m0xEE @m0xee@librem.one

Various Artists – Aurora 2025: Passage

https://www.clongclongmoo.org/2025/03/09/various-artists-aurora-2025-passage/

#alternative #byncsa #electronic #idm #ccmusic #creativecommons

If you had unlimited money, what are the pieces of software you would buy out and release as open source?

#StarTrek

We found him sleeping like this.

#CatsOfMastodon

#RandomFact #RandomFacts #Fact #Facts #Cat #Cats

I don't want YouTube video to watch, I want pages to read.

YMMV of course, but I don't want to spend ten minutes to watch something that I can read in probably five, and with more satisfaction.

If there's nothing to SEE, why a video? We all know by now that microlearning is useless crap.

Void Linux users... buckle up

**xbps-tui**: A TUI for the xbps package manager.

Supports search, filter, package info & more!

Written in Rust & built with @ratatui_rs

Source: https://codeberg.org/lukeflo/xbps-tui

#rustlang #ratatui #tui #voidlinux #linux #package #manager #terminal

Not a care in the world.

#CatsOfFediverse #oneorangebraincell #CatsOfMastodon #orangecats

It typically takes six years for them to begin to grow.

Regarding the US scandal about Social Security database[^1], a completely unrelated anecdote from an IT practitioner.

I once worked for one firm developing an IT system for managing corporate pensions. I managed to erase the most traumatising memories, but just imagine this: a system developed since 1980’s that started as a set of complex electronic spreadsheets (think early MS Excel), then migrated to early local databases (think MS Access), then migrated to PL/SQL where textual representation of the user interface was implemented in SQL.

Please re-read the last part above, so that you can fully imagine this little coding wonder - text and then HTML being printed from inside SQL. I know most people likely won’t believe this, but please believe me that was true - and then think for a minute about maintainability of such code. And say a short prayer for its developers.

It was not done by choice, of course - that’s the end result of 40+ years of continued development of a system that constantly remained in production, with production data loaded, on which real people’s pensions depended.

On top of it add dozens of changes in pension law, which must have been accumulated in the code because you must differently calculate pension before and after say 1994. On top of it add dozens of code variants created for different clients with different needs and jurisdictions.

Now about the data. This is the part most misunderstood by people in EU - in UK and US there’s no central database of citizens, like for example we have PESEL in Poland. At birth you’re assigned a PESEL identifier and it accompanies you the whole life and uniquely identifies you for your salary, pension, healthcare and everything. Britons say it’s “for privacy”, which is why when we apply for a bank account or rent a car we need to bring a pile of bank statements and utility bills for the last three years, but let’s not dwell on this subject.

The second part to this is the legal culture of declaring your identity rather than having it certified by government agencies, so if you once write “Annie” and then 10 years later you write “Ann” or “Anne”, this ultimately creates three database objects that are really one physical person. On top of this add typos and reading or OCR errors. The consequence of this is terrible inconsistency and duplication of data because there’s no single reference id.

When read article on US Social Security database issues such as the one below, this rings a bell. All the above factors is precisely how you end up with ~400m entries in a pension database in a country where ~340m people are really living. And that’s how you end up with people with incorrect birth dates and no death dates[^2], for example because nobody legally confirmed their death.

But this doesn’t necessarily mean that US SSA is a crooked system that illegally pays 400m pensions to non-existent people. The total amount of payments that were not legitimate was estimated at just ~0.84% and that’s less than private pension funds[^3].

Of course, Musk could easily fix it if US had implemented an EU-style single national id database to use as a reference record, but good luck with that…

[^1]: https://www.factcheck.org/2025/02/online-posts-misconstrue-data-on-social-security-numbers/

[^2]: https://www.ssab.gov/research/social-security-and-the-death-master-file/

[^3]: https://www.politifact.com/article/2025/feb/17/are-150-year-old-americans-receiving-social-securi/

vm.swappiness = ’

Dare me to do this in prod??

Happy #303day to all who celebrate.

It took me a whole year to finally upload last year's jam...

https://music.axwax.eu/axwax-303-day-2024/

#MyMusic #BonkWaveAdjacent

Happy #303day !
.
#tb303 #303day2025 #synth #music #roland #bass

Aliceffekt - Oylaen Cannalix

How my Firefox became a LibreWolf

New blog-post: https://www.davidrevoy.com/article1065/how-my-firefox-became-a-librewolf

#firefox #librewolf #tos #webcomic

Beatrix is still a magnificent girl, even in sickness and old age. #caturday #cats #catsofmastodon

Meet my newest foster! She arrived Tuesday evening and has settled in so quickly! She'll probably be ready to start meeting potential adopters in the next few days, as soon as I can decide on a name for her.

#Cats #Caturday #StandardIssueCat #TabbyCat #FosterCat #AdoptDontShop #AlleyCatProject

ROUND V - Phase 1 - match 11/13

Which one is the best progressive rock album?

Mike Oldfield, Tubular Bells (1973)
or
Frank Zappa, ‘The Grand Wazoo’ (1972)

See pinned post on profile for the tournament rules

Please 𝗕𝗢𝗢𝗦𝗧

YOU ARE STRONGLY ENCOURAGED TO GIVES EACH ALBUM A FRESH LISTEN BEFORE VOTING

#KingusMusicTournaments #MusicTournament #ProgressiveRock #ProgRock #KMTPoll #Music #MikeOlfield #FrankZappa