timorl @timorl@qoto.org

first: I think that the power war is about corporate interests, which has never been shy in using any means - now they use a conflict in the community (struggle 2) to divide it, in order to consolidate power.

It is the dilemma of FLOSS, that its achievements are being used to amass immense profit and power by the platform industry. In commons theory, this is called "enclosure" and means the exploitation of "free" resources. free means "owned by no one" (and economic theory knows only two types of ownership: state and private) - even if in fact, these resources are maintained by informal communities. this is the case in land-grabbing from indigenous communities around the world, and I think in a way also in FLOSS.

It also points to another aspect in FLOSS: I was inspired by feminist activists to read the FSM as a feminist manifesto - because it addresses exploitation and offers a way to change it. And indeed, if you look at it that way, it is all about protecting a social practice (of programming). But the solution it takes, in form of the GPL, is acting on the level of the product of that social practice, not the social practice itself. This mindset of valuing the product over the social practice is also alive in the principle of meritocracy.

Using #Pinephone #Mobian as a main phone Day 4

I didn't make reports since day 1. On day 2, I sent and received a few sms texts. On day 3, I spent an hour on a phone call with my dad (he got vaccinated the day before, yay!). The internal speaker was on the quiet side at max volume, a known issue for which there's a tweak. The back of the UBports CE was very hot by the end. It might be useful to swap the back cover with the Plasma Mobile version which has a graphene tape inside.

1/x

@timorl

GCC does not satisfy the "one month" requirement: that's why we need better compilers (and languages)

But this IS a political issue!

If you cap complexity, you reduce costs and this way you reduce the power corporation can extort to users.

If you can rewrite anything you run in a month, no company is going to betray your trust.

As for the "simplicity ideology with complex compilers" you are talking about, I think you are confusing simplicity and easiness.

Simplicity is very different from easiness: simplicity provides freedom, easiness produce lock-in. But more often than not, simple tools requires more mental effort than easy one.

IMHO simplicity should always be preferred in Free Software.

#sputnik #corona #vaccine
Not that I care too much, but this is interesting.

1. few weeks ago (in a desperate PR action) the govt of Slovakia bought 2Mio doses of Sputnik V vaccine.
2. instead of directly distributing it, the govt asked the national testing institute for medicines (or whatever is the name) to approve it
3. the institute finally delivered a report stating that a) the docs to the vaccine is severely incomplete, b) the Russian producer refuses to answer further questions both from the institute and from EMA and c) they noticed that the vaccine batches across countries significantly differ in what they are and how they are handled. Most importantly d) the batch used for Lancet study of efficacy is different than the one Slovakia bought so it’s unclear what are the real performance properties of this stuff. In turn, the institute recommended to use the vaccine only at significant risk as they are not equipped to evaluate this more thoroughly (only EMA is).
4. in turn, the Russian producer (after speaking to the now ex-PM of Slovakia) alleged this as fake news and
5. requested return of the whole delivery on the ridiculous ground that in a breach of sales contract the vaccine was put to test by a 3rd party lab.

Source of the latest points: https://twitter.com/sputnikvaccine/status/1380158709985329155

Well. Personally, I totally agree with the view that the conditions and scrutiny for admitting this vaccine shall be the same as for other producers, but Russian producer thinks otherwise and thereby withholds important information. They obviously try to force other countries to use this on the basis of plain belief that it works as marketed. And these antics about requesting it to be sent back, well… If they fully refund it too, I guess it should be OK. We learned something new about vaccine politics here though.

I agree with everything on this chart.. People tend to have the risks of an "AI war" in the future all backwards...

Another agency puts the coalition of Piráti and STAN on the first place in a Czech parliamentary elections poll! Many thanks to all our supporters!

@timorl I'm a bit late but you can do this by opening up the thread in their instance (click on the date by one of the posts (preferably the highest one) from said instance). Yw.

The Most Important Scarce Resource is Legitimacy - https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/03/23/legitimacy.html excellent post by @VitalikButerin
, creator of the most interesting/important cryptocurrency, #Ethereum (v @azeem)

A colleague mentioned today that the April Fools tradition of pranking unsuspecting people into believing something false can be very unwelcome on the receiving side. That made me think of better ways to observe April Fools and I think I've found a slightly Discordian one that I wish I'd thought of years ago.

Let's share puzzles/riddles that often leave the listener very confused and help them realize that something they might have believed about the world is inaccurate. I think it's much better, because it's educational, there's no temptation not to ask the recipient whether they wish to take part beforehand, and I don't expect recipients to feel like they're being made fun of.

Let me start with a physics puzzle I'm fond of:

Consider a car that travels northward with speed v. Assume there are no losses (no rolling friction, vacuum, etc.) so the car travels at constant speed with engine off. At a point in time, the car engages its engine and speeds up to 2*v northward. How much work did the car engine do?

Well, we can compute the increase of car's kinetic energy: m/2*((2v)^2-v^2)=m/2*3v^2

Alas, let us consider a different (inertial) reference frame: one that moves northward with speed v (note that it's not tied to the car, even though it starts stationary in it). In that reference frame the car sped up from 0 to v, so the increase in car's kinetic energy is m/2*v^2.

What gives? How much energy did the engine actually have to use to speed the car up?

h/t to Ryszard Zapała, my HS physics teacher

Celebrating my first commit making it into the mainline Linux kernel: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/drivers/usb/typec/tps6598x.c?h=v5.12-rc4&id=3cac9104bea41099cf622091f0c0538bcb19050d
Lines added: 0
Lines removed: 1
Can I call myself a "contributor" now even though technically I didn't add anything, just removed one line? 😃

“Ruby off the Rails: Code library yanked over license blunder, sparks chaos for half a million projects • The Register” https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/25/ruby_rails_code/

The ergonomics of modern proof writing just get better and better.

This is just a proof about a C program. Nothing in the program is important from a philosophical standpoint. But the logic and implementation is swell.

The logic is called higher-order impredicative concurrent separation logic. The separation part allows me to only have to think about small parts of the C program at a time. Multiple people can work on the same proof without stepping on each other.

The implementation allows for a lot of automation in proof writing. Most of the heavy lifting and boring stuff, like interfacing integers to registers of 64 bits are done. There is plenty of room to create more automation for common proof strategies.

#chatcontrol is an EU plan to spy in real time on *all* your communication, including encrypted messengers like Signal. Let me put it bluntly: If the state doesn't trust me, I will never trust the state. This is unacceptable. Period.

There is a nice example for weaponized language in contracts and politicians:

best-effort

What native speakers familiar with contract terms understand: you make no guarantees or commitments in the fulfillment of something

What non-native speakers or unfamiliar with this term understand: wow, they committed to maximum effort

So the EU official complaining about AstraZeneca deliveries not being “best effort”: they were exactly that! Bottom-barrel, no guarantees service.

Pat #animation done! Took a while! Lots of #Blender #3D and #lowpoly related learning on the way. Also my first hand painted textures! I'm kinda proud of the fennec one.

cc @amaral @polychrome @MadestMadness @codepuppy

The hand crafted pats I promised like a month ago 😅