@froge@social.glitched.systems cover
@froge@social.glitched.systems avatar

froge

@[email protected]

Your friendly neighborhood tech frog, here to explore society and complex systems together. My personal views are obscure and will probably be grating to most people, but we don't have to agree to be friends!

Will often discuss things like distributed systems, programming, society, and computer security. Politics WILL come up sometimes. Video games are cool too ​:blobowo:​

I do serious research in between memes I swear, follow for fun computer adventures, and help build a better society together!!

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. View on remote instance

@chrisvest@mastodon.social avatar chrisvest , to random

Since moving to the US I haven’t watch any TV at all, until I got a YouTube TV free trial for superbowl/olympics. I find it pretty weird, and slightly surreal, that almost two thirds of all the ads are medical related. But I’ve never seen anyone mention or comment on this. It’s kind of dystopian to watch, and makes me think the ads in Cyberpunk 2077 are missing this aspect for immersion and realism.

froge ,
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@chrisvest I mention this every single time I watch American television, it's extremely strange, almost all advertising is for predatory credit companies and medical devices with dubious origins... no wonder people get hurt by them lol

@GroupNebula563@mastodon.social avatar GroupNebula563 , to random

OH MY GOD Minecraft will be 20 in 3 years

froge ,
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@GroupNebula563 this isn't real, time can't hurt me if I don't acknowledge it ​:blobsmiletear:​

@Lacze@hear-me.social avatar Lacze , to random

GrapheneOS Under Attack? Here's What Actually Happened

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Bz4rtL7crRI

This video explores the reputation and resilience of GrapheneOS...

--
:mastodon: @GrapheneOS

froge ,
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@GrapheneOS @Lacze I'm no fan of the braxman technology, but out of curiosity, do you have some info on the supposed intentional backdoors? that would be extremely interesting to know about

@froge@social.glitched.systems avatar froge , to random
@froge@social.glitched.systems avatar froge , to random

fuck it, mario maker cryptography
https://youtu.be/JrBemdhNGyk

@brettm@swarm.coiloptic.org avatar brettm , to random

map apps and anything based on openstreetmaps is so bewildering to me. one day i can put in my address and it finds it straight away. i install the same app on another phone and install the same maps, and not only it cannot find my street it cannot find my suburb.

databases of every street in the state are big, yes. but its a simple search function. why it broken? why so fragile?

if its so hard then proposal: once it works don't make any more changes! just leave it be!

froge ,
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@brettm maps are constantly changing, even the government supplied state maps will have like 1,000+ changes a month, sometimes a street disappears and comes back, usually this is a better experience than an outdated maps with streets that don't even exist

ghost streets exist in OSM too and it's way more annoying for me than just having updated maps tbh

froge ,
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@brettm I'd like to see open street maps go back to contributor only updates, because I'm very certain it's going to suck way worse than incorporating the state maps, pretty sure they started doing that because it was actually much higher quality data tbh

I do think they should offer a version that separately labels the state maps so you can choose to ignore them, but also, I'm very sure the state data will be if high enough quality that everyone will still prefer downloading it anyway tbh

@Binder@petrous.vislae.town avatar Binder , to random

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    froge ,
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    @Binder average big tech meeting:

    "how many monthly angry users do we have?"
    "ok, ok, pretty solid, so how do we increase this as much as possible?"

    @molly0xfff@hachyderm.io avatar molly0xfff , to random

    the betting platforms can't open markets on Trump's death for obvious reasons, but Kalshi just so happened to open up a "Trump out as President" market on Saturday

    Kalshi prediction market for "Trump out as President this year?". It opened at around 5% on August 30, raising to around 10% by September 1
    ALT
    froge ,
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    @molly0xfff "for obvious reasons"?

    as somebody who doesn't particularly pay close attention to these kinds of betting markets, I was under the impression that they operate outside US jurisdiction and typically have an "anything goes" policy on which markets can open

    @brettm@swarm.coiloptic.org avatar brettm , to random

    Super annoyingly Librewolf (and Firefox) create a Downloads dirbeven if you have another location specified for downloads, there is no way to stop it.

