discontinuity DECT 2262

On #StarTrekDay I'm wearing my "imagine better futures" t-shirt and thinking about the positive visions star trek encouraged me to see. Deep space nine feels especially relevant to our current situation, where we need to find ways to fight back against fascism.

PSA: check the batteries in your old electronics before they cause a fire. I discovered some puffy batteries in old feature phones stored in the back of the cupboard. I'm going to remove all the batteries from tech like this and bring them to the recycling - or get rid of the whole device if I don't need it anymore. Might be worthwhile for those of us packing for #EMFCamp to pair this errand with packing. That's why I was digging though the pile of old feature phones. Nice that it's usually easy to just remove batteries from the feature phones I was looking at - no tools required. Some smartphones/laptops have the batteries glued in, which means it's much better to just get rid of the whole device :(

Finished some heat wave prep this evening. I use a bunch of slightly insulated Mylar coated "camping" or car window protection mats. The sheets are exactly the right size for the balcony doors. There, I used 3m double sided tape to tape up a "curtain rail" on the outside of the window frame. Then I use clothespins to attach the sheets at the top. The straps hanging past the bottom of the window get shut in the window frame and hold the whole thing sturdy. Not recommended for windy days - but heat waves are rarely windy (and the worst case scenario is a 6 € sheet gets ripped). On the bigger French balcony windows, I hang them horizontally. I use a piece of fabric to add strength and throw some Paracord through the balcony supports above to pull the sheet/fabric curtain up. It's all attached with clothespins too. The balcony rail has one sheet woven through it. That keeps it more stable than just going around the bars at the end. It's made for a windshield so it just elastics to itself on the inside. Nothing is heavy enough to cause damage if it manages to fall from a second story window and it makes a HUGE difference in the indoor temperature. I hear doing this from the inside up next to the glass can cause cracked glass, so if you have to mount Mylar inside make sure you have gaps between the glass and the reflective surface. It's better for heat management to have it outside anyway though - moves the hottest surface further from the inside air.

I love that this speaker includes a picture drawn by her niece at the end of the talk. https://media.ccc.de/v/emf2026-235-1-flexible-pcbs-for-you-and-for-me Another better option than asking an AI to make you some garbage. Also a very cool talk about practical work in teaching people to make flexible PCBs!

In travel to emf news: my Eurostar for Saturday has been cancelled, my partner is on a rail replacement bus, and we ended up paying 3.5x what we expected for luggage. It will be worth it but it's time for me to go touch grass.

@Edent@mastodon.social this is such great news! Thanks for sharing.

@mattgrayyes eat it with chopsticks?

If you haven't read Amelia Bedelia, here's the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelia_Bedelia

@hacksilon ooh that's a fascinating failure case. And like... I always have multiple passkeys for each account so I don't have to worry about the impact of losing one (lost or broken device bound key.) I can't back up my yubikey passkey!! This is really a terrible design that assumes happy path. My favorite!

@hacksilon that's a GOOD joke except it's extremely true 😂

@gcluley as someone who has only ever rented cars, duck's tip is one I didn't know about and will genuinely use!

@bittner@hachyderm.io I think you're right. It's the scale that kills things. But then, that's why I like Mastodon, because it can be run and is run at human scale (see Jerry helping out Krebs with the kimbot trolls). It's just that the human scale only works with enough folks willing to run human scale stuff, and users being willing to pay. I hope that this mindset shift means more folks who aren't tech nerds are looking into real alternatives. I just feel like, as a group, FOSS nerds don't make it easy for folks not in the in-group to get in. Who would run the local fishing group or textile arts Mastodon instance for example? I'm a nerd and even I don't want to run this stuff myself. A community with a low count of nerds able to do this is the one with the hardest journey. I'm really curious to see how that gap gets bridged! I hope it does at least.

@bittner@hachyderm.io I guess more specifically: you say it's a cultural problem and not a technical one, and I think you're right. I also think you're right that people care. But how, culturally, are you seeing folks effectively push back and make changes other than by changing technology? Or is it linked, so resisting the commercial incentives means looking outside of those companies offerings?

@c3himmel @MyIgel @msquare thanks! I'm glad to see you've put solid thought into what makes an enterprise grade application. Now all you need is iso27001 check box certification (ideally for a part of the business that has nothing to do with your product, but that you can talk about and add to your tender) and I'll have my procurement team contact your sales team about tender qualification requirements.

@pducklin @gcluley those vehicles sound like a blast to drive! I think the reason I didn't know is that most folks I know with cars have had very few of them and never noticed? And as someone who is in a car once every couple years... Not knowing to look for that, I don't know how I would have noticed! But it's going to make the next rental experience easier :)

@c3himmel @c3bar I'm sorry, there aren't enough obvious security flaws for this to be enterprise grade software. And when I navigate around it does it basically instantaneously. You need to add at least a two second delay (better: 5) before responding to HTTPS requests and a way more broken design!! Ideally make it so that about 5% of requests will take over 60s to complete. Also: make sure you mess up the SSO so that any user with a valid SSO sign in can access any other user's account information. Then you can start asking for 10.000€/seat/month.

@c3himmel but mostly: this is so great, thanks for the laugh!!

Anyone at #EMFCamp with a Nokia slide charger that definitely works? I think the phone is bricked but I'd like to test a known good charger before I give up.

I'm very pleased I got an embroidery kit from the #EMFCamp shop. It's kept me company on this long train trip home. Next time I'll try to get a spot in one of those workshops!

@bittner@hachyderm.io thanks for posting this Dave. I agree completely. I think one hard question is that of network effect. To a very great extent, I've found my own either fully private, or run by a few dedicated nerds spaces which aren't full of this, and that really helps. But I don't know if those spaces are visible or accessible to everyone. I also know that for me, with a firehose of even non AI information, I'm fully capable of building my OWN dark patterns: it's tempting to follow people who are angry but CORRECT AH YOU'RE SO RIGHT I WILL FOLLOW. I'll build my own rage feed without the algorithm's help. But that is really bad for me, so I'm doing my best to mute those triggers and unfollow negativity. That's hard, but worthwhile for me. Not sure how everyone can learn how and why to opt out. It takes repeated work and accepting FOMO. I rely on podcasts to give me the news, but that means I rely on functioning news media. which also doesn't seem like a safe bet. I pay for as many as I can but still. I do see more friends and acquaintances thinking this way and working together to find other ways, so hopefully you're right. I'm really curious about what options will work for not so tech nerds folks. Mastodon and signal are my happy places, but I don't think the network effect is there for people with different interests? And I worry that as soon as there is enough of a network effect then the bad actors will find us there. Have you found other options that work for you and the folks in your life?

@chewie@mammut.gogreenit.net don't forget that you can still submit this as a talk and then you'll get ticket vouchers!