Because a (terrible terrible no good) Dutch owned website contravened Texas law, Verisign was ordered to remove the domain name from the .COM zone, and they complied. This has happened before, and it will likely happen again. If a US state doesn't like what you do, your .COM domain name may disappear on you. Mirror of Texas statement, cuz the original is not accessible from the EU: https://archive.is/kOmc4#selection-838.0-838.1

Peak mastodon is where someone writes an article stating that AI is a massive failure and someone lambasts the author for not being negative enough about AI. Amazing work everyone.

Reading (too much) AI-news is quite upsetting if you try to square it with observed realities of what people are actually achieving (not much). Here @nprofile1q... assures us that we are not wrong. The world of business is no longer able to meaningfully evaluate AI or even talk about it coherently: https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/ai-mania-is-eviscerating-global-decision-making/

The world of climate science has been correct in predicting our climate upheaval. However, it is now clear things are even worse, in ways that we don't understand nor can predict. Here an insight into what is going on from The Economist: https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2026/07/15/the-rate-at-which-earth-is-absorbing-energy-is-alarming-climate-scientists?giftId=ZDk1OWFlNDAtNDY1Yi00YWM4LTljNTMtMDA0NGE4MzA3ZDMw&utm_campaign=gifted_article (I'm out of gift links, sorry!)

So I wrote a tool to trawl the Dutch address database and find the remotest house in famously cramped the Netherlands. And lo, I found it, and people had even written about how unique it is. It is slightly more than 1 mile removed from the closest other dwelling. This is what passes for "remote" here! https://mastodon.nl/@bert_hubert/116908871738795785

The just passed legislation does not apply to WhatsApp, signal or any platform with end to end encryption. It is still terrible, but important to know.

And who is behind all this? Member state governments who madly deeply want to be able to scan all your encrypted communications. Their attempts have been going on for years, here is my 2025 overview (which I thought would be the last...) https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/chatcontrol-in-brief/ /ends

Three times now the European Parliament has voted against a proposal to allow Meta, TikTok, Snap etc to scan all your private communications for child sexual abuse material, "just in case". 1/

Wishing my American 🇺🇸 friends a happy 4th of July, despite everything. Hang in there!