Dave T-W @davoloid@social.cleverlibre.org

I fear that tomorrow or Thursday we will witness the largest #nuclear disaster the world has ever seen.

The #Kremlin has repeated today that it expects that #Ukraine will blow up the #Zaporizhzhia #npp. That is of course Russia-speak for the fact that they are planning to do this themselves and blame Ukraine.

When the enormous disaster at #Chernobyl happened, it involved only one reactor. The nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia has six reactors. If #Russia decides to blow up all six, it would be one of the biggest disasters the world has ever seen.

I truly hope that I am wrong and there are reasons for Russia not to do this. Mainly that the #fallout would spread to Russia itself (as well as the occupied Ukrainian territories that it has now illegally annexed), it would expose Russian soldiers to radiation poisoning and it would serve little tactical purpose.

But this is Russia. They have consistently done things during this war that made little sense, from starting the invasion in the first place to blowing up the dam at Nova Kakhovna, which left #Crimea without its main source of drinking water. So, blowing up the largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine is not at all unthinkable, especially now that Russia is losing this war.

BBC News - #Ukraine war: At least 43 injured in daylight #strike in #Kharkiv region
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-66102096

You can't make this stuff up:

"Meta mainly tried to bypass the consent requirement for tracking and online advertisement by arguing that ads are a part of the "service" that it contractually owes the users."

https://noyb.eu/en/cjeu-declares-metafacebooks-gdpr-approach-largely-illegal

#Meta #GDPR #CJEU #PrivacyViolations

We have spotted quite a few students using generative AI in their essays this summer and applied standard academic misconduct proceedings, though in most cases the work was so bad they would've failed anyway.

Today I learned of one whose use was sufficiently extensive that they will fail their degree.

I am wondering if this is *the first time a student has failed a whole degree for using AI*? Would love to hear about other cases. If you want to tell me in confidence, my Session ID is in my Bio

#StarTrek

Happy 4th to everyone not pleading the 5th about the 6th

"i use linux as my operating system," i state proudly to the unkempt, bearded man. he swivels around in his desk chair with a devilish gleam in his eyes, ready to mansplain with extreme precision.
"actually," he says with a grin, "linux is just the kernel. you use GNU+linux."
i don't miss a beat and reply with a smirk, "i use alpine, a distro that doesn't include the GNU coreutils, or any other GNU code. it's linux, but it's not GNU+linux."

the smile quickly drops from the man's face. his body begins convulsing and he foams at the mouth as he drop to the floor with a sickly thud. as he writhes around he screams "I-IT WAS COMPILED WITH GCC! THAT MEANS IT'S STILL GNU!"
coolly, i reply "if windows was compiled with gcc, would that make it GNU?" i interrupt his response with "and work is being made on the kernel to make it more compiler-agnostic. even if you were correct, you won't be for long."

with a sickly wheeze, the last of the man's life is ejected from his body. he lies on the floor, cold and limp. i've womansplained him to death.

Hello to all new and settled followers 🙂 Today might be a good day to flag #TheGlobalJigsaw to you, a #podcast series am working on - it has plenty of #Russia content (both at home and abroad)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13xtvrk/episodes/downloads
if you are into light podcast visualisation here is the visual playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLz_B0PFGIn4fK2XXqsOE-zcX_7R7gOklU
and if you would like to get in touch with comments: theglobaljigsaw@bbc.co.uk is happy to read it all
PS: Bonus content every #Caturday is the boss lady, who oversees the production

on June 27 #Putin actually admitted that #Wagner had been funded by the state, saying that between May 2022 and May 2023 alone #Russia had paid Wagner 86 billion rubles (over $1 billion) for salaries and incentive payments. This was just dropped in by Putin in the wake of the failed #mutiny. This is a huge admission, something that people had been trying to get to the bottom of for years now and the Russian state had denied. '

If you’re reading this toot there’s a pretty high chance you’ve asked yourself ethical questions about your social media use *and that’s why you’re here*

You’ve likewise probably got concerns about Meta and Threads

But the 90-odd % of your friends you left behind on Facebook, Insta etc. likely don’t have those concerns to the same extent as you

Mastodon has to win on user experience *as well as on ethics*. We can’t just berate the Meta users

Suggestion: Reach out to your local government, emergency service provider, and/or news org. Let them know that Twitter has ended public access to content and that Mastodon is a working alternative *today*. I did this on the weekend with my local emergency folks and this morning I got a reply back saying they had noticed the embedded Twitter feed on their webpage was broken.

They didn't realize Twitter had cut that service. Now, hopefully, they are considering their options including Mastodon.