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Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov was arrested Saturday night by French authorities on allegations that his social media platform was being used for child pornography, drug trafficking and organized crime. The move sparked debate over free speech worldwide from prominent anti-censorship figures including Elon Musk, Robert F. Kennedy. Jr. ~~and Edward Snowden~~. However, "the immediate freakout came from Russia," reports Politico. "That's because Telegram is widely used by the Russian military for battlefield communications thanks to problems with rolling out its own secure comms system. It's also the primary vehicle for pro-war military bloggers and media -- as well as millions of ordinary Russians." From the report:

"They practically detained the head of communication of the Russian army," Russian military blogger channel Povernutie na Z Voine said in a Telegram statement. The blog site Dva Mayora said that Russian specialists are working on an alternative to Telegram, but that the Russian army's Main Communications Directorate has "not shown any real interest" in getting such a system to Russian troops. The site said Durov's arrest may actually speed up the development of an independent comms system. Alarmed Russian policymakers are calling for Durov's release.

"[Durov's] arrest may have political grounds and be a tool for gaining access to the personal information of Telegram users," the Deputy Speaker of the Russian Duma Vladislav Davankov said in a Telegram statement. "This cannot be allowed. If the French authorities refuse to release Pavel Durov from custody, I propose making every effort to move him to the UAE or the Russian Federation. With his consent, of course." Their worry is that Durov may hand over encryption keys to the French authorities, allowing access to the platform and any communications that users thought was encrypted.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday that the arrest of Durov was "in no way a political decision." The Russian embassy has demanded that it get access to Durov, but the Kremlin has so far not issued a statement on the arrest. "Before saying anything, we should wait for the situation to become clearer," said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov. However, officials and law enforcement agencies were instructed to clear all their communication from Telegram, the pro-Kremlin channel Baza reported. "Everyone who is used to using the platform for sensitive conversations/conversations should delete those conversations right now and not do it again," Kremlin propagandist Margarita Simonyan said in a Telegram post. "Durov has been shut down to get the keys. And he's going to give them."

Edit: Not sure where the Slashdot summary got "Edward Snowden", but he's not mentioned in any of the links.

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People in a quiet neighborhood in Carthage, a town in Moore County, North Carolina, heard a series of six loud pops a few minutes before 8:00 p.m. on Dec. 3, 2022. A resident named Michael Campbell said he ducked at the sound. Another witness told police they thought they were hearing fireworks. The noise turned out to be someone shooting a rifle at a power substation next door to Campbell's home. The substation, operated by the utility Duke Energy Corp., consists of equipment that converts electricity into different voltages as it's transported to the area and then steered into individual houses. The shots hit the radiator of an electrical transformer, a sensitive piece of technology whose importance would likely be understood only by utility company employees. It began dumping a "vast amount" of oil, according to police reports. A subsequent investigation has pointed to a local right-wing group, one of a wave of attacks or planned attacks on power infrastructure.

By 8:10 the lights in Carthage went out. Minutes later, a security alarm went off at a Duke Energy substation 10 miles away, this one protected from view by large pine trees. When company personnel responded, they found that someone had shot its transformer radiator, too. Police found shell casings on the ground at the site and noticed someone had slashed the tires on nearby service trucks. The substations were designed to support each other, with one capable of maintaining service if the other went down. Knocking out both facilities prevented the company from rerouting power. Police described the two incidents as a coordinated attack. About 45,000 families and businesses remained dark for four days. This was a burden for area grocery stores and local emergency services. One woman, 87-year-old Karin Zoanelli, died in the hours after the shooting when the blackout caused her oxygen machine to stop operating. The North Carolina Medical Examiner's office classified the death as a homicide.

The attack on Duke's facilities in Moore County remains unsolved, but law enforcement officials and other experts suspect it's part of a rising trend of far-right extremists targeting power infrastructure in an attempt to sow chaos. The most ambitious of these saboteurs hope to usher in societal collapse, paving the way for the violent overthrow of the US government, according to researchers who monitor far-right communities.

Damaging the power grid has long been a fixation of right-wing extremists, who have plotted such attacks for many years. They've been getting a boost recently from online venues such as "Terrorgram," a loose network of channels on the social media platform Telegram where users across the globe advocate violent white supremacism. In part, people use Terrorgram to egg one another on -- a viral meme shows a stick figure throwing a Molotov cocktail at electrical equipment. People on the forum have also seized on recent anti-immigration riots in the UK, inciting people there to clash with police. In June 2022, months before the Moore County shootings, users on the forum began offering more practical support in the form of a 261-page document titled "Hard Reset," which includes specific directions on how to use automatic weapons, explosives and mylar balloons to disrupt electricity. One of the document's suggestions is to shoot high-powered firearms at substation transformers.

