A return to vernacular buildings, which maintain interiors at a comfortable temperature through architectural design rather than energy-intensive technical installations, could significantly reduce energy consumption for heating and cooling. However, it’s not a short-term solution: it would require a large amount of time, money, and energy to replace the existing building stock.

Fortunately, history offers an alternative solution that can be deployed more quickly and with fewer resources: textiles. Before the Industrial Revolution, people added a temporary layer of textile insulation to either the interior or the exterior of a building, depending on the climate and the season. In cold weather, walls, floors, roofs, windows, doors, and furniture were insulated with drapery and carpetry. In hot weather, windows, doors, facades, roofs, courtyards, and streets were shaded by awnings and toldos.

Removable insulation can achieve significant energy savings with much more flexibility than permanently enclosed insulation materials. Because modern insulation methods require construction permits and structural interventions to a building, they are expensive, time-consuming, and only accessible to home owners. Furthermore, modern insulation methods are ill-suited for older buildings, in which case they are often not financially and energetically sustainable.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/31716365

The world is burning, and it's about time you start organizing. To learn how to do it as a tech worker within the tech sector, Tech Workers Coalition (TWC) is the best place to start.

In this session you will discover what TWC is, how you can join a local or global chapter, and the many initiatives going on around the world for you to contribute to.

We have two identical sessions to accommodate different time zones, so please sign up for the one that works best for you — can’t wait to see you there!

Tuesday, June 17th, 2025

Option A is 18:00 CEST / 12PM ET / 9 AM PT Register

Option B is 5PM PT / 8PM ET Register

An estimated 68% of internet activity starts on search engines and about 90% of searches happen on Google. If the internet is a garden, Google is the Sun that lets the flowers grow.

This arrangement held strong for decades, but a seemingly minor change has some convinced that the system is crumbling. You'll soon see a new AI tool on Google Search. You may find it very useful. But if critics' predictions come true, it will also have seismic consequences for the internet. They paint a picture where quality information could grow scarcer online and large numbers of people might lose their jobs. Optimists say instead this could improve the web's business model and expand opportunities to find great content. But, for better or worse, your digital experiences may never be the same again.

On 20 May 2025, Google's chief executive Sundar Pichai walked on stage at the company's annual developer conference. It's been a year since the launch of AI Overviews, the AI-generated responses you've probably seen at the top of Google Search results. Now, Pichai said, Google is going further. "For those who want an end-to-end AI Search experience, we are introducing an all-new AI Mode," he said. "It's a total reimagining of Search."

You might be sceptical after years of AI hype, but this, for once, is the real deal.

People use Google Search five trillion times a year – it defines the shape of the internet. AI Mode is a radical departure. Unlike AI Overviews, AI Mode replaces traditional search results altogether. Instead, a chatbot effectively creates a miniature article to answer your question. As you read this, AI Mode is rolling out to users in the US, appearing as a button on the search engine and the company's app. It's optional for now, but Google's head of Search, Liz Reid, said it plainly when launching the tool: "This is the future of Google Search."

“The Wikimedia Foundation has been exploring ways to make Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects more accessible to readers globally,” a Wikimedia Foundation spokesperson told me in an email. “This two-week, opt-in experiment was focused on making complex Wikipedia articles more accessible to people with different reading levels. For the purposes of this experiment, the summaries were generated by an open-weight Aya model by Cohere. It was meant to gauge interest in a feature like this, and to help us think about the right kind of community moderation systems to ensure humans remain central to deciding what information is shown on Wikipedia.”

Some very out of touch people in the Wikimedia Foundation. Fortunately the editors (people who actually write the articles) have the sense to oppose this move in mass.

Friend of mine said the shelves are empty at WF in central CA due to this.

More

cross-posted from: https://lazysoci.al/post/28276061

Investigation by investigative journalism outlet IStories (EN version by OCCRP) shows that Telegram uses a single, FSB-linked company as their infrastructure provider globally.

Telegram's MTProto protocol also requires a cleartext identifier to be prepended to all client-server messages.

Combined, these two choices by Telegram make it into a surveillance tool.

I am quoted in the IStories story. I also did packet captures, and I dive into the nitty-gritty technical details on my blog.

Packet captures and MTProto deobfuscation library I wrote linked therein so that others can retrace my steps and check my work.

The Post’s anonymous sources claimed that White House staff managing the systems could not monitor the Starlink connection to prevent the leakage of sensitive information or unauthorized access. Its sources allege that a Wi-Fi network called “Starlink Guest” appeared on White House phones in February, prompting users only for a password, not a username or a second form of authentication. This Wi-Fi network was reportedly still present on White House visitors’ phones this week.

Mobile first!

Hack Latino is an artificial intelligence-powered app for Latinos in the U.S., made by the Georgia-based entrepreneur Adrian Lozano Jr. It offers restaurant suggestions and consular information to more than 30,000 users, along with a key feature to keep them safe: a map of ICE sightings, launched in April.

It is one of a slew of mobile platforms created by nonprofit organizations, independent developers, and foreign governments, which have cropped up amid a surge in immigration raids in the U.S. The Donald Trump administration has vowed to enact mass deportations from the U.S., home to some 13.7 million undocumented individuals. The digital tools provide services such as “Know Your Rights” guides, legal information, and emergency resources to help the community prepare for potential encounters with immigration authorities.

Apps such as Hack Latino or digital tools like Stop ICE Alerts function much like the community patrols of the 1990s, when neighbors and activists in neighborhoods with a large Hispanic presence would warn others about the arrival of authorities — except these apps have the added benefit of real-time technology, said Pedro Rios, director of the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization that supports migrants and refugees.

Google wasn't around for the advent of the World Wide Web, but it successfully remade the web on its own terms. Today, any website that wants to be findable has to play by Google's rules, and after years of search dominance, the company has lost a major antitrust case that could reshape both it and the web.

The closing arguments in the case just wrapped up last week, and Google could be facing serious consequences when the ruling comes down in August. Losing Chrome would certainly change things for Google, but the Department of Justice is pursuing other remedies that could have even more lasting impacts. During his testimony, Google CEO Sundar Pichai seemed genuinely alarmed at the prospect of being forced to license Google's search index and algorithm, the so-called data remedies in the case. He claimed this would be no better than a spinoff of Google Search. The company's statements have sometimes derisively referred to this process as "white labeling" Google Search.

But does a white label Google Search sound so bad? Google has built an unrivaled index of the web, but the way it shows results has become increasingly frustrating. A handful of smaller players in search have tried to offer alternatives to Google's search tools. They all have different approaches to retrieving information for you, but they agree that spinning off Google Search could change the web again. Whether or not those changes are positive depends on who you ask.