Links 27/11/2023: Underwater Data Centres and Gemini, BSD Style!
Contents
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Leftovers
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Server
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Gadget Tendency ☛ The Chinese began building the world’s first commercial underwater data center
Placing data centers underwater is not a new idea.
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Science
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The Conversation ☛ 2023-11-23 [Older] Why the man-hating feminist is a myth – according to science
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The Conversation ☛ 2023-11-21 [Older] Why a social media detox may not be as good for you as you think – new research
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The Conversation ☛ 2023-11-20 [Older] How movies use music to manipulate your memory
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The Conversation ☛ 2023-11-21 [Older] SAD lamps: do they work? Experts explain how they help the winter blues
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Gizmodo ☛ 2023-11-23 [Older] Utah Telescopes Intercept Ultra-Powerful Cosmic Ray
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Hardware
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Barry Kauler ☛ New keyboard hardware profiling
Today I posted about a fix for keyboard layout:
https://bkhome.org/news/202311/trying-to-fix-console-keymap-stuck-on-us.html
After doing that, remembered a problem that someone reported, a long time ago; probably at least a year ago...
They were booting Easy on a USB-stick, on different computers. One computer had a "us" layout keyboard, so they configured Easy for that. But then booted up on a computer with "fr" layout; however, Easy is not aware of the change and still thinks it is "us" layout. This will cause a problem if have to enter a password at bootup, and after bootup an app will have to be run to change the keyboard layout to "fr".
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Health/Nutrition/Agriculture
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New York Times ☛ At Meta, Millions of Underage Users Were an ‘Open Secret,’ States Say
Meta “routinely documented” children under 13 on Instagram and collected their data, according to a newly unsealed complaint.
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CBC ☛ 2023-11-23 [Older] Preston Manning's fiction made real in his Alberta pandemic report
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-24 [Older] China finds 'no unusual pathogens' amid respiratory illness spike
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US News And World Report ☛ 2023-11-23 [Older] West Africa Responds to Huge Diphtheria Outbreaks by Targeting Unvaccinated Populations
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-22 [Older] Black women died most in London's Black Death
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-23 [Older] When will I be happiest in my life? (Spoiler: not at 14)
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CBC ☛ 2023-11-19 [Older] Metro Vancouver residents slapped with $166K in fines for defying water restrictions
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-19 [Older] Antibiotic resistance: When UTIs turn lethal
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CBC ☛ 2023-11-21 [Older] Manning tells Conservative MPs his COVID-19 panel report could help defeat the Liberals
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-20 [Older] Antibiotic resistance a looming, lethal global threat
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Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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Gizmodo ☛ RIP Amazon's Comixology App, Which Dies in December
Comics readers will have to read the comics and manga they purchased from the popular platform on Kindle going forward.
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Security
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Privacy/Surveillance
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Defence/Aggression
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Marcy Wheeler ☛ The MAGA Tourist Geofence and the Violent Confederate Flag-Toting Geofence
Trump claims that only one person of his people from January 6 could be deemed insurrectionists. That's not what the Surveillance Giant Google geofence says.
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ANF News ☛ 2023-11-21 [Older] Wecker: Germany is complicit in Turkey’s war against the Kurds
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-23 [Older] Berlin exhibition shines light on regimes weaponizing child abductions
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US News And World Report ☛ 2023-11-22 [Older] Turkey Tells NATO That Sweden Won't Join by Next Week's Meeting -Sources
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ANF News ☛ 2023-11-24 [Older] Cizire Autonomous Administration: Turkey tries to prevent the eradication of ISIS
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-23 [Older] Europe reels after far-right Geert Wilders comes out on top of Dutch election
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-23 [Older] Geert Wilders: Far-right populist wins big in Dutch election
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-21 [Older] How the Dutch election may buck Europe's populist trend
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France24 ☛ Far right’s Geert Wilders seals shock win in Dutch election after years on political fringe
He’s received countless death threats and has been under police protection for almost two decades. He’s been convicted for inciting hate speech and his opinions once even got him banned from entering the UK. Known as the Dutch Donald Trump, far-right politician Geert Wilders and his PVV Freedom Party have now won a major victory in the country’s general elections.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-22 [Older] Dutch election: Wilders' far-right PVV set to win — exit poll
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-23 [Older] Europe was a beacon of democracy — can it stay that way?