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cross-posted from: https://dubvee.org/post/1764707

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Dooley

It's not often you see WV natives on-screen. Last year I learned that Brad Dourif (Lon Suder from Voyager) is from here, and TIL Paul Dooley (Enabran Tain from DS9) is from not far from where I live.

Just thought that was interesting that Trek has two (so far?).

Basically I'm trying to de-clutter the cables to my charging station, and was hoping to use a 3-way cable for my phone, watch, and headphones.

My main concern is if one device is able to successfully negotiate QuickCharge or PD, would that send 9-20 volts to the other devices?

e.g. if I grabbed the wrong cord and hooked it into my laptop, the laptop requests 20v, would that PD negotiation succeed and also send 20v to my 5v devices on the other two leads?

I've only used these kinds of cables with USB-A and chargers that can only output 5V. Most of my chargers now are QC/PD so I'm curious if I should avoid those or take any particular precautions.

Source

The resemblance is a little uncanny.

Bell Riots kick off in 6 days, and we have a proto Borg queen coming online in 2024 just like that old gypsy woman said. Maybe we do live in the Trek universe.

Follow up to this post: https://dubvee.org/post/1715655

I've completed the first week of my 30 day dumb phone challenge. There were a few hiccups along the way, and I had to break out the old smartphone more often than I'd expected, but overall, it's still been successful beyond my expectations (my expectations were quite low, and I figured I'd have given up already lol).

I probably won't be doing weekly updates, but the first week was pretty much expected to be the most challenging, so I figured a follow-up would be warranted.

TL;DR: So far, so good, and I'm actually enjoying it rather than tolerating it as I initially expected.

Main Challenges

MFA for my work VPN

That was, by far, the most frequent cause of having to break out my smartphone. Despite changing my default MFA method from app notification to code, nine times out of ten, the VPN would still try to send the app push. This is made worse by the really crappy VPN my work offers that will, on a good day, disconnect you at random one or more times per workday (sadly, I have no say in what product we use for that). Needless to say, the old phone remained at arm's length most of the workday (though I was successful in keeping it "out of sight, out of mind")

On day 3, it started to prompt for a TOTP token about half the time (yay, progress), and since day 5, it's asked every time. Why it took 3-5 days for that change to be fully effective is beyond me. Note to self: If I ever do change back to app push, never lose my phone.

Looking up Business Phone Numbers

I was out running errands and needed to call a local business to see if they had a specific thing in stock (the big box store I was near was out). Rather than run back to the parking lot and grab my smartphone from my car, I re-enabled the mobile browser to grab their number from their website. While this went against the spirit of the experiment, my old dumb phone way back when did have a primitive mobile browser which I used similarly, so I'm going to let this slide. I've also left the mobile browser enabled since needing to lookup a business phone number while out and about is not an uncommon situation.

Pokemon Go

Ok, so this is purely an indulgence, but I do have a very long, unbroken streak going on Pokemon Go. I'm not really a die-hard player anymore, but I do refuse to break my streak. So every morning when I let the dogs out, I sit on the patio, drink my coffee, and catch my daily Pokemon as well as play a few of my daily word games. For those purposes, the smartphone is basically a wifi tablet/Game Boy that gets used for about 15 minutes and then put away. I can live with that.

As far as the challenges go, that was pretty much it. Looking at the contemporary slate of feature phones (most of the ones I looked at run KaiOS), a web browser is pretty standard so I didn't really cheat much at all by re-enabling it. As far as "feature completeness" is concerned, re-enabling the web browser seems to cover all my known bases.

General Experience

It's certainly been different. I still have the "itch" to pull out my phone and start scrolling at the first hint of boredom, but having this pseudo dumb phone is kind of like wearing oven mitts to keep you from scratching when you had chickenpox as a child lol. I've found myself taking in my environment more, being more observant of people/things around me, and generally listening to a lot more music when I need a distraction.

Beyond that, it's been great not getting notifications for every little thing, and there's been very little FOMO with not being "always on" in multiple IM apps. People were also quick to start reaching me via SMS instead of IM.

The other thing I'm really enjoying is just using this thing. It just feels so much more comfortable in my hand than any of the cookie-cutter rectangles I've used for the last 16 years. It took a little less than a day to get back into the full swing of tap and T9 typing, but I'm enjoying that, too (or maybe I'm just enjoying physical keys again). I have to make far fewer corrections than with the on-screen keyboards, and going back to fix a mistake is way less frustrating with physical arrow keys than the stupid finger slide smartphones use.

