‘The vehicle suddenly accelerated with our baby in it’: the terrifying truth about why Tesla’s cars keep crashing


It was a Monday afternoon in June 2023 when Rita Meier, 45, joined us for a video call. Meier told us about the last time she said goodbye to her husband, Stefan, five years earlier. He had been leaving their home near Lake Constance, Germany, heading for a trade fair in Milan.

Meier recalled how he hesitated between taking his Tesla Model S or her BMW. He had never driven the Tesla that far before. He checked the route for charging stations along the way and ultimately decided to try it. Rita had a bad feeling. She stayed home with their three children, the youngest less than a year old.

At 3.18pm on 10 May 2018, Stefan Meier lost control of his Model S on the A2 highway near the Monte Ceneri tunnel. Travelling at about 100kmh (62mph), he ploughed through several warning markers and traffic signs before crashing into a slanted guardrail. “The collision with the guardrail launches the vehicle into the air, where it flips several times before landing,” investigators would write later.

The car came to rest more than 70 metres away, on the opposite side of the road, leaving a trail of wreckage. According to witnesses, the Model S burst into flames while still airborne. Several passersby tried to open the doors and rescue the driver, but they couldn’t unlock the car. When they heard explosions and saw flames through the windows, they retreated. Even the firefighters, who arrived 20 minutes later, could do nothing but watch the Tesla burn.

At that moment, Rita Meier was unaware of the crash. She tried calling her husband, but he didn’t pick up. When he still hadn’t returned her call hours later – highly unusual for this devoted father – she attempted to track his car using Tesla’s app. It no longer worked. By the time police officers rang her doorbell late that night, Meier was already bracing for the worst.

Customers described their cars suddenly accelerating or braking hard. Some escaped with a scare; others ended up in ditches

The crash made headlines the next morning as one of the first fatal Tesla accidents in Europe. Tesla released a statement to the press saying the company was “deeply saddened” by the incident, adding, “We are working to gather all the facts in this case and are fully cooperating with local authorities.”

To this day, Meier still doesn’t know why her husband died. She has kept everything the police gave her after their inconclusive investigation. The charred wreck of the Model S sits in a garage Meier rents specifically for that purpose. The scorched phone – which she had forensically analysed at her own expense, to no avail – sits in a drawer at home. Maybe someday all this will be needed again, she says. She hasn’t given up hope of uncovering the truth.

Rita Meier was one of many people who reached out to us after we began reporting on the Tesla Files – a cache of 23,000 leaked documents and 100 gigabytes of confidential data shared by an anonymous whistleblower. The first report we published looked at problems with Tesla’s autopilot system, which allows the cars to temporarily drive on their own, taking over steering, braking and acceleration. Though touted by the company as “Full Self-Driving” (FSD), it is designed to assist, not replace, the driver, who should keep their eyes on the road and be ready to intervene at any time.

Autonomous driving is the core promise around which Elon Musk has built his company. Tesla has never delivered a truly self-driving vehicle, yet the richest person in the world keeps repeating the claim that his cars will soon drive entirely without human help. Is Tesla’s autopilot really as advanced as he says?

The Tesla Files suggest otherwise. They contain more than 2,400 customer complaints about unintended acceleration and more than 1,500 braking issues – 139 involving emergency braking without cause, and 383 phantom braking events triggered by false collision warnings. More than 1,000 crashes are documented. A separate spreadsheet on driver-assistance incidents where customers raised safety concerns lists more than 3,000 entries. The oldest date from 2015, the most recent from March 2022. In that time, Tesla delivered roughly 2.6m vehicles with autopilot software. Most incidents occurred in the US, but there have also been complaints from Europe and Asia. Customers described their cars suddenly accelerating or braking hard. Some escaped with a scare; others ended up in ditches, crashing into walls or colliding with oncoming vehicles. “After dropping my son off in his school parking lot, as I go to make a right-hand exit it lurches forward suddenly,” one complaint read. Another said, “My autopilot failed/malfunctioned this morning (car didn’t brake) and I almost rear-ended somebody at 65mph.” A third reported, “Today, while my wife was driving with our baby in the car, it suddenly accelerated out of nowhere.”

Braking for no reason caused just as much distress. “Our car just stopped on the highway. That was terrifying,” a Tesla driver wrote. Another complained, “Frequent phantom braking on two-lane highways. Makes the autopilot almost unusable.” Some report their car “jumped lanes unexpectedly”, causing them to hit a concrete barrier, or veered into oncoming traffic.

Musk has given the world many reasons to criticise him since he teamed up with Donald Trump. Many people do – mostly by boycotting his products. But while it is one thing to disagree with the political views of a business leader, it is another to be mortally afraid of his products. In the Tesla Files, we found thousands of examples of why such fear may be justified.
Illustration of bashed up and burned cars in a car park
‘My husband died in an unexplained accident. And no one cared.’ Illustration: Carl Godfrey/The Guardian

We set out to match some of these incidents of autopilot errors with customers’ names. Like hundreds of other Tesla customers, Rita Meier entered the vehicle identification number of her husband’s Model S into the response form we published on the website of the German business newspaper Handelsblatt, for which we carried out our investigation. She quickly discovered that the Tesla Files contained data related to the car. In her first email to us, she wrote, “You can probably imagine what it felt like to read that.”

There isn’t much information – just an Excel spreadsheet titled “Incident Review”. A Tesla employee noted that the mileage counter on Stefan Meier’s car stood at 4,765 miles at the time of the crash. The entry was catalogued just one day after the fatal accident. In the comment field was written, “Vehicle involved in an accident.” The cause of the crash remains unknown to this day. In Tesla’s internal system, a company employee had marked the case as “resolved”, but for five years, Rita Meier had been searching for answers. After Stefan’s death, she took over the family business – a timber company with 200 employees based in Tettnang, Baden-Württemberg. As journalists, we are used to tough interviews, but this one was different. We had to strike a careful balance – between empathy and the persistent questioning good reporting demands. “Why are you convinced the Tesla was responsible for your husband’s death?” we asked her. “Isn’t it possible he was distracted – maybe looking at his phone?”

No one knows for sure. But Meier was well aware that Musk has previously claimed Tesla “releases critical crash data affecting public safety immediately and always will”; that he has bragged many times about how its superior handling of data sets the company apart from its competitors. In the case of her husband, why was she expected to believe there was no data?

Meier’s account was structured and precise. Only once did the toll become visible – when she described how her husband’s body burned in full view of the firefighters. Her eyes filled with tears and her voice cracked. She apologised, turning away. After she collected herself, she told us she has nothing left to gain – but also nothing to lose. That was why she had reached out to us. We promised to look into the case.

Rita Meier wasn’t the only widow to approach us. Disappointed customers, current and former employees, analysts and lawyers were sharing links to our reporting. Many of them contacted us. More than once, someone wrote that it was about time someone stood up to Tesla – and to Elon Musk.

Meier, too, shared our articles and the callout form with others in her network – including people who, like her, lost loved ones in Tesla crashes. One of them was Anke Schuster. Like Meier, she had lost her husband in a Tesla crash that defies explanation and had spent years chasing answers. And, like Meier, she had found her husband’s Model X listed in the Tesla Files. Once again, the incident was marked as resolved – with no indication of what that actually meant.

“My husband died in an unexplained and inexplicable accident,” Schuster wrote in her first email. Her dealings with police, prosecutors and insurance companies, she said, had been “hell”. No one seemed to understand how a Tesla works. “I lost my husband. His four daughters lost their father. And no one ever cared.”

Her husband, Oliver, was a tech enthusiast, fascinated by Musk. A hotelier by trade, he owned no fewer than four Teslas. He loved the cars. She hated them – especially the autopilot. The way the software seemed to make decisions on its own never sat right with her. Now, she felt as if her instincts had been confirmed in the worst way.

We uncovered an ominous black box in which every byte of customer data was collected – and sealed off from public scrutiny

Oliver Schuster was returning from a business meeting on 13 April 2021 when his black Model X veered off highway B194 between Loitz and Schönbeck in north-east Germany. It was 12.50pm when the car left the road and crashed into a tree. Schuster started to worry when her husband missed a scheduled bank appointment. She tried to track the vehicle but found no way to locate it. Even calling Tesla led nowhere. That evening, the police broke the news: after the crash her husband’s car had burst into flames. He had burned to death – with the fire brigade watching helplessly.

The crashes that killed Meier’s and Schuster’s husbands were almost three years apart but the parallels were chilling. We examined accident reports, eyewitness accounts, crash-site photos and correspondence with Tesla. In both cases, investigators had requested vehicle data from Tesla, and the company hadn’t provided it. In Meier’s case, Tesla staff claimed no data was available. In Schuster’s, they said there was no relevant data.

Over the next two years, we spoke with crash victims, grieving families and experts around the world. What we uncovered was an ominous black box – a system designed not only to collect and control every byte of customer data, but to safeguard Musk’s vision of autonomous driving. Critical information was sealed off from public scrutiny.