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-23 [Older] German police raid suspected Hamas and Samidoun properties
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-23 [Older] German police target far-right 'Reichsbürger' in raids
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-22 [Older] Japan military aid expands Southeast Asia footprint
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-23 [Older] What is NATO’s Balkan plan as Kosovo and Bosnia wobble?
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-22 [Older] India resumes e-visa services for Canadians amid row
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US News And World Report ☛ 2023-11-22 [Older] Buffalo Airport Closed to International Flights After Explosion at US-Canada Border - US FAA
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US News And World Report ☛ 2023-11-22 [Older] Buffalo Airport Closed to International Flights After Explosion at US-Canada Border - US FAA
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CBC ☛ 2023-11-22 [Older] 2 dead after blast at Rainbow Bridge, N.Y. governor says 'no sign of terrorist activity'
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-23 [Older] US-Canada bridge blast: 'No indication of terrorism'
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The Age AU ☛ 2023-11-23 [Older] Fatalities after vehicle explosion at US-Canada border crossing bridge
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US News And World Report ☛ 2023-11-23 [Older] Police Still Probing Cause of Fiery Car Crash at US-Canada Border
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US News And World Report ☛ 2023-11-22 [Older] Fiery Rainbow Bridge Car Crash at US-Canada Border Kills 2; Terrorism Ruled Out
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US News And World Report ☛ 2023-11-22 [Older] Explosion at US-Canada Border Caused by Reckless Driver-Sources
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US News And World Report ☛ 2023-11-22 [Older] Fiery Crash Kills 2 at Niagara Falls' Rainbow Border Bridge. Officials Say No Sign of Terrorism
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CBC ☛ 2023-11-22 [Older] Rainbow Bridge crossing reopens 1 day after deadly car explosion
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CBC ☛ 2023-11-21 [Older] Why is a man convicted of killing Bangladesh's president in 1975 still living free in Canada?
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-20 [Older] German police arrest 18-year-old over far-right attack plot
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-20 [Older] Japan: Why Okinawa is strategically crucial for US military
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-20 [Older] Liberia: Boakai declared winner of presidential election
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-21 [Older] Germany: Faeser seeks Hamas condemnation at Islam conference
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-21 [Older] Myanmar's rebel offensive: How worried should India be?
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-21 [Older] North Korea launches spy satellite
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-21 [Older] North Korea plans third spy satellite launch attempt
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Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine
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LRT ☛ Military parade in Vilnius – photos
On Saturday, a parade of Lithuanian and NATO troops and military equipment was held to mark the 105th anniversary of the restoration of the Lithuanian Armed Forces.
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-22 [Older] Switzerland approves tank returns to Germany; Kyiv to profit
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Environment
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Energy/Transportation
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US News And World Report ☛ 2023-11-21 [Older] EPA Offers $2B to Clean up Pollution, Develop Clean Energy in Poor and Minority Communities
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The Age AU ☛ 2023-11-23 [Older] Late-night drama raises stakes and delays vote on $20b Origin Energy takeover
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-21 [Older] Binance founder quits CEO post, pleads guilty to US charge
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-21 [Older] How the Gulf region is planning for a life after oil
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-21 [Older] Nigeria and Germany agree deal on gas and renewables
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-21 [Older] Will Germany invest in Thailand's 'land bridge' project?
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Wildlife/Nature
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Finance
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Green Party UK ☛ 2023-11-21 [Older] Autumn Statement: Greens offer 10-point plan of distinctive tax and spend policies to create a fairer, greener country
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-21 [Older] Argentina: Can the US dollar save the economy?
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-21 [Older] Germany's budget woes: A threat to the government?
