Dean @dean@librem.one

Microsoft now owns, or will soon own, one of the best text-to-speech engines for blind power-users, through its acquisition of Nuance. But the code has been abandoned for years. It seems unlikely that this TTS engine is a valuable asset for Microsoft. So let's petition them to open-source it. https://www.change.org/p/microsoft-open-source-eti-eloquence (No, I didn't start the petition, but I'm in agreement with it.)

2 YEARS! For 730 days, Julian #Assange has been rotting in "British Guantanamo", after being forcefully removed from EC embassy, his political asylum illegally revoked.

His crime? Exposing the true nature of the war crimes of the US and the UK, in an undeniable, un-censorable and searchable way.

Massive breaches of the rule-of-law concern us all!

Beyond Assange and WikiLeaks is the fate of free speech, free press, and our collective ability to publish online.

#FreeAssangeNow #DropTheCharges

Delete Chrome. Now.

Google is using its exceptionally powerful position to make *the browser itself* analyze your browsing behavior and serve that on a plate in the form of "cohorts" to anyone interested.

They are transforming Chrome into a "browsing-history-passport" - right now.

If you care about your intellectual freedom even a little bit, you must put Chrome out of your life as soon as possible. Support others doing the same.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/google-testing-its-controversial-new-ad-targeting-tech-millions-browsers-heres

#DeleteChrome

@jwkicklighter @jele

We do a disservice to people who genuinely have a hard time picking up social cues or "reading the room", when we put that in the same category as decades of toxic behavior--behavior which literally thousands of people have attempted to change since the 1980s.

I would encourage you to read Sumana's post, here: "Not The First Time We Tried" (many other detailed such accounts exist).

https://www.harihareswara.net/sumana/2021/03/26/0

The Federation Falacy - On Life & Lisp: https://rosenzweig.io/blog/the-federation-fallacy.html

I'm sure plenty of you disagree, I think I recall specifically that.

Personally I like advocating P2P, to avoid asking asking the question of "which server do you want to use?"

I renamed the essay to "Towards A Cooperative Technology Movement" and moved it to https://cooperativetechnology.codeberg.page/

Ada Lovelace is known for being the first computer programmer, which is cool, except 1) she never actually ran her programs, 2) the programs were for a machine that was never built, and 3) neither her program or the machine had any influence on modern CS.
[ . . . ]
Why not instead use Barbara Liskov? The "Liskov Substitution Principle", the 'L' in SOLID, is named after her. Her work on CLU has influenced almost all modern languages. She invented abstract data types. She invented ITERATORS!
[ . . . ]
Or Frances Allen? First woman to win the Turing Award. Major, *major* innovations in optimizing compilers that compiled high level languages into FAST bytecode. Without her we might still be stuck writing assembly for anything that needs performance.
[ . . . ]

GNOME 40 is almost here meaning updates are on the way! Learn a little bit more about what's changing in Epiphany in this blog from Alexander Mikhaylenko: https://blogs.gnome.org/alexm/2021/03/13/reinventing-tabs/

#GNOME40 #Epiphany #opensource

"Ulysses claims it can currently access more than 15 billion vehicle locations around the world every month, and it estimates that, by 2025, 100 percent of new cars will be connected and transmitting gigabytes of collectible data per hour." #privacy https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/03/one-company-wants-to-sell-the-feds-location-data-from-every-car-on-earth/

Today I learned freezing soap bubbles are beautiful.

Hiring more devs: https://puri.sm/jobs/

* https://puri.sm/job/on-site-computing-device-technician/

* https://puri.sm/job/pureos-gtk-application-development/

* https://puri.sm/job/coreboot-pureboot-heads-me-fsp-firmware-developer/