Elon Musk is a perfectionist with a tendency towards micromanagement. At Tesla, his whims seem to override every argument – even in matters of life and death. During our reporting, we came across the issue of door handles. On Teslas, they retract into the doors while the cars are being driven. The system depends on battery power. If an airbag deploys, the doors are supposed to unlock automatically and the handles extend – at least, that’s what the Model S manual says.

The idea for the sleek, futuristic design stems from Musk himself. He insisted on retractable handles, despite repeated warnings from engineers. Since 2018, they have been linked to at least four fatal accidents in Europe and the US, in which five people died.

In February 2024, we reported on a particularly tragic case: a fatal crash on a country road near Dobbrikow, in Brandenburg, Germany. Two 18-year-olds were killed when the Tesla they were in slammed into a tree and caught fire. First responders couldn’t open the doors because the handles were retracted. The teenagers burned to death in the back seat.

A court-appointed expert from Dekra, one of Germany’s leading testing authorities, later concluded that, given the retracted handles, the incident “qualifies as a malfunction”. According to the report, “the failure of the rear door handles to extend automatically must be considered a decisive factor” in the deaths. Had the system worked as intended, “it is assumed that rescuers might have been able to extract the two backseat passengers before the fire developed further”. Without what the report calls a “failure of this safety function”, the teens might have survived.
'I feel like I'm in the movies': malfunctioning robotaxi traps passenger in car – video

Our investigation made waves. The Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt, Germany’s federal motor transport authority, got involved and announced plans to coordinate with other regulatory bodies to revise international safety standards. Germany’s largest automobile club, ADAC, issued a public recommendation that Tesla drivers should carry emergency window hammers. In a statement, ADAC warned that retractable door handles could seriously hinder rescue efforts. Even trained emergency responders, it said, may struggle to reach trapped passengers. Tesla shows no intention of changing the design.

That’s Musk. He prefers the sleek look of Teslas without handles, so he accepts the risk to his customers. His thinking, it seems, goes something like this: at some point, the engineers will figure out a technical fix. The same logic applies to his grander vision of autonomous driving: because Musk wants to be first, he lets customers test his unfinished Autopilot system on public roads. It’s a principle borrowed from the software world, where releasing apps in beta has long been standard practice. The more users, the more feedback and, over time – often years – something stable emerges. Revenue and market share arrive much earlier. The motto: if you wait, you lose.

Musk has taken that mindset to the road. The world is his lab. Everyone else is part of the experiment.

By the end of 2023, we knew a lot about how Musk’s cars worked – but the way they handle data still felt like a black box. How is that data stored? At what moment does the onboard computer send it to Tesla’s servers? We talked to independent experts at the Technical University Berlin. Three PhD candidates – Christian Werling, Niclas Kühnapfel and Hans Niklas Jacob – made headlines for hacking Tesla’s autopilot hardware. A brief voltage drop on a circuit board turned out to be just enough to trick the system into opening up.

The security researchers uncovered what they called “Elon Mode” – a hidden setting in which the car drives fully autonomously, without requiring the driver to keep his hands on the wheel. They also managed to recover deleted data, including video footage recorded by a Tesla driver. And they traced exactly what data Tesla sends to its servers – and what it doesn’t.

The hackers explained that Tesla stores data in three places. First, on a memory card inside the onboard computer – essentially a running log of the vehicle’s digital brain. Second, on the event data recorder – a black box that captures a few seconds before and after a crash. And third, on Tesla’s servers, assuming the vehicle uploads them.

The researchers told us they had found an internal database embedded in the system – one built around so-called trigger events. If, for example, the airbag deploys or the car hits an obstacle, the system is designed to save a defined set of data to the black box – and transmit it to Tesla’s servers. Unless the vehicles were in a complete network dead zone, in both the Meier and Schuster cases, the cars should have recorded and transmitted that data.
Illustration of bashed up and burned cars in a car park
‘Is the car driving erratically by itself normal? Yeah, that happens every now and then.’ Illustration: Carl Godfrey/The Guardian

Who in the company actually works with that data? We examined testimony from Tesla employees in court cases related to fatal crashes. They described how their departments operate. We cross-referenced their statements with entries in the Tesla Files. A pattern took shape: one team screens all crashes at a high level, forwarding them to specialists – some focused on autopilot, others on vehicle dynamics or road grip. There’s also a group that steps in whenever authorities request crash data.

We compiled a list of employees relevant to our reporting. Some we tried to reach by email or phone. For others, we showed up at their homes. If they weren’t there, we left handwritten notes. No one wanted to talk.

We searched for other crashes. One involved Hans von Ohain, a 33-year-old Tesla employee from Evergreen, Colorado. On 16 May 2022, he crashed into a tree on his way home from a golf outing and the car burst into flames. Von Ohain died at the scene. His passenger survived and told police that von Ohain, who had been drinking, had activated Full Self-Driving. Tesla, however, said it couldn’t confirm whether the system was engaged – because no vehicle data was transmitted for the incident.

Then, in February 2024, Musk himself stepped in. The Tesla CEO claimed von Ohain had never downloaded the latest version of the software – so it couldn’t have caused the crash. Friends of von Ohain, however, told US media he had shown them the system. His passenger that day, who barely escaped with his life, told reporters that hours earlier the car had already driven erratically by itself. “The first time it happened, I was like, ‘Is that normal?’” he recalled asking von Ohain. “And he was like, ‘Yeah, that happens every now and then.’”

His account was bolstered by von Ohain’s widow, who explained to the media how overjoyed her husband had been at working for Tesla. Reportedly, von Ohain received the Full Self-Driving system as a perk. His widow explained how he would use the system almost every time he got behind the wheel: “It was jerky, but we were like, that comes with the territory of new technology. We knew the technology had to learn, and we were willing to be part of that.”

The Colorado State Patrol investigated but closed the case without blaming Tesla. It reported that no usable data was recovered.

For a company that markets its cars as computers on wheels, Tesla’s claim that it had no data available in all these cases is surprising. Musk has long described Tesla vehicles as part of a collective neural network – machines that continuously learn from one another. Think of the Borg aliens from the Star Trek franchise. Musk envisions his cars, like the Borg, as a collective – operating as a hive mind, each vehicle linked to a unified consciousness.

When a journalist asked him in October 2015 what made Tesla’s driver-assistance system different, he replied, “The whole Tesla fleet operates as a network. When one car learns something, they all learn it. That is beyond what other car companies are doing.” Every Tesla driver, he explained, becomes a kind of “expert trainer for how the autopilot should work”.

According to Musk, the eight cameras in every Tesla transmit more than 160bn video frames a day to the company’s servers. In its owner’s manual, Tesla states that its cars may collect even more: “analytics, road segment, diagnostic and vehicle usage data”, all sent to headquarters to improve product quality and features such as autopilot. The company claims it learns “from the experience of billions of miles that Tesla vehicles have driven”.
‘Lidar is lame’: why Elon Musk’s vision for a self-driving Tesla taxi faltered
Read more

It is a powerful promise: a fleet of millions of cars, constantly feeding raw information into a gargantuan processing centre. Billions – trillions – of data points, all in service of one goal: making cars drive better and keeping drivers safe. At the start of this year, Musk got a chance to show the world what he meant.

On 1 January 2025, at 8.39am, a Tesla Cybertruck exploded outside the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas. The man behind the incident – US special forces veteran Matthew Livelsberger – had rented the vehicle, packed it with fireworks, gas canisters and grenades, and parked it in front of the building. Just before the explosion, he shot himself in the head with a .50 calibre Desert Eagle pistol. “This was not a terrorist attack, it was a wakeup call. Americans only pay attention to spectacles and violence,” Livelsberger wrote in a letter later found by authorities. “What better way to get my point across than a stunt with fireworks and explosives.”

The soldier miscalculated. Seven bystanders suffered minor injuries. The Cybertruck was destroyed, but not even the windows of the hotel shattered. Instead, with his final act, Livelsberger revealed something else entirely: just how far the arm of Tesla’s data machinery can reach. “The whole Tesla senior team is investigating this matter right now,” Musk wrote on X just hours after the blast. “Will post more information as soon as we learn anything. We’ve never seen anything like this.”

Later that day, Musk posted again. Tesla had already analysed all relevant data – and was ready to offer conclusions. “We have now confirmed that the explosion was caused by very large fireworks and/or a bomb carried in the bed of the rented Cybertruck and is unrelated to the vehicle itself,” he wrote. “All vehicle telemetry was positive at the time of the explosion.”

Suddenly, Musk wasn’t just a CEO; he was an investigator. He instructed Tesla technicians to remotely unlock the scorched vehicle. He handed over internal footage captured up to the moment of detonation.The Tesla CEO had turned a suicide attack into a showcase of his superior technology.