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Green Party UK ☛ 2023-11-22 [Older] Greens reject pre-election tax cut bribes and call for action to meet the needs of people and planet
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CBC ☛ 2023-11-23 [Older] Up to 900 foreign workers will help build EV battery plant in Windsor, Ont., NextStar says amid backlash
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BIA Net ☛ 2023-11-24 [Older] Turkey to unveil tax incentives to boost foreign currency inflows
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CBC ☛ 2023-11-22 [Older] Past rate hikes may be enough to bring inflation back to target, Tiff Macklem says in speech
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2023-11-19 [Older] Dollar Scarcity is Pushing More African Countries to Crisis
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CBC ☛ 2023-11-17 [Older] Quebec's stock market regulator can go after Canada's Panama Papers kingpin, Supreme Court rules
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-23 [Older] Germany: Public sector strikes hit schools and hospitals
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-20 [Older] Shakira reaches settlement to avoid Spain tax fraud trial
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-23 [Older] Germany to suspend 'debt brake,' present revised 2023 budget
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CBC ☛ 2023-11-20 [Older] Staff at A&W in Kamloops, B.C., unionize in what organizers say is a first in Canada
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-23 [Older] How China became the world's largest debt collector
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-22 [Older] Why the EU-Canada trade deal is a big deal
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-17 [Older] Eurozone inflation falls to lowest level since 2021
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-18 [Older] Changes to Germany's skilled immigration rules take effect
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-18 [Older] Can Israel's economy withstand the current conflict?
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CBC ☛ 2023-11-20 [Older] She's a grad student juggling 3 jobs. Canada's cost of living may force her to move elsewhere
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CBC ☛ 2023-11-21 [Older] Canada's inflation rate cools to 3.1% but the cost of living keeps going up
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CBC ☛ 2023-11-22 [Older] Born in the '90s: How likely is it that you own a home? | About That
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-22 [Older] UK: Conservatives issue tax cuts as election looms
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-20 [Older] German government faces budget crisis
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AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics
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Modern Diplomacy ☛ 2023-11-22 [Older] Western democracy has failed in Africa – ex-Nigerian president
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Defence Web ☛ 2023-11-22 [Older] Why aren’t sanctions preventing coups in Africa?
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-21 [Older] In Africa, demands for slavery reparations grow louder
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Defence Web ☛ 2023-11-18 [Older] No South African arms exports to Israel – NCACC
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-18 [Older] South Africa's referral of Israel to ICC divides opinion
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-22 [Older] South African lawmakers vote to shut Israel's embassy
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US News And World Report ☛ 2023-11-21 [Older] South African Lawmakers Vote to Suspend Diplomatic Ties With Israel, Shut Embassy
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-20 [Older] Argentina: What to expect from populist President Milei
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-20 [Older] DR Congo election campaigns kick off
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-20 [Older] Germany's socialist Left Party fights for survival
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-20 [Older] Germany: Top Protestant church official resigns
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-20 [Older] Italy mafia trial: 'Ndrangheta bosses get lengthy jail terms
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-20 [Older] Jailed Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi released on bail
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Censorship/Free Speech
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CBC ☛ 2023-11-23 [Older] Quebec Superior Court halts adoption of pro-Palestinian McGill student union policy
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Scheerpost ☛ 2023-11-19 [Older] Glenn Greenwald: Big Tech Censors Viral Osama bin Laden Letter
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CBC ☛ 2023-11-21 [Older] Doctor suspended from U of O residency after pro-Palestinian social media posts
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-21 [Older] X sues Media Matters about report on ads next to antisemitic content
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Jacobin Magazine ☛ 2023-11-20 [Older] Blacklisted Communist Writer Albert Maltz’s Last Novel Will Finally Be Published in the US
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Civil Rights/Policing
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New Yorker ☛ Should People Have the Right to Say Awful Things Without Facing Legal Consequences?
Those who want to curtail freedom of speech do not log the debits and credits of censorship, nor do they care about the balance of norms—they act when they have power.
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BIA Net ☛ 2023-11-24 [Older] HRW director urges Europe to pressure Turkey over human rights record
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Deutsche Welle ☛ 2023-11-23 [Older] US: Caste equality advocates vow to continue the fight
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CBC ☛ 2023-11-19 [Older] No Frills reaches tentative deal with Unifor workers, averts strike at 17 stores in Ontario
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Monopolies
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Trademarks
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Copyrights
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Gemini* and Gopher
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Personal/Opinions
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🔤SpellBinding: GHISNRL Wordo: COCKY
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Day n+1 of Thanksgiving cuisine sustenance
Whoa, baby, it be *snowing* out dare!
That's okay. I've no plans other than to love my wife, and occasionally glance at a computer screen to see Just How Bad It Is.
Which reminds me, in this racism-is-you-not-me-trigger-happy world, I love - and, thus, treat - darker and lighter bird meat *equally*.
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Dos amig[ao]s
To me capitalism is the result/consequence/reflection of most people *not* trying, i.e. not trying to be more than self-centric/self-ish, necessarily increasing the odds of others - including the environment - being so-called left in the lurch.
