Nat Tuck @nat@ferrus.net

Imaginative fiction trains people to be aware that there *are* other ways to do things and other ways to be, that there is not just one civilization and it is good and it is the way we have to be. -- Ursula K. Le Guin

“Current trends in the automotive industry point to a future with you locked in a remote control car, your vendor holding the remote." https://puri.sm/posts/locked-in-a-remote-control-car/

SCI-HUB NEEDS YOUR HELP!

Do you have a few dozen gigabytes of free diskspace and a machine that can seed it via #bittorrent?

You can help save an unbelievable trough of scientific knowledge from disappearing behind the elites' paywalls!

https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/nc27fv/rescue_mission_for_scihub_and_open_science_we_are/

https://phillm.net/torrent-health-frontend/seeds-needed-scimag.php

Spread the word and seed till you bleed – for the betterment of humanity!

I'm looking for a federated RSS reader with functions like commenting / liking.

Does something like that exist yet?

"I am resigning along with most other Freenode staff"

https://p.haavard.me/407

😬

Periodic reminder. If anyone wants insight into why the US is such a corrupt and generally screwed up country (it's my hyper-militarized homeland, so I feel justified in pointing this out), see this comprehensive explanation from Larry Lessig: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJy8vTu66tE

Yup, this is a very solid position: https://waldo.jaquith.org/blog/2020/12/government-open-source/

> The power to target is the power to discriminate. By definition, targeted ads allow advertisers to reach some kinds of people while excluding others. A targeting system may be used to decide who gets to see job postings or loan offers just as easily as it is to advertise shoes.

Well said.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/googles-floc-terrible-idea

Republican North Dakota legislators have introduced SB2333, a bill that prohibits large tech companies from locking their users into a single app store or payment processor.

https://www.legis.nd.gov/assembly/67-2021/documents/21-1044-01000.pdf

While his has implications for Android and other large tech platforms, its most immediate and far-reaching effects with be on Apple, whose Ios platform uses lock-in to monopolize both apps and payments (and another domain, not mentioned in the bill: repairs).

1/

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.

Set copyright to 10 years

"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!

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

#FreeAllPoliticalPrisoners

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.

Happy five year anniversary of twitter keeping us safe from dangerous postings.

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