"We didn't tell McDonalds, 'You need to figure out how to feed schoolchildren'—we had schools do it. The way to fix the problem of connecting people is to focus on local orgs & governments with incentives to connect them, not by asking Comcast to solve it."https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rl8_F3TVwvk
#Pine64 PineDio + FemtoStar Satellites: "PineDio gateway can service the neighbourhood with text messaging, while a FemtoStar gateway can service an entire continent with data speeds fast enough to make phone calls or browse the web"
https://www.pine64.org/2021/05/19/femtostar-taking-aim-for-the-stars/
Last week the UK Govt published a new draft of their #OnlineSafetyBill, making UK corps liable for jail time unless they censor "harmful" content (without defining harmful). Targeted at Big Tech it instead directly threatens Matrix. Read https://matrix.org/blog/2021/05/19/how-the-u-ks-online-safety-bill-threatens-matrix & raise the alarm.
Now that cars have become rolling smartphones, it's been pretty disappointing to see them copy some of the worst practices from the smartphone world. I wrote an article that talks about some of those problems. [CW: Tesla negativity] https://puri.sm/posts/locked-in-a-remote-control-car/
Defendants have the right to examine the source code of DNA forensic software—especially one where an inspection 6 years ago revealed errors that created false positive matches in dozens of cases in one Australian state alone. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/05/eff-tells-california-court-forensic-software-source-code-must-be-disclosed
"In China, #Apple Compromises on Censorship and Surveillance"
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-censorship-data.html
Many people turn a blind eye to Apple's absolute control over products and how they restrict a customer's freedom, because they trust Apple won't abuse that power.
That control takes on a new significance when it's handed over to the Chinese government.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-censorship-data.html
The Maine legislature is now considering a bill that would defund the state’s intelligence fusion center. This could become a national model for rolling back the mass surveillance apparatus that’s been growing since 2001. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/eff-calls-maine-support-bill-defunds-local-intelligence-fusion-center
The City of Fullerton was pushing a dangerous and flawed interpretation of California’s computer crime law. We’re relieved that the city has dropped its lawsuit against journalists and admitted that they did nothing illegal. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/05/victory-california-city-drops-lawsuit-accusing-journalists-violating-computer
swiley.net
Email mastodon+swiley@swiley.net (this makes all of my computers beep and turn on an indicator light and is always the fastest way to reach me.) I was on octodon a while ago but abandoned my account. I've never been a member of gab or parlor.
If you’d like to learn to program I would consider the SICP [1] more or less the peak of American CS pedagogy (at least as far as beginners go) along with “The Practice of Programming” once you get through that.
I play ukulele, I’m ok at reading music and decent at improv. I learned from Walter Piston’s “Harmony” and some of Adam Neely’s videos.
My main phone is a pine phone so if I don’t pick up when you call the battery is probably dead, the modem is probably dead, or I’m currently swearing at calls/pulseaudio/alsa. I’d strongly recommend sending an email instead.
Dispite what my web page says I’ve stopped uploading my scratch projects to GitHub once I started to understand the basics of collaboration with git. I was using the flamegraph as gamification/motivation but it doesn’t work as well with feature branch/squash merge workflows so I just keep most things on my VPS until I’m happy with publishing updates.
[1] https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/full-text/book/book.html