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Hi @freemo

I saw you claiming that you prefer Trump to Biden for US president, which surprized me as I was under the impression that Trump is so bad for democratic & rule of law standards that no reasonable person valuing these things could support him. I also saw you point out some anti-Trump propaganda that was just factually wrong, so you seem to be knowledgeable in that matter. Since I am now wondering whether my views are just a result of such propaganda I was hoping you could verify some of the things that led me to my conclusions.

I am not a US citizen and this exercise is mostly for anti-propaganda calibration purposes for me. You seem to enjoy this kind of discussion, but I know that you are a busy man, so I won't assume a lack of response to have big significance. I will still be grateful for any you give.

Thread follows, ordered by a combination of severity and how sure I am of specific claims.

timorl boosted

abortion protests in Poland, plpol, fascism (-) 

Jarosław Kaczyński, Deputy Prime Minister of Poland, and the leader of the Law and Justice party (usually considered center-right, but... judge for yourself) gave a speech yesterday, in which he referred to the protests going on in Poland after a high court ruling that made strict Polish anti-abortion laws even stricter.

I translated it to English:
rys.io/wypierdalac/kaczissimus

Here is the context:
theguardian.com/world/2020/oct

timorl boosted

My 14 year old son just told me how he hacked his online Spanish assessment to get it to translate all the questions into English. He opens Firefox dev tools and disables some client-side javascript that tries to prevent him. Finally a child I can be proud of.

Then we have to have the conversation about how—while it's cool—make sure you actually learn the material. Don't cheat yourself out of an education...

timorl boosted

After 30 years, #Norway grants asylum to a Polish person again:
theguardian.com/world/2020/oct

> Gaweł’s case is the first time political asylum has been granted to a Pole in more than 30 years since the fall of communism in #Poland. [Observers] see it as another sign that international trust in Poland’s justice system has been undermined by the government.

> Some other courts in Europe have refused to extradite Poles, saying they cannot have a fair trial under Poland’s government.

timorl boosted

The #Epic @fedilab @k9mail cases have reinforced our strong stance that we must control the distribution channels of #FLOSS and no longer depend on the #PlayStore

A major threat to the adoption of an alternative is that users expect updates to be automatic but #Google made that possible only for the #PlayStore

Code Lutin will invest on @fdroidorg to make software update possible on non-rooted #Android devices thus, allowing people to adopt #FreeSoftware

#MécénatCodeLutin #DeleteGoogle

timorl boosted

one of the more somewhat interesting things about being the first out enby at work is that no one knows what Dressed Up Professional Non-Binary dresses like

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timorl boosted
timorl boosted

ukpol, covid, closed-source, 🤦‍♀️ 

Which begs the question: what other critically important IT resources are not being taken care of by qualified IT personnel?

If something as absolutely crucial as keeping the COVID cases up-to-date fell flat on its face due to a *known* limitation of a desktop tool, what about more complicated issues like the *security* of *healthcare* data related to it?

This is criminal negligence on the part of whoever is in charge.

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@mithrandir @jordyd@octodon.social Ah, sorry, of course I meant @nonphatic 's point about logic.

@mithrandir @nonphatic To connect this to @jordyd@octodon.social 's point, probability should be taught as an extension of logic, as E.T. Jaynes intended. This could even be implemented as a single course called "Reasoning" or some such, with the basics of both subjects. Not everyone needs to be able to interpret scientific studies, so teaching everyone p-values and such might be overkill, but a reasonable understanding of probabilistic reasoning can be achieved with relatively basic knowledge.

timorl boosted

What was the first *real* program you've ever written?

timorl boosted

brexit, ukpol, borders 

UK Gov't: Truckers, you need to get your shit together and finally start preparing for the paperwork and the new border checks regime that will come into effect Jan 1st!

Truckers: WE KNOW! We need info on the specifics, from you guys. Can we have that? We've been asking for MONTHS!

UK Gov't: 🦗 🏏 🦗

theguardian.com/politics/2020/

#Brexit

@technomancy
Oh, I recently migrated from the lua to the python script (I don't remember why, for the encryption? Or device verification?) and there was something strange with the instructions but I eventually managed — maybe I can help?

timorl boosted

If, like me, you have been unable to follow in real-time the #Assange hearings currently taking place, then visit Craig Murray's blog to catch up and read his thorough and detailed daily summaries. These are not short pieces, but fairly long and complete reports about what is being discussed, presented, and challenged during the sessions, going in details of the anomalies and tactics used by the prosecution.

Currently no mainstream media, even those who present themselves as independent, are covering the hearings in any serious fashion, if at all.

Regardless of what you think of Assange and #WikiLeaks it is important that what is being discussed there can circulate as much as possible. Many things are being debunked, and overall, the outcome of the hearings for potential US extradition will have dramatic chilling effects on future efforts to publish such documents.

craigmurray.org.uk/

timorl boosted

I got two pieces of in the mail today, one nationalistic and another neoliberal, both on the same issue. I'm positively surprized by the quality of the nationalistic one, less than half of it was fear-mongering, and the rest even contained some not completely distorted data! The neoliberal one was predictably reasonable in these respects too. Together they pointed to enough issues and data related to the proposal, that I would know where to start research if I wanted to decide which way to vote. I cannot yet vote in , but it's nice knowing that works well here.

timorl boosted

software vs writing 

software: no one knows what you do, and everyone who does including yourself hates it. there are limitless niches of valuable work to be done — valuable in a social sense, as open source of course goes unpaid — but most such niches are so obscure that the necessary connective tissue required to form the greater whole will never materialize, unless done by capitalists, who will ruin it.

writing: everyone writes. everyone writes better than you. everyone writes so much that editors beyond number are bored of stories better than anything you’ll ever write. they are so bored that even joking about the boredom is cliche. when you receive a $20 check for a work you spent a month shopping around, you will feel grateful. but at least it is much harder to write anything deadly than it is in software.

timorl boosted

Mass produced hardware is bad for the environment and usually involves poor working conditions for employees.

However mass production usually means accessibly. Cheap smartphones have opened the poorest parts of the world to the internet.

How to we get the best of both worlds? Sustainable and accessible. I'm going to throw privacy friendly on top of that.

I want it all.

timorl boosted

Tech opinion: we need a Linux of phones

And I don't mean like android or like an actual Linux distribution for phones, I mean the same approach to mobile development that's taken to Linux development, which is make shit that works on the worst of devices, have a million forks for users to pick from, try wacky stuff and weird configurations, and let me touch every single part of my device

I got a leaflet in the mail warning me of the dangers of a proposed initiative to build cycling paths. Half of the "problems" listed sound very appealing to me, too bad I cannot vote in referendums yet.

I love reading stuff intended to convince me of something, that ends up convincing me of the opposite.

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