    It does not appear till u close librewolf (like a bird shitting on you as it flies away)

    I have done a script (called librewolf, earlier in the PATH than the real executable) to remove the kibble from my home dir:

    #!/usr/bin/mksh

    /usr/bin/librewolf && wait
    sleep 1 && wait
    rm -rf Downloads

    froge ,
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    @brettm why does my browser think it knows better than me when it comes to the location of downloads? when even let me choose a location if it's just going to automatically re-create the default folder forever?

    this is probably a bug, honestly it's stupid enough that I might just fix it myself later, assuming the project isn't going to argue for dumb reasons about it smh

    froge ,
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    @prettygood @brettm the software explicitly lets me decide to use an arbitrary location, it should just ignore that my desktop isn't following spec in that case... if I had just slammed "save" and not chosen a specific directory the browser can feel free to create the default one from the xdg desktop spec

    but like, unless I do that it should fuck off tbh

    @futurebird@sauropods.win avatar futurebird , to random

    In my sci-fi story there is a massive data center and I thought about making it "10km wide" but then scaled it back a bit because that seemed absurd. (A 4km data center full of ants is still very exciting.)

    This is the data center Zuckerberg wants to build.

    I worry that when these guys become CEO and stop working building things and writing code they can fall for some of their own hype.

    What (if anything) do you think a data center of this size could do that current centers cannot?

    A monstrous rendering of a big build the size of half of the island of manhattan.
    ALT
    froge ,
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    @twipped @futurebird they're probably kind of hard to secure and staff, and government zoning prevents "industrial" uses in "commercial" areas, but aside from that it might work tbh

    @sambowne@infosec.exchange avatar sambowne , to random

    Obvious phishing spam; I hope no one falls for this. I tried to report it but got a 404 error.
    cc: @jerry

    @sambowne Attention User, We’ve updated our guidelines, and verification is now required for all members. Our records indicate your account hasn’t been confirmed yet. To verify, please click the link below: 🔗 https:// mastodon. netprocesse .com/mx/x/1830598901 The process is fast, and without it, access to your profile may be restricted. Thank you for your attention, Mastodon Support Team
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    froge ,
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    @jerry @sambowne there are so many, seems some group retooled their spam bots for this new campaign and flooded the fediverse

    @GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social avatar GrapheneOS , to random

    Apple and Google both provide support for offline speech-to-text using local models. Users can configure it to be fully offline.

    The Murena Voice to Text service in /e/OS sends the user's audio to OpenAI which is hidden away in their terms of service:

    https://community.e.foundation/t/voice-to-text-feature-using-open-ai/70509

    froge ,
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    @GrapheneOS @djoerd this, it's not even a competition, graphene wins in basically any metric you could imagine almost without effort, just because the practices of /e/OS are laughable

    @JessTheUnstill@infosec.exchange avatar JessTheUnstill , to random

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    froge ,
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    @JessTheUnstill I find that realistically the only case where all those backups become unavailable is after a house fire

    if your threat model breaks at "house fire burned it all" I personally think you're doing pretty good, and that's a reasonable place to stop lol

    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar mcc , to random

    Everyone's like "oh, run your own website, why don't people just run your own website" an then self-hosting a website turns out to be a miserable, grueling, thankless, neverending grind with the occasional risk of something really dangerous happening and it's your fault

    froge ,
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    @mcc this makes me want to build a website that only ONE person can ever view at a time, I want it to literally just timeout anyone after a single person is viewing it (until they stop and someone else views it).... I think that could count as art? lol

    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar mcc , to random

    Hey, Computer People. There was a fire drill with "WeTransfer" with WeTransfer granting themselves some potentially expansive explicit IP rights to files transferred over their service in a new TOS, then backpedaling when people got upset. Bluesky indie games folks are freaking out.

    Can anyone recommend an e2e encrypted file transfer service of this sort, appropriate for use by Windows/Mac using commercial devs who have moderate tech prowess (e.g., not scripters, not a lot of time to fiddle)?

    froge ,
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    @mcc there is a tool called "magic wormhole" that uses fancy cryptography and mostly acts in a p2p way to do transfers of any size, with optional support for a relay server, it might do what they need

    https://github.com/magic-wormhole/magic-wormhole

    froge ,
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    @mcc the github page has less information than the official docs, the system is designed to be user friendly for non-programmers and stuff, there are apps for iOS and Android, as well as cross platform native apps on windows, but honestly the web version is probably easiest (they just load a website, send/tell someone a code, and it should start sending files)

    https://magic-wormhole.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ecosystem.html#end-user-client-applications

    https://github.com/Jacalz/rymdport

    froge ,
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    @mcc @xgranade doesn't seem related, but after a quick look their protocol is reasonable enough to also work for file transfers, if people like it I'd say just use that too

    @aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar aeva , to random

    wheat thins imply the existence of wheat thicks, which is just bread if you think about it

    froge ,
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    @aeva wheat thicks are dangerously close to "weetabix" which are, indeed, thick wheat thins

    @tomgag@infosec.exchange avatar tomgag , to random

    ETHZ and EPFL announced the release of a Large Language Model (LLM) developed on public infrastructure: Trained on the “Alps” supercomputer at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) in 8B and 70B parameters configurations, using open-source training data, respecting web crawling opt-outs during data acquisition, and natively fluent in over 1000 languages. Quoting: "The model will be fully open: source code and weights will be publicly available, and the training data will be transparent and reproducible".

    I don't know how good it's going to be, but if true for me this is the real definition of "open-source" in AI (not the ridiculous, corporate-promiscuous definition by the Open Source Initiative).

    https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2025/07/a-language-model-built-for-the-public-good.html

    froge ,
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    @mcc @tomgag in the current legal landscape if you don't opt-out of crawling in some capacity your data is free game tbh

    most global courts have ruled that legally speaking the output of AI is a significantly transformative work that is not related to the original content, and since it is created by a machine it is neither copyrightable nor is it restricted by general open source licenses

    soo.... basically they just scraped the web and avoided crawling things that explicitly asked not to be crawled in the robots.txt, which satisifes EU legal and copyright law (at least according to the paper on that page)

    anything else is kinda legal to just use right now

    notably this appears to be clarified in a 2024 ruling by the US supreme court against github copilot, however they went to appeal and the other lawsuit from NYTimes is still ongoing, so something might change this eventually

    In summer 2024, a judge dismissed some of the claims, reasoning that AI-generated code is not identical to the open source code it was trained on and thus does not violate U.S. copyright law, which generally applies only to identical or near-identical reproductions.

    froge ,
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    @mcc @tomgag to clarify a bit, courts are heavily leaning towards the output of AI not being considered a reproduction of the training data, so they most likely don't need to comply with the licenses legally speaking (unless you opt-out of crawling at the start)

    froge ,
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    @mcc @tomgag yeah pretty much tbh

    this is the associated paper they reference for the scraping
    https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.06219

    @mcc@mastodon.social avatar mcc , to random

    2024
    Week 11 (??)
    Language: Textual Wasm

    Confidence level: Medium high

    PREV WEEK: https://mastodon.social/@mcc/114524697727786286
    RULES: https://mastodon.social/@mcc/113676228091546556

    I'm now doing the puzzles slightly out of order.

    "Wasm" is a bytecode VM that runs in web browsers as an alternative to JavaScript. Oddly for a modern VM, it's designed to be targeted by C.

    A thing I've heard repeatedly claimed, both excitedly and with eye-rolls, is that Wasm's human readable form is "a LISP". I want to know what that means.

    froge ,
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    @mcc I know this is just a funny toy challenge for you, which is actually super cool and nice as a learning tool, but... is there genuinely any reason to go through this giant headache for a weird stripped down language designed with the browser in mind, that got retrofitted and slapped on an OS with extra APIs later?

    like actually why do people build code that compiles to this? the only benefit I've seen touted is "cross platform code" which isn't true yet because the tooling sucks, or "sandboxed execution" which can be accomplished WAY more reliably with any number of other methods

    I really cannot grasp why people suffer through WASI specifications and standalone wasm binaries on their systems outside of toy examples for learning lol

    froge ,
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    @mcc I suppose so, I'm not sure if the tooling and environment are at a point where the sandboxing works to a reliable level yet, v8 constantly has sandbox escape bugs and stuff even though it's the most popular runtime, but maybe I'll just give it a few more years and see how things go

    I went poking around to see if the old issues I found about memory shrinking were solved, but apparently they weren't yet, so the wasm spec still has no way to free memory correctly to the host when you're done with it, which is a really silly and funny limitation to deal with too... it still totally feels like a mish-mash or stuff duct-taped into a spec to me (which might be why the tooling sucks lol)

    this memory issue just straight up prevents deployment to mobiles for most use-cases, and has been a spec issue for 5+ years easily, but I guess on desktop everyone ignores it so there isn't huge focus on getting it fixed

    https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/1397

    froge ,
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    @mcc it is actually, I believe android implements WASI to allow your apps to run natively there last time I checked, but the memory model makes it super annoying to use for a lot of devs still

    froge ,
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    @mcc yeah I get that, to be clear I think this is a super great thing for the browser at the moment, and if WASI and the native side works out some of these annoying edge cases it would be great there too, I'm just somewhat skeptical of the support for it in the current state on native platforms... maybe people don't know about these issues? or just don't care? it just raises some red flags for me when I see it though

    but that could totally just be because my usecases don't match up with what other people need a lot of the time tbh 😄

    @froge@social.glitched.systems avatar froge , to random

    yooo federated forgejo is becoming real, this is great news

    RE: @meissa@social.meissa-gmbh.de avatar meissa : The new upcoming federation feature in forgejo will allow to...

    @aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar aral , to random

    “Microsoft to install facial-recognition technology in stores, which could be used to identify individual customers: When a shopper approaches the shelf, she would see a price calibrated specifically for her. The next shopper might pay a different amount based on their profile. Retailers could use shopper data to charge higher prices to those who can afford to pay more.”

    https://www.thenation.com/article/society/retail-grocery-automation-esl-kroger/

    It’s OK, if you don’t like it, you can just simply not buy food.

    Via @ErickaSimone & @broadwaybabyto

    froge ,
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    @aral @ErickaSimone @broadwaybabyto catch me hacking this algorithm and releasing information to the public to trick the system into believing everyone is impoverished, algorithmically driving Microsoft's profits into the dirt, and allowing thousands to buy items at a relative discount.

    I promise me and those like me have infinitely more time and energy to fuck this up than the corporations have to fix it, I'll make it my lifelong side project to lose them vast amounts of money with the same technology they built to exploit people lol

    @JessTheUnstill@infosec.exchange avatar JessTheUnstill , to random

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    froge ,
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    @JessTheUnstill I hear that new cars have tons of annoying proprietary tech around the keyfob codes in particular, and for a mechanic to reset them it gets annoying sometimes

    froge ,
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    @JessTheUnstill @ktneely to be real, based on a lot of the research I've seen, the electronic keyfobs are totally not secure anyway, they're just very guarded and private about the stupid hacked up algorithms that get used for most cars

    I really would just prefer the locksmith cutting a new key, it's probably about as good, but ugh the keyfob is locked and built into the car already smh

    @aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar aral , to random

    Anyone know what happened to the Shame Tesla account on mastodon.social?

    Why was it removed?

    https://mastodon.social/@shametesla

    Screenshot of end of Shame Tesla’s post continued from last screenshot, showing entire image/poster with photo of Elon Musk performing a Hitler salute at Trump’s inauguration accompanied by the following text: IF YOU DRIVE A TESLA YOU SUPPORT A MAN WHO - supports Putin's Russia in attacking Ukraine - brings the fascist salute in broad daylight - treats workers like slaves - runs a platform for nazi and fascist symphatisers - plans to put advertisements in the night sky - tortures animals - uses the cameras of your Tesla to spy on you 24/7 AREN'T YOU ASHAMED? IT'S NOT TOO LATE TO SELL https://mastodon.social/@shametesla
    Screenshot of mastodon.social/@shametesla account: the page you were looking for doesn’t exist here anymore.

    Screenshot of mastodon.social/@shametesla account: the page you were looking for doesn’t exist here anymore.
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    froge ,
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    @aral did nothing wrong!

    @alice@lgbtqia.space avatar alice , to random

    There's a type of reply-guy that crawls out of the woodwork when I post anything that might inspire others to take action, and they're deceptively insidious.

    Regardless of the topic, they sound like this:

    Alice: I don't own a gun because they're for killing and I'm not a fan of killing.
    Bob: Then only the bad guys will have guns.

    Alice: I deleted my Facebook account.
    Bob: If the good people leave then the bad guys win.

    Alice: I'm openly queer so others know they're not alone.
    Bob: You'll make yourself a target.

    In every instance, they defend the shitty state of things by discouraging action and change. It's a reply that is designed to support the default, the current power structure. It's a type of reply meant to de-fang movements.

    I've posted about this before, but apparently it bears repeating. Fighting for something takes energy. Change takes sustained energy and momentum. These types of interactions sap energy. They're not posting anything openly disagreeable, they're just dropping little doubt caltrops, little concern anchors—making it harder to keep fighting, harder to gain momentum.

    If you're about to jump into a thread and concern troll, don't. I'm fucking sick of it. The rest of us don't have the time or energy to drag your dead weight along.

    froge ,
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    @alice not saying the people who often reply this way really mean it, or that they're actively malicious, often they're genuinely just misinformed or whatever

    but in saying that... there is a reason the CIA writes about this in their handbooks on how to disenfranchise and squash grassroots movements, it DOES take energy and momentum to sustain positive change, and comments that offer nothing of substance while broadly discouraging action absolutely have a big impact on people and wider movements as a whole, I think this is something most people don't consider very often but it's hugely important to remember

    @csilverman@mastodon.social avatar csilverman , to random

    New year, new blog redesign: https://shortform.csilverman.com

    froge ,
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    @csilverman works without JS, immediately better than 90% of the web, this is super nice!

