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So if you depend on Google's and Microsoft's, Facebook's etc. products you are subject to regulations set by this companies and government controlling them. If you use free software you are subject to regulations set by wide community of people and you, if skilled enough, can change the laws yourself to suit your needs.

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"How the code regulates, who the code writers are, and who controls the code writers β€”these are questions on which any practice of justice must focus in the age of cyberspace. The answers reveal how cyberspace is regulated."

socialtext.net/codev2/regulati

I... I've spent almost two full weeks on getting this algorithm right.

They're aperiodic tilings of rhombs, which can be constructed through (de Bruijn's) method of multiple grids, which is effectively the same as projecting a 5/6/7/8/9, etc cube grid onto 2d. Shows up in nature as quasicrystals.

Tried to get this working in seexpr, failed miserably. Still spent like 2 days on getting something visible in #Krita.

I am so tired, but happy.

Browsers are big: gitlab.com/snippets/1724353

Let me add a few numbers to these points:

WebKit's JavaScript engine is 467,658 LoC (over 400,000 is C++) across 2,923 unique files
Layout, Rendering, JS APIs, etc: 1,115,597 LoC (over 900,000 C++) across 9,260 unique files
Embedding & I/O: over 337,139 (over 320,000 Objective-C & C++) across 3,402 unique files
"WebInspector": 203,318 LoC (over 150,000 JS) across 1,117 unique files.

1/2

@floppy My main scenarios aren't that Google will persecute, but Google's data stores are an excellent enabler for discrimination. Health insurance, future employers, banks, voter analyses, all of these can be seen as interested in Google's data troves and want to buy services. I think that's secondary, though, a layperson can't foresee all possible abuses of data, and new vectors may arise.

The only way to ensure data won't be abused, is making sure the data aren't aggregated.

@floppy So... he's not vulnerable, doesn't expect to ever become vulnerable in any capacity, and doesn't mind being an enabler for making vulernable persons even more at risk. Privacy is like a vaccine, it doesn't work on the individual level, it works at the crowd level. If only a few persons have privacy, given it is possible, then those persons become persons of interest for whatever actor collects data. 1/2

It's actually quite ironic that renewable energy activism tends to completely ignore one critical resource it uses that also happens to be non-renewable: the land surface.

The challenge here is that the best renewable energy source (solar) uses three orders of magnitude (1000x) more land than the best non-renewable (gas).

To replace gas with nuclear you need pretty much the same area. But to replace gas with solar you suddenly need to find 1000x more extra space.

sciencedirect.com/science/arti

Questions to ask when evaluating an online service 

1. