keverets @keverets@librem.one

From a discussion on a major #HigherEd forum by a senior campus leader,

"We are a #Google school…"

If the comment was, "We are a Coca-Cola school," I suspect we'd hear concerns: marketing products to students, corporate influence in #HigherEducation, even health & safety/quality (all BTW applicable to Google).

If you believe Google (or #Microsoft, #Adobe) is a "global standard," the same case can be made for Coca-Cola (Pepsi). I doubt stating such an alignment would be so promoted.

#EdTech

"How dare you ask me who asked developers to buy tickets for my daughter's pre-wedding party?" says the premier of Ontario https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-ford-stag-doe-1.6749487

Metro.co.uk headline "Tesla goes down across Europe leaving some drivers unable to charge cars" https://metro.co.uk/2023/02/14/tesla-goes-down-across-europe-leaving-some-drivers-unable-to-charge-cars-18282364/

DID YOU KNOW? You can actually design electric cars that can charge their batteries WITHOUT AN APP or any computers of any kind? Kind of like how gasoline pumps used to work? Sure, a battery pack with a microcontroller tends to be more efficient, but it is not strictly necessary. The electric motors of the car must be fully computer controlled, but these computers need not be tied to apps either.

Electric cars all being designed to become useless without an app controlling them is not inherent to electric car technology itself. It is a result of modern day #consumerism (capitalism) where every single business on the face of the Earth gathers data about you, and earns money from selling #ads to you. IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY. This is what @pluralistic calls #enshitification .

And I can't wait to hear people argue with me about how gasoline-fueled cars are better and more reliable because their engines work just fine without apps or cell phones. Electric cars could be this way too, but due to the way businesses make money nowadays, they do not.

It occurs to me I haven’t done a #myfavoritethings for awhile, so let me share with you the work of Ken Isaacs. I first discovered his “How To Build Your Own Living Structures” in my hippie-school library when I was 13, and it blew my mind (in the parlance of the times). It’s a book of DIY recipes for brilliant, idiosyncratic modular structures that saddle the gap between furniture & architecture; to this day I dream of building myself a Superchair. Get yr own copy here! http://letsremake.info/PDFs/k_isaacs.pdf

Me: Write a TED talk about the bullshit of TED talks. Include anecdotes and statistics. Also include a humourous aside about a mule with a spinning wheel. End with "Thank you for attending my TED talk."

ChatGPT:

"Nobody can opt out of paying for parking. People who walk, bike, or take transit bankroll those who drive. In so doing, they are making driving cheaper & thus more prevalent, which in turn undermines the quality of walking, biking, & transit."

Discovered during the week I was unable to access a Kindle book purchased in 2013. Reason? The order was “too old”, and refund issued to buy again. Which was pointless as the book is now more expensive than when I bought it.

Subsequently discovered 66(!!) other ebooks no longer available for download.

Currently 40 minutes in to a support chat with Amazon.

About to learn, I think, whether we purchase ebooks, or rent them…

California has implemented some new permanent COVID-19 regulations. The regulations require that employees shall receive training regarding COVID-19, must be informed of COVID cases in the workplace, and be protected with air filtration through MERV-13 or higher filters. Regulations like these implemented at the state or national level would help to ensure safer workplaces, events, and commercial environments.
https://www.fisherphillips.com/news-insights/10-key-things-new-calosha-permanent-covid-19-regulation.html

Just what I needed: some good news about the #climate impact of the #EU. The EU has probably contributed the most to #ClimateChange so we should also be staying on top of the solutions. "Wind and solar were EU’s top electricity source in 2022 for first time ever" https://www.carbonbrief.org/wind-and-solar-were-eus-top-electricity-source-in-2022-for-first-time-ever/

In roughly the past half-decade, Microsoft went from nowhere to overwhelming dominance of text editors with VSCode, ownership of majority of code hosting (and open source dev) with GitHub, ownership of the dependency stack used by most devs with npm, control over the most popular single language with TypeScript, and is trying to position copilot and ChatGPT as inevitable parts of the future dev process. Nothing negative for the ecosystem will come of this, as the last half century teaches us.

We now have a public pricing page for hosted instances! 🧑🏻‍💻

If you need to run CryptPad in your enterprise, at your school, or for a nonprofit, select the appropriate pricing, fill out the form and get a dedicated quote for your organization. 🤝🏻 🧾

https://cryptpad.org/pricing/

They're about a year old but hanging out at the VPN convening in Austin made me want to repin my old VPN posts

report: https://digital-lab-wp.consumerreports.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/VPN-White-Paper.pdf

do you even need a VPN tho:
https://www.consumerreports.org/vpn-services/should-you-use-a-vpn-a5562069524/

VPNs can be really bad actually: https://www.consumerreports.org/vpn-services/vpn-testing-poor-privacy-security-hyperbolic-claims-a1103787639/

our top picks for privacy and security: https://www.consumerreports.org/vpn-services/mullvad-ivpn-mozilla-vpn-top-consumer-reports-vpn-testing-a9588707317/

hot off the press! https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/research/report-future-of-memory-safety/

In America, there are five walkable cities. Disneyland and Disneyworld are two of them.

TL;DR "We know layoffs don't really cut costs and they hurt productivity, but everyone else is doing them and our board wants to know why we aren't." https://news.stanford.edu/2022/12/05/explains-recent-tech-layoffs-worried/

I read through 70,000 words of Apple's privacy policy and associated guides so you don't have to.

Apple's advertising business has grown massively in recent years, with ads appearing in the App Store, News and Stocks apps. Part of this is its personalized advertising. Everything you do in the App Store is tracked, every tap of the screen and scroll of a page.

https://www.wired.com/story/apple-privacy-data-collection/

#apple #wired #data #privacy #news #advertising #infosec

Time machine

"America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: 'if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?' There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.

Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.”

-Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouses-Five

"Introducing Ring Car Cam!"

now i'm gonna remind folks that everyone's threat profile is different and my security decision-making is not right for everyone, but there is no fucking way you should give Amazon direct access to your driving habits, GPS location, OBD-II port, *and* place a microphone in your car to boot.

all over an LTE connection you do not control.