Yet there were critics even in the moment of glory. “It reveals the kind of sweeping surveillance going on,” warned David Choffnes, executive director of the Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute at Northeastern University in Boston, when contacted by a reporter. “When something bad happens, it’s helpful, but it’s a double-edged sword. Companies that collect this data can abuse it.”
Illustration of bashed up and burned cars in a car park
‘In many crashes, investigators weren’t even aware that requesting data from Tesla was an option.’ Illustration: Carl Godfrey/The Guardian

There are other examples of what Tesla’s data collection makes possible. We found the case of David and Sheila Brown, who died in August 2020 when their Model 3 ran a red light at 114mph in Saratoga, California. Investigators managed to reconstruct every detail, thanks to Tesla’s vehicle data. It shows exactly when the Browns opened a door, unfastened a seatbelt, and how hard the driver pressed the accelerator – down to the millisecond, right up to the moment of impact. Over time, we found more cases, more detailed accident reports. The data definitely is there – until it isn’t.

In many crashes when Teslas inexplicably veered off the road or hit stationary objects, investigators didn’t actually request data from the company. When we asked authorities why, there was often silence. Our impression was that many prosecutors and police officers weren’t even aware that asking was an option. In other cases, they acted only when pushed by victims’ families.

In the Meier case, Tesla told authorities, in a letter dated 25 June 2018, that the last complete set of vehicle data was transmitted nearly two weeks before the crash. The only data from the day of the accident was a “limited snapshot of vehicle parameters” – taken “approximately 50 minutes before the incident”. However, this snapshot “doesn’t show anything in relation to the incident”. As for the black box, Tesla warned that the storage modules were likely destroyed, given the condition of the burned-out vehicle. Data transmission after a crash is possible, the company said – but in this case, it didn’t happen. In the end, investigators couldn’t even determine whether driver-assist systems were active at the time of the crash.

The Schuster case played out similarly. Prosecutors in Stralsund, Germany, were baffled. The road where the crash happened is straight, the asphalt was dry and the weather at the time of the accident was clear. Anke Schuster kept urging the authorities to examine Tesla’s telemetry data.

Every road user trusts the cars around them not to be a threat. Does that trust still stand when a car is driving itself?

When prosecutors did formally request the data recorded by Schuster’s car on the day of the crash, it took Tesla more than two weeks to respond – and when it did, the answer was both brief and bold. The company didn’t say there was no data. It said that there was “no relevant data”. The authorities’ reaction left us stunned. We expected prosecutors to push back – to tell Tesla that deciding what’s relevant is their job, not the company’s. But they didn’t. Instead, they closed the case.

The hackers from TU Berlin pointed us to a study by the Netherlands Forensic Institute, an independent division of the ministry of justice and security. In October 2021, the NFI published findings showing it had successfully accessed the onboard memories of all major Tesla models. The researchers compared their results with accident cases in which police had requested data from Tesla. Their conclusion was that while Tesla formally complied with those requests, it omitted large volumes of data that might have proved useful.

Tesla’s credibility took a further hit in a report released by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in April 2024. The agency concluded that Tesla failed to adequately monitor whether drivers remain alert and ready to intervene while using its driver-assist systems. It reviewed 956 crashes, field data and customer communications, and pointed to “gaps in Tesla’s telematic data” that made it impossible to determine how often autopilot was active during crashes. If a vehicle’s antenna was damaged or it crashed in an area without network coverage, even serious accidents sometimes went unreported. Tesla’s internal statistics include only those crashes in which an airbag or other pyrotechnic system deployed – something that occurs in just 18% of police-reported cases. This means that the actual accident rate is significantly higher than Tesla discloses to customers and investors.

There’s more. Two years prior, the NHTSA had flagged something strange – something suspicious. In a separate report, it documented 16 cases in which Tesla vehicles crashed into stationary emergency vehicles. In each, autopilot disengaged “less than one second before impact” – far too little time for the driver to react. Critics warn that this behaviour could allow Tesla to argue in court that autopilot was not active at the moment of impact, potentially dodging responsibility.

The YouTuber Mark Rober, a former engineer at Nasa, replicated this behaviour in an experiment on 15 March 2025. He simulated a range of hazardous situations, in which the Model Y performed significantly worse than a competing vehicle. The Tesla repeatedly ran over a crash-test dummy without braking. The video went viral, amassing more than 14m views within a few days.
Mark Rober’s Tesa test drive

The real surprise came after the experiment. Fred Lambert, who writes for the blog Electrek, pointed out the same autopilot disengagement that the NHTSA had documented. “Autopilot appears to automatically disengage a fraction of a second before the impact as the crash becomes inevitable,” Lambert noted.

And so the doubts about Tesla’s integrity pile up. In the Tesla Files, we found emails and reports from a UK-based engineer who led Tesla’s Safety Incident Investigation programme, overseeing the company’s most sensitive crash cases. His internal memos reveal that Tesla deliberately limited documentation of particular issues to avoid the risk of this information being requested under subpoena. Although he pushed for clearer protocols and better internal processes, US leadership resisted – explicitly driven by fears of legal exposure.

We contacted Tesla multiple times with questions about the company’s data practices. We asked about the Meier and Schuster cases – and what it means when fatal crashes are marked “resolved” in Tesla’s internal system. We asked the company to respond to criticism from the US traffic authority and to the findings of Dutch forensic investigators. We also asked why Tesla doesn’t simply publish crash data, as Musk once promised to do, and whether the company considers it appropriate to withhold information from potential US court orders. Tesla has not responded to any of our questions.

Elon Musk boasts about the vast amount of data his cars generate – data that, he claims, will not only improve Tesla’s entire fleet but also revolutionise road traffic. But, as we have witnessed again and again in the most critical of cases, Tesla refuses to share it.

Tesla’s handling of crash data affects even those who never wanted anything to do with the company. Every road user trusts the car in front, behind or beside them not to be a threat. Does that trust still stand when the car is driving itself?

Internally, we called our investigation into Tesla’s crash data Black Box. At first, because it dealt with the physical data units built into the vehicles – so-called black boxes. But the devices Tesla installs hardly deserve the name. Unlike the flight recorders used in aviation, they’re not fireproof – and in many of the cases we examined, they proved useless.

Over time, we came to see that the name held a second meaning. A black box, in common parlance, is something closed to the outside. Something opaque. Unknowable. And while we’ve gained some insight into Tesla as a company, its handling of crash data remains just that: a black box. Only Tesla knows how Elon Musk’s vehicles truly work. Yet today, more than 5m of them share our roads.

Some names have been changed.

This is an edited extract from The Tesla Files by Sönke Iwersen and Michael Verfürden, published on 24 July by Penguin Michael Joseph at £22. To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

Christopher Street Day in Köln: Das mulmige Gefühl bleibt


Vermehrt greifen Rechtsextreme queere Veranstaltungen an. Der CSD in Köln hat auch deshalb ein striktes Sicherheitskonzept erarbeitet. Die Teilnehmenden wollen sich nicht einschüchtern lassen - das fällt ihnen aber zunehmend schwerer.

[2025] Canvas in ONE WEEK


it's time to get hyped!

July 12th, 2025 @ 4am UTC


you can now open the Canvas to setup your templates and preview how it's going to work!

2025 Canvas Size: 500x500

Related posts:



what is Canvas?


Canvas is a collaborative pixel canvas that includes everyone apart of the Fediverse! Any fediverse platform that supports direct messages is able to login and participate for this 48 hour live event

socials


Best privacy preserving measures


Considering the current intrusive cyber climate, what are the best ways to preserve privacy?

For example, I have been exclusively using a VPN connection network-wide at home setup on OpenWrt, which in turn has a PiHole as its DNS, with the PiHole using Unbound and NextDNS (redundant I know, but I use it to encrypt my requests more than anything else).

I also have Wireguard setup so I can VPN all my devices to my network while I am on the road (also have a NextDNS profile installed. Yes I know, it’s redundant).

I also basically have all my “smart” devices (TV, lightbulbs, air purifier, etc…) at home cutoff from the internet using OpenWrt’s firewall to prevent them from calling home.

I rotate web browsers frequently to try and attempt avoiding getting fingerprinted, not sure how useful that is.

I switched email providers to mailbox.org because f*** Google and Microsoft.

I also am hosting my own cloud drive on Nextcloud to avoid using services like GDrive, OneDrive, Dropbox, etc…

I own Apple devices which aren’t the best for privacy but migrating from a whole ecosystem that I have been embedded in for MANY years is easier said than done. Hopefully in the future that’s my next move.

I feel like there is a lot more I can do but I am not sure what else. I would appreciate any and all suggestions ya’ll might have.

Supreme Court declines to revive Montana law that would require parental consent for minors to obtain abortions


in reply to DominusOfMegadeus

Lol to this, because it's partially true, but also a bit defeatist.

