Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

Study about the impact of open source software & hardware on technological independence, competitiveness and innovation in the EU economy - https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/study-about-impact-open-source-software-and-hardware-technological-independence-competitiveness-and "The main breakthrough of the study is the identification of open source as a public good." 390 pages, free download

SOMEONE has gotta be clinking their champagne glasses about the fact that they made the unemployment benefits run out on labor day

Germany wants phone makers to offer 7 years of security updates
https://www.engadget.com/germany-phone-makers-7-years-security-updates-163601435.html?src=rss #bigtech #purism #librem5

Study says Europe is 21 years behind its emissions reduction goals
https://www.engadget.com/europe-21-years-behind-emissions-goals-enel-study-180121943.html?src=rss #climatechange #climatecrisis #leadonclimate

Big Tech is the problem, but is antitrust the solution? What about copyright abuse, patent trolling and other shady tactics? Yes! But antitrust is foundational, because monopolies have more to spend on lobbying and less disagreement about how to spend it.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/starve-beast-monopoly-power-and-political-corruption

“We are responsible for creating a culture in which we can remain private.”
In conversation with privacy specialist Carissa Véliz
https://protonmail.com/blog/carissa-veliz-data-privacy/ #privacy #purism

EFF Threat Lab's new tool `apkeep` lets you download Android APKs directly from the command-line in either a Linux desktop or Android mobile environment. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/09/introducing-apkeep-eff-threat-labs-new-apk-downloader

Schools should be using #Nextcloud.

At least, that's what the French government thinks!

What do YOU think?
https://apps.education.fr/

I have started a small fundraiser for a friend that needs mental health support. Any help is welcome and appreciated.

https://www.4giving.com/2C8C #funding #peersupport #mentalhealth

Another day where I found myself pointing someone to one of my old Linux Journal articles to help with a task. This time it was an article about VIM macros from 2014: https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/return-mac

This is hard to read, but it's quite right. https://eand.co/this-is-how-a-civilization-collapses-c3d9f113b4cd

Wow. This is what I've been looking for, because it's what we (as a species & civilisation) need! *Open source* digital public infrastructure. Here's an example: the world's most widely used public health software system! https://dhis2.org - where I found out about this: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/08/4-reasons-you-should-care-about-digital-public-infrastructure

Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft—all of whom made big publicized announcements in June 2020 that they would stop selling face recognition technology to police—attended the April 2021 "industry day" informational session.

https://www.documentcloud.org/projects/ices-raven-204592/

ICE convened a meeting of dozens of surveillance technology providers in an effort to find companies to build a massive suite of intelligence collection, fusion, and analysis tools.

https://twitter.com/caro1inehaskins/status/1433053445632765957

#Opec member urges #OilProducers to focus more on #RenewableEnergy | #FossilFuels | The Guardian

A potentially interesting development.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/01/opec-member-urges-oil-producers-to-focus-more-on-renewable-energy

#Environment #Renewables #GlobalWarming #ClimateChange #Iraq

I know an old lady who swallowed dewormer for horse. She's dead of course.

She swallowed dewormer to chase the bleach, she swallowed the bleach to chase the bulb, she swallowed the bulb cuz it's UV, which everyone knows makes COVID flee.

She did all these things cuz talk radio said, but I don't know why she's not jabbed instead. I guess she's dead.

@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/