There is only 1 week left for affected parties to respond to a UK gov consultation about the impact of the Online Safety Act. If you've got any evidence that you want to submit about the new rules, now is the time: https://committees.parliament.uk/work/9955/the-online-safety-act-implementation-and-impact/publications/
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LonM
@LonM@social.vivaldi.net
mastodon 4.7.3+vivaldimodTechnology Critical Luddite
European from Scotland
Background: CS, Security, & Computing Education
Current Goals: Using the power of thinking really hard to manifest myself into a happy solarpunk alternate reality without all of (*waves at everything*)
I do not give consent for my posts to be used to train SALAMI models.
133 Followers
244 Following
47 Posts
Joined November 10, 2022
Website, Blog, Photos:
bits and bytes:
Pronouns:
i'll most likely respond to he/them/dr but whatever is fine
ScotRail today demonstrated to the nation the importance of having a good release process. They pushed out a change to an app, not in a phased update, but a full new app. They immediately deprecated the old one. When I tried it this morning so many things were broken, from login attempts crashing the app to adding basic ticketing options like discount cards being broken. Not to mention most the of the tech support and updates is still coming from their X account.
I really hope they eventually publish a post-mortem for this because I would love to see how they got this so wrong.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cddjzgv3zl1o
#scotland #scotrail
I've written a short blog post doing a bit of analysis based on the FOI request I sent to ScotRail about their new app. Some things stand out, the short time allocated for the whole project in particular.
https://lemcgregor.scot/posts/2026/09/17/scotrail-new-app/
Replying to
@sushee@ohai.social Absurd, and yet in education, this is basically my goto last line of defence against just giving up on teaching writing code altogether
Boosted by @cstross@wandering.shop
@gamingonlinux@mastodon.social You might be interested in giving this petition opposing the motion a signal boost: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/754408
Replying to
@davidrevoy Game designers that make quest items take up inventory space - they are the true villains we need to defeat
Replying to
@Willow Exactly, and go further. Not just sex or gender. Anything. Everything. want to know my age? Location? Nationality? No. Why do you need to know? I'm not telling you that.
Replying to
@guardeddon@mas.to Absolutely, If they could build a decent no-frills web app, that would be fantastic.
Replying to
@tilton Not just that, but that the nail guns people are using will randomly fire a nail at a wonky angle about 20% of the time
Annoying thing I have discovered about Libbry/OverDrive. They are delivering ebooks from publishers that have explicitly published without DRM. However, the libby books have DRM applied, whether you read through their proprietary app, web app, or through Adobe Digital editions. And according to the notice at the start of the book, that violates both the author and publisher's wishes.
Replying to
@gugurumbe@mastouille.fr @vladcampos@mastodon.social @eunews@mastodon.social Reading through some of this, that's the conclusion I'm coming to as well. No privacy, everything through proprietary apps. The ECB site also mentions blockchain which is giving me the heebies.
If that is the case, then I am genuinely baffled as to what the point of a digital euro would be over implementing a pan-EU debit card processor to rival the likes of paypal / visa. We already have widely available cashless payment infrastructure, what good does a digital euro offer for what will end up being a much more expensive implementation?
Even more confusing considering the swiss were already experimenting with Taler.
Question for mastodon: What is this white string material in a hairdryer actually made of? I'm guessing it's not a natural fabric or one of the usual synthetics or it would immediately melt/catch fire when turned on. It can't be anything that conducts heat or electricity. I have read it may be Mica, but that seems to refer to the structural plates within the dryer, and not the support for the heating element itself.
I genuinely do not understand the point of "humanoid" robots. If there's a task you need to automate, surely the best approach is to change the task to fit cheap robots, not to build expensive error-prone human-like machines?
The examples in this latest article make no sense.
Handling cargo containers: The whole point of containers is to make it easier for machines to handle them without human limbs.
Ground support equipment: surely wheels would be more useful than legs?
Even the example of cleaning cabins: isn't that basically a glorified roomba?
What am I missing?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpwp87j1llvo
#robots #ai #design #automation
I just spent an hour answering the UK's consultation on digital ID. I am not a huge fan of it, and I hope that my critical responses will lead to it not being a total disaster,and hopefully ensure the entire design is done in an open, democratic, and ultimately optional fashion.
I also hope my response will not be lost in the "using generative AI capabilities to analyse and summarise responses and help us to handle consultation responses efficiently and accurately" of it all.
Replying to
@Tutanota@mastodon.social EU citizens should respond to the proposed Digital Fairness Act and suggest that this kind of behaviour be considered illegal: https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/14622-Digital-Fairness-Act_en
I have commented suggesting that consumers should have a right to install whatever software they want on hardware they own.
@neil@mastodon.neilzone.co.uk Why are restrictions like this are applied to a pornographic context but not others. Should it also apply to cinema which features plot-relevant sexual abuse? What about all the torture porn flicks that come out in theatres around halloween?
I am concerned that this is yet another example of "fringe art influencing behaviour", which has been disproven time and again. I've played who knows how many violent videogames as a kid, and I turned into a pacifist as I grew up.
Offputting as it might be, legislating fictional works out of the public eye and declaring job done is not a good approach. Better would be to improve public conversation and educating people of the specific harms these acts can lead to. (disclaimer - I don't know if the government is suggesting any additional positive steps, or if the ban is all they're doing)
The manifesto from the @ScottishGreens@mastodon.scot introduced today. Great forward-thinking policies like Lynx Reintroduction, allowing asylum seekers to work, and UBI. Some more questionable ideas like free buses (why not stay with a national fare cap) and council tax reform (why not a local income tax). And some topics like digital & tech lacking (accepting much of this is not devolved). But generally looks very good
https://greens.scot/Manifesto
#scotland #scotpol #politics
Replying to
@notjustbikes@social.notjustbikes.com I'm glad to hear someone in the netherlands is thinking right. The british government is pushing to build a digid app. I fully expect it will end up getting outsourced > privatised > sold off. Except unlike what happened here, a sale won't get blocked, because our governments are perennially full of private sector cronies who actively want stuff like this to happen.
