riQQ's recent activity

  1. Comment on Men arrested on suspicion of explosives offences near US air base in Britain following "major incident" in ~news

    riQQ
    Link
    https://www.euronews.com/2026/09/30/burnham-says-strong-indications-iran-played-part-in-raf-fairford-security-scare

    Burnham says 'strong indications' Iran played part in UK airbase security scare

    "There are strong indications that Iran played a part in what happened over the weekend at RAF Fairford," Burnham told the BBC, referring to Sunday's bomb scare near the base in southwest England, which the US has been using in its war against Iran.

    "Of course it remains an ongoing, complex, and serious police investigation," he added.

    Speaking to Sky News, Burnham said: "We have been waiting to confirm what we could say, but we can now confirm our belief that Iran played a part."

    https://www.euronews.com/2026/09/30/burnham-says-strong-indications-iran-played-part-in-raf-fairford-security-scare

    3 votes

  2. Comment on If math is more than proof, we need to better celebrate the rest of it in ~science

  3. Comment on An update on Wayback Machine access in ~tech

    riQQ
    Link
    I still have quite some issues when archiving websites but it seems to have gotten a bit better.

    We’ve heard you: “Fix the Wayback Machine!”

    Here’s what’s going on. The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine has been hit by waves of high-volume automated traffic, and we’ve put protections in place to keep the service running. One recent change: we rewrote the message you see when a request is blocked with a 429 error — the HTTP code that means “too many requests.”

    Those protections sometimes catch real people by mistake. If that’s happened to you, we’re sorry, and we appreciate your patience while we work to reduce the errors.

    We’re getting better at telling abusive bots apart from the people who depend on the Wayback Machine every day. If you think you were blocked in error, email info@archive.org with your operating system, browser, and IP address, and we’ll look into it.

    I still have quite some issues when archiving websites but it seems to have gotten a bit better.

    12 votes

  5. Comment on What it means to lose Autistici/Inventati in ~tech

    riQQ
    Link

    A terrorism designation is forcing Autistici/Inventati to shut down, taking its blogging platform NoBlogs offline with it.

    For 25 years, A/I has given activists like me a place to share our thoughts, but now it is being treated as a threat. Noblogs.org might not be online anymore when you read this. On August 26 A/I sent out an announcement that the US government had declared them to be supporters of terrorism. According to a press release by the State Department. “Autistici/Inventati (A/I Collective) is an Italy-based extremist group that builds and operates the digital infrastructure for violent Antifa cells and other far-left militants across the world.” The collective quickly rejected the allegations and wrote that they “strongly affirm our dedication to providing a platform of tools for digital self-defense, addressing the need of free communication for activists and other individuals, groups and associations.”

    8 votes

  7. Comment on Hibernating bacteria can invade hospitals and survive outer space - but their energy budget reveals a weakness in ~science

    riQQ
    Link

    A spore is a bacterium's survival capsule: dried almost solid and wrapped in protein armor, with its chemical processes shut down. Bacteria enter this state of hibernation when environmental conditions are unfavorable. What's left is close to indestructible: It can survive boiling, desiccation, radiation and the vacuum of space. NASA once bolted Bacillus spores to the outside of a satellite and left them in orbit for nearly six years; the ones shielded from sunlight were able to come back to life upon returning to Earth.

    Out in the dirt, bacteria have handed down this spore-forming ability for roughly 3 billion years. But if you put one of these bacteria in a comfortable laboratory flask and feed it well, within a few thousand generations it will lose the ability to make spores altogether.

    Why would a trait this useful, conserved for 3 billion years, vanish in a few thousand generations? This paradox has bothered microbiologists like me for decades.

    7 votes

  9. Comment on There's a new "Google Jail" for independent wikis in ~tech

    riQQ
    (edited )
    Link

    If you have a new domain, only the main page shows up on Google search results
    [...]
    My best guess (and to be clear, this is a guess): Google decided they could no longer effectively identify and swat away SEO slop, and figured that just massively nerfing brand new domains was their next best option.

    Subdomains of existing domains are totally fine
    Since this Google issue started, we’ve also launched a number of wikis on subdomains of an existing, established domain (wiki.leagueoflegends.com, wiki.warframe.com, hypixelskyblock.minecraft.wiki). Every single one of these has been immediately successful for getting articles other than the main page indexed on Google.

    It doesn’t even need to be a popular domain! overwatch.weirdgloop.org, which launched just 7 days ago, is already doing better on page-indexing than any of the wikis currently in Google Jail.

    I’ve always said that the only legitimately hard part about moving your wiki off Fandom is that you have to wage a years-long Google war against the zombified corpse left over on Fandom. When you’ve got the game’s community on your side and you’re not dealing with the new-domain issues, this is genuinely not that hard…

    …but when your wiki is simply not able to get its pages to show up because of this Google Jail, that doesn’t matter. You’re not going to get the majority of readers, which to me is what determines the success or failure of a move from Fandom.

    There’s a bit of light at the end of the tunnel, though - based on our experiments so far, it seems like once we establish these new wikis fairly well on Google, it should be safe to move them off weirdgloop.org back to whatever the appropriate name was, while keeping the existing Google juice that the subdomain picked up. I’m hoping that in 6 months or so we can just 301 redirect overwatch.weirdgloop.org to overwatch.wiki, use Google’s change of address tool, and put these wikis to where they should have been in the first place.

