You can watch the Trump administration play DEI whac-a-mole with employee policies and public websites on GitHub, which is automatically cataloguing all of the changes the 18F agency is frantically making to its internal and external webpages:
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GitHub Is Showing the Trump Administration Scrubbing Government Web Pages in Real Time
Watch the Trump administration play DEI whac-a-mole on this government agency's GitHub page.
A web developer has created and released an infinitely generating "tar pit" designed to trap AI training bots in an endless maze: "Just me unleashing shear unadulterated rage at how things are going"
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Developer Creates Infinite Maze That Traps AI Training Bots
"Nepenthes generates random links that always point back to itself - the crawler downloads those new links. Nepenthes happily just returns more and...
New: The manufacturer of a medical device that costs six figures has told hospitals that they will no longer be allowed to fix them. Hospitals must now sign repair contracts with the manufacturer if they want the device fixed. Repair monopoly in action:
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Medical Device Company Tells Hospitals They're No Longer Allowed to Fix Machine That Costs Six Figures
Hospitals are increasingly being forced into maintenance contracts with device manufacturers, driving up costs.
The last few weeks have really highlighted just how fragile corporate social media is, and just how beholden to political power it is. To build any sort of ground-up power we must continue to invest in decentralized alternatives that are resistant to intervention
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Decentralized Social Media Is the Only Alternative to the Tech Oligarchy
The TikTok ban and Donald Trump's rise to power show how fragile our social media accounts are. We must normalize and invest in decentralized socia...
Everything Zuckerberg is doing must be seen in context of the TikTok ban, the greatest gift the government could give Meta. We went through years of his testimony about China; he has been planting seeds for this for years, now desperately needs Trump to side with him:
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Donald Trump Has Mark Zuckerberg By the Balls
A TikTok ban is a massive prize that Zuckerberg has been laying the groundwork on for years. Will Trump let him have it?
New: The FTC has formally sued John Deere over its tractor repair monopoly, which is the strongest punitive action the federal government has ever taken against a company over restricting right to repair
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FTC Sues John Deere Over Its Repair Monopoly
Deere "has illegally restricted the ability of farmers and independent technicians to repair Deere equipment, including tractors and combines."
"It’s not really enjoyable to make music now… it takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of practice, you have to get really good at an instrument... I think the majority of people don’t enjoy the majority of time they spend making music."
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CEO of AI Music Company Says People Don’t Like Making Music
"I think the majority of people don’t enjoy the majority of the time they spend making music.”
New: Meta has deleted trans and nonbinary Messenger themes, as well as the blog posts announcing them. Happens the same week that it has changed its rules to allow users to say LGBTQ+ people are "mentally ill"
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Meta Deletes Trans and Nonbinary Messenger Themes
Amid a series of changes that allows users to target LGBTQ+ people, Meta has deleted product features it initially championed.
New: Meta employees are furious about a new policy that allows users to call LGBTQ+ people "mentally ill." Some have resigned in protest. Some LGBTQ+ employees have started saying they if they are 'mentally ill' they should get leaves of absence from work
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‘It’s Total Chaos Internally at Meta Right Now’: Employees Protest Zuckerberg’s Anti LGBTQ Changes
Meta's decision to specifically allow users to call LGBTQ+ people "mentally ill" has sparked widespread backlash at the company.
Hundreds of police license plate cameras are misconfigured to stream unencrypted to the open internet. A privacy researcher took these streams and turned them into a real-time database that tracks car movements & information, highlighting how invasive this tech is
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Researcher Turns Insecure License Plate Cameras Into Open Source Surveillance Tool
Privacy advocate draws attention to the fact that hundreds of police surveillance cameras are streaming directly to the open internet.