Author Archives: pappp

Albania Created an ‘A.I. Minister’ to Curb Corruption. Then Its Developers Were Accused of Graft.

Posted on 2026-01-27 by pappp

Source: NYT > World

Article note: Seems like a microcosm of the whole AI industry. The corruption detection AI is simply a tool of corruption operated by its vendor.

The Albanian avatar known as Diella, a public anticorruption crusader, has been described as the world’s first government minister created by artificial intelligence.

Posted in News | Leave a comment

Xfwl4 – The Roadmap for a Xfce Wayland Compositor

Posted on 2026-01-27 by pappp

Source: Hacker News

Article note: Neat. I've been off XFCE as my default environment for almost a decade because of creeping GTK misfeatures, but they've always had a good design philosophy, and this xfwl4 project seems to be in keeping.
Comments
Posted in News | Leave a comment

FAA institutes nationwide drone no-fly zones around ICE operations

Posted on 2026-01-25 by pappp

Source: Hacker News

Article note: "Unlike traditional Temporary Flight Restrictions, the NOTAM does not provide geographic coordinates, activation times, or public notification when the restriction is in effect near a specific location. Instead, the restricted airspace moves with DHS assets, meaning the no-fly zone can appear wherever ICE or other DHS units operate." "In practical terms, a drone operator flying legally in a public area could unknowingly enter restricted airspace if an ICE convoy passes within the protected radius." Oh boy, secret laws where you can't know if you are in violation until confronted, against documenting the behavior of state actors. Full fascism.
Comments
Posted in News | Leave a comment

Microsoft Gave FBI Keys to Unlock Encrypted Data, Exposing Major Privacy Flaw

Posted on 2026-01-23 by pappp

Source: Hacker News

Article note: Mmmyep. Bitlocker with a Microsoft account is barely more than theater, it manages to keep most of the fragility and overhead of a sophisticated encryption system, but - having done the recovery flow for someone's machine that b0rked - even without the power of state threats, it's not that hard to shake the retained keys out of Microsoft. Fun that non-nerds are starting to learn about bullshit vendor-bypassable security that the cypherpunks have been screaming about for 35 years due to (this is a euphemism I find myself using uncomfortably often of late) "the geopolitical situation."
Comments
Posted in News | Leave a comment

Immigration Agencies Are Openly Defying Federal Courts

Posted on 2026-01-20 by pappp

Source: Hacker News

Article note: I'm old enough to remember in the post-9/11 era when we were rushing into the existence of DHS (legislated in 2002, established in 2003 - it's not old) and the criticism from either wing warned about the creation of a giant, unaccountable, inevitably overreaching monster due to a poorly considered knee-jerk reaction to one incident. Oh look, an overreaching, unaccountable monster. Let's learn and fucking dismantle it.
Comments
Posted in News | Leave a comment

SparkFun Officially Dropping AdaFruit due to CoC Violation

Posted on 2026-01-14 by pappp

Source: Hacker News

Article note: Several of the prominent hobbyist electronics folks appear to be vigorously crybullying each other. This is not fabulous.
Comments
Posted in News | Leave a comment

Logistics Is Dying; Or – Dude, Where’s My Mail?

Posted on 2026-01-08 by pappp

Source: Hacker News

Article note: It certainly seems to be a "The capitalists are ripping apart working systems so the number keeps going up" situation. I think the most shocking bit is how uncorrelated with distance or difficulty it all is, I regularly have stuff get from China to a nearby sorting center faster than it gets from the sorting center to me, and see large fragile items like TVs that seem to be being sold for less than I'd expect shipping to cost... but also have letters take months, or packages disappear.
Comments
Posted in News | Leave a comment

Researcher Wipes White Supremacist Dating Sites, Leaks Data on okstupid.lol – Hackread – Cybersecurity News, Data Breaches, AI, and More

Posted on 2026-01-05 by pappp

Source: Published articles

Article note: Majestic.
Posted in News | Leave a comment

Dell is eating humble pie and bringing back the XPS brand

Posted on 2026-01-05 by pappp

Source: The Verge - All Posts

Article note: That went about as poorly as everyone expected.
Dell XPS 14 and XPS 16 laptops on a white tabletop.
Forget Premium, Pro, and Pro Max — Dell backtracked so hard its new laptops don’t even say Dell on top.

Nearly one year ago to the day, Dell killed off its long-standing XPS brand name in favor of milquetoast Premium, Plus, Pro, and Pro Max monikers - but it's back for CES 2026. The new XPS 14 and XPS 16 laptops look to win back fans of the "Extreme Performance System" with Dell's thinnest designs to date, a row of proper function keys, improved battery life, and Intel's new Panther Lake Core Ultra Series 3 processors. Dell even went as far as putting the XPS brand name on the lid, and finally marking the edges of its seamless haptic trackpad with subtle glass etching lines.

The XPS 14 and 16 are launching in select configurations on January …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Posted in News | Leave a comment

PicoPCMCIA leverages the Raspberry Pi RP2350 to emulate a PCMCIA card

Posted on 2026-01-05 by pappp

Source: adafruit industries blog

Article note: Oh man, that's _delightful_ for playing with old laptops. Modern Wifi, storage emulation including CD drives, all the things that are usually a hassle.

yyzkevin is launching an open source project to make a multifunction PCMCIA (later named PC) card for vintage computers. Details:

  • This is a Type II, 5V, 16-bit PC Card designed for use in compliant PCMCIA sockets and should work in most devices.
  • Built around the RP2350 and leveraging the ISA-like nature of the PCMCIA bus, this project benefits greatly from code interchangeability with other RP-based retro projects, most notably PicoGUS and PicoMEM.
  • The card has an onboard wireless module containing the Infineon CYW43439, same as found on the Raspberry Pi Pico W. This allows the card to attach to modern Wi-Fi networks (2.4GHz 802.11b/g/n WPA2). It can then emulate an NE2000 adapter and/or a dialup modem.
  • The card has an included Texas Instruments TLV320AIC3254 which calls itself a “Very Low-Power Stereo Audio CODEC with programmable miniDSP”.
  • Emulation of intelligent mode MPU-401 is possible thanks to implementation done by PicoGUS base on SoftMPU/HardMPU.
  • Sound Blaster emulation and the worlds first PCMCIA Gravis Ultrasound
  • Emulated Panasonic MKE CD-ROM
  • Storage Emulation
  • The USB port for the RP2354 is made available on the external connector

See the video below and more in the post here.

Posted in News | Leave a comment