Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

This is what happens when MBAs get put in charge of everything in society.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/11/mckinsey-the-force-multiplier-for-the-opioid-crisis-goes-all-in-with-anti-public-health-messaging-on-covid.html

Apple's talking about sideloading this week to shift the discussion away from App Store competition. If it had to compete with other secure iPhone app stores (like ones dedicated to gaming) it would have to lower its fees and improve its policies. It's about control not security.

How #GDPR stops #discrimination and protects #equalities | #OpenRightsGroup

The#UK #Government is looking to scrap GDPR now that we’ve left the #EU.

https://www.openrightsgroup.org/how-gdpr-stops-discrimination-and-protects-equalities/

#Brexit

Hard to belive but Nextcloud is the most popular collaboration software in Germany. Ahead of Microsoft, Google, Dropbox and many others. This is the result of a voting of over 60.000 IT professionals. https://nextcloud.com/blog/first-in-germany-again/

A planned lithium mine in Nevada is moving forward despite local resistance.

https://earthnewsreport.com/2021/11/08/plans-to-dig-the-biggest-lithium-mine-in-the-us-face-mounting-opposition/

#Cop26: #world on track for disastrous heating of more than 2.4C, says key report | Cop26 | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/09/cop26-sets-course-for-disastrous-heating-of-more-than-24c-says-key-report

#Environment #GlobalWarming #ClimateChange

And this was motivated by discussions with someone who runs (as I understand it) a "FOSS Advocacy" foundation that actively chooses (& defends the choice) to run proprietary software over viable FOSS alternatives because this person refuses to either learn enough to run the FOSS or involve someone who can.

To me this fully undermines the purpose of the organisation & demonstrates its fundamental lack of viability: it doesn't have the right skill set to be fit for purpose.

Big Oil Was Told It Wasn’t Welcome at UN Climate Talks. It’s the Biggest Presence.
https://gizmodo.com/big-oil-was-told-it-wasn-t-welcome-at-un-climate-talks-1848015074 #COP26 #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #LeadOnClimate

Please boost:

A screen reader for Linux (GUI) is being developed in Rust. If anyone knows Rust and would like to help, or to just view the great work taking shape here, see:

https://yggdrasil-sr.github.io/

#a11y #accessibility #blind #screenreader #coding #rust

A little bit ago I sent an email to Elizabeth Warren, thanking her for pushing for cryptocurrency regulation in the U.S., and asking her to please make cryptocurrency energy use / carbon footprint part of the conversation.

This seems to be something that U.S. legislators need to hear about, because it does not seem to be part of the current conversation *at all*.

Context: https://www.npr.org/2021/11/06/1050430801/cryptocurrencies-bitcoin-elizabeth-warren-gary-gensler

The Alice v. CLS Bank Supreme Court case has led to hundreds of “do-it-on-a-computer” patents being thrown out. Putting that caselaw aside would be a huge step backwards. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/11/senators-push-study-unstable-patent-law-while-patent-trolls-cheer-them

From the companies that brought you outrageous prison phone call rates, we're seeing new advances in surveillance for profit. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/09/catalog-carceral-surveillance-voice-recognition-and-surveillance

Interesting to hear on https://linuxlads.com/s6e19 how @amolith does his self-hosting stuff... we've ended up with surprisingly different approaches, but full respect to you for the approaches you've adopted! Just shows there are many paths to victory in the FOSS world!

Good caselaw beats bad patents. Let’s keep it that way. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/11/senators-push-study-unstable-patent-law-while-patent-trolls-cheer-them

This evening I spent a little time listening to Friday's Democracy Now, including discussion of the ongoing COP26 conference.

I'm pretty familiar with the absurdity of comparing China and India to the U.S. as greenhouse gas emitters, given the much larger population size of those countries compared to ours, but listening tonight I found myself really bothered by the fact that, particularly for India, the kind of people who have the political power to be represented at this kind of event are generally going to be elites of various sorts, which is to say that most of them speak for the portions of India that are currently emitting the most. In particular, I suspect that whether or not India is permitted to continue expanding coal consumption will have very little affect on the poorest Indians living in rural areas, except insofar as those groups are particularly vulnerable to climate change.

This isn't an idea that I've heard much about, and I think it deserves some discussion.

I'm thinking there could be a valuable lesson in here for governments, procurement officers, and educational policy makers... https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/11/these-parents-built-a-school-app-then-the-city-called-the-cops/

@RadiantEmber @mithrandir @platypus

The big ecological harm from a growing forests for lumber in a 20-40 year rotation is that you don't end up with really old or dead trees, which are valuable to deep forest species like woodpeckers. There is of course also some nutrient loss from biomass removal, but it isn't clear how big an issue this is.

A forest researcher once told me that there's an ongoing argument between systems dynamics people, who use models to track where nutrients end up and who say "the sky is falling", and on the ground practitioners who haven't yet seen any sign of decline in nutrients. I come from more of a systems-dynamics background myself, but if the models aren't borne out empirically, it makes me wonder if there are some closed loops that we're overlooking.

We need #FOSS not OSS. We need governments to champion people and communities, not corporations. When you run 'open source' conferences, here's a tip: rather than using Zoom and inviting Microsoft, reject them both and use (wait for it) actual open source software. I'll help you. This is jingoistic bullshit: https://www.openirelandnetwork.com/events/open-source-in-government/ Remember, public corporations and FOSS are fundamentally incompatible because of https://davelane.nz/megacorps + https://davelane.nz/proprietary

‘Reality check’: Global CO2 emissions shooting back to record levels

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/04/reality-check-global-co2-emissions-shooting-back-to-record-levels?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other #COP26 #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #LeadOnClimate