Joshua Casey 😷 @JoshuaACasey@social.cleverlibre.org

The US government has admitted to purchasing vast amounts of publicly available online information on its citizens: https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/13/us-intelligence-report-purchase-americans-personal-data/.

You can take steps to protect your identity online like using #SimpleLogin email aliases when signing up for services. Register for free: https://app.simplelogin.io/auth/register.

Avoid using popular mental health apps. The Mozilla Foundation found that many of them are “exceptionally creepy” and share personal data. Instead, look for independent tools, backed by research.

http://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/top-mental-health-and-prayer-apps-fail-spectacularly-at-privacy-security

Scientists turn plastic waste into clean fuel using solar energy

https://www.ctvnews.ca/climate-and-environment/scientists-turn-plastic-waste-into-clean-fuel-using-solar-energy-1.6449392

#ClimateEmergency #pollution #ecology #environment #ClimateCrisis #ClimateCatastrophe #climate

The troubling heat in Texas and its ties to climate change in 5 maps
Dan Stillman
7–9 minutes

Texas is no stranger to searing heat, but the heat wave that arrived last week is becoming exceptional for its intensity and duration. Air temperatures have soared past 100 degrees for multiple days, even exceeding 110 in spots, and the sizzling heat index has reached as high as 125

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2023/06/20/texas-record-heat-maps-climate/

#ClimateEmergency #pollution #ecology #environment #ClimateCrisis #ClimateCatastrophe #climate

There are now multiple browser extensions to redirect outgoing links to subs in the threadiverse to your local instance of choice

Kbin Linker Extension
https://github.com/daniel-lxs/kbin-link

Lemmy Linker Extension
https://github.com/FackJox/lemmy-link

This is a major downside to how federation works currently and something we shouldn't need extensions for, but as a stopgap solution I am glad they exist.

[@fediverse #threadiverse]

✨ 1000 users max

Did you know we limit the maximum number of users by default?

We think 1000 users is a healthy instance size, but understand if that doesn't work for you, so you can set your own limit.

Everyone wins with ethical defaults and endless customization. You can also set max caption length, # of photos per albums and much more.

Ethical defaults + Endless customization =

Anti-porn crusaders were behind early efforts to censor the Internet. Now they're back.

Texas has a brand new anti-porn law that clears First Amendment hurdles about as well as a rhinoceros competing in a steeplechase.

Deep dive here: https://aricohn.substack.com/p/texas-legislature-convinced-first

In case you missed it: Here's an explanation as to why those "sexy" pictures of British-American comedian John Oliver are dominating a community on Reddit.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-65949412

#Reddit #JohnOliver

@BlackAzizAnansi Non-techies' introduction to mastodon is generally confusion, brief exploration, and then bailing. This network tore itself apart because of a decision to offer a default server.

How many active monthly users does mastodon really have? Looks like about a million. Even after all the Twitter bs mastodon is tiny.

I generally like it here but most of my friends from the disability, journalism and science communities who joined did not stay.

With all this #RedditMigration going on, there's been a renewed interest in #forums, especially with #activitypub integration.

We've got @devnull working on it. I'm hoping we don't miss the boat by the time it can be rolled out, but we want to do right by the #fediverse and come out swinging with a highly interoperable frontend to the fediverse-at-large.

Stay tuned here for more info as the story (and branch) develops!