You need to stay on top of berry bushes quarterly in warmer zones, but this person is in Minnesota. I don't think they'll thrive their like they would in warmer zones without harsh winters.

If farms can keep them in check, regular gardeners can as well, it just takes a fair amount of effort.

YSK that you can often get higher-quality information in your searches by searching specifically for PDF files. You do this by appending "filetype:pdf" to your query


You can even add a search like this to your browser's inbuilt search engines, with a string like this:
* searx.bndkt.io/search?q=filety… %s &slanguage=all
* duckduckgo.com/?q=filetype%3Ap… %s &ia=web

The %s is the placeholder string used by both Firefox, Chromium, and many of their derivatives like LibreWolf, ZenBrowser, and Vivaldi. You'll need to remove the spaces around it in the two URLs above (as Lemmy changed all my URLs without spaces to something different).

This entry was edited (1 week ago)
in reply to IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds

Ah that’s fair, I can see where you’re coming from on that. Those icons could 100% be generated with AI given the right prompting.

In my book, they look way more like stock assets to me due to how generic the symbols are, and the consistent styling. The “army guard” icon is kinda sus because of the stick “gun”, but that can be read as deliberate ambiguity to appease potential corporate customers who don’t want gun depictions in their vector stock images, and same deal with the generic “six point star”.

You’d also think they’d have chosen some sort of more detailed depiction of “isolation & surveillance” than a megaphone, or a lightning head for “fear & control”. If any of the accompanying text was included in the prompt to generate these images, the output would’ve been completely different.

This entry was edited (1 week ago)

Internal microphone not being detected pleaseee helppp


Hello all- I am seeking help trying to figure out why my internal microphone isn't being detected. I have followed a lot of troubleshooting audio guides such as this one and none of it has worked.

I'm on Pop_OS, with wayland, on an Asus laptop,

Here is more info if anyone could by chance help me

arecord -l

**** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC294 Analog [ALC294 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

systemctl --user status pipewire
● pipewire.service - PipeWire Multimedia Service
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/pipewire.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Thu 2025-07-03 15:19:48 EDT; 24h ago
TriggeredBy: ● pipewire.socket
   Main PID: 2192 (pipewire)
      Tasks: 3 (limit: 18486)
     Memory: 16.4M
        CPU: 15.088s
     CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/session.slice/pipewire.service
             └─2192 /usr/bin/pipewire

Jul 03 15:19:48 pop-os systemd[2182]: Started PipeWire Multimedia Service.
Jul 03 15:19:48 pop-os pipewire[2192]: mod.jackdbus-detect: Failed to receive jackdbus reply:>
lines 1-13/13 (END)

some more info: pastebin.com/embed_js/6vR5ZEXw

![]

I am new to linux so please don't make fun of me too much if what i'm sharing doesn't make any sense!!

in reply to Crash

Okay, so this is one of Asus's consumer models that fits in the "Windowstop" category, meaning a lot of the hardware is going to be windows-only for various reasons.

It's got an ALC272 which IS supported, but that doesn't mean the microphone will be, especially if it's on the USB bus for whatever reason.

Couple questions:

1) Do other microphones work, just not internal?
2) Does your volume control work as expected
3) Does the webcam work, and does the internal microphone work only when the webcam is engaged?
4) What do apps like Discord or Zoom detect as available for your inputs?

As a test, install pavucontrol and qasmixer. Open pavucontrol, and check ALL the input settings (there are many combos). If nothing there shows activity, launch qasmixer, select the 'hw' view on the right, then try selecting different mixers and see if one finally clicks.

If any of these are successful, your mic is detected, and your mixer settings are messed up so it's not being enabled as an input sink.

If none of these work, you're going to have to dig restart, then run sudo dmesg and grep through looking for information regarding audio devices, or similar errors to see if it can't detect it.

From the product specs, it looks like it might have Harmon Kardon speakers, which may also tie into the microphone, and that's going to be problematic if it's a USB device for a number of reasons I won't dive into. Overall, this model just seems to be problematic from digging around. Example: reddit.com/r/ASUS/comments/160…

This entry was edited (1 week ago)
in reply to just_another_person

  1. other microphones work but the quality is bad
  2. volume control works as expected
  3. Webcam works just no sound.
  4. when i go on zoom or discord there is no available inputs

the internal mic used to work but then I had to do some update and now its not.

Is there a chance that there is some config file that is blocking something? like i made some kind of setting in a config file that is making this happen?

Internal microphone not being detected pleaseee helppp


Hello all- I am seeking help trying to figure out why my internal microphone isn't being detected. I have followed a lot of troubleshooting audio guides such as this one and none of it has worked.

I'm on Pop_OS, with wayland, on an Asus laptop,

Here is more info if anyone could by chance help me

arecord -l

**** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC294 Analog [ALC294 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

systemctl --user status pipewire
● pipewire.service - PipeWire Multimedia Service
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/pipewire.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Thu 2025-07-03 15:19:48 EDT; 24h ago
TriggeredBy: ● pipewire.socket
   Main PID: 2192 (pipewire)
      Tasks: 3 (limit: 18486)
     Memory: 16.4M
        CPU: 15.088s
     CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/session.slice/pipewire.service
             └─2192 /usr/bin/pipewire

Jul 03 15:19:48 pop-os systemd[2182]: Started PipeWire Multimedia Service.
Jul 03 15:19:48 pop-os pipewire[2192]: mod.jackdbus-detect: Failed to receive jackdbus reply:>
lines 1-13/13 (END)

some more info: pastebin.com/embed_js/6vR5ZEXw

![]

I am new to linux so please don't make fun of me too much if what i'm sharing doesn't make any sense!!

in reply to Crash

Audio devices can have multiple modes or "profiles" that determine what they do.

For my headset I have:

For my internal sound card I have:

If I set my headset to one of the options that doesn't have "+ Mono Input" the mic stops working and doesn't even show up in settings and apps anymore. Same if I use the "Stereo Output" mode on my internal sound card. They must be set to a mode with both output and input enabled to work.

I can see this from "Sound" in my KDE settings, but you can also configure this in the "Configuration" tab of pavucontrol.

This entry was edited (1 week ago)

Can I get help installing Tekken 7 on my fedora please 🥺


Hi mates,

I am new to linux knows very very basic linux like using it for more then year know how to sort little issues etc. I have my laptop with me having specs as following:
**Hp Elitebook 840 G4
Core i5 7th Gen
8gb Ram
256 gb SSD
Full Hd 1080 maybe resolution
Currently using Fedora KDE Edition **

Use for basic working sometimes it gets load sometimes but still a good one.

Help me if you can install Tekken 7 or if not then tekken 3 will work for me as well.

I dont litterly know anything fully technical so kindly if you gonna tell me explain it to be with step by step detailes please and let me know each thing. It'll be great help 🤞

Note: If Tekken 7 can't be installed on fedora or need anything else to change, kindly recommend me, mostly i have used debian based systems and rest i have is fedora so if anything is nkt suitable, let me know please.

Gonna post in multiple communities to get extra help. Thank you

don't like this

in reply to Hofmaimaier

Ich weiß, ich nur ein lustiges Bild. Aber ich habe so viele Gedanken dazu, das ich nun Stichpunkte raushauen muss. Bitte nicht zu hart runter wählen, ich spitze zu und meine nichts davon böse:

  • Kochen ist Selbstermächtigung
  • Wer keine Zeit hat um einmal am Tag 45 Minuten Essen zu kochen setzt die Prioritäten falsch
  • Kalorien sind billig, Nährstoffe teurer
  • Peinliche Deutsche kaufen so billig wie möglich und werden dann krank und dick.
  • Übergewicht ist eine ganz natürliche Reaktion auf ein unnatürliches Nahrungsangebot
  • Nein danke ist ein mächtiges Werkzeug
  • Überall Singles mit kalten Küchen! Vielleicht ist die Hyper-Individualisierung eine kapitalistische Falle, die absichtlich traurige, einsame Konsumenten produziert. Zurück zu Punkt 1.
This entry was edited (1 week ago)
in reply to Teppichbrand

Peinliche Deutsche kaufen so billig wie möglich und werden dann krank und dick.


Wenn man sich die linke Seite des Posts ansieht: Marken-Coffee-to-go, Marken-Cola, Marken-Chips, Marken-Sandwich sind aber gar nicht so billig wie möglich. Das gibt es alles billiger von Eigenmarken und Konkurrenzfirmen. Vielleicht ist der Post da einfach nicht akkurat, aber die Produkte würden ja nicht angeboten wenn sie niemand kauft.

Überall Singles mit kalten Küchen! Vielleicht ist die Hyper-Individualisierung eine kapitalistische Falle, die absichtlich traurige, einsame Konsumenten produziert.


Wo will man auch heutzutage noch Partner treffen? Bei Tinder? Im immer seltener werdenden Dritten Raum (ein Ort, an dem Leute sich aufhalten können ohne Geld bezahlen zu müssen)? "Hyper-Individualisierung" klingt, als hätten die Singles einfach nur keine Lust sich Partner zu suchen.

