⊥ᵒᵚ Cᵸᵎᶺᵋᶫ∸ᵒᵘ ☑️ @falken@qoto.org

Let's call it: rejoining the EU as we were before is pure fantasy.

The UK as part of the EU was never a golden age! We extracted without contributing, vetoed when convenient, and treated solidarity as optional. We behaved less like an exemplar member state and more like Hungary tbh.

Even if the EU doors opened tomorrow, trust is gone and would have to be earned. Can a politically fragmented, unstable Britain offer what Europe needs right now?

Just because old British exceptionalism is dead doesn't mean the answer is permanent isolation. Equally, we shouldn't be queuing up, cap-in-hand at Europe's table; we need to sort out what that table should look like first. On climate, migration, labour standards. The current UK Government and likely successors offer a desperate vision.

The choice isn't between begging for readmission or closing the door entirely. Green Party policy is clear: full re-join is the goal. But we can't just demand it back. We must build the internal stability and partnerships that serve the next generation, so that when the time is right, we return not as beggars, but as committed partners ready to lead on the climate and justice.

#eu #ukpol #RealityCheck #GreenParty #brexit

@cstross

A colleague, @scottgal, is active on your very problem: https://www.stylobot.net/

RE: https://mastodon.social/@arstechnica/116801795085427483

This is a signal that the AI bubble is bursting and the next investment bubble, already prepping in the wings, is quantum computing.

Holy shit how is this not a thing I knew about: https://www.yyzkevin.com/picopcmcia/

Pretty sure the England Vs. Ghana match tonight was the busiest streaming event we've ever done.
I can't give streaming figures by my logging pipeline which handles BBC web, account and a subset (maybe 1/4) of media logging ran at a peak of 1.6 million log lines per second.
Best bit is, as usual, I didn't need to do anything in advance or on the night, Cloud Run and BigQuery handled the lot with ease.

I've smashed 4 car windows to rescue dogs from hot cars today already. I haven't found any yet but I'm not giving up

#DogsOfMastodon #Heat #Cars

I was at my local Social Security office applying for survivors benefits and, out of nowhere, Karen just had to yell in the back about how my account needed extra scrutiny because I was a sneaky person.

I guess she's still holding a grudge over my fax outsmarting?

But she interrupted the lengthy interview to interrogate me about my mailing address. My mailing address is a snail mail to email system, because the American Social Security administration isn't fully accessible and still, still, sends documents via paper, or on antiquated CDs with document files on the CDs. I don't like CDs lying around my house, so I don't have that option. I don't know enough Braille, yet, to read the Braille notices, but her condescension was sucking the air out of the room.

A 20 minute back and forth ensued, wherein she railed about how I was not allowed to have a mailing address that's different from my physical address. My calm but annoyed rebukes were proof, in her eyes, that I should not be treated with kindness.

She loved making me feel small, in front of all her workers.

But it is true. Fellow minorities stick up for each other, sometimes.

Luckily, other workers saw through her bullshit and clapped when she ranted about how I was the reason the fax machine hasn’t been working as it once did because of my malicious compliance.

Still, I was no badass, in person, I'm afraid. I was tired. I was worn down. I didn't have the publications on hand so had to recall them from memory. This isn't easy to do when one is tired. I think the minority workers knew what she was doing because many came over to assist the new girl, I suspect, speed up the applications.

I was grateful they didn't ask to detail the family abuse, they just asked me how long I’d been separated from my mother and how long has it been since I initiated no contact.

I was more grateful for that grace than they could ever know.

Background. https://sightlessscribbles.com/posts/the-paperwork-flood/

#Disability #SocialSecurity

What the company that made the 1990s TV early CGI show Reboot is uploading remastered versions to YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inKdUICLmXY

Look, I won't claim Reboot is a *good* show, but it is a show that I watched every episode of as a child (and when I was a kid I had never seen anything like it)

But these days, if you want some CGI history and a LOT of misuses of computer science terms then absolutely watch Reboot

🤣

#humour

My client is a caregiver to their mother, who has little access to short term memory. My client explains that the tv has just updated and reorganized its Home Screen. She knew how to access her shows on the old Home Screen. Now, every time she powers up the tv, she’s deluged with ads and trending slop and has to relearn how to use the device to find her shows, from scratch, as if starting over again for the first time. This is now a nightly half-hour ordeal. The update was mandatory. They were never given an option to keep the system she knew.