    @aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar aral , to random

    Meanwhile in America… this is why CEOs get shot.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/s/2v8nLEvlPF

    froge ,
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    @aral I genuinely can't view this because reddit is a garbage platform not built for humans anymore, and they block my browser and network, and block people without an account in a lot of cases now, but I'm sure whatever this was it's damning lmao

    @pixelfed@mastodon.social avatar pixelfed , to random

    ICYMI: We built an open fediverse directory to help you find people to follow based on topics!

    https://fediverse.info/explore/people

    froge ,
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    @pixelfed an open directory to search and explore different content owned and controlled by different people? Meta could never!

    (I need to stop because every post you make will end up with this comment otherwise lol)

    @dansup@mastodon.social avatar dansup , to random

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    froge ,
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    @dansup in general I would say release API docs and let 3rd party apps implement things correctly, but also, it's likely possible to implement very good FYP algos using mostly backend related data too (eg comment viewing, share related API calls) so maybe it might be worth implementing from a backend-first perspective and looking at if the client analytics even end up causing a significant difference in the future... then maybe it can just be generally avoided 😛

    froge ,
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    @dansup I mean I'm not super knowledgeable on the value of analytics data, so I'm not sure how important knowing if the user hit the "read more" button (or similar) actually is for an effective FYP algo, but I can see how it might be useful at some point to have that kind of data coming in

    Mostly I think even if you did want to force reporting of that data, it's better to work with the 3rd party clients, rather than leaving the only 3rd partys be those that break things until their tools run

    @aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar aral , to random

    Folks, please do delete your X accounts, by all means, but I’d be very surprised if that meant that your data is deleted or that Elon Musk won’t be using it to train his AI, etc.

    I put in a data deletion request after deactivating my account in 2022 and set the Irish DPC on them when they didn’t. After several back and forths, with the Irish DPC being less than worthless, I gave up. Afaict, there is zero enforcement of GDPR Article 17.

    CC @noybeu

    #x

    Letter from Twitter to me (continued). Blue Twitter bird logo. particular data is deleted - or whether it may be retained because there is an ongoing need and legal basis to process it. While we are working to improve our removal processes, users may continue to request the deletion of specific data by contacting Twitter through a number of mechanisms and submitting a deletion request. When such requests are received, the teams responsible for the data concerned are informed and required to perform manual deletion jobs according to a prescribed workflow. The data is removed from the Twitter systems where it is known to exist, as required by applicable law. We hope that the information above helps address any remaining concerns you may have regarding the deactivation of your Twitter account. We remain at your disposal for any further information. Sincerely, Office of Data Protection Twitter International Unlimited Company

    Letter from Twitter to me (continued). Blue Twitter bird logo. particular data is deleted - or whether it may be retained because there is an ongoing need and legal basis to process it. While we are working to improve our removal processes, users may continue to request the deletion of specific data by contacting Twitter through a number of mechanisms and submitting a deletion request. When such requests are received, the teams responsible for the data concerned are informed and required to perform manual deletion jobs according to a prescribed workflow. The data is removed from the Twitter systems where it is known to exist, as required by applicable law. We hope that the information above helps address any remaining concerns you may have regarding the deactivation of your Twitter account. We remain at your disposal for any further information. Sincerely, Office of Data Protection Twitter International Unlimited Company
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    froge ,
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    @aral @noybeu the Irish DPC being basically useless on GDPR enforcement is a hot button issue in Europe right now, from what I understand the rest of the EU is essentially applying legal pressure and threatening penalties for non-enforcement so hopefully the Irish DPC gets much better in future

    @aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar aral , to random

    You can thank Brexit for this shit.

    “Pay to reject”

    Taking back control indeed.

    Screenshot of Sun web site with option to either accept all cookies or pay to reject personalised ads.
    ALT
    froge ,
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    @aral is... is this real? I mean even just the branding here is awful from a PR perspective, wtf are they even doing... incredible

    @Mojeek@mastodon.social avatar Mojeek , to random

    show me the real alternative search engine,
    no the real alternative search engine
    that's it

    young magneto sits next to the bing logo, then the duckduckgo logo, before finally saying "that's it" to the mojeek logo
    ALT
    froge ,
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    @Mojeek poor form, should have edited the text into the image at least, 4/10 it was almost funny