Full title: Charges Dropped Against Person Who Clapped at a City Data Center Meeting / Lux Claridge was dragged from a city meeting about data centers and charged with interfering with the police after they clapped during a presentation.

i think the article does a wonderful job at illustrating the point without even uttering a single word

We started a 'pass-the-story' puppet where each child adds one sentence. Even quiet kids whispered a line. It builds vocabulary and turn-taking. Anyone measured long-term gains from this?

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1361810/bill-gates-accuses-the-tech-industry-of-knowingly-downplaying-ai-s-risks-because-too-muc

Meta: “There’s no problem.” Also Meta after getting sued: “Here are the safety changes everyone should adopt.” 😆

Get your shortnames while the getting's good.

Got off easy.

cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1361377/just-2-new-data-centres-will-pump-out-more-planet-heating-carbon-emissions-than-exxonmob

Remember the original Quest headset that Meta (then Oculus) trumpeted back in 2019? Meta seems to hope you don’t, since the company officially stopped supporting the wireless VR headset in 2023 to focus on the more popular Quests 2 and 3. However, tinkerers haven’t abandoned the hardware and recently released a new root-access exploit and bootloader that gives “developers and enthusiasts full control over Quest 1 hardware.”

The QuestStack project integrates previously known vulnerabilities in the Quest’s Android fastboot process into a privilege escalation chain that leads easily to full root access on the device. The bootloading process is now streamlined enough that it can be completed without any downloads through a web interface after connecting the headset to a PC.

With this exploit, the original Quest hardware can now be officially divorced from any reliance on Meta’s servers or services to be useful. That means enterprising Quest owners should be able to sideload apps without needing to register for a Meta Developer account and activating Developer Mode through Meta’s mobile app. It also means users should be able to go through the initial setup and login steps for a fresh Quest headset even if and when Meta decides to shut down the servers that currently support this process.

Additional link from another source

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/26/meta-kids-safety-features-settlement-01050418

In the book “The Rulers: Corporate Power in the Age of AI and the Cloud,” writer Cecilia Rikap examines how India, Brazil and China are taking on Big Tech companies.