ML2 @mathlover@qoto.org

@sir why ?

@freemo @QOTO How is the "Q" in "QOTO" pronounced?
As in "queen" ("quoto")?
Or as in the English pronunciation of "Qatar" ("koto")?
I personally prefer the former but I'm wondering what the official stance is.

@freemo @xandrachurch@mas.to I can imagine of such a scenario, say, 1000 or 8000 years later(if humans haven't went to extinction )when humans are living together with other Intelligent animals whose ancestors were treated badly by humans but somehow have gained equal rights as human beings at last. If that is the case, maybe all humans living today would be considered by as "human superemists" according to the moral standard at that time. Well maybe it's improper to use animals as an example, but what I am trying to say is that unless you believe that the current developing stage of human society marks the end of history and the close of moral progress, then it's inevitable that some parts of our once-generally-agreed opinions would be considered unacceptable by the future.

Sad news today. I went to photograph the #tree20 liquidambar tree today as it’s right at the end of the year and so my project is almost complete. Except that it has been cut down! When I saw that it was gone, I felt devastated. It has literally been cut down in its prime. I’m not an expert and so maybe it had some disease. I couldn’t bear to photograph the void it has left behind today.

Google is down party! YouTube, Gmail, Drive are all down. Maybe some alternatives to their services have some time to shine now.

Alternative to gmail? @Tutanota Alternative to YouTube? Odysee.com Alternative to Drive? Nextcloud, @operationtulip

#YouTubeDOWN #Google

You guys know I like to bash Go, but... FUCK!

"The Go security team has determined that the root causes of the vulnerabilities cannot be reliably addressed."

Ok, your language design has some serious flaw that can't be fixed, so they are basically saying "Yup, a core library is going to be vulnerable for a long time".

Also, this is going since August 2020, according to the related post. Project Zero works way fast (30 days) to disclose issues on every other project, but on a project from their own company, 4 months.

Google surely cares about the well-being of the internet, sure.

Link: https://mattermost.com/blog/coordinated-disclosure-go-xml-vulnerabilities/

The Roots of Big Tech Run Disturbingly Deep https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/07/opinion/google-facebook-mergers-acquisitions-antitrust.html

I would love it if I could just download and seed a torrent of some CC-licensed course materials from any number of universities — especially for some niche courses rather than just the “giant lecture hall” 101 courses.

I think the ADA lawsuit against Berkeley probably really damaged that dream, but in general I see it as a very disappointing failure of open / libre culture ☹

The myth that Trump has always tried to push as part of his "Keep America Conned" initiative was that he was successful with the economy, when in real numbers he's had the worst economic record of any president in over 70 years.

He was a documented, verifiable economic failure as president, among all the other failures, of course. More outlets should be covering this.

Trump will leave office with a historically bad economic record -
https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/13/politics/trump-economy-record/index.html

#IT #privacy #encryption #global #uk #politics #democracy

Let me be absolutely clear here.

I am utterly against child pornography. Period!

However, while the Children's Commissioner for England may have good data and a genuine concern for sexual abuse, she is utterly clueless about the wider issues.

For many years the UK Government has used child pornography and safeguarding issues to erode privacy and out-China China in terms of state surveillance.

Encrypted messaging putting children at risk of abuse, says watchdog

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/dec/08/encrypted-messaging-putting-children-at-risk-of-abuse-says-watchdog

Paranoid hat:

Remember this morning failure on Google services? They response is was that a quota on user login was preventing the users from logging in.

Well, a few hours later, there is a vulnerability disclosure on go xml library, which affects elements such as SAML, a distributed authentication protocol.

Wouldn't it be weird if both were linked?

It was in August of 2020, as I was recovering from a year of personal struggles, that I decided to create a map of the Fediverse, intended for a web shop that me and the owner of an instance I was a moderator on had set up. Being a fan of mediaeval and early modern maps, I decided that my map would be a homage to those.

A map is always a work in progress, and can never be complete. Including every instance on the network would be a monumental task, and would've resulted in something more akin to an atlas than a map. I had to draw a line somewhere, and decided on mapping the top 100 instances, ranked by total status count. Some of these had since gone offline and were taken off the list. A select number of instances were excluded because people objected to their inclusion. To the resulting list, instances proposed by other users were added.

Fediverse instances don't have meaningful physical locations. An instance for German speakers could be hosted in France, for example. In many cases, there is no geographical theme at all. The Fediverse is a virtual world and has no topology, so I opted to make an elevation map. Coastlines and water bodies were derived from this map by intersecting it with a sea level plane.

I grouped the instances into thematic provinces, and the provinces into thematic regions, which were in turn assigned locations by free association. Instances with geographical themes were assigned locations roughly corresponding to their associated real-world locations on a world map. To suggest latitude and give the map a more organic feel, the place names were arched in concentric circles.

A research trip was made to a library, where I found books containing old maps. Sea monster designs were selected from them, together with a design for the compass. These were then cleaned up by manually tracing and recolouring them.

I shared previews of the map as I was working on it, and the feedback was positive. At this point, however, it became evident that the web shop wouldn't succeed, and the map project was shelved.

In November of 2020, I decided that I would try my luck as a freelancer, so I began to brainstorm and write down ideas. In December of the same year, I remembered the map I had made, and decided that I would give it some final touches and actually publish it:

https://thj.no/product/carta-fediversi-2020/

Facebook hit with antitrust probe for tying Oculus use to Facebook accounts https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/10/facebook-hit-with-antitrust-probe-for-tying-oculus-use-to-facebook-accounts/?guccounter=1

Oh god no...

https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/alien-tv-series-xenomorph-to-earth/

#movies #alien #hollywood #tv

@Lynx here, have some hemlock 🍷

...

i can't really blame anyone though, why risk your livelihood for some random topic? the chances that you get cancelled are real, your colleagues won't take any flak for you (because they'll also get canceled..).

as long as there is no public outcry that these methods aren't even remotely ok, nothing will change. if the media is really to blame for anything, regardless of their political alignment, then for allowing to happen and actively taking part in canceling. for better or worse, journalism killed itself.

earlier this week, Elon announced he's moved from California to Texas.

today, Oracle Corp announced it's moved its headquarters from California to Texas.

the reasons for nuking Texas keep going up.

comments about THE REAL RACISTS usually make me cringe but... what the fuck is this