Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

@0 About 5% of computer users have "advanced" literacy, defined as "Some navigation across pages and applications is required to solve the problem. The use of tools (e.g. a sort function) is required to make progress towards the solution. The task may involve multiple steps and operators. The goal of the problem may have to be defined by the respondent, and the criteria to be met may or may not be explicit"

Scheduling a meeting room, or determining "what percentage of the emails sent by John Smith last month were about sustainability" are examples of level-3 tasks.

A quarter of the adult population cannot use computers at all, 14% are at "below level-1" skills, and 30% can only perform very basic level-1 tasks, for a total of 70% of the population which has only very basic skills ... or less.

It's easy to over-estimate the general literacy and numeracy of the population, especially if you yourself are college-educated and work in and/or with information technology.

The United States performs one of the most comprehensive assessments of adult literacy. The key lesson for me is just how limited it is.

https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp

The findings correspond highly to a study of adult computer literacy amongst 20 countries by the OECD:

"Skills Matter: Further Results from the Survey of Adult Skills"
http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264258051-en

Computer usability expert Jacob Nielsen has a discussion of this as well: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/

I've discussed this as "The Tyranny of the Minimum Viable User", which both notes that much of the population has very basic skills, and that this also hampers the very small minority who do.

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/69wk8y/the_tyranny_of_the_minimum_viable_user/

@ajroach42 @alrs @mdhughes

#TyrannyOfTheMinimumViableUser #literacy #AdultLiteracy #ComputerLiteracy #JacobNielsen #UseIT #usability

"Worst cloud vulnerability possible discovered in Microsoft Azure..." Granting read/write access to every database on the service.
#Infosec #News #Vulnerability #Cybersecurity #TheCloud #Cloud #Microsoft #Azure

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/08/worst-cloud-vulnerability-you-can-imagine-discovered-in-microsoft-azure/

Proud parent moment: cooking up brunch in the kitchen and overheard 12yo talking to his cobbers via vid chat and they're bemoaning the impending ultimatum to transfer all Mojang Minecraft accounts to Microsoft accounts. Most of the other kids don't have a problem with it, but I hear my boy saying what an imposition it is and then "actually, I hate Microsoft". So at least I'm doing something right. #parentingWin

It's really disappointing to see that Microsoft are forcing all Minecraft users to create MSFT accounts to continue using the service. Just had to help my boys make the shift, which is pretty soul destroying. It sets them up for creeping data gathering and further exploitation by MSFT.

@lightweight Minetest (https://www.minetest.net/) is pretty good.

@LeoSammallahti
I like the idea, but I'd prefer a platform co-op owned by the unions/union members using the platform, and donors, with the vote weighting heavily favoring the supported workers.

The details of how things work, of course, would be decided democratically by the co-op owners.

New idea - a website that collects links to all ongoing fundraising campaigns of striking workers.

It would be a #platformcoop owned by those who make a recurring monthly donation, that would be distributed equally between all active fundraising campaigns that month.

Thoughts?

Here is an image to illustrate what it could look like.

Today's public service announcement from the Department of The Past.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ziq-burn-the-bread-book-make-anarchy

@lightweight thank you for mentioning about software patents and New Zealand, Dave. You reminded me instantly to my favorite article Software Patents - Obstacles to Software Development https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/software-patents.en.html.

#patent #freesoftware

Stop using Excel to process important business and scientific data.

"Researchers in data-intensive fields (particularly in the life sciences) need better computer skills. Initiatives such as Software Carpentry offer workshops to researchers, but universities should also focus more on giving undergraduates the advanced analytical skills they will need."

https://theconversation.com/excel-autocorrect-errors-still-plague-genetic-research-raising-concerns-over-scientific-rigour-166554

#Excel #DataScience

For folks who think that Microsoft or Google or any tech mega corp (even hasbeens or wannabes) are redeemable, let me point you to this bit of megacorporate treachery (the revelation in NZ Parliament was instrumental to NZ's banning of any new software patents). Microsoft, IBM, and the BSA are all dishonourable entities - it's in their nature. https://wiki.endsoftwarepatents.org/wiki/IBM_and_MS_deciding_New_Zealand_legislation#The_8_June_meeting

Good thing that mega-corporates like Microsoft are so much better at keeping our stuff safe... we should just outsource all our tech needs to them... or should we? https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-microsoft-warns-thousands-cloud-customers-exposed-databases-emails-2021-08-26/

#Apple: "Designed in California, Assembled in China, Purchased by You, Owned by Us."

#privacy #infosec

https://edwardsnowden.substack.com/p/all-seeing-i

While Deliveroo pays its couriers sometimes as little as £2 hour, Wings Coop provides an alternative democratically owned by the couriers.

Could it foster the wider coop economy by expanding ownership to restaurants and partnering with other coops?

A new article on Mutual Interest, a no-paywall media coop owned by our readers & writers.

https://www.mutualinterest.coop/2021/08/wings-co-op-how-the-courier-owned-deliveroo-alternative-could-help-strengthen-the-wider-co-op-economy

Become a Mutual Interest member and vote for your favourite articles in our participatory budgeting here:

https://opencollective.com/mutual-interest-media

New post: Burning 2.5Tb of Bandwidth Hosting a Nitter Instance https://www.wezm.net/v2/posts/2021/nitter-bandwidth/

The #Debian Janitor now automatically produces updated packages with the latest upstream Git commit for about 8k out of the 30k packages in the archive. Instructions on how to add the apt repo and which packages are included at https://janitor.debian.net/fresh / https://jelmer.uk/fresh-builds.html

Samsung can remotely brick TVs it believes are stolen once they reconnect to the Internet, which is required to enable smart TV features. ⁨#privacy https://gizmodo.com/samsung-smart-tvs-can-be-remotely-bricked-if-stolen-1847557228

And, of course, it's money in the bank for the Zooms and Googles and Microsofts of the world. And here's the thing: they're not worthy. Not even close. They're gold-plated assholes with government-granted monopolies.

The genericising of proprietary tech brand names really pisses me off. It's like saying "Let's Subaru to the Countdowns for some Proctor & Gambles, Johnson and Johnsons, and maybe we'll throw in a few Unilevers before we Subaru to our next consumption destination".