keverets @keverets@librem.one

The auto industry has almost completely abandoned the idea of selling affordable cars in the U.S. https://www.motor1.com/features/710453/cheap-cars-dead/

China is plainly planning to fill the gap, as Japan did some decades ago.

This will -- guaranteed -- lead to a furious response, but that won't include US carmakers actually competing. The response will be protectionism, because one thing history has shown us is that American companies facing foreign competition are terrified of actual competition.

Everyone said get a Brother printer so I bought a 3-in-1 scanner and printer. There seems to be something wrong with it though. I plugged it into a Linux laptop, opened a document, pressed print, selected the printer, and it printed. Then I opened simple-scan, pressed scan, and it scanned.

This isn't how printers and scanners are supposed to work. Where do install the drivers that don't work properly etc? This was no fun. I demand a refund.

Some of you know today as π-day.

But the real insiders know that today is the 30th anniversary of the 1.0 release of Linux.

Every turtle should be provided with a skateboard.

After being kneecapped by a #patents troll years ago, #Mozilla Location Services, the only somewhat trusted (non-Google/Apple) "Wi-Fi positioning system" (geolocation based on triangulating collected #WiFi SSIDs), is now shutting down: https://github.com/mozilla/ichnaea/issues/2065

MLS was how #GeoClue could get a meters-accurate location without a #GPS receiver / sky line-of-sight.

It was used by many #GNOME / #KDE apps to get instantaneous neighborhood-level location (for maps, local weather…) on #Linux laptops.

🚨Ford got caught. For months, his government claimed there was nothing wrong with their Greenbelt grab. Through @OntarioNDP FOI requests we see that Ford's staff repeatedly hid in emails using code names (G*) to replace "Greenbelt" to evade FOI request. https://thenarwhal.ca/ontario-greenbelt-code-words/

Over many years, I have been gradually replacing all of the paragraphs in the Ship of Theseus Wikipedia article.

'Places across the U.S. are testing no-strings cash as part of the social safety net' - @NPR

We should expand UBI programs.

#UBI #UniversalBasicIncome

https://www.npr.org/2024/03/05/1233440910/cash-aid-guaranteed-basic-income-social-safety-net-poverty

If one simply must monger, might I suggest fish or cheese, as opposed to…say…fear or war.

Immediately tosses all my existing subpar teapots out the window… 😢

I've read a lot online about how "Y2K was overblown". As an engineer who worked like crazy in 1999 to correct our systems this drives me crazy.

Today I read about games going offline, watches getting frozen and airline tickets showing the wrong date.

Because of a leap year. Which happens every FOUR years (give or take).

Yeah Y2K was a once every 1000 year issue.

Isn't 2038 going to be fun.

Just published my newest article. This one is about the billionaire-fueled effort to ban basic income experiments, the group responsible, and the names of their biggest known donors.

https://www.scottsantens.com/billionaire-fueled-lobbying-group-behind-the-state-bills-to-ban-universal-basic-income-experiments-ubi/

"Some people say light is waves, and some say it's particles, so I bet light is some in-between thing that's both wave and particle depending on how you look at it. Am I right?" "YES, BUT YOU SHOULDN'T BE!"
https://xkcd.com/2898/

RTO doesn’t improve company value, but does make employees miserable: Study

Data are consistent with bosses using RTO to reassert control and scapegoat workers.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/02/rto-doesnt-improve-company-value-but-does-make-employees-miserable-study/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

The most feared melee weapon of the post-apoc

#ttrpg #weapons

Some of Thinking Machines’ later models had built in refrigerant based cooling systems.

Latest from Doctors without Borders (MSF):
────
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) condemns in the strongest possible terms the killing of two MSF staff family members during an Israeli offensive on Al-Mawasi, Khan Younis, Gaza, Palestine. Six other people were injured in the attack.

Late on the evening of 20 February, Israeli forces conducted a military operation in Al-Mawasi, located on Gaza’s coastline, during which an Israeli tank fired on a house sheltering MSF colleagues and their families. The attack killed the daughter-in-law and wife of one of our colleagues, and injured six people, five of whom were women or children. Bullets were also fired at the clearly marked MSF building, hitting the front gate, the building’s exterior, and the interior of the ground floor.

Ambulance teams were delayed for more than two hours by the shelling in the area, but were later able to reach the site and bring the wounded, some sustaining burn injuries, to the International Medical Corps Field hospital in Rafah.

"The amount of force being used in densely populated urban environments is staggering, and targeting a building knowing it is full of humanitarian workers and their families is unconscionable."
Meinie Nicolai,
MSF General Director
────

Read it in full on their website:
https://www.msf.org/msf-strongly-condemns-deadly-israeli-attack-msf-shelter-gaza

Layoffs are happening because upper management has a herd mentality across tech companies and because we've become a conventional company more focused on the next quarter than on the long term.

Layoffs are happening because our leadership team are all billionaires or near-billionaires who have no idea what it is like to be rank and file any longer.

Layoffs are happening because our union isn't strong enough to fight back.

Layoffs are NOT happening because we're being replaced with AI.

Signal still requires phone number to get started, but supporting usernames as identifiers after that -- a significant improvement.

https://www.wired.com/story/signal-launches-usersnames-phone-number-privacy/