In a long post titled "Our commitment to Windows quality," published on Microsoft's website and sent via email to millions of members of the Windows Insider Program, Windows boss Pavan Davuluri laid out a laundry list of changes Microsoft plans to make in Windows 11, starting this month.

What's most remarkable about this post is what it doesn't contain. Here's how Davuluri kicked things off:

Every day, we hear from the community about how you experience Windows. And over the past several months, the team and I have spent a great deal of time analyzing your feedback. What came through was the voice of people who care deeply about Windows and want it to be better.

That paragraph belongs in the non-apology Hall of Fame, with a cross-reference to "Friday news dump" -- a classic PR technique that aims to minimize media coverage of the awkward news being released.

Built a small encrypted messenger that runs over any MQTT broker you host. The broker is just a dumb relay — it only sees ciphertext, never plaintext. Setup is dead simple: spin up an MQTT broker (EMQX, Mosquitto, whatever), share a room name and encryption key with someone, done. ChaCha20-Poly1305 + Argon2id, fresh salt and nonce per message. Rust backend (Tauri), React frontend, single portable exe around 5MB. There's also a clipboard encryption mode — type plaintext, it encrypts to clipboard, paste into any app. Useful if you don't want to run a dedicated chat client. Originally designed for people in censored regions, but it works as a minimal self-hosted secure chat for anyone who wants it. Limitations: no forward secrecy, no traffic obfuscation, Windows only for now. Tauri should make cross-compilation straightforward if anyone wants to build for Linux/macOS. Unlicense, public domain. I'm not maintaining it — fork and do what you want.

get your own cake ~~peasants~~ valued customers.

Exclusive: War in the Middle East is draining the global carbon budget faster than 84 countries combined

The US-Israel war on Iran is a disaster for the climate, according to an analysis that finds it is draining the global carbon budget faster than 84 countries combined.

As warplanes, drones and missiles kill thousands of people, level infrastructure and turn the Middle East into a gigantic environmental sacrifice zone, the first analysis of the climate cost has found the conflict led to 5m tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in its first 14 days.

The analysis, shared exclusively with the Guardian, adds another layer on to reporting of the catastrophic environmental harm being caused by attacks on fossil fuel infrastructure, military bases, civilian areas and ships at sea.

Looking for a simple card/cal/WebDAV server that runs in docker.

Have tried Davis, Radicale and Baikal but have either struggled to get them working or found them a bitch to maintain.

Doesn't have to be a DAV type solution. Syncing/backing up contacts and calendars from an android phone is essential.

The prospect of the hard-left France Unbowed party taking control of Toulouse, France’s fourth-largest city and home to Europe’s best-known airplane maker, is putting industry on edge.

It’s not just that a win in the second round of local elections Sunday could give the party’s anticapitalist leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a major boost ahead of next year’s presidential election. That’s a concern for later.

The immediate fear is that if France Unbowed makes history here — the party has never come close to controlling such a big metropolis — it will heap taxes on local icons like Airbus to pay for a generous manifesto that includes water subsidies, free public transport for residents under 26 years old, and free school meals and educational supplies.

Hello everyone!

I recently switched my Android phone to a custom ROM, and while setting things up, I wanted push notifications without relying on Google. That’s how I discovered UnifiedPush.

Really liking the concept, I decided to rent a small VPS (1 vCPU, 2GB RAM) and started hosting NTFY. So far, it's been working great. Over time, I’ve added a few more services like FreshRSS and Audiobookshelf.

All of this is just for personal use, so the resource usage is minimal (the whole setup only uses around 500MB of RAM). I really enjoy how much value you can get out of such a small machine.

That brings me to my question:

What other lightweight, self-hostable tools would you recommend? I’m especially interested in small, resource-efficient services that you’ve personally found useful.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

Hello Lemmy! Long time lurker, first time poster here.

Myself and a few friends love self-hosting, but believe that it's hard to get started. So we created what we believe to be the easiest gateway to homelabbing, and we called it Homelabinator!

To celebrate our launch, we are running a giveaway! Submit a screenshot of a subscription you have canceled to enter into a giveaway for a free domain of your choice!

Check it out here: homelabinator.com

Early reactions to Nvidia's DLSS 5 were swift and skeptical, with some observers likening the technology to an Instagram-style filter applied over gameplay footage. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang refuted the allegations, but subsequent clarifications have helped outline how the system actually works – and where it can fall short.

What would happen?

A former U.S. Army general tasked with overseeing U.S.-led military support for Ukraine lost classified maps on a train in Europe and was concussed after an "overindulgence in alcohol" during a dinner in Ukraine, according to a report by the U.S. Department of Defense's Inspector General.

The 50-page report, dated March 12, found that Retired Army Major General Antonio Aguto Jr., who led the German-based Security Assistance Group-Ukraine (SAG-U), violated policy in his handling of classified maps while on a State Department-chartered trains.

SAG-U, which was established in November 2022 with about 300 military personnel, assists with "coordinating the training and equipping of the Armed Forces of Ukraine," out of Wiesbaden, Germany, according to the Pentagon.