If you write about the messy reality behind "free" internet services: we're seeing #OpenStreetMap hammered by scrapers hiding behind residential proxy/embedded-SDK networks. We're a volunteer-run service and the costs are real. We'd love to talk to a journalist about what we're seeing + how we're responding. #AI #Bots #Abuse

RE: https://kolektiva.social/@alissaazar/115954859112536565

This photo was sent to me by someone else who was exposed to HC on Saturday. The skin on their face was also quite irritated, but not as bad as their hands which were entirely exposed. They added that they also felt extremely tired, confused, had a soar thoat and felt nauseous Saturday night and Sunday. They told me that they have been exposed to teargas before but had never had this experience.

Someone else reached out and shared their experience as well:

“I coughed up copious amounts of liquid to the point of vomiting after coming home. My whole face looks sunburned. My nose has not stopped running since the exposure and I have had fever like feelings. I’ve been exposed to a lot of tear gas. I’m a 40 year old activist, first major protest when I was 14. This stuff was different and awful. I have reactive airways and it’s seriously made me question if I can even be a front line protester anymore.”

@kde Konqi is pleased with their new Mecha comet! ☄️

Coming soon at #KDE stand at @fosdem 2026!

#kde #plasmamobile #MechaComet

Cloudflare just published a vibe coded blog post claiming they implemented Matrix on cloudflare workers. They didn't, their post and README is AI generated and the code doesn't do any of the core parts of matrix that make it secure and interoperable. Instead it's littered with 'TODO: Check authorisation' and similar

https://blog.cloudflare.com/serverless-matrix-homeserver-workers/

These two @lwn articles are prime examples of why good journalism matters and why you should pay money to make sure it thrives:

They both look beyond the shiny statements from the different parties involved and outside commentators such as @torvalds in this case and explain just how it is from a mostly neutral[1] point of view so that you can make your own judgments.

* GPLv2 and installation requirements – https://lwn.net/Articles/1052842/

* SFC v. VIZIO: who can enforce the GPL? – https://lwn.net/Articles/1052734/

[1] We are humans, and even if we try, we are never completely neutral – and a publication like #LWN that targets the FLOSS community obviously will somewhat look at things from the view of its target audience.

#gpl #Linux #kernel #VIZIO #sfc

New video: My congress hw exchange haul!

… in which I go through what I got at #39C3 and try to get a bunch of it working.

• https://youtube.com/watch?v=jdGYdTmToHw
• https://tv.ol-worldwi.de/My%20congress%20hardware%20exchange%20haul.mp4

We knew this was coming, but now the clock is running. From Privacy International:

"Yesterday the Trump Administration announced a proposed change in policy for travellers to the U.S. It applies to the powers of data collection by the Customs and Border Police (CBP)."

"If the proposed changes are adopted after the 60-day consultation, then millions of travellers to the U.S. will be forced to use a U.S. government mobile phone app, submit their social media from the last five years and email addresses used in the last ten years, including of family members. They’re also proposing the collection of DNA."

PI linked to and summarized a Federal Register entry describing the proposed requirements:

-All visitors must submit ‘their social media from the last 5 years’

-ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorization) applications will include ‘high value data fields’, ‘when feasible’
‘telephone numbers used in the last five years’
-‘email addresses used in the last ten years’
-‘family number telephone numbers (sic) used in the last five years’
-biometrics – face, fingerprint, DNA, and iris
-business telephone numbers used in the last five years
-business email addresses used in the last ten years.

https://www.privacyinternational.org/news-analysis/5713/trump-administration-wants-your-dna-and-social-media

The Federal Register entry says comments are encouraged and
must be submitted (no later than
February 9, 2026) to be assured of
consideration

Federal Register entry: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2025-12-10/pdf/2025-22461.pdf

shoutouts to msi, firmware developer knows best

[123689.084271] Buffer I/O error on device dm-0, logical block 97262419
[123689.084288] Aborting journal on device dm-0-8.
[123689.084296] EXT4-fs error (device dm-0): ext4_journal_check_start:87: comm syslogd: Detected aborted journal
[123689.084305] EXT4-fs (dm-0): Delayed block allocation failed for inode 20863169 at logical offset 0 with max blocks 3 with error 30
[123689.084307] EXT4-fs (dm-0): This should not happen!! Data will be lost
[123689.084307] 
[123689.084310] EXT4-fs error (device dm-0) in ext4_do_writepages:2944: Journal has aborted
[123689.084312] EXT4-fs (dm-0): Delayed block allocation failed for inode 22707117 at logical offset 0 with max blocks 1 with error 30
[123689.084316] EXT4-fs (dm-0): This should not happen!! Data will be lost
[123689.084316] 

2026-01: monthly blog post reboot

* Excited for FOSDEM, we'll have a stand and talks
* #PineNote moved up to community
* New nightly repositories
* First Contributor Support Programme report
* systemd musl support + service file upstreaming
* Number of settings apps in Phosh reduced
* USB stack reworked
* loongarch64 binary packages
* New maintainers.txt files

Thanks to everybody who contributes to postmarketOS, you are amazing!

https://postmarketos.org/blog/2026/01/25/pmOS-update-2026-01/

#linuxmobile #fosdem #postmarketos

As we've posted in our monthly blog posts before we're working hard on hardware CI to automatically run a bunch of tests on various phones for changes in the software we ship.

To accomplish this some of our team members have created PCB's to connect the phones to so we have full control over them, and after some iterations the first batch of the production units have just arrived!

We'll start setting them up in the hackathon we're doing after #FOSDEM and we'll soon share the initial results!

Thanks to @fossdd we have gotten rid of some technical debt in postmarketOS edge by finally removing the postmarketos-mvcfg package and adjusting all users of it. This should not affect anyone.

However if you saw postmarketos-mvcfg scrolling by while installing postmarketOS and were wondering about what it does, @newbyte wrote a nice blog post explaining that and why it had been introduced in the first place:

https://postmarketos.org/edge/2026/01/23/postmarketos-mvcfg-removed/

Generic kernel package with automatically generated config in YOUR distribution? It's more likely than you think!

linux-postmarketos-mainline is now available, and linux-postmarketos-stable is being built :)

WE DID IT! The verification for the signatures of the European Citizens' Initiative against the destruction of video games has concluded. We have more than enough! More infos on the official channels of the organizers and #StopKillingGames.

hmm yes, E²PROM

Time to dust off that weblog by talking about AI use in programming!

https://fun.dersco.re/weblog/2026/01/25/on-using-large-language-models-for-programming/

Generated by my brain cells.

I love reading. I love writing. I love coding. I love drawing. I love creating.

Go ahead and make the slop machines faster, you can't take away what I love.

Likely due to recent RAM and flash price increases, the #MechaComet base model only ships with 2GB RAM, and going up to 8GB is only allowed when going with the faster i.MX 95 chip.

This makes the device more pricey than it may seem initially - and I sadly can't recommend going with 2GB, if you consider adding your own 4G module and browsing the web is part of your use-case. Thanks AI, I guess. #LinuxMobile

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mecha-systems/mecha-comet-modular-linux-handheld-computer

Wow, Mafia at work. Google is now marking EVERY SINGLE APK at our repository as (checks notes) "Malware site issue". Congrats, "Safe" browsing.

Of course there is not a single malware there, everything is scanned multiple times. And I bet they excluded *.google.com from their scan or the entire PlayStore would be red by now, too…

Calling out to all of you: Please use https://safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_error/ to report the links as "safe"!

#serviceToot #izzyOnDroid #fediPower