Replying to
@eunews@mastodon.social I can't read the linked article. Will it use something like GNU Taler - be fully open source, transparent, interoperable, and buyer-private? Or will development and maintenance be outsourced to a private company with everything funnelled through a closed source app.
Replying to
@eloy There used to be just a CS / Engineering department. There was no university IT. So it was far easier to make decisions.
Now there has to be a uni-wide IT team, with business goals, compliance, etc, often competing for resources with department specific IT groups. That's not necessarily a problem but makes it much harder to build and deploy new stuff if it always needs approval from higher up.
The worst though is when individual departments IT get folded into to main uni IT, then it's impossible to trial any innovations.
Replying to
@davidrevoy you could summon your own crow, but then you'd have to go to the magic department head to get approval, you'd need to put forward a business case, check that the wild crow meets the university's data protection standard...
This comic is a bit too real :)
Replying to
@BBCRD@social.bbc @BBC_News_Labs@social.bbc Are there any live pages that have this visible yet? It sounds interesting, would be good to see how it works in practice.
And what are the usage rules going to be - will it be offered for every image or just certain criteria?
Replying to
@cakeordeath83@mastodonapp.uk @BBCRD@social.bbc @BBC_News_Labs@social.bbc
This looks good. I like the explanation and the presentation.
Today I learned about "Headline Newds" which pairs onlyfans artists up with climate communication. That seems like a genius way to engage people, and give a progressive edge to an often derided cultural space. Mastodon seems more content to discuss adult topics, so I thought I'd share here. (The production page linked below is SFW)
Replying to
@thisismissem@hachyderm.io Worth pointing out you only need to be a citizen, you don't need to currently reside there. So if you're in the UK, Switzerland, etc right now but hold a passport for an EU country, you can sign anyway.
Tram Driving Championship today - livestream
Replying to
@BBC_News_Labs@social.bbc @edsu@social.coop @BBCRD@social.bbc I see you are including a quick questionnaire alongside the trial. It will be interesting to see how people respond (including if any don't interact with it at all)
Replying to
@davidrevoy@framapiaf.org She needs to conjure up a magic firewall. preferably made of hellfire
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@petersuber@fediscience.org "You prefer light interfaces — your operating system told us."
The website is in dark mode. To scan for this and refuse to comply is the most evil thing on this page.
Replying to
@BBCRD@social.bbc Very glad to see the extension, and it's good to see some of the thinking behind how you've approached this.
I would not have though that something like a bot that shares news stories as they get published on the main site would have caused issues, but I guess there's internal pressures due to how the BBC is managed.
Looking forward to seeing whatever is next.
Replying to
@raymierussell@mastodon.scot The fact that this keeps happening with so many different services is evidence there needs to be a change. More accountability for companies running public services would be a good start
Even KDE's now going full slop. "A Desktop that loves you back". What the hell is wrong with these people? I don't want my PC to love me, it's an unfeeling tool that exists to do as I say and nothing more.
If you want to talk about lovable, sovereign, AI-native KDE, come back to me when you're ready to talk about a hard fork that contains no AI whatsoever. That's the kind of sovereignty I'm interested in, and I would love it.
Disgusting. I've only ever seen photos of these, and they always seem to come from London. I'm glad I never have to go there. I hope this disease doesn't spread further north.
@caiocgo@social.vivaldi.net @Vivaldi@social.vivaldi.net I see what you mean. I agree, the default button layout on linux is not great.
You can customise this, and someone on the forum has a guide: https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/31711/solved-how-can-i-change-windows-buttons/29?_=1776889318543
Replying to
@Edent@mastodon.social Can I vent? Not many positives from me.
Rail apps in Scotland. Discount card app sometimes won't load leaving you vulnerable to a fine & can't be integrated into the ticket itself. Scotrail's ticket app worked, but broke and now crashes when you tap a ticket. They're going to release a new app (not an update?), but the old app still exists, so it feels like they're following Paris. It bugs me that these apps exist to begin with when you could get a PDF or a wallet pass instead from the website.
Second story from Genoa, Italy. Free travel (good), but only at certain times of day (confusing). Official timetabling was on google maps (I avoid google). Metro train ticket involves validating a paper stub, but once the ticket machine only printed me half a ticket which couldn't be validated (end of the paper roll I guess). Nobody ever checked my tickets, though, so the whole exercise just felt annoying.
Edinburgh's metro options are generally easy to use, tap and go, low daily cap, though edinburgh trams' zones nonsense is a scam.
Replying to
@dangoodin@infosec.exchange I find it immensely annoying that DRM allows for screenshots to be blocked in the first place. I guess this is a silver lining.
@caiocgo@social.vivaldi.net @Vivaldi@social.vivaldi.net Have you used Settings > Appearance > Compact? That, plus turning off toolbars and panels makes it look pretty similar
Replying to
@CountBinface@mastodon.world I am shocked anyone would pay that much for a croissant. My local Lidl sells them for less than 50p
Replying to
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social I hate that this is no longer a funny sci-fi joke
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3EXUZVuH7Y
Replying to
@thecommongreen@mastodon.scot Just so a record is kept in case they are altered, the web-only ones are archived here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20260314190803/https://scottishfamily.org/our-policies/
https://web.archive.org/web/20260422125420/https://liberatescot.scot/what-we-fight-for/
https://web.archive.org/web/20260428133244/https://elections.communistparty.org.uk/manifesto-scotland-2026/