    14 votes

  11. Comment on UN says world will miss its climate target, warming must be reversed in ~enviro

    riQQ
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    According to the article, some of the leaks have been easy fixes yet there are states not even responding to alerts :(

    According to the article, some of the leaks have been easy fixes yet there are states not even responding to alerts :(

    The UN Methane Alert and Response System (Mars) sent 192 alerts of methane plumes to Turkmenistan in the last year. The country had three of the six worst leaks detected in the world by Mars in last six months, and nine of the top 50.

    Turkmenistan responded to about 20% of the alerts with on-the-ground information about the leaks and potential plans to fix them. In contrast, the US was sent the second highest number of alerts – 138 – but responded to none and had fixed no leaks in the last year. Other nations that failed to respond to any alerts were Iran, Russia and China.

    5 votes

  12. Comment on GPS tracker for an interstate move in ~tech

    riQQ
    Link
    Meta: Shouldn't this be moved to ~tech? I don't have the moving privileges to do it myself.

    Meta:
    Shouldn't this be moved to ~tech? I don't have the moving privileges to do it myself.

    3 votes

  13. Comment on Industry Standard Tools in ~life.home_improvement

    riQQ
    Link Parent
    Not a lot of information, but it does say the following below the blue scrolling banner:

    Not a lot of information, but it does say the following below the blue scrolling banner:

    Est. 2026

    1 vote

  14. Comment on Motorola’s GrapheneOS phones will launch in 2027 priced higher than Pixels in ~tech

    riQQ
    Link Parent
    Which Pixel do you have?

    Which Pixel do you have?

    3 votes

  15. Comment on Motorola’s GrapheneOS phones will launch in 2027 priced higher than Pixels in ~tech

    riQQ
    Link
    I'm a bit sad to see this, as I wasn't looking to buy a flagship smartphone but rather a Pixel a-series replacement.

    I'm a bit sad to see this, as I wasn't looking to buy a flagship smartphone but rather a Pixel a-series replacement.

    11 votes

  16. Comment on Motorola’s GrapheneOS phones will launch in 2027 priced higher than Pixels in ~tech

    riQQ
    Link
    The Mastodon comment the article is based on:

    Several months ago, Motorola and the makers of GrapheneOS announced a team-up that would expand support for the privacy-centric OS to beyond Google’s Pixel phones. The announcement, however, was bereft of details. Now, the creators of the OS have taken to Mastodon (naturally) to provide an update. Moto’s GrapheneOS phones are on track to launch in 2027, but they’ll cost a pretty penny.

    According to the GrapheneOS team, the upcoming Moto phones will be premium flagship devices. The team expects pricing to be even higher than Pixel phones, which is saying something. The current Pixel lineup starts at $900 for the base model Pixel 11, a $100 increase from last year. The Pixel 11 Pro XL price has gone up to a whopping $1,300 this year.

    While Motorola makes plenty of budget devices in the Moto G line, those devices aren’t a viable option. GrapheneOS has supported Pixels because Google’s Tensor chips provide the necessary security features, but not all Qualcomm chips offer the same capabilities. Only Qualcomm’s most expensive 8-series processors are comparable from a security standpoint, and those only go in expensive flagship smartphones.

    The Mastodon comment the article is based on:

    The initial devices with GrapheneOS support should be available in 2027. The initial devices will be flagships so they'll be higher end hardware than Pixels at a higher price. Lower end devices will take more time to meet our requirements since the updates and security features aren't as good. It's mostly due to how Qualcomm handles it. The latest Snapdragon flagships have the best security features. We'll also need Motorola to start paying them for longer updates below flagships.

    7 votes

  18. Comment on Fixing a Framework laptop bricked by a BIOS update in ~tech

    riQQ
    Link Parent
    This is the least that they can do. Sad that it took media coverage to force their hand.

    This is the least that they can do. Sad that it took media coverage to force their hand.

    Framework’s statement to Ars says:

    … in addition to replacing in-warranty Mainboards, we are making exceptions for out-of-warranty replacements where we can confirm a stable-release BIOS update caused the board to become non-bootable.

    Framework is also introducing a “Crisis Recovery Mode” BIOS functionality to enable a path for failed updates to be directly recoverable.

    “Our latest Framework Desktop BIOS release includes this functionality, and we are actively bringing it to Framework Laptop 12, 13, and 16 in our upcoming BIOS release cycles for each,” Framework said.

    3 votes

  19. Comment on Dutch regulator fines Uber $966m for automating driver suspensions in ~transport

    riQQ
    Link

    The Dutch data protection authority has fined ⁠Uber €825m ($966m) for deactivating driver ⁠accounts through automated systems without adequately informing them, according to a 17 August decision.

    The penalty would be the second-largest issued yet under Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

    It is behind only a €1.2bn ($1.4bn) fine ⁠imposed on Meta by Ireland in 2023 for unlawfully transferring European Facebook users’ data to the United States. Meta is appealing.

    Uber said it would also appeal.

    26 votes