blog.zaramis.se/2026/02/02/pol…
The unfair society we live in
[a water pipe is delivering water directly in the mouth of a huge character sitting on a chair, gorging on the water, below a label]\
Evil proletarian getting all the unemployment benefits\
\
[a few little droplets are falling from the water pipe into the mouth of a thin character in a suit, next to the label]\
Poor billionaire trying to buy their 7th yacht
thebad.website/comic/the_unfai…
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Templates | The Bad Website
Templates - See more by visiting this page on thebad.websiteThe Bad Website
Stiles joins London union leaders in calling for workers’ action centre to remain open in wake of auto layoffs
Stiles joins London union leaders in calling for workers’ action centre to remain open in wake of auto layoffs
There are fears that laid off workers from London’s auto sector will soon have nowhere to turn to help with re-training. This comes as a workers’ action centre gets set to wind down in just a few days.Bryan Bicknell (CTVNews)
blog.zaramis.se/2026/02/02/van…
My thousand dollar iPhone can't do math
My thousand dollar iPhone can't do math
TL;DR: My iPhone 16 Pro Max produces garbage output when running MLX LLMs. An iPhone 15 Pro runs the same code perfectly. A MacBook Pro also runs the same code perfectly.Rafael Costa (Rafael's Journal)
Windows 11 just lost 5% market share in two months despite Windows 10 losing support.
According to Statcounter, Windows 11 held a 55.18% market share in October 2025. That share dropped to 53.7% in November and dropped again in December. Now, Windows 11 holds a 50.73% market share.
gs.statcounter.com/os-version-…
Desktop Windows Version Market Share Worldwide | Statcounter Global Stats
This graph shows the market share of desktop windows versions worldwide based on over 5 billion monthly page views.StatCounter Global Stats
French tech company Capgemini to sell its subsidiary working for US ICE amid international controversy over the deaths of two people in ICE operations
French company Capgemini to sell US subsidiary amid controversy over ICE links
French IT giant Capgemini said Sunday it was selling its subsidiary working for the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency amid international controversy over the deaths of two people in ICE operations.RFI
'Call of Duty' Microtransactions Surge Followed Jeffrey Epstein Advice to CEO
42 years ago, this was state of the art copy protection
1984, Jet Set Willy was released. A great game that every kid at school wanted. Of course we all wanted a copy, but it cost £8 here in the UK, which was several weeks' pocket money.
Copying games then involved finding a kid whose Dad was seriously into Hifi and had a stackable stereo system, then we'd copy it with their tape to tape system. But JSW had this as the cassette inlay.
How this works? When the game loaded after about 10-15 minutes, it would ask what colours were in Grid square A5, or H9 etc. Get it wrong twice and the game would exit and you'd need to start over.
(If you're wondering what happens if you're colour blind - you could write to the publishers and if they accepted your complaint, they would ask you to send them the game and would give you a cheque to cover the refund)
Of course, kids are determined and inventive, and this was well before photocopiers or digital cameras, so we would spend our lunchtimes with pencil and paper writing down every single combination...
It was a good game, with some great music, but really really hard.
(Credit to intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue45/… for the picture, and the page also goes into more depth)
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The Secret of Monkey Island - Dial A Pirate
The Secret of Monkey Island - Online Interactive Code Wheel. Dial-A-Pirate Code Wheel is form of copy protection from original The Secret of Monkey Island Retail boxed game developed by LucasFilm Games in 1990...www.oldgames.sk
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade for Amiga I think it was which came with a photocopy proof translation table that you used with a red piece of translucent plastic overlay, which would reveal the codes underneath.
Or maybe that was Zak McKracken.
Both amazing games. I remember the Monkey Island 2 one also, but I think we had cracked versions for all of those games anyway tbh. :)
ye Monkey Island was easy to photocopy :D
I remember in my local PC shop, they had a whole binder of copy-protection mechanisms they would photocopy from when they sold you a pirated game :D
It's understandable that companies wanted to protect their software, but this method was a bit feeble. On the ZX Spectrum at least, it could be overcome by a single POKE!
Still, at least it wasn't the horrible, user-hostile LensLok system...
The inks used couldn't be faithfully scanned/replicated. So even color copiers were useless.
My father had a friend from his childhood who ended up owning a graphic design studio, and sometimes he would have to have these replicated using classic photography.
When I think back, we jumped through a lot of hoops to get a free game when we could have just spent a couple dollars lol
It wasn't. A lot of the copy protection was the game asking for the word on a particular page and line in the manual. When you pirated the game (which was easy, since it was literally just copying the disk to another disk), you photocopied the manual as well. Or rather photocopied the photocopy of the manual, I didn't see a lot of original games for the PC and Commodore 64 back in the 80s, but I sure had hundreds if not thousands of games.
I guess the colour thing was probably a method of circumventing the photocopier, because colour photocopiers were not really generally available back then.
Defeating a 40-year-old copy protection dongle – Dmitry Brant
cross-posted from: feditown.com/post/2498813
Defeating a 40-year-old copy protection dongle – Dmitry Brant
Defeating a 40-year-old copy protection dongle – Dmitry Brant
cross-posted from: feditown.com/post/2498813
Defeating a 40-year-old copy protection dongle – Dmitry Brant
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France Just Created Its Own Open Source Alternative to Microsoft Teams and Zoom
France Just Created Its Own Open Source Alternative to Microsoft Teams and Zoom
Not only for them, but any other non-European videoconferencing software.Sourav Rudra (It's FOSS)
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Have you tried selfhosting it? For me, it was unusable, despite a beefy cloud server, even for just 2 people. And thats ignoring setup complexity.
This one is optimized and kubernetes ready, which makes it super easy. Will try out soon.
It's licensed under Apache license:
Apache License 2.0
A permissive license whose main conditions require preservation of copyright and license notices. Contributors provide an express grant of patent rights. Licensed works, modifications, and larger works may be distributed under different terms and without source code.Permissions
Commercial use
Modification
Distribution
Patent use
Private use
Limitations
Trademark use
Liability
Warranty
Conditions
License and copyright notice
State changes
You know that they could just fork it, right? Saying that "it's american", just causes FUD for opensource.
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Nothing to do with license.
Firefox is a massive piece of code and following modern browser standards is so difficult that it's a feat for big teams of developers and no small team seems to be able to pick the pace needed.
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This is awesome!
But I am confused, isn't github Microsoft though? Why host it there?
Why didn't they pour money on Jitsi?
European, mature, FOSS...
I fear grift is there somewhere.
Also, French engineering has a habit of turning sound concepts into messy overengineerd but underbuilt results.
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Also, French engineering has a habit of turning sound concepts into messy overengineerd but underbuilt results
Any exemple ?
The development is quite transparent. The team is looking at reduced development and more integration, so instead of "pouring money on a project", they tried various solutions, and picked the "best one".
One criteria was an integration with their internal communication system: Tchap, essentially a Matrix server. The Matrix video call group didn't cut it because it requires ElementX, and apparently there are unresolved issue there (no idea if it's the app itself or due to customization of their Matrix server). They ended up with Visio, that is not a "new" solution: it's based on LiveKit.
github.com/tchapgouv/tchap-pro…
Etude des différentes options visio dans Tchap
Dans le cadre des priorités de la suite numérique : gros besoin d'intégrer la visio à Tchap en prio 2024 Plusieurs options semblent s'ouvrir à nous et nous avons besoin d'une investigation ops pour...julie-ri (GitHub)
W is a SWEDISH startup funded by private entities.
It has absolutely nothing to do with France, and the only link you could make here is it's owned at 25% by a media that received subsidies from the EU, like a lot of media do, and France is part of the EU.
The startup has not been endorsed by any public entity at any level.
This is completely irrelevant.
So they do use available solutions.
Well, I wish you could just say that, but "the French" is not a consistent body of people.
While we have this team working on a sovereign suite, Macron is rushing a law to ban <15 years old on social network, so… they will soon require all users to provide an ID. It will have to go through a "trusted third-party", not directly to Meta/Twitter/etc., and not to the gov directly, but we all know how much corporates and governments have been trustworthy historically. And once the data is collected, you're just one law away from all abuse.
Needless to say that the teen will rush to VPN, so they also mentioned a potential ban on VPNs! (France would then join the short-list of great democratic VPN-banning countries: North Korea, China, Iran…)
France has horrible laws for encryption, so how much do you want to bet this thing doesn't have e2ee.
This is an Intel operation
France requires companies to get permission to export cryptography. They're one of the worst countries in Europe for crypto.
comparitech.com/blog/vpn-priva…
Encryption laws: Which governments place the heaviest restrictions on encryption?
Deciphering control: Explore the global landscape of encryption laws to find out which governments impose the strictest regulations on data privacy and security.Paul Bischoff (Comparitech)
Zoom, Teams, Meet, and all the major providers do not have e2ee on by default. It's a paid extra and almost nobody turns it on.
Mega uses e2ee by default, and it cannot be turned off.
Die Office-Suite für die Öffentliche Verwaltung
openDesk bietet kollaborative Office-Anwendungen für die Öffentliche Verwaltung: Textverarbeitung, Chat, Dateifreigabe, Videokonferenzen und Projektmanagement.openDesk
When Silence Is Mistaken for Peace
Many assume the war is over and everything is fine now. That’s not our reality. Gunfire has decreased, but it hasn’t stopped, and daily life is still tight and uncertain. Our calls may be quieter, but the struggle continues. Any support or solidarity still means a lot.
gofund.me/1d3ea05b6
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