I've also quickly gotten spoiled by not having to suckle at the teat of the nearest USB cable throughout the day. Partly because I'm not scrolling on it all day and partly because there's just less phone the battery has to support, it easily lasts all day with plenty to spare. It'll get unplugged around 6am and only be down to 65% or so by the time I go to bed. I'm used to being well below 65% before lunch lol.

Next Steps

This is only the end of week 1, so I've got 3 more weeks to go before I really feel I'm ready to make a decision. Based on initial experience, I probably could go for a true dumb phone, but the only thorn in my side is my bank app. I really hate to lose that, and it's the only thing I can't do even with a modern "dumb" phone.

Before beginning this experiment proper, I did play around with this as the smartphone it actually is (I disabled a lot of things on it to dumb it down for this challenge). It's certainly a weird form factor to use Android with, but it's got its charms. One thing I noticed was that I could do everything I could do on my main phone. The nice thing, though, was that I just didn't want to. Like, it was just annoying enough with the small screen and tap/T9 text input that I was happy I could do something if I needed to but was too annoyed to make a habit out of it. That said, I very well may un-dumb this when the 30 days are up and keep using it as my daily driver.

Was sitting in traffic today and could hear this playing in a car nearby. 🤘

Not affiliated with this, lol, but it was recommended to me in another comment thread, and it seems to be relevant to what this community is about. I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but I do have it on order.

I'm also still fine-tuning the direction of this community. I'm thinking something between Digital Minimalism and Neo-Luddism with a side dish of "this is what's pissing me off about tech lately". Like, I'm not against tech by any means, and I still like it, but I don't want to be enslaved by it. Anyway, suggestions are welcome for that.

Synopsis

"Newport is making a bid to be the Marie Kondo of technology: someone with an actual plan for helping you realize the digital pursuits that do, and don't, bring value to your life."--Ezra Klein, Vox

Minimalism is the art of knowing how much is just enough. Digital minimalism applies this idea to our personal technology. It's the key to living a focused life in an increasingly noisy world.

In this timely and enlightening book, the bestselling author of Deep Work introduces a philosophy for technology use that has already improved countless lives.

Digital minimalists are all around us. They're the calm, happy people who can hold long conversations without furtive glances at their phones. They can get lost in a good book, a woodworking project, or a leisurely morning run. They can have fun with friends and family without the obsessive urge to document the experience. They stay informed about the news of the day, but don't feel overwhelmed by it. They don't experience "fear of missing out" because they already know which activities provide them meaning and satisfaction.

Now, Newport gives us a name for this quiet movement, and makes a persuasive case for its urgency in our tech-saturated world. Common sense tips, like turning off notifications, or occasional rituals like observing a digital sabbath, don't go far enough in helping us take back control of our technological lives, and attempts to unplug completely are complicated by the demands of family, friends and work. What we need instead is a thoughtful method to decide what tools to use, for what purposes, and under what conditions.

Drawing on a diverse array of real-life examples, from Amish farmers to harried parents to Silicon Valley programmers, Newport identifies the common practices of digital minimalists and the ideas that underpin them. He shows how digital minimalists are rethinking their relationship to social media, rediscovering the pleasures of the offline world, and reconnecting with their inner selves through regular periods of solitude. He then shares strategies for integrating these practices into your life, starting with a thirty-day "digital declutter" process that has already helped thousands feel less overwhelmed and more in control.

Technology is intrinsically neither good nor bad. The key is using it to support your goals and values, rather than letting it use you. This book shows the way.

This is the second time today I've had to cut over to the backup WAN (which is much slower). Fiber provider is royally screwing the pooch today, and I currently have no ETA. The only silver lining is it's a widespread issue, so hopefully they're inclined to address the problem in a timely manner.

To relieve congestion on the backup connection, I've temporarily disabled external access to pictrs. All requests (GET or POST) to /pictrs will return a 404 response until the main connection is back online.

Sorry for the inconvenience. Please direct all rage at the shit fiber provider I foolishly "upgraded" to.

Status as of 5:17PM:

Update: 4:30 PM: Tried to call and re-activate my account on my old provider since I own the equipment, and it's all still hooked up. I can even still access my old account on the web portal. Should be easy, right? Fucking wrong! They said they couldn't activate it until they sent me equipment, I returned it, and then called back to say I want to use my own. What the actual fuck?? I'm literally waving money at you, you're still charging me a $100 "install" fee (where you have to do nothing), and all you have to do is take it (and my equipment serial number). Fuck my life (and fuck those idiots, too).

Update 5:17 PM: We remain on backup WAN. ETA for fiber restoration is within 24 hours, but I'm not holding my breath. Like, how do you even fuck up this badly? (the whole goddamned state is affected including business customers)

Update 7:39 PM: Primary connection is back online (for now?). Services have successfully failed back over.