Chopping vegetables has worked the same way for fifty thousand years. Why do these assholes think they have the right to change how a tv works?

#MoveSlowAndFixThings

RE: https://kafeneio.social/@felixthehat/116792863262707070

There's a dark, musty room in the basement of #10, where Lecterns Of PMs Past are kept. It can only be opened by one old guy who is charged with keeping the key about his person at all times.

Occasionally, when the door is opened, the lecterns will have moved around; sometimes one is lying broken in a pile of splinters.

Thatcher's lectern is kept separately, in its own antechamber. It is chained to the walls and floor. But that doesn't stop the endless screaming.

Vint Cerf posted this short essay yesterday on his perspectives on how tech has changed lives over six decades and his view of the future.

It is one in a series from experts to celebrate Computer Weekly's 60th anniversary this year.

https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/CW60-On-longevity-a-career-spanning-60-years-of-modern-computing
2/n

It's 10 years to the day since the UK voted to make itself poorer, and this week we learned that we have indeed made ourselves poorer to the tune of 6%.

Democracy in action, folks.

#Brexit

https://bmmagazine.co.uk/news/brexit-cost-uk-economy-6-percent-bank-of-england-company-data/

It is 1997. I am being promised that a bold, dynamic new Labour leader will revitalise the country. Blair brings in tuition fees and invades Iraq.
It is 2007. I am being promised that a bold, dynamic new Labour leader will revitalise the country. Brown props up the banking system and cracks down on immigration.
It is 2024. I am being promised that a bold, dynamic new Labour leader will revitalise the country. Starmer criminalises protest and cracks down on immigration.
It is 2026.

Seems British PM tenures could be effectively stated using a unit derived from lowest common denominator, so recent tenures are :

Keir Starmer: 15 Trusses
Rishi Sunak: 13 Trusses
Liz Truss: 1 Truss
Boris Johnson: 23 Tr
Theresa May: 23 Tr
David Cameron: 46 Tr
Gordon Brown: 21 Tr
Tony Blair: 76 Tr
John Major: 48 Tr

(Using @urlyman's lettuce-head data )

#UKPM #UKPol

Linux systems using Secure Boot rely on a Microsoft signed "shim" bootloader. The current key expires in September, after which Microsoft will no longer use it to sign new bootloaders. While a replacement key has been available since 2023, it is missing from many systems. Fixing this requires a firmware update from hardware vendors, which isn't guaranteed for older devices. Most modern systems should transition smoothly, but some distros will face extra manual work

https://lwn.net/Articles/1029767/

This article, "C Is Not a Low-Level Language; Your Computer is Not A Fast PDP-11", by David Chisnall of Cambridge, is a critical self-assessment of C, modern CPU architectures that pander to C, and modern C compiler writers, like himself.

The intertwined successes of UNIX and C was inevitable, given the nature of the computing technology in the late 1960s. But that instant, meteoric success continues to demand backward compatibility through the decades, and that backward compatibility engenders much forward restraint on future advances.

As a long-time fan of C and PDP-11/70, I find Chisnall's critiques painfully true. The same could be said of UNIX, my all-time favourite operating system. And x86, too, followed a similar path to immediate success and perpetual dominance.

The power of inertia is terrifying: even after 50 years, the current score of the computer architecture and programming language game remains "von Neumann 1 v Backus 0".

https://spawn-queue.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3212477.3212479

Android is going to be adding developer ID verification for any developer that wants their app to be sideloaded onto more than 20 devices.

You might be wondering: how are they going to track that? Well it turns out they already have been. Google Play Protect is sending the hashes of the apps you install back to Google's servers.

Your unique device identifier, your account info, and the apps you run are stored on Google's servers, even for a local install of a sideloaded app.

1. Today, brave brave John Edwards ran away.

To thank the UK Information Commissioner for all the fish, here are FIVE EPIC FAILURES he's made during his tenure. Or, to paraphrase his own words, the five best attempts at humor that were inappropriate.

Thread below 🧵

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0eyq7rnn22o