(I originally put this first para at the end, but it’s pretty important, so putting up top) Be aware that just because we’re autistic, it doesn’t mean we’re not bad guys. He might be grooming her, he may already have more personal information than he should, and he may be targetting autistic children specifically. If you think that is the case, go to your parents or the police. I know that’s the last thing you’ll want to do, but the consequences if he is can be life changing or fatal.

(Original follows) Fellow autist here, if that matters, but probably not.

No, it’s not mean. People come and go out of each others lives all the time. Your time with this guy is clearly over - if it feels less than fun or has become uncomfortable or weird, move on. Why not? You don’t owe him anything.

As you know, autistic people are no strangers to being obsessive, and putting that alongside a lack of awareness when we’re pushing personal barriers, we can be really annoying. I don’t recommend you accept any money or gift cards from this guy, even to buy your GF a new tablet. That will give him a bigger feeling of entitlement and certainly gives him power over you.

Just stop communicating. No explanations, no apologies, both of you just stop and block. If he tries to contact you after that, or by other means, that’s creepy af and definitely report.

It’s a self hosted web app, and that’s not something that’s easy to change once it’s written. The benefits to self hosting are pretty well established, and this type of thing can be accessed from anywhere in the world by multiple devices and always be in sync. For myself, I use this both from a laptop, my desktop and a phone when I’m out - I’m always jotting down thoughts before they fall out of my head. Also, there’s probably a lot of desktop task apps out there already that do tasks, like many Email clients. I don’t mind reinventing a wheel, but not too keen on reinventing all the wheels.

Demo is a fair point, I’ll include that on the wishlist for the future. I think the pictures probably do a fair job of indicating how a task app works - which is basically a way of entering, displaying and ticking off tasks which many people will be familiar with, but perhaps I’m just over familiar with the concept. A self resettable demo might be nice, yes.

Advertising revenue.

Not just America - all Western countries did.

We made it expensive to manufacture goods due to labour costs and well-meaning but crippling environmental protections and couldn’t compete on price.

(very) Late diagnosed autistic guy here.

Thank you for writing that.

One of the revealing things about realising this is what I am is looking back at a long life and realising a lot of people thought of me as rude, or that I was being deliberately awkward. I’ve certainly lost one job because of it, lived a life that’s largely friendless (IRL anyway) and doubtless missed a thousand opportunities through not being aware of them. There’s also an element of cause and effect - sometimes you know pretty quickly that someone’s not going to warm to you, so you just shut them out mentally. It’s expensive for me to make the effort to be normal and as I’ve got older I’m less willing to waste this time and energy.

I see it as very positive that so many people are aware of neurodiversity now, especially younger generations, and their first thought when someone behaves differently isn’t always that they’re deliberately being an assehole. Sometimes they are, of course, especially those with particularly bigoted views, but not always.

Thank you.

Thank you for the kind words!

My point is that you don’t know the actual truth. Nor do I. We can’t.

Bots and paid agents are not a new technique - in ancient times, countries would send spies undercover into enemy territory to sow discord. To rabble rouse and change public opinion. It’s the same now, just the tools have changed. No news source is entirely unbiased, even word of mouth is influenced. The only way you can determine the truth is by seeing it with your own, naked eyes. And even then, your own personal bias can change the context.

Reddit is a platform where its’ easy to get the ears of a lot of people, so it’s a big target. It’s not Reddit’s fault, and Lemmy would suffer exactly the same if we had the numbers they do.

What is different now on the world stage, mostly thanks to Trump, is that there’s no longer even any pretence to truth. The most powerful person in the world lies constantly, and his example proves that works. No shame, no integrity, no honesty - just lies and crude manipulation.

“Truth is the first casualty of war”

CAs exist on trust and trust alone.

This, along with any other mistake, erodes that trust and will have damaged Sectigo’s reputation at least as much as Rustdesk’s.

I doubt there’s any conspiracy or higher figure at work here. Just human error.

Rustdesk will probably have a claim for financial losses and good luck if they pursue that - the admission of a mistake and breach of protocol makes it seem likely to be settled very quickly. The tone of this report suggests that this is somewhere they’ll be heading towards and I suspect Sectigo will pay handsomely to make this story short lived.

Except many of us use cloudflare tunnels to reach our selfhosted kit from the internet because we’re behind CGNATs…

Good article and a reminder that all might not be as it seems, and I’m glad they’re reporting this to the French Police as well as raising awareness. The language used in the emails do suggest it could be a single zealot rather than a professional body. It also highlights how often “but what about the children?” is used to enact censorship. (Not least by my own government in the UK with the OSA)

I have one issue though;

The complaints against the site look extremely suspicious. In our case, they came from an organization that was only recently registered that seems deliberately set up to hide the identities of those behind it.

Surely anyone registering any online organisation today would want to take reasonable steps to protect their real identity, especially one dealing with such sensitive matters? Anyone thwarted would want that information for malicious ends.

Become a dog. They’re the happiest people I know.

Just installed it.

Went to Reddit, it recommended I use Lemmy. Sounds good.

“Tell me you work in America without telling me you work in America”

Big orders for single people, especially for stuff like curry, pizza and chinese, could just mean they’re buying several meals at once and are going to freeze it for later on. Think of it as meal prepping without having to cook.

How the heck is UK European? They left the EU 5 years ago.

Steady that jerky knee there fella, you might want to read that a bit more closely.

The premise is European, not EU. It’s a matter of geography, not politics.

As a 54 year old who has just had two weeks of agony because he forgot his age and tried to deadlift a 225kg motorbike by himself, I’m going to skip this one because I clearly haven’t learned anything.

I think what you’re looking for is known as kiosk software. Basically a locked down browser that has limited or zero user interaction possible.

Or by deliberately breaking DNS on that host. Add the entries you want to allow to /etc/hosts and not supply any upstream DNS servers. (Change of needing maintenance if those sites change IP)

“That’s a great question!” </ai>

The truth is, we don’t need AI to have misinformation, and AI is not the biggest problem in the current post-truth society. There has been a war going on globally in undermining truth for a long time. The old saying, “The first casualty in war is truth” is invalid now, because truth is no longer relevant and lies are weaponised like never before in history. People don’t want to be certain of something, their first reaction to news is to react at a deep and emotional level and the science of misinformation is highly refined and successful in making most people react in a certain way. It takes effort and training not to do that, and most of us can’t.

Journalists have been warning us about this for decades but integrity costs money, and that funding has been under attack too. It’s pretty depressing whichever way you look at it.