This entry was edited (1 week ago)

[Fix] KDE Plasma 6 on Wayland - tablet pen suddenly not changing pointer position


Symptoms


Stylus taps are registered as well as button presses (on the last cursor position). Cursor doesn't change position.
"Test tablet" in "Drwaing Tablet" KDE settings only displays Stylus release events.
X11 works.
Finger touch still works.

Solution


Rename or delete ~/.config/kcminputrc, or remove config section related to "Pen" (not tested). Deleting the config resets other mouse pointer settings like speed, device enabled/disabled and calibrations.
Then log out and log back in.

Precursor


Testing pen in "Test tablet" section.

Other attempted fixes


Log out and back in - Fail
Reboot - Fail
Moving cursor on login screen and during login process - Fail
Insert and remove pen again - Fail
Shutdown and disconnect battery (in UEFI) - Fail
Removing kcminputrc after diffing with Timeshift snapshot and filtering for interesting files with grep - Pass

System info


OS: Arch Linux x64
Host: Lenovo ThinkPad L390 Yoga
Kernel: 6.12.30-1-lts
DE: Plasma 6.3.5
Libinput: 1.28.1-1
Last full system upgrade: 2025-05-28

This entry was edited (1 week ago)

Last Stand: Nuclear test veterans fight for memory and justice


Dessalines, .ml admin, head Lemmy dev: "Putin isn't an idiot! And he's not throwing people to a meat grinder! He's gloriously fighting the West! That's a BAN!"


Source: lemmy.world/comment/18040346

Modlog: photon.lemmy.world/modlog?comm…

Join the lemmy.ml boycott today and help foster a better Lemmy-verse! No more posts, comments (except to counter their propaganda ofc!) or upvotes on any comms on the Lemmy.ml instance!

And consider donating to individual instances instead

@MushuChupacabra@lemmy.world

Unknown parent

lemmy - Link to source

cm0002

Yea, I truly believe that's one of the biggest blockers.

We can fix a lot of things ourselves or just with time like, lack of content, engagement etc. but without a hard-line against the tankies like wide defederation of .ml (or at least just the big ones like .world) fixing the outside reputation is going to be a tall order. Even with PieFed

This entry was edited (1 week ago)

Palestinian woman released from ICE custody after lengthy detention


By #MEE staff
Published date: 3 July 2025 20:22 BST Last update: 07:00 EDT

"The day before she was released, on Monday, Sakeik was awoken by guards and told that she was going to be removed from the detention facility in Texas, where she was being held. An officer told Sakeik that she was being deported, but then she was not.

Sakeik was first threatened with deportation on 12 June when ICE agents brought her to the tarmac at Fort Worth Alliance Airport and told her they were deporting her to “the border of Israel.”

A US federal judge had previously ordered that Sakeik could not be deported."

'Ward was arrested and almost deported simply because she is Palestinian and ICE thought they could get away with it'
- Chris Godshall-Bennett, lawyer representing Sakeik

Independence from the US


This year, like every other year, Americans will celebrate Independence Day with flag-waving, and parades, and fireworks. The political system the flag and the parades and fireworks are supposed to represent is in tatters, but everybody likes a party.

For Americans, the madness gripping their country is a catastrophe. For non-Americans, it is an accidental revolution. This Independence Day, the world is declaring its independence from the US.

The lesson the Americans once taught the British, they are teaching the rest of the world: there are no necessary nations. There are no exceptional countries. There are no permanent global orders

GOP Congressman Deletes Post Celebrating ’18 Million Kids’ Losing School Meals: ‘Was an Error’


After the Trump-backed “Big Beautiful Bill” passed both the House and Senate, one social media user protested, “17 million people just lost health care. 18 million kids just lost school meals. 3 million Americans just lost food assistance.”

Van Orden responded to the post, “YES!”

After he received backlash, the post was quickly deleted, with the congressman claiming he had meant to reply to a different post.

The rise of paramilitary settler groups in Israel's West Bank strategy


in reply to beastlykings

I use 2:1 when I bother to heat it in a pot, but recently I've taken to just filling sugar and boiling water into the intended container and shaking it every couple of minutes, and that method leads to somewhat more watery syrup. Still more sugar than water, though.

If a recipe needs more dilution, you can always add water while mixing the cocktail. I do that pretty often.

This entry was edited (1 week ago)

Creating similar service to AlternativeTo


I am looking to create similar tool to AlternativeTo. This would list different brands and why you should or should not buy them. Is there some software that would be great starting point for creating this kind of service?

I would guess wiki apps would work for this, but like wikijs, but interested to hear is the something else that could be used for this.

Trying to install Garuda on Surface Pro 5


Only thing that happens is that I get a black screen. Not sure what's happening, no error, nothing.

Disabled secure boot and stuff in UEFI.

Any suggestions? I feel stupid.

Edit: I'll leave it here for whomever might come next: use Ventoy to create the USB, not Rufus, and then boot in grub2 option. It's installing now, at least. Let's see...

This entry was edited (1 week ago)
in reply to Noerknhar

Getting Linux on a Surface can be hard.

How did you format the USB drive? I could never get a usb to boot on my Surface Go unless it was made in Rufus using Windows. I believe you need to format the USB (with no iso) as an unbootable disc with fat32 and GPT and THEN put the iso you want on it. (Two separate operations on the same USB stick.)

There's also a custom Linux Kernel just for Surfaces that you can use for better driver compatibility.

Edit: I see you mentioned Ventoy. I got some ISOs to work with it, but most didn't. Then again, I couldn't get some ISOs to work with Rufus either.

This entry was edited (1 week ago)

Katastrophe: Stromstoffbilanz für Landwirtschaft abgeschafft


Doch die Verordnung war das einzige Werkzeug, mit dem eine Überdüngung auf die verursachenden Betriebe zurückzuführen war. Nun fürchten Experten, dass die Nitratwerte im Trinkwasser wieder steigen könnten, weil die Verursacher wieder anonym wären.
Wenn das passiert, könnte das auch für die Regierung Folgen haben.2018 wurde Deutschland von der EU für die Nichteinhaltung der Nitratgrenzwerte im Trinkwasser verklagt. Eine Klage, die 2023 zurückgezogen wurde, weil die EU-Kommission die von Deutschland ergriffenen Korrekturen als hinreichend ansah. Dazu gehörte auch die 2018 eingeführte Stoffstrombilanzierungsverordnung.

Seit ihrer Einführung ist die Menge an Stickstoff, die von landwirtschaftlichen Flächen in die Umwelt gelangt, um fast ein Drittel gefallen.
Dr. Benjamin Leon Bodirsky, PIK

Trotzdem hat das Bundesministerium für Landwirtschaft, Ernährung und Heimat (BMLEH) die Stoffstrombilanzverordnung abgeschafft. Bundesminister Rainer sagt, er löse ein Wahlversprechen zum Bürokratieabbau ein: "Damit befreien wir unsere Höfe von jährlich 18 Millionen Euro Bürokratieballast."


Dazu als Einordnung: 304 Milliarden Euro Umsatz im "agribusiness" I'm Jahr 2023 laut Agrarheute

Die Aufhebung der Stoffstrombilanzierung kommt faktisch einem Rückfall in die Gesetzlosigkeit im Bereich der Düngung gleich.
Prof. Klaus Dittert, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

Bestraft würden nun nämlich wieder die Landwirte, die sich an Regelungen gehalten und verantwortungsvoll gedüngt hätten. Umweltsünder, die überdüngen, hätten wieder freie Fahrt, so Dittert.

[...] das mit der EU vereinbarte Wirkungsmonitoring, welches Bestandteil der Nitrat-Richtlinie ist, wird nun nicht mehr durchgeführt.
Das könnte die EU-Kommission dazu veranlassen, das Vertragsverletzungsverfahren von 2018 wieder aufzunehmen. Es drohen Milliardenstrafen, die schlussendlich Verbraucherinnen und Verbraucher schultern - ebenso wie höhere Preise für Trinkwasser. Denn das Herausfiltern von Nitrat ist teuer.


Klassiker in D: Grenzwert wird überschritten -> es wird im Bestfall reguliert -> Grenzwert wird unterschritten -> "das braucht sich kein Mensch; Bürokratie yay"

Ich bin so frustriert und Müde von der bekloppten CSU es ist doch nicht zu fassen. Für 18 Mio, so ein schmarrn.