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Savoring & Wandering
I’ve always had a hard time doing boring things like washing the dishes or walking or just existing but recently I got two pieces of advice that, although they kind of contradict each other, taken together they have really helped.
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“Little and often” vs “only once”
Over in the Mark Forster corner of the online “productivity” world (a favourite well for procrastinators to return to again and again) there’s often focus on the idea of working on something “little and often”. You have a stack of letters to send or doshes to distim? Don’t do them all at once, just go and do some of them, take a break, and then you can return at a later time.
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Metabolism in architecture
About a month back I visited a rather unusual and eclectic museum, which included a small room at the ended dedicated to a 1980s "Utopian architecture" project called "The Tube" (die Röhre) by the German architect Günther Eckert. Eckert was a real architect who designed real buildings which actually got built in the real world, but The Tube, as far as I can tell (it's not very well documented online, it would seem, especially not in English), remained entirely a conceptual project, just a large collection of plans and sketches and mock-ups painted over photographs. Honestly I'm not sure there was ever a realistic expectation on behalf of anyone, even Eckert himself, that it would ever be more than that, rather than just a though experiment. The Tube was very unlikely to ever get build because it was, you see, a truly gigantic enclosed tube encircling the entire planet, in which of all of humanity was supposed to live and work.
[...]
The Metabolism movement was founded by a group of Japanese architects, right at the end of the 50s, and is inspired by (amongst other things, but this is the idea I find most interesting/appealing) the biological notion of continuous renewal and organic growth, and the recycling of raw materials from old structures to build new ones. This idea has deep roots in Japan. There are a number of wooden Shinto shrines, most famously the Ise Grand Shrine, which are repeatedly and continually rebuilt in a Ship of Theseus fashion. This constant rebuilding is partially religiously motivated, but it has practical benefits, too. Each cycle of renewal takes about 20 years, and it provides an opportunity for older and more experienced builders to pass on techniques and knowledge to the next generation, and ensures that there is always somebody alive who has first-hand knowledge of how and why any given aspect of the shrine as it currently stands was built, with nothing ever being lost to history. Small adaptations to the design can be made to reflect changes in the availability of materials and shifting usage practices. I think this is really very cool.
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RE: Dos amig[ao]s
I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. People have some inherent nature, but are largely shaped by the outside world. This middle path implies that there is a feedback loop between the individual and society; they shape each other. This is why individuals must critique the society they live in, and the modes of production that shape their social reality.
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some thoughts
embracing the value of embracing my first-person perspective and the context in which the compudanzas project happens.
as everything (here and everywhere), they are subject to change, and could be closer to poetry.
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RE: Dos amig[ao]s
I assure you I've no hatred of humanity. It's more that I look at what seems like "a real mess" (aka "the world"), have noted points of view and/or ways of modeling reality within "my own" (the double quotes are a nod to the aforementioned influencing/filtering) thought/emotional bioprocessing realm that reasonably account for "my piece of it" (for having made a mess of my life at times in diverse and sundry ways), have assumed that others aren't too different from me, and that the integral of billions of realtime behaviors driven by such seems an explanation whose predictive powers gives me a sense of being at least on the right track.
Do I hate myself?
No.
Do I despise seemingly being a self/person/individual.
Pretty much.
[...]
Word-mediated mutual understanding of even slightly more nuanced topics seems to goes to hell pretty quickly, which I believe the Internet demonstrates in all four playing card suits.
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*Yawn*
March has an advertorial for Saudi Arabia right before the Editor’s Letter. Evidently there’s a place in Saudi Arabia that looks like the Oseira Plains, complete with Mount…well, it actually doesn’t look like Mount Granajh in the background
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tomorrow is my last day of work!
i would be more excited but i really overcommitted myself to a lot of things this month and i am worried about being so busy.
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Games
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🎲 Scoundrel
A single player dungeon crawler
Thanks to Lettuce for their “e-zine of solo games” in which they mention Scoundrel, a game by Zach Gage and Kurt Bieg. It is a solo dungeon crawler of sorts that is played with a single deck of normal playing cards.
Me and the wife have adapted the rules slightly and made it a cooperative game. It is quite fun. Each game takes only ten minutes or so and the minimum space requirements — both in materials to carry and playing space — make it an ideal travel game.
