An article about legal interest in the EU on Right to Repair stuff: https://reasonstobecheerful.world/europe-guarantee-right-to-repair-ifixit/
Pressure in the right direction, though the biggest threat (at least in the US, don't know EU law here as well) to the right to repair is the use of *intellectual restriction laws* to obstruct repair / reverse engineering / jailbreaking.
Do you own a drill? A saw? A vise? Are you in the United States?
Some jerk has introduced a bill to make you a felon:
"So, there you have it. It is tinfoil-hattedness to raise these concerns. The one area in computer science where tinfoil-hattedness is of absolutely importance is cryptography; and the maintainer of the only Haskell entropy package dismisses these very valid concerns as tinfoil-hattedness."
https://leonmergen.com/on-the-state-of-cryptography-in-haskell-c272fb0b6478 (Medium)
Very good read, especially since I want to discuss crypto later!
Did you know that @Fitbit can track your sleeping patterns or even whether you are having unprotected sex? Wondering what @google could do with this data?
Sign the #NotOnOurWatch petition to the @EU_Commission to stop the merger!
https://pvcy.org/googbit https://nitter.net/privacyint/status/1274747659102892033/photo/1
FINALLY! Ramsey Orta, Who Filmed The Police Killing Of Eric Garner, Released From Prison
Orta was serving time for a gun possession charge that he said was set up by the police.
https://gothamist.com/news/ramsey-orta-who-filmed-police-killing-eric-garner-released-prison
Anyone else finds the word "deeplinking" and the court battles around it completely bonkers insane?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_linking
I mean, this is linking. It's the whole point of the Web. Why do we even need a separate term for that.
we're 80% funded 🖤 https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt/reform
Zoom acquired Keybase today.
Keybase helped me to identify a trend in the software industry: using a pretty UI to cover up the disruption of an open ecosystem with a closed, centralized replacement. Keybase seemed cool on the face of it - making encryption easier is a laudible goal, and PGP certainly could use the improvement. But, thanks to Keybase, now I ask different questions upfront.
Beware the Keybase formula:
1. Integrates with an existing, open ecosystem
2. May have open-source clients, but server is closed source and does not federate
3. Pretty UI and good marketing
4. VC funded
I'm disappointed that the state of open source video conferencing software is so bad. There are two apparently mature projects based on WebRTC. One thinks I'm going to allocate a new hardware server to it to run a version of Ubuntu so old that it no longer gets hardware support updates (and hence won't run on a new hardware server). The other one thinks that I'm going to have users install exactly Google Chrome to use it. Neither of those things is true.
@marksherman This video, titled "Git and Github for Poets" seems relevant to your interests: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCQHnlnPusY&feature=emb_title
Open source self-driving software is definitely something the world needed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y67XKPmtY8
"But if I want Self-Criticism Virtue Points, criticizing the Grey Tribe is the only honest way to get them. And if I want Tolerance Points, my own personal cross to bear right now is tolerating the Blue Tribe."
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/
Nicely done Scott, nicely done.
Why is it important to control your own computers?
One more reason: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/02/apple_hong_kong/
The world clearly needs more "smart" devices, as indicated by this factory reset procedure for GE light bulbs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BB6wj6RyKo&feature=youtu.be
Buying home routers for OpenWRT is annoying. The used market especially can result in getting some weird stuff. I just spent like three days figuring out how Shaw had messed up the firmware on my newly acquired refurb Netgear WNDR3700.