So wenig Zeit bleibt, um aus untergehendem Auto zu kommen


Klimaanpassung statt Klimaschutz? Mit dem Auto ans Mittelmeer, wo's in letzter Zeit öfter mal gibt? Der ADAC zeigt, wie's geht - oder auch nicht.
This entry was edited (1 week ago)
in reply to HaraldvonBlauzahn

Man beachte bei der Folge, dass ab Minute 33 auch das mit dem Fenster aufmachen getestet wird, unter anderem werden im Trockenen Eisengewichte auf eine Autotür gestapelt, um den Unterwasserdruck zu simulieren, wenn man im gesunkenen Auto das Fenster per normalem Fensterheber öffnen will. Im Endeffekt gilt, sobald das Wasser ein Fenster auch nur teilweise bedeckt, hilft in der Tat nur noch der Nothammer.

Finde aber schon cool, dass der ADAC das hier praktisch ausprobiert bzw. demonstriert hat.

This entry was edited (1 week ago)

Auf Podiumsdiskussion: Kanzler Merz gibt Frauen Karriere-Tipps – „Männer sind bessere Netzwerker“


in reply to RanzigFettreduziert

Nach dem was man so aus den USA liest, ist das vielen rechten Wählern gar nicht so egal, wenn ihnen die Bezüge weggekürzt werden oder sie gleich ganz aus dem Bezug von Arbeitslosengeld, Krankenversicherung usw. rausfliegen oder sogar sie oder ihre Angehörigen, Nachbarn usw. ins Gulag gesteckt werden.

Selbst rechte Wähler stecken nicht alle so tief in der alternativen Realität, dass sie sogar das noch wegrationalisieren.

This entry was edited (1 week ago)

Polish opposition proposes entry ban for migrants from Middle East and Africa


Poland’s main opposition party, the national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS), has proposed an entry ban for people from certain countries in the Middle East and Africa. It says this would help stop Germany’s practice of sending migrants who have illegally crossed the border back to Poland.

The proposal comes amid renewed debate over how to tackle migration, with the Polish government on Tuesday announcing the reintroduction of controls on Poland’s borders with Germany and Lithuania in an effort to prevent the “uncontrolled flow of migrants”.

After Prime Minister Donald Tusk had announced the border controls, the head of PiS’s parliamentary caucus, Mariusz Błaszczak, said that the government’s actions were “too little, too late”.

“This crisis has been going on for months,” he continued. “This issue requires far-reaching action.”

Błaszczak said that PiS would submit a bill to parliament introducing a temporary ban on entry to Poland for third-country nationals from “specific countries outside Europe…whose citizens illegally cross borders”.

Previously, on Monday, PiS party leader Jarosław Kaczyński had called for an “immediate ban on entry to the territory of Poland for people from the Middle East and North Africa”.

PiS has not yet specified which Middle Eastern and African countries would be included in its proposed ban. It says they would be selected based on analysis of data showing which nationalities most often cross borders illegally or are transferred to Poland from Germany.

A government information campaign discouraging people from trying to illegally enter Poland was recently launched in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Iraq, Pakistan and Egypt, countries from which Poland has identified the largest numbers of people crossing the border from Belarus.

Since 2021, tens of thousands of migrants and asylum seekers – mainly from Asia and Africa – have tried to enter Poland from Belarus, with the encouragement and assistance of the Belarusian authorities.

In response, Poland has heavily fortified its eastern border with physical barriers and electronic monitoring. The government also recently banned asylum claims by people crossing from Belarus. Those measures have led to a dramatic decline in the numbers entering via that route.

In his remarks on Tuesday, Błaszczak made clear, however, that PiS’s proposed entry ban was designed to address the issue that has recently caused most controversy, which is Germany’s policy of sending back to Poland thousands of migrants who crossed the Polish-German border illegally.

Many of those sent back are Ukrainians. Others are non-Europeans, often from Asia and Africa, who have either claimed asylum in Poland – and therefore must remain there while their applications are processed – or have simply passed through it after entering the EU irregularly.

“After the introduction of this [proposed] law, Polish border guards will be able to prevent citizens of these countries from entering our territory,” said Błaszczak. “So those who are today being transferred from Germany by the German authorities, or who are trying to cross from Germany to the Polish side, will not be able to do so.”

The migrant returns carried out by Germany take place under a combination of EU regulations, bilateral agreements with Poland, and the border controls that Berlin reintroduced in 2023. Earlier this year, Tusk declared that Poland may stop adhering to such agreements.

However, some Poles have sought to take matters into their own hands, organising self-declared “citizen patrols” – some of them hundreds strong – at the German border to monitor and prevent migrant returns.

Błaszczak said that PiS politicians will be visiting the German border to make clear that “we support the border defence movement”, which he described as “Polish patriots who took matters into their own hands when Donald Tusk’s state abdicated [its responsibilities]”.

He also pledged that the party “will provide support to those who are persecuted by the current authorities of our country” for undertaking such actions, reports the Polish Press Agency (PAP).

Earlier this week, Tusk and interior minister Tomasz Siemoniak criticised the actions of the citizen patrols, saying that they are disrupting the work of border officers and spreading false claims about the number and types of migrants being transferred by Germany.

I'm impressed by Rambo III for DOS


Rambo III for DOS genuinely surprised me.

I’d previously played the Commodore 64 version—a predictable top-down shooter with decent graphics for the old brown breadbox, but nothing remarkable.

The DOS version, released in 1989, really stands out. It supports VGA graphics and AdLib sound, delivering crisp colors and catchy music that were impressive for the time.

What blew me away, though, was the control options. Not only does it support keyboard and joystick, but you can also move and shoot using the mouse—a rarity for the platform back then. Even better, it actually works pretty well by the standards of the day.

Rambo III came out in many versions: arcade, Master System, Genesis. The computer versions are mostly similar, each carrying quirks unique to their platforms—you could find it on Atari ST, Amiga, MSX, C64, Amstrad CPC, and even ZX Spectrum.

The DOS release covers CGA, EGA, and VGA graphics modes plus a variety of sound options, offering a surprisingly eclectic experience. While critics favored the Genesis version, I think the DOS port holds its own. It’s more than playable and can deliver some solid fun.

A Privacy-First Tool to Manage Your Bluesky Account


A new tool called BskyDelete just dropped — a lightweight, browser-based way to manage your presence on Bluesky.
Here’s what it does:

🔸 Bulk delete posts, likes, reposts, and follows
🔸 Filter by date, keywords, or engagement (likes/reposts)
🔸 Runs locally in your browser — no data leaves your device
🔸 Optional 📁 backup export before wiping content
🔸 Built almost entirely using 🤖 AI-assisted development

Perfect for anyone looking to declutter their timeline, start fresh, or just keep things tidy in the fediverse.
Check it out here 👉 BskyDelete

Lemmy/Fediverse/Kbin(/all) monthly active users - graph 2022-2025?


Greetings to you all!

I tried to find a graph about activity levels but I think I found only Lemmy's first 1-2 years.
Can we gather data to get the big picture?

All Likud Ministers Urge Netanyahu to Annex Entire West Bank This Month | Common Dreams


Nanook reshared this.

China's foreign minister tells EU that Beijing cannot afford Russia to lose in Ukraine, media reports


Lemmy.ml continues to allow misinfo/propaganda sites "articles" so long as it's anti-west aligned while removing good credible news sources. Instances that federate with them help their spread


This is what the admins of .ml cultivate, as documented in the megathread

Credible sources removed just within the last day: lemmy.world/post/32298242 lemmy.world/post/32426343

.ml is not much different than the rest of the Triad, continued federation with them is continuing to allow them to spread toxic misinformation and behavior across the Threadiverse.

If you're an instance admin, please consider defederation.

Users, consider joining the lemmy.ml boycott today and help foster a better Lemmy-verse! No more posts, comments (except to counter their propaganda ofc!) or upvotes on any comms on the Lemmy.ml instance.

Other wonderful content, and this is just from when I looked at the local new feed a bit ago:

Classic RT I'm sure you all know and Pravda.ru "Pravda Report"



Documentation of Lemmy.ml's Extremism [Megathread]


Good job everyone blocking and boycotting .ml! It's having an effect, users are noticing and MAUs on their comms are falling!

And for anyone asking "Why are we boycotting/blocking lemmy.ml?" Here's a quick recap:

Lemmy.ml is an instance run by admins who are hardcore tankies and will enforce their ideology on their instance through various means from allowing (and pushing it themselves) propaganda (Such as Russia being justified in some way to invade Ukraine) and known propaganda outlets (Like RT) to removing content on their instance critical of their favored authoritarian regimes such as Russia or China and even banning users for such speech or speech critical of them if it's off their instance (Just like the Reddit mods of ol!).

If it was just some random instance it would have been defederated from long ago like the rest of the "Tankie Triad" (Hexbear and Lemmygrad), but they've positioned lemmy.ml as the "flagship" instance and abused that position and influence to become large enough to keep other instances from defederating from them.

Which I believe is harmful to the Lemmy-verse's overall growth and outside reputation. I have seen it come up before on Reddit threads (and other testimonials from people who came back and tried it again) that "They tried Lemmy but it was a bunch of tankies and went back to Reddit"

I don't know about you, but I'd prefer Lemmy to not end up with the reputation for being "Tankie Central " or even worse "Voat 2.0".

