Kyle Rankin @kyle@librem.one

Managers who could only measure productivity by butts-in-seats are turning to surveillance software and always-on webcams to measure butts-in-seats at home. If you don't trust your employees and can't measure their productivity, maybe you are the problem. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/04/30/work-from-home-surveillance/

Well that's pretty encouraging. It looks like when people are better informed about #privacy trade-offs and must opt-in, instead of being forced to opt-out, many prefer the privacy-preserving option. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/04/half-of-americans-wont-trust-contact-tracing-apps-new-poll-finds/

Here's one in likely many #IoT startups that go out of business from #COVID-19, leaving customers with bricked hardware. Vendor lock-in from cloud-dependent devices using proprietary APIs causes so much e-waste when those services eventually go away. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/04/after-prolonged-service-outage-petnet-shuts-down-citing-coronavirus/

Many of the #infosec arguments in the encryption backdoor debate (life-or-death, manpower vs automation, tech ineffectiveness, #privacy + freedom vs benefit, govt. + big tech power) apply to #COVID-19 app tracking debate, but with many ppl changing sides.

As an update to this, @purism published a video to demonstrate how hardware kill switches work in practice to enable your webcam and microphone only during meetings, not the rest of the time your laptop is aimed at your living room or bedroom. https://youtu.be/gw1M9c3x4uQ

I'm at the phase in quarantine where I'm daydreaming about living on a sailboat for months at a time. Instead, I just spent the day cleaning and reorganizing my garage.

(apologies to Katrina and the Waves)

I used to think maybe you caught it, now baby I'm sure
And I just can't wait for a doctor to knock on my door
Now every time I get a new Prime box, gotta hold myself down
Cause I just gotta try the new treatment that's going around

Now I'm injecting sunshine, whoa
I'm injecting Clorox, whoa
I'm ingesting Lysol, whoa
And don't it feel good
Hey, all right now
And don't it feel good

I expected a global pandemic with partial shutdown of society would be the time for preppers to shine and practice their training. Yet after only a month of easy sheltering (grid up, clean water, ample food, even Netflix), some preppers are starting to crack. Disappointing.

Once I ran outside
Now I stay inside
This tainted test you've given
I give you all a swab can give you
Take my tears and that's not nearly all
Tainted test:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/cdcs-failed-coronavirus-tests-were-tainted-with-coronavirus-feds-confirm/

So hypothetically, if you can get paid to take barrels of negative-value oil, do they offer contactless delivery or at least curbside pickup? #stimuluscheck https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-19/oil-drops-to-18-year-low-on-global-demand-crunch-storage-woes

I transferred some of the Altbier to a 6L keg that fits inside my kitchen fridge and is pressurized using a CO2 canister. Three weeks from grain to glass.

Some folks were curious about the time from brew day to glass. This Altbier is an ale and ferments faster (1-2 weeks) than a lager (3-4). Last week I chilled it down to cellar temps and transferred it into a keg and connected the keg to CO2 to carbonate for 1-2 weeks.

One underreported downside to wearing a mask so much is that all this talking like Batman is wearing out my voice.

In a world full of bored pranksters willing to zoombomb en masse, a truly anonymous #COVID19 contact tracing app doesn't stand a chance. It'll only take a small number of trolls to make identification mandatory.

Today I was reminded of the time I remotely wiped a server over SSH and wrote about it for Linux Journal. I figured some of you might not have read it before and would find it entertaining: https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/remotely-wipe-server

For the sake of our phones (and clothing) I hope the COVID-19 5G truthers setting fire to antennas in the UK never discover these apps use radio waves to track the infection.

I'm so happy I splurged for Penguin's high quality cloth hardcover of War and Peace (Briggs translation). It not only feels great in your hands, it has a silk ribbon bookmark! #booknerd