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Science
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Stargazing and Aurora, Fairbanks, AK, USA, 2023-11-24 (publ. 2023-11-26)
Last Friday morning (November 24th) I had an opportunity to go stargazing before work, due to mostly clear in the early hours. I made it out to the boat launch about 4:30am AKST. I just took the binoculars and the tripod. Here was the view toward the south-west, as reproduced in Stellarium: [...]
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Technology and Free Software
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New Stuff in Tootik
tootik is maturing quickly, and I use it for many things: for example, I follow bots that monitor news sites and publish summaries on Mastodon, allowing me to consume news (and replies) in plain text form through a Gemini client.
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Covert terminal file writing/reading
I occasionally run into the phenomenon of my spouse not being able to "let live" when it comes to online activity/participation.
To the rescue cometh a pair of scripts I wrote facilitating writing/reading text files in the terminal as covertly as possible.
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Magic
True story. The job was for a position involving the day-to-day operation of DNS servers and firewalls involving DNS and client systems involving DHCP and DNS systems, and was a senior role so the ideal candidate would probably be able to say a little more than "magic" as to how DNS works. In hindsight the question was maybe too broad, though one might imagine someone who knows a bit about DNS either talking about it, or they might ask a counter-question to help get down into details. Like, "how long are you going to let me talk about DNS, because it could be a while to touch on getaddrinfo, the clever aliases used in DNS packets to save space, recursive servers, authoritative severs, how client systems obtain what DNS servers to talk to, root.hints, what glue records are, why a client might not use DNS (hosts file, DNS-over-HTTP, alternate resolution systems such as LDAP), why DNS might sometimes use TCP, and so forth." A good high-level summary of all this is of course "magic", which here means something like "it's complicated and there are a lot of fiddly details and you might want to abstract it away in some contexts, like when talking to people who do not need to know the details".
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things i like about sway vs i3 and vice versa (wip)
1. i don't like bemenu one bit. it looks atrocious when not properly configured and i'm too old for that. i much prefer dmenu. also the behaviour is subpar
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Internet/Gemini
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The geometry of online life
You know how it is when you explain how you understand something to someone else, and they seem to be listening intently, and when you're finally done they say: [...]
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Gemini, BSD Style!
A lot has changed over the holiday that was Thanksgiving 2023, there was a good amount of careful reflection on this capsule and what I wanted it to be. I don't want it to end up a mothball of yet another failed capsule as there have been so many already these past years as Gemini has come up in the world. As I alluded in my previous post, there seems to be a problem with self-discipline when it comes to writing and posting. I've determined that I've created a technical barrier of sorts in my workflow that needs to be addressed. So I once again moved to a new hosting provider while looking for better method of simplification of my writing workflow process. Previously I would write a post in Visual Code, then I would need to edit it several times to perfect the grammar and spelling errors before committing to GitHub repo so that when the time came to cut a new docker image I would only have to complete the build step once. When the writing was done a new docker image would be built, this image would then have to be pushed to Docker Hub. I would shortly after login in Portainer to pull the new image, and re-deploy the stack to update the container followed by testing with Amfora and Lagrange to make sure that the content was showing and the atom RSS feed was working properly.
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Programming
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Reviewing Felienne Hermans’ _The Programmer’s Brain_
One of the things I’ve been tasked with at the day job is to work on features in a codebase. The implementation language is all JavaScript, but it uses a lot of once-trendy libraries and frameworks. These libraries and frameworks increase the complexity of the entire codebase in ways that are good for companies that devote multiple teams to a codebase like this. However, these architectural decisions make the whole thing needlessly complicated for our needs. No more than two people have ever worked on this pile of code at the same time.
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Judging a programming language
Here is something where I have a li’l bit of hypocrisy in my own bitter heart.
I’ve got a close friend who, whenever we’re talking about programming languages, I get the impression that he only judges them by the surfacest of surface syntax features. Does the code look like the languages of old that he’s used to? Then good. Otherwise bad.
Never a look at things like type systems, generics, comptime, metaprogramming, container heterogenity, polymorphism, inference, verbosity (well—he does favor explicitness whereas I favor implicitness & good defaults), first-class functions or the first-class–ness of any other codemes, performance, code reuse, ease of factoring and refactoring, flexibility etc.
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* Gemini (Primer) links can be opened using Gemini software. It's like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.