So if you haven't joined the boycott yet, join today and help us foster a better healthier Lemmy-verse!

You can take a look around here on !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works for documentation of it or checkout this list of curated documentation

::: spoiler Evidence of bans, censorship and bias to push their "ideology":

lemmy.world/post/32298242

lemmy.world/post/32471440

lemmy.world/post/32720369

lemmy.world/post/32292143

lemmy.world/post/32222856

lemmy.world/post/32426343

lemmy.world/post/32058315

lemmy.world/post/32426884

lemmy.world/post/32191006

lemmy.world/post/32720652

lemmy.world/post/32676095

lemmy.world/post/32298242

lemmy.world/post/32292143

lemmy.world/post/32221990

lemmy.world/post/32222278

lemmy.world/post/32222991

lemmy.world/post/32223697

lemmy.world/post/32224698

lemmy.world/post/32425984

lemmy.world/post/31569892

lemmy.world/post/31368129

lemmy.world/post/31329952

lemmy.world/post/31596159

lemmy.world/post/30665418

lemmy.world/post/30876228

lemmy.world/post/31090903

lemmy.world/post/31329952

lemmy.world/post/31368129

lemmy.world/post/29490804

lemmy.world/post/29507466

lemmy.world/post/29878102

lemmy.world/post/29980157

lemm.ee/post/65494823

lemmy.world/post/28480760

lemmy.world/post/28481615

lemmy.world/post/28482147

lemmy.world/post/28480936

lemmy.world/post/28482273

lemmy.world/post/28481272

lemmy.world/post/28481064

lemmy.world/post/27674360

lemmy.world/post/27674117

lemmy.world/post/27673934

lemmy.world/post/27673724

lemmy.world/post/27577337

lemmy.world/post/27378634

lemmy.world/post/27346630

lemmy.world/post/27341283

lemmy.world/post/27288224

lemmy.world/post/27156418

lemmy.world/post/27054157

lemmy.world/post/27008261
:::

::: spoiler Allowing known propaganda outlets and permitting altered headlines:

lemmy.world/post/32323822

lemmy.world/post/32283425

lemmy.world/post/32289824

lemmy.world/post/32337368

lemmy.world/post/30843744

lemmy.world/post/28275465

lemmy.world/post/27428838

lemmy.world/post/27416097

lemmy.world/post/27314050

lemmy.world/post/27288953
:::

"NK is actually good, and anything counter to that is Western LIES" ~dessalines, .ml admin, head Lemmy dev lemmy.world/post/31595035

Spreading Russia talking points like the Ukraine invasion just being a "negotiating tactic" !https://lemmy.world/post/27012640

General negative sentiment to other instances who haven't "seen the way" yet: lemmy.world/post/27426510

Open declaration of support for Russia (direct from dessalines (head admin)) lemmy.world/post/27352415

"concentration camps were just reeducation camps and weren't that bad" lemmy.world/post/26985447

"Don't worry guys, the Uyghur Genocide was REALLY just birth control! ~dessalines, .ml admin, dev lemmy.world/post/30580167

"See! nobody died IN Tiananmen Square, just AROUND it, so it doesn't count!!" ~ Davel, .ml admin
lemmy.world/post/30673342

A .ml admins' (davel) response to a valid report of "NK is actually good" propaganda/misinfo lemmy.world/post/32627834

"The China censorship tool isnt actually censorship! And if it is, it's actually a good thing a state has that much power!" ~Tankies of .ml lemmy.world/post/30010789

Rooting for Russia in the Russia-Ukraine war lemmy.world/post/29274763

Nutomics continued transphobia lemmy.world/post/29222558

Update 6/1/2025 - adding additional links since original post

Update 6/14/2025 - adding additional links since last edit

Update 6/19/2025 - adding additional links since last edit

Update 6/30/2025 - adding additional links since last edit

Update 7/03/2025 - adding additional links since last edit/formatting changes

Update 7/09/2025 - adding additional links since last edit


This entry was edited (1 week ago)
in reply to алсааас [she/they]

Lol, I already have

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:RFE…
Additional considerations apply to the use of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). RFE/RL should be used cautiously, if at all, for reporting published from the 1950s to the early 1970s, when RFE/RL had a documented relationship with the CIA.

RFE/RL may be biased in some subject areas (particularly through omission of relevant, countervailing facts), and in those areas, it should be attributed in the article body. There is no consensus as to what subject areas require attribution. The scope of topics requiring attribution of RFE/RL should be decided on a case-by-case basis.

It hasn't been true for some time now and is generally found to be credible and fairly unbiased and RFA is seen in even a more positive light:

Radio Free Asia can be generally considered a reliable source. In particularly geopolitically charged areas, attribution of its point of view and funding by the U.S. government may be appropriate. Per the result of a 2021 RfC, editors have established that there is little reason to think RFA demonstrates some systematic inaccuracy, unreliability, or level of government co-option that precludes its use.

And MBFC:

In contrast this is what RT looks like:

This entry was edited (1 week ago)

Documentation of Lemmy.ml's Extremism [Megathread]


Good job everyone blocking and boycotting .ml! It's having an effect, users are noticing and MAUs on their comms are falling!

And for anyone asking "Why are we boycotting/blocking lemmy.ml?" Here's a quick recap:

Lemmy.ml is an instance run by admins who are hardcore tankies and will enforce their ideology on their instance through various means from allowing (and pushing it themselves) propaganda (Such as Russia being justified in some way to invade Ukraine) and known propaganda outlets (Like RT) to removing content on their instance critical of their favored authoritarian regimes such as Russia or China and even banning users for such speech or speech critical of them if it's off their instance (Just like the Reddit mods of ol!).

If it was just some random instance it would have been defederated from long ago like the rest of the "Tankie Triad" (Hexbear and Lemmygrad), but they've positioned lemmy.ml as the "flagship" instance and abused that position and influence to become large enough to keep other instances from defederating from them.

Which I believe is harmful to the Lemmy-verse's overall growth and outside reputation. I have seen it come up before on Reddit threads (and other testimonials from people who came back and tried it again) that "They tried Lemmy but it was a bunch of tankies and went back to Reddit"

I don't know about you, but I'd prefer Lemmy to not end up with the reputation for being "Tankie Central " or even worse "Voat 2.0".

So if you haven't joined the boycott yet, join today and help us foster a better healthier Lemmy-verse!

You can take a look around here on !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works for documentation of it or checkout this list of curated documentation

::: spoiler Evidence of bans, censorship and bias to push their "ideology":

lemmy.world/post/32298242

lemmy.world/post/32471440

lemmy.world/post/32720369

lemmy.world/post/32292143

lemmy.world/post/32222856

lemmy.world/post/32426343

lemmy.world/post/32058315

lemmy.world/post/32426884

lemmy.world/post/32191006

lemmy.world/post/32720652

lemmy.world/post/32676095

lemmy.world/post/32298242

lemmy.world/post/32292143

lemmy.world/post/32221990

lemmy.world/post/32222278

lemmy.world/post/32222991

lemmy.world/post/32223697

lemmy.world/post/32224698

lemmy.world/post/32425984

lemmy.world/post/31569892

lemmy.world/post/31368129

lemmy.world/post/31329952

lemmy.world/post/31596159

lemmy.world/post/30665418

lemmy.world/post/30876228

lemmy.world/post/31090903

lemmy.world/post/31329952

lemmy.world/post/31368129

lemmy.world/post/29490804

lemmy.world/post/29507466

lemmy.world/post/29878102

lemmy.world/post/29980157

lemm.ee/post/65494823

lemmy.world/post/28480760

lemmy.world/post/28481615

lemmy.world/post/28482147

lemmy.world/post/28480936

lemmy.world/post/28482273

lemmy.world/post/28481272

lemmy.world/post/28481064

lemmy.world/post/27674360

lemmy.world/post/27674117

lemmy.world/post/27673934

lemmy.world/post/27673724

lemmy.world/post/27577337

lemmy.world/post/27378634

lemmy.world/post/27346630

lemmy.world/post/27341283

lemmy.world/post/27288224

lemmy.world/post/27156418

lemmy.world/post/27054157

lemmy.world/post/27008261
:::

::: spoiler Allowing known propaganda outlets and permitting altered headlines:

lemmy.world/post/32323822

lemmy.world/post/32283425

lemmy.world/post/32289824

lemmy.world/post/32337368

lemmy.world/post/30843744

lemmy.world/post/28275465

lemmy.world/post/27428838

lemmy.world/post/27416097

lemmy.world/post/27314050

lemmy.world/post/27288953
:::

"NK is actually good, and anything counter to that is Western LIES" ~dessalines, .ml admin, head Lemmy dev lemmy.world/post/31595035

Spreading Russia talking points like the Ukraine invasion just being a "negotiating tactic" !https://lemmy.world/post/27012640

