There is no public domain day in Canada this year and thanks to copyright term extension passed by the government in a budget implementation bill in 2022 there will not be one for 20 years.
https://twitter.com/DukeCSPD/status/1609557088153341952
The Canadian copyright term extension represents one of the very worst policy developments of 2022 as the government buried the reform in a budget bill, ignored its own copyright review recommendations, limited access to Canadian culture and history, and added costs to education.
Henrietta Lacks was a poor, Black, young mother diagnosed w cervical cancer in 1951. When her cells were collected w/o consent, scientists saw they multiplied remarkably fast.
“HeLa” cells changed #science. They’re used globally to study viruses, drugs, hormones, genes, diseases & develop vaccines. Lacks passed away at 31 w no recognition.
Rebecca Skloot’s beautiful book about her life & legacy is changing that. Now her statue will replace Robert E. Lee in NC. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/20/us/henrietta-lacks-statue-roanoke-virginia.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare #history
TIL: There is a cursed color in the Kodak ProPhoto RGB color space which, when converted to sRGB using pre-August-2020-Security-Update Android's image conversion routines, causes an integer overflow and a crash due to a rounding error. Some dude accidentally created an image (https://www.flickr.com/photos/gaurav_agrawal/48746079687/) which contains the cursed color on a single pixel. In 2020 if you set this image as your desktop on a Google or Samsung device, the device would brick & lose all onboard data https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXKvwPjCGnY
Elon suspended the account tracking his private jet & the personal account of the college student running it -- who's now on Mastodon.
Follow: @elonjet
Wikipedia’s best secret link: see articles about nearby places! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby
Raspbian should not exist, BTW. They had a little bit of cover forking Debian for performance reasons but that is long since past.
The Raspbian fork's purpose now is lock rpi users into a ghetto that prevents them from using non-rpi hardware.
As I approach the end of the year, I wanted to look back and see how many projects I have contributed to (not counting the ones that I maintain). This usually happens because I notice an issue with a project. Generally I file an issue, it's rewarding to in and fix the issue myself, plus the issue gets fixed faster since the maintainer can review and click the "merge button"! This is especially so for documentation, it is very easy to just fix the documentation and file an MR.
This is genius!
#Berlin is allowing cyclists to claim on-street parking spaces for their bikes—for free.
At the same time, they're boosting the price of on-street parking for drivers.
That sends a very, very clear message.
For those of you familiar with your seasonally-appropriate Stuart McLean canon.
(And for those who aren't familiar, are you in for a treat: https://www.canadianliving.com/life-and-relationships/canadian-living-books/article/cozy-up-to-this-short-story-from-the-classic-christmas-at-the-vinyl-cafe )
Delta Chat is an #OpenSource messaging app that works over email @delta https://delta.chat/
Works on desktop/mobile with most every email provider https://providers.delta.chat/
Chat with folks who don't have Delta installed, just email.
Chat with bots (groups, etc) https://simplebot-org.github.io/simplebot-instances/
Share web apps in chat https://webxdc.org/
It can even be run anonymously off a flash drive https://lefherz.net/2022/08/28/how-to-setup-delta-chat-on-tails-in-4-steps/
10 Ways Delta Chat is Better than WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram https://pocketnow.com/10-ways-delta-chat-is-better-than-whatsapp-signal-and-telegram/
This tool that searches your Spotify playlists for the music on Bandcamp works great. Makes a nice list of what to get on today's #BandcampFriday where the revenue share is waived and it all goes to the artist.
Needed a laptop replenishment since the old ones were dead & dying. Purchased a refurbished Lenovo #x230 (which has #coreboot & #libreboot options) and a #PineBookPro . Though the base price was similar, by the time the PBP was delivered it was 50% more expensive.
Though the PBP has a nicer feel and bigger screen, for my purposes (mainly a couch computer for web browsing, video playing, some light development work, and occasionally kid school needs) it isn't worth the premium.
French authorities declare the use of Microsoft Office and Google Docs illegal in schools and education markets, as they don’t follow GDPR and might disturb later competition by making students used to these proprietary solutions.