risk formerly confined to Russia, India, China and Turkiye.'
(DIR) Post #AywQLZDG4kojGw6uEC by leighelse@mastodon.nz
2025-10-06T18:56:48Z
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Cory Doctorow on how Apple and Google buckled immediately to the Trump administration.https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/06/america-with-chinese-characteristics/#orphaned-syrian-refugees-need-not-apply'Truly, everyone's a "rogue capitalist" now. It's almost like the problem with companies isn't whether their business model is based on showing you ads or charging you money, but rather, whether they can abuse you for profit and get away with it.'
(DIR) Post #AzJmqmxTgesaVW6HS4 by leighelse@mastodon.nz
2025-10-18T01:27:42Z
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Thank you @lightweight This is a great read, and I recommend the extensive comments and footnotes too.
(DIR) Post #AzU6jUZXaZBO7YIkCm by leighelse@mastodon.nz
2025-10-23T00:51:42Z
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My two oldest grandchildren need laptops. He (15) needs one to learn to code on, and has an interest in a range of languages and environments. She (13) needs one for secondary school next year which will smoothly run Google Classroom.Currently my intention is to buy two used Lenovo X270 machines and upspec them to 16GB + 512GB + a new battery, and install Linux Mint. I'll go for the higher resolution screens if I can get them, otherwise they can cope with 1366x768 (and perhaps I can find him a monitor to use at home).The advantages of getting two of the same model are shared power supplies and batteries, plus the eventual ability to cannibalise as necessary. And the advantages of this specific model are:- New enough to have USB-C- User-upgradeable RAM and SDD- Superb battery life- Physically robustAny thoughts? Options?
(DIR) Post #AzVdyAumRqRb8xnyLI by leighelse@mastodon.nz
2025-10-23T18:21:45Z
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Sodium-ion batteries are coming, and they're going to change the world.https://cleantechnica.com/2025/10/22/the-sodium-ion-battery-revolution-has-started/'he cost of sodium battery materials is much lower than for any lithium battery. There are no resource bottleneck materials like cobalt or lithium to contend with. In addition, aluminum can be used for electrodes, whereas lithium requires copper for one of the electrodes. Carbon or graphite and separator materials will be similar, but in all other respects, sodium has much lower material costs. Compared to LFP, sodium does not require phosphorous, a substance that is almost exclusively sourced from one state in north Africa, nor lithium, a relatively abundant but more expensive substance than sodium. LFP cannot compete on material costs or temperature range, and both BYD and CATL expect to phase it out first in energy storage.'
(DIR) Post #AzVeqyA9YsB9WM7iQS by leighelse@mastodon.nz
2025-10-23T18:03:59Z
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To arrest the decay of the web, do we need to block bad actors more aggressively? An essay by Chris Siebenmann.https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/web/WeShouldBlockForSocialReasons?showcomments'I've come to feel that if something like the current web is to be preserved, we need to take action not merely when technical problems arise but also when the social consensus is violated. We need to start blocking things for what I called editorial reasons. When software or people do things that merely shows bad manners and doesn't yet cause us technical problems, we should still block it, either soft (temporarily, perhaps with HTTP 429 Too Many Requests) or hard (permanently). We need to take action to create the web that we want to see, or we aren't going to get it or keep it.'
(DIR) Post #Azj26lq44OQL3xrcZ6 by leighelse@mastodon.nz
2025-10-29T19:10:29Z
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On Elon's latest attempt to rewrite reality.https://www.thedissident.news/grokipedia-and-the-coup-against-reality-itself/'Grokipedia, the copycat of Wikipedia launched by Elon Musk isn’t just a string of AI generated slop, it is a weapon. The launch of "grokipedia" is a calculated, strategic escalation by the billionaire oligarch class to seize control of knowledge production itself and with that, control of reality. This is the construction of a reality production cartel that creates a parallel information ecosystem designed to codify a deeply partisan, far-right worldview as objective fact. This project was the result of Musk’s repeated failures to bend his existing Large Language Model (LLM), Grok, to his political will without destroying its coherence and reliability.'
(DIR) Post #AzrEFUdc91z52Je4hM by leighelse@mastodon.nz
2025-11-02T18:53:57Z
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If you want to put Office 365 and Google Sheets behind you, check out openDesk, a European product with a free community edition for personal and small business use.https://www.opendesk.eu/en/operating-modelsopenDesk is Kubernetes only, and offers a full suite of office applications.
(DIR) Post #B0PnmfBaZB0H4IHQLg by leighelse@mastodon.nz
2025-11-18T18:56:24Z
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A comparison of #LineageOS, #eOS, and #GrapheneOS by someone who's used all three. https://kevinboone.me/lineage-eos-graphene.html'Using any replacement firmware will be inconvenient if you’re tied to Google’s services, as many of us are. You can try to continue to use those services, but in a less privacy-crushing way, and Graphene and ∕e∕OS purport to offer some help with that. However, I think you’d need to be both knowledgeable and careful to use Google Services, even in these restrictive environments, without inadvertently sacrificing privacy. To my mind, if you want to de-Google, you have to find replacements for Google, not ways to appease Google.'
(DIR) Post #B0gKejZMLeOu7tdy2y by leighelse@mastodon.nz
2025-11-27T20:17:37Z
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RE: https://social.heise.de/@heiseonlineenglish/115620701826969090I can't boost the original post (thanks, though, https://mastodon.nz/@phlogiston) but Aotearoa New Zealand should be considered similar policies to those now enforced in Switzerland.
