archive.today and archive.ph (also .is, .md, .fo, .li, .vn) could be Russian assets.

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Cake day: 2025年3月5日

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  • I thought this was the result of Ukrainian drone attacks, but no. This is the governments doing. Scary stuff, very much reminiscent of the Soviet Union - a new, more tech savvy version.

    Widespread cellphone internet shutdowns began in May and persisted through summer and into the fall. In November, 57 Russian regions on average reported daily disruptions to cellphone links, according to Na Svyazi, an activist group monitoring shutdowns.

    Authorities say these outages are designed to prevent Ukrainian drones from tapping mobile networks for navigation.

    Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said they are “absolutely justified and necessary,” but analyst Kateryna Stepanenko of the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said they haven’t been effective in curbing the intensity of Ukraine’s drone attacks, “given the amount of strikes we’ve seen in recent months on Russian oil refineries.”

    In many regions, only a handful of government-approved Russian websites and online services — designated as being on “white lists” — are available during connectivity blackouts.

    Authorities have tried touting the joys of reconnecting with a technology-free lifestyle.

    One recent anti-drone restriction sets 24-hour “cooling periods” during which data and texts are blocked from SIM cards that were carried abroad or have been inactive for 72 hours. The owner can unblock it via a link received by text message.

    Unblocking becomes impossible, however, if a SIM card is used in internet-connected appliances or equipment without interfaces for receiving text messages, like portable Wi-Fi routers, cars or meter boxes.

    Other restrictions targeted two popular messaging apps: WhatsApp, with about 96 million monthly users in October, and Telegram, with 91 million, according to media monitoring group Mediascope.

    Authorities began restricting calls on these apps in August, supposedly to stop phone scams, and are throttling them in some parts of Russia.

    Neither app is on the government “white list.”

    On the list is Russian messaging service MAX. Authorities actively promote it and since September the service is required to be preinstalled on all smartphones in Russia. Critics see it as a surveillance tool as MAX openly declares it will share user data with authorities upon request. Experts also say it doesn’t use end-to-end encryption.









  • “For example, we had our own Github, so we couldn’t use their Github Copilot license,” he explained. “We were still required to find some ways to use AI. The one corporate AI integration that was available to us was the Copilot plugin to Microsoft Teams. So everyone was required to use that at least once a week. The director of engineering checked our usage and nagged about it frequently in team meetings.”

    “To satisfy the boss, I started using the Teams Copilot AI to get answers for questions I would previously have Googled,” he said. “Questions such as the syntax for a particular command or an idea for setting up a new (to me) process. Sometimes the answers were perfect. Sometimes they were useless. Once, I spent three hours trying to get the AI’s suggestion for a Docker problem to work before I gave up and Googled the correct answer in two minutes.”

    doG help us all.

    We thought these new technologies would help humanity, to have more time to concentrate on the real work. Instead they’re being used to exploit us even more, and in such a stupid way.

    It’s one of those things where having even the slightest bit of insight, you can predict that this is going to crash big time, eventually. Yet the people who should don’t listen. And then, when it inevitably happens, everyone is very surprised indeed. And somebody who knew it, just like you and thousands of other people, will be celebrated as some sort of prophet. We truly live in a dark age.