Well there was a whole lot of news about this the past couple of days but none of it seems to have found it's way to the Fediverse.

Per the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the DOJ released "The Epstein Files" on Friday, the 19th. Only they didn't. Despite spending $851k dollars on overtime (4737 collective hours) in the the "Special Redaction Project" (also internally referred to as the "Epstein Transparency Project"), they were clearly still not finished, because (depending on who you ask) they only released ~1% of the available files. More files will continue to be released "over the next couple of weeks". While I would argue this is a good thing, as it's kinda like Wikileaks where they release docs over time in order to keep it in the headlines for an extended period, but it is also definitively not in compliance with the law that was passed.

In addition, the files were (as expected) very heavily redacted. We're talking hundreds of pages that are redacted in their entirety. Just entire documents with black squares over them. Nothing visible except "Grand Jury-NY".

.

According to the law, the DOJ must provide an explanation of any redacted files, which they've also not done.

In addition to that, many docs were redacted retroactively, or removed completely. At least 16 files have disappeared from the DOJ webpage entirely..

In one case there was a file which didn't have much context but detailed how DJT liked to flick and suck one girl's nipples until they were raw.. This file was redacted after release, which provided essentially incontrovertible proof of what we already knew; that they are indeed not redacting anything to protect victims but to protect Trump (and probably his friends).

Several of the files removed were pictures of Trump. It's kind of hilarious how they spent so much time and money and yet fumbled this so badly, and then later tried to "fix it" by removing them, as if no one would realize it. It's pretty much exactly the type of ineptitude we've come to expect from this admin.

The Democrats have, accordingly, drafted articles of impeachment for Pam Bondi.

Let me know in the comments if I missed anything.

Sorry for the editorialized title but I feel like the author is really burying the lede here.

Ellison argued Paramount’s deal will have a shorter regulatory approval process given the company’s smaller size and friendly relationship with the Trump administration.

CNBC reported Friday that the Trump administration was viewing the deal with “heavy skepticism,” and Trump said Sunday that the market share considerations could pose a “problem.”

Such naked corruption...

I volunteer with a small local org. They use Google Workspace. I want to ask them to switch to NextCloud. But despite looking pretty throughly, I can't find anyone that offers managed hosting/support. I don't want to be the sysadmin. The org already pays a hefty fee for Google so they should't have a problem paying for NextCloud.

NC recommends a bunch of providers on their site, but they all look like VPS's, and don't seem to mention NC at all, much less anything about support. They also all look like they're non-US, which I understand many would consider a good thing but I really don't want to be dealing with slow connections. Not sure if that's a realistic concern.

Bonus points if they offer discounts for non-profits.

windows is ass. i use only linux now.

Hi guys. I dunno if any of you use MacOS but it's fuckin stupid and if you ever click the share icon, it only gives you options to share to/from Mac products. I don't use any Mac products other than MacOS. There's literally no way to just copy a link from the share button. If I just copy the link from the URL bar and send it to someone it will say "mismatching instance" (whatever that means) with no way to resolve it.

I'd like a way to share posts to people not on the threadiverse, but with the Photon frontend, so that it looks less shitty. How would one do that?

Maybe I'm just out of touch, but I don't understand who this is for, and I think it's going to flop.

First of all...who is asking for thinner phones?

Secondly, the price. This is not an Air SE. This thing is only $100 less than a full-fat iPhone Pro, and $200 more than iPhone base (which is a particularly good value this year).

And what do you get for that price?

• 2 fewer lenses than the pro, and 1 fewer than the base
• Titanium frame, I guess?
• Less powerful processor than the base
• Inherently more fragile frame
• Less battery life than even the base model (this was often cited as the shortcoming of the iphone Mini)
• Slower charging speed than both models
• no cinematic video mode

Are people really clamoring for thinner phones so badly that they'll spend more money for less features?

https://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/?modelList=iphone-17-pro%2Ciphone-air%2Ciphone-17

Edit: 1 week later and the Air underperforms the base model as well (as expected)

Also someone pointed out below that the 16e is only 2 grams heavier and is $400 cheaper.

In the past, if you broke or lost your phone, your Signal message history was gone. This has been a challenge for people whose most important conversations happen on Signal. Think family photos, sweet messages, important documents, or anything else you don’t want to lose forever. This explains why the most common feature request has been backups; a way for people to get Signal messages back even if their phone is lost or damaged.

After careful design and development, we are now starting to roll out secure backups, an opt-in feature. This first phase is available in the latest beta release for Android. This will let us further test this feature in a limited setting, before it rolls out to iOS and Desktop in the near future.

Here, we’ll outline the basics of secure backups and provide a high-level overview about how they work and how we built a system that allows you to recover your Signal conversations while maintaining the highest bar for privacy and security.

Secure Backups 101

Secure backups let you save an archive of your Signal conversations in a privacy-preserving form, refreshed every day; giving you the ability to restore your chats even if you lose access to your phone. Signal’s secure backups are opt-in and, of course, end-to-end encrypted. So if you don’t want to create a secure backup archive of your Signal messages and media, you never have to use the feature.

If you do decide to opt in to secure backups, you’ll be able to securely back up all of your text messages and the last 45 days’ worth of media for free.