(DIR) Post #B0oW37zBsAUpZ0EvTc by leighelse@mastodon.nz
2025-12-01T18:29:23Z
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As Aotearoa New Zealand considers the undue influence of the petro-chemical and tobacco industries on its current government, spare a thought for Ireland, where the newly-appointed Data Protection Commissioner cannot even legally criticise Meta.https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/01/erin-go-blagged/#big-tech-omerta'If you'd asked me a year ago, I would have said that this is as terrible as things could get. But now that Ireland has put an ex-Meta exec in charge of deciding whether Meta is invading Europeans' privacy, without confirming whether this dingo babysitter is even allowed to criticize Meta, it's clear that things could get much worse than I ever imagined.'
(DIR) Post #B0wqqsM3occFuZcDfU by leighelse@mastodon.nz
2025-12-05T19:32:32Z
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The secretive cabal of US polluters that is rewriting the EU’s human rights and climate law.https://www.somo.nl/the-secretive-cabal-of-us-polluters-that-is-rewriting-the-eus-human-rights-and-climate-law/'While Europeans were told that their governments were negotiating a landmark law to hold corporations accountable for human rights abuses and climate damage, a secretive alliance of US fossil fuel giants was working behind the scenes to destroy it. Collaborating under the innocent-sounding name ‘Competitiveness Roundtable’, eleven multinational enterprises have worked closely to eviscerate several EU sustainability laws, including the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). This Competitiveness Roundtable may be unknown, but its members are a who’s-who of polluting, mainly US, multinationals, including Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Dow. The group seems to have run rings around all branches of the EU and the Trump administration to get what they want: scrapping, or at least hugely diluting, the CSDDD.'
(DIR) Post #B10tirzoLJWaybvF32 by leighelse@mastodon.nz
2025-12-07T18:28:24Z
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Schleswig-Holstein will save more than €15 million a year by swapping Microsoft licenses for open source.https://www.heise.de/en/news/Goodbye-Microsoft-Schleswig-Holstein-relies-on-Open-Source-and-saves-millions-11105459.html'The Green state parliament member Jan Kürschner also admitted in an interview with heise online that such a comprehensive conversion would not go without friction. But he emphasized the long-term nature of the project and the necessity of fundamentally rethinking administrative processes: "With the change, there is an opportunity to truly rethink the administration and free ourselves from old burdens. That is the great added value." If only a one-to-one conversion is made, it might certainly "stumble at one point or another." But those who truly optimize administrative processes will likely find in the end: "Open source is the better way."'
(DIR) Post #B10xgj80k2Cwi9zWaW by leighelse@mastodon.nz
2025-12-07T19:00:26Z
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Two browser extensions that work quietly in the background to find Mastodon accounts and blog posts that may appeal to you.https://alexsci.com/blog/calm-tech-discover/'I reject the dead Internet theory: I see a vibrant Internet full of humans sharing their experiences and seeking connection. Degradation of the engagement-driven web is well underway, accelerated by AI slop. But the independent web works on a different incentive structure and is resistant to this effect. Humans inherently create, connect, and share: we always have and we always will. If you choose software that works in your interest you’ll find that it’s possible to make meaningful online connections without mental hazard.'
(DIR) Post #B1DPRhcxAW9kKGbk80 by leighelse@mastodon.nz
2025-12-13T19:10:06Z
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Cory Doctorow on why regulation of Big Tech consistently fails to deliver good outcomes.https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/13/uncle-sucker/#willing-marks'It's true that technology can give rise to novel regulatory challenges, but it's also true that claiming that a technology is so novel that existing regulation can't resolve its problems is just a way of buying time to commit more crimes before the regulators finally realize that your flashy new technology is just a boring old scam.'
(DIR) Post #B1Jbq8Hk4UmwLtrTOK by leighelse@mastodon.nz
2025-12-16T19:06:21Z
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Cory Doctorow on why countries should fight fire with water.https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/16/k-shaped-recovery/#disenshittification-nations'Funnily enough, this case is so convincing that I've started to hear from Canadian Trump appeasers who insist that we must not repeal our anticircumvention laws because this would work too well. It would inflict too much pain on America's looting tech sector, and save Canadians too much money, and make too much money for Canadian tech businesses. If Canada becomes the world's first disenshittification nation (they say), we will make Trump too angry.'
(DIR) Post #B1RggC3DXMi0dga8cC by leighelse@mastodon.nz
2025-12-19T19:13:34Z
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Make artificial intelligence bots avoid your site by injecting porn links.https://github.com/vivienhenz24/fuzzy-canary'AI companies are scraping everyone's sites for training data. If you're self-hosting your blog, there's not much you can do about it, except maybe make them think your site contains content they won't want. Fuzzy Canary plants invisible links (to porn websites...) in your HTML that trigger scrapers' content safeguards.'
(DIR) Post #B2BVsTSr8XawwwhTSy by leighelse@mastodon.nz
2026-01-11T18:33:49Z
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One user's experience leaving Windows for Linux.https://www.notebookcheck.net/I-dumped-Windows-11-for-Linux-and-you-should-too.1190961.0.html'So why did I switch to Linux, and why am I writing this article about the experience? In a word: joy. I like using my computers again and find the experience fun. There's always something I can tweak or learn about how it operates. The fact that it runs faster than it did on Windows and is significantly more stable are huge bonuses.'
(DIR) Post #B2EWBQt5WaivvxtEe0 by leighelse@mastodon.nz
2026-01-12T18:44:14Z
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Cory Doctorow summarises the reasons every country should remove tech copyright legislation in response to Trump tarriffs.https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/11/disenshittification-nation/#heated-rivalry'... if Canada repeals its anti-circumvention law, we can make billions of dollars, destroy the profits of America's most important technological allies, liberate ourselves from America's defective technology, and forge a durable, powerful anti-Trump alliance with American firms who are preyed upon just as surely as Canadians are.'