General negative sentiment to other instances who haven't "seen the way" yet: lemmy.world/post/27426510

Open declaration of support for Russia (direct from dessalines (head admin)) lemmy.world/post/27352415

"concentration camps were just reeducation camps and weren't that bad" lemmy.world/post/26985447

"Don't worry guys, the Uyghur Genocide was REALLY just birth control! ~dessalines, .ml admin, dev lemmy.world/post/30580167

"See! nobody died IN Tiananmen Square, just AROUND it, so it doesn't count!!" ~ Davel, .ml admin
lemmy.world/post/30673342

A .ml admins' (davel) response to a valid report of "NK is actually good" propaganda/misinfo lemmy.world/post/32627834

"The China censorship tool isnt actually censorship! And if it is, it's actually a good thing a state has that much power!" ~Tankies of .ml lemmy.world/post/30010789

Rooting for Russia in the Russia-Ukraine war lemmy.world/post/29274763

Nutomics continued transphobia lemmy.world/post/29222558

Update 6/1/2025 - adding additional links since original post

Update 6/14/2025 - adding additional links since last edit

Update 6/19/2025 - adding additional links since last edit

Update 6/30/2025 - adding additional links since last edit

Update 7/03/2025 - adding additional links since last edit/formatting changes

Update 7/09/2025 - adding additional links since last edit


Dessalines, .ml admin, head Lemmy dev: "RT/Sputnik/Other known Russian propaganda outlets ✅, Credible news outlets that criticize the Russia? THATS US FUNDED PROPAGANDA!"


Meduza News: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meduza

MBFC: mediabiasfactcheck.com/meduza/


This entry was edited (4 days ago)

California husband says he will continue to support MAGA movement after wife taken into federal custody


This entry was edited (1 week ago)

Lemmy.ml continues to allow misinfo/propaganda sites "articles" so long as it's Russia-aligned/anti-west while removing good credible news sources. Instances that federate with them help their spread


This is what the admins of .ml cultivate, as documented in the megathread

Credible sources removed just within the last day: lemmy.world/post/32298242 lemmy.world/post/32426343

.ml is not much different than the rest of the Triad, continued federation with them is continuing to allow them to spread toxic misinformation and behavior across the Threadiverse.

If you're an instance admin, please consider defederation.

Users, consider joining the lemmy.ml boycott today and help foster a better Lemmy-verse! No more posts, comments (except to counter their propaganda ofc!) or upvotes on any comms on the Lemmy.ml instance.

Other wonderful content, and this is just from when I looked at the local new feed a bit ago:

Classic RT I'm sure you all know and Pravda.ru "Pravda Report"


Documentation of Lemmy.ml's Extremism [Megathread]


Good job everyone blocking and boycotting .ml! It's having an effect, users are noticing and MAUs on their comms are falling!

And for anyone asking "Why are we boycotting/blocking lemmy.ml?" Here's a quick recap:

Lemmy.ml is an instance run by admins who are hardcore tankies and will enforce their ideology on their instance through various means from allowing (and pushing it themselves) propaganda (Such as Russia being justified in some way to invade Ukraine) and known propaganda outlets (Like RT) to removing content on their instance critical of their favored authoritarian regimes such as Russia or China and even banning users for such speech or speech critical of them if it's off their instance (Just like the Reddit mods of ol!).

If it was just some random instance it would have been defederated from long ago like the rest of the "Tankie Triad" (Hexbear and Lemmygrad), but they've positioned lemmy.ml as the "flagship" instance and abused that position and influence to become large enough to keep other instances from defederating from them.

Which I believe is harmful to the Lemmy-verse's overall growth and outside reputation. I have seen it come up before on Reddit threads (and other testimonials from people who came back and tried it again) that "They tried Lemmy but it was a bunch of tankies and went back to Reddit"

I don't know about you, but I'd prefer Lemmy to not end up with the reputation for being "Tankie Central " or even worse "Voat 2.0".

So if you haven't joined the boycott yet, join today and help us foster a better healthier Lemmy-verse!

You can take a look around here on !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works for documentation of it or checkout this list of curated documentation

::: spoiler Evidence of bans, censorship and bias to push their "ideology":

lemmy.world/post/32298242

lemmy.world/post/32471440

lemmy.world/post/32720369

lemmy.world/post/32292143

lemmy.world/post/32222856

lemmy.world/post/32426343

lemmy.world/post/32058315

lemmy.world/post/32426884

lemmy.world/post/32191006

lemmy.world/post/32720652

lemmy.world/post/32676095

lemmy.world/post/32298242

lemmy.world/post/32292143

lemmy.world/post/32221990

lemmy.world/post/32222278

lemmy.world/post/32222991

lemmy.world/post/32223697

lemmy.world/post/32224698

lemmy.world/post/32425984

lemmy.world/post/31569892

lemmy.world/post/31368129

lemmy.world/post/31329952

lemmy.world/post/31596159

lemmy.world/post/30665418

lemmy.world/post/30876228

lemmy.world/post/31090903

lemmy.world/post/31329952

lemmy.world/post/31368129

lemmy.world/post/29490804

lemmy.world/post/29507466

lemmy.world/post/29878102

lemmy.world/post/29980157

lemm.ee/post/65494823

lemmy.world/post/28480760

lemmy.world/post/28481615

lemmy.world/post/28482147

lemmy.world/post/28480936

lemmy.world/post/28482273

lemmy.world/post/28481272

lemmy.world/post/28481064

lemmy.world/post/27674360

lemmy.world/post/27674117

lemmy.world/post/27673934

lemmy.world/post/27673724

lemmy.world/post/27577337

lemmy.world/post/27378634

lemmy.world/post/27346630

lemmy.world/post/27341283

lemmy.world/post/27288224

lemmy.world/post/27156418

lemmy.world/post/27054157

lemmy.world/post/27008261
:::

::: spoiler Allowing known propaganda outlets and permitting altered headlines:

lemmy.world/post/32323822

lemmy.world/post/32283425

lemmy.world/post/32289824

lemmy.world/post/32337368

lemmy.world/post/30843744

lemmy.world/post/28275465

lemmy.world/post/27428838

lemmy.world/post/27416097

lemmy.world/post/27314050

lemmy.world/post/27288953
:::

"NK is actually good, and anything counter to that is Western LIES" ~dessalines, .ml admin, head Lemmy dev lemmy.world/post/31595035

Spreading Russia talking points like the Ukraine invasion just being a "negotiating tactic" !https://lemmy.world/post/27012640

General negative sentiment to other instances who haven't "seen the way" yet: lemmy.world/post/27426510

Open declaration of support for Russia (direct from dessalines (head admin)) lemmy.world/post/27352415

"concentration camps were just reeducation camps and weren't that bad" lemmy.world/post/26985447

"Don't worry guys, the Uyghur Genocide was REALLY just birth control! ~dessalines, .ml admin, dev lemmy.world/post/30580167

"See! nobody died IN Tiananmen Square, just AROUND it, so it doesn't count!!" ~ Davel, .ml admin
lemmy.world/post/30673342

A .ml admins' (davel) response to a valid report of "NK is actually good" propaganda/misinfo lemmy.world/post/32627834

"The China censorship tool isnt actually censorship! And if it is, it's actually a good thing a state has that much power!" ~Tankies of .ml lemmy.world/post/30010789

Rooting for Russia in the Russia-Ukraine war lemmy.world/post/29274763

Nutomics continued transphobia lemmy.world/post/29222558

Update 6/1/2025 - adding additional links since original post

Update 6/14/2025 - adding additional links since last edit

Update 6/19/2025 - adding additional links since last edit

Update 6/30/2025 - adding additional links since last edit

Update 7/03/2025 - adding additional links since last edit/formatting changes

Update 7/09/2025 - adding additional links since last edit


This entry was edited (1 week ago)
in reply to FarraigePlaisteaċ

I don't think it was on the support comm, but they did respond on a thread about it once on why they don't defed from them like they did the other 2.

It boiled down to 3 things: big comms, official Lemmy support comms and the fact the devs rolled out instance blocking tools

The 1st one, I'm hopefully solving with my cross-posting and calls for boycotting, the third one is by calling attention to the fact that it doesn't work as one would think. Pretty sure everyone thought block meant block when it was being discussed.

Republicans’ Megabill Will Put U.S. Climate Goals Out of Reach


Four research firms project that the Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act will raise greenhouse gas emissions and likely put U.S. and global climate goals out of reach


Archived copies of the article
* web.archive.org
* archive.today

in reply to davel

What do you guys think about AnySoftKeyboard? Could it be a "sleeping agent"?

Country of origin is Israel according to: alternativeto.net/software/any…

(I know this doesn't mean anything, but still..)

The main developer seems to live in New York: evendanan.net/

He's probably a good guy. Just got a little suspicious (or curious) when I saw the Israeli flag on AlternativeTo.