If you want to back up your media history beyond 45 days, as well as your message history, we also offer a paid subscription plan for US$1.99 per month.

This is the first time we’ve offered a paid feature. The reason we’re doing this is simple: media requires a lot of storage, and storing and transferring large amounts of data is expensive. As a nonprofit that refuses to collect or sell your data, Signal needs to cover those costs differently than other tech organizations that offer similar products but support themselves by selling ads and monetizing data.

Anatomy of Secure Backups: Privacy First, Always

At Signal, our commitment to privacy informs which features we build and the ways that we build them.

Using the same zero-knowledge technology that enables Signal groups to work without revealing intimate metadata, backup archives are stored without a direct link to a specific backup payment or Signal user account.

At the core of secure backups is a 64-character recovery key that is generated on your device. This key is yours and yours alone; it is never shared with Signal’s servers. Your recovery key is the only way to “unlock” your backup when you need to restore access to your messages. Losing it means losing access to your backup permanently, and Signal cannot help you recover it. You can generate a new key if you choose. We recommend storing this key securely (writing it down in a notebook or a secure password manager, for example).

These choices are part and parcel of Signal’s guiding mission to collect as close to no data as possible, and to make sure that any information that is required to make Signal robust and usable cannot be tied back to the people who depend on Signal. This is why wherever there’s a choice between security and any other objective, we’ve prioritized security.

Enabling Secure Backups

If you want to opt in to secure backups, you can do so from your Signal Settings menu. For now, only people running the latest beta version of Signal on Android will be able to opt in. But soon, we’ll be rolling this feature out across all platforms.

Once you’ve enabled secure backups, your device will automatically create a fresh secure backup archive every day, replacing the previous day’s archive. Only you can decrypt your backup archive, which will allow you to restore your message database (excluding view-once messages and messages scheduled to disappear within the next 24 hours). Because your secure backup archive is refreshed daily, anything you deleted in the past 24 hours, or any messages set to disappear are removed from the latest daily secure backup archive, as you intended.

Backing up, moving forward

We’re excited to introduce secure backups, making sure you can retain access to your Signal messages even when your phone is lost or destroyed. But secure backups aren’t the end of the road.

The technology that underpins this initial version of secure backups will also serve as the foundation for more secure backup options in the near future. Our future plans include letting you save a secure backup archive to the location of your choosing, alongside features that let you transfer your encrypted message history between Android, iOS, and Desktop devices.

Secure backups are available in today’s Android beta release. A full public release, along with iOS and Desktop support, is coming soon.

E: apparently it needs to be said that I am not suggesting you switch to Linux on your phone today; just that development needs to accelerate. Please don't be one of the 34 people that replied to tell me Linux is not ready.

Android has always been a fairly open platform, especially if you were deliberate about getting it that way, but we've seen in recent months an extremely rapid devolution of the Android ecosystem:

1. The closing of development of an increasing number of components in AOSP.
2. Samsung, Xiaomi and OnePlus have removed the option of bootloader unlocking on all of their devices. I suspect Google is not far behind.
3. Google implementing Play Integrity API and encouraging developers to implement it, which prevents apps from the Google Play Store from being downloaded without a system-wide OS-level account login. Notably the EU's own identity verification wallet requires this, in stark contrast to their own laws and policies, despite the protest of hundreds on Github.
4. And finally, the mandatory implementation of developer verification across Android systems. Yes, if you're running a 3rd-party OS like GOS you won't be directly affected by this, but it will impact 99.9% of devices, and I foresee many open source developers just opting out of developing apps for Android entirely as a result. We've already seen SyncThing simply discontinue development for this reason, citing issues with Google Play Store. They've also repeatedly denied updates for NextCloud with no explanation, only restoring it after mass outcry. And we've already seen Google targeting any software intended to circumvent ads, labeling them in the system as "dangerous" and "untrusted". This will most certainly carry into their new "verification" system.

Google once competed with Apple for customers. But in a world where Google walks away from the biggest antitrust trial since 1998 with yet another slap on the wrist, competition is dead, and Google is taking notes from Apple about what they can legally get away with.

Android as we know it is dead. And/or will be dead very soon. We need an open replacement.

E2: thank you to everyone stopping by from Hacker News, Reddit, etc. to check out the threadiverse. I hope you'll stick around for a while. Check out https://phtn.app/ and the Voyager and Blorp apps for a nicer UI. Fuck Spez!

tl;dw their performance numbers don't match up to what we've seen in the past. Some pretty significant decreases in performance over Windows. I think there's clearly some sort of configuration error there. They also ran into the old dual-boot problem where Windows overwrites the Linux partition.

In my opinion this is lazy and irresponsible reporting. I don't at all mean to discount his experience, they are legitimate concerns, and it's fine to show the struggles of using Linux, but it's very clear he (admittedly) doesn't know what he's doing, and they need to consult an expert (or even a casual user) to figure out what the problem is before reporting. He said in the last video that Bazzite reached out to him to let them know if he has any problems so they could help but he obviously did not do that. As is, it just makes Linux/Bazzite look bad.

I hope he follows up with another video discussing the solutions.

What do you think?