The San Francisco Police Department illegally spied on Black-led protests against police violence in 2020. Watch @eff and @ACLU_NorCal ask a court to hold SFPD accountable at a livestreamed hearing. https://www.eff.org/press/releases/livestreamed-hearing-friday-eff-will-ask-court-issue-judgment-against-sfpd-illegally
💶🏆💵 Know an individual, team, or organization creating #OpenSource #software for good? Tell them to apply for the 2022 Pizzigati Prize, which celebrates software #developers and awards cash grants. #FreeSoftware #FLOSS
https://www.nten.org/article/apply-for-the-2022-pizzigati-prize/
TIL that the word "robot" derives from the Czech word "robota."
"Robota," is Czech for "corvee," i.e. the labor that feudal peasants were required to provide to the sovereign or lord in feudal Europe.
The word "robot" was introduced to English via the 1920 sci-fi play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) by Czech writer Karel Čapek. In the play, a factory creates artificial people who at first are happy to serve humans, but eventually revolt and kill everyone...but also learn how to love. 🤯
Canon can't get enough toner chips, so it's telling customers how to defeat its DRM.
https://arstechnica.com/?p=1824817
The data indicates that Agile projects aren't scalable and produce lesser quality than PSP, TSP, or RUP projects. This means that software quality has probably declined over the last 15 - 20 years.
For some good news, open source software does fall into the upper half of the quality levels; open source is more quality driven than (e.g.) financial software.
Capers Jones is proposing an overhaul of software education and oversight similar to what occured in medicine. He makes a strong case that is more realistic than the "just throw more programmers at it" proposals that are popular in the software industry.
Could you imagine a call for everyone to learn to be a doctor? Starting in grade school?
"We all have bodies that we use every day, so we should all learn how to do surgery!" /sarcasm
Via Alexandra Bradbury, art by https://twitter.com/lizar_tistry
The Teamster and UAW wins are not so straightforward, but they create real opportunities.
In Iowa city, Chomp, a food delivery app owned as a cooperative has outcompeted the tech giants.
It provides an exciting model for restaurants to bounce back from the pandemic, with six cities across the US seeking to replicate their success.
This is the first issue of a weekly newsletter about cooperative success stories and ideas about the future of the movement.
https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/new-hampshire-residents-make-your-voice-heard-on-january-11th
New Hampshire residents and those in surrounding areas can support a new piece of free software legislation to be introduced in the New Hampshire state legislature on
**Tuesday, January 11th** at 10:30 a.m. EST.
House Bill (HB) 1273
Our Freedom to Write and Read Everything" (SOFTWARE) Act
The 77th edition of my weekly collection of news about #LinuxPhones (@PINE64 #PinePhone, #PinePhonePro, @purism #Librem5 and such), #LinBits, is out!
https://linmob.net/linbits-77-weekly-linux-phone-news-week51-52/
The end of the year in Linux Phones, let's have a last LinBits: A new #Maui Shell for phones and tablets, #postmarketOS v21.12, #Mobian on the PinePhone Pro, #GTK 4.6.0, an app-list replacement prototype and more!
Of the companies that market stalkerware—sometimes under the guise of child safety or employee-monitoring software—@evacide told the TED audience, “Do these companies know that their tools are being used as tools of abuse? Absolutely.” https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/05/watch-eff-cybersecurity-director-eva-galperins-ted-talk-about-stalkerware
RT @kwiens: And the winner for Privacy Worst in Show #ces2022 awarded by @eff is a light bulb that spies on you. Boo! https://t.co/af17ipuz…
More attacks on public schools. #dumballover
https://inthesetimes.com/article/chicago-teachers-union-public-schools-covid-lockout-pandemic
Strong words from Capers Jones, "The software industry has the worst metrics and worst measurement practices of any industry in human history. It is one of very few industries that cannot measure its own quality and its own productivity. This is professionally embarrassing." #softwaredevelopment #softwareengineering #dumballover
#ShlaerMellor, #FunctionPointAnalysis, #punk, #environmentalist, #unionAdvocate, #anarchosocialist
"with a big old lie and a flag and a pie and a mom and a bible most folks are just liable to buy any line, any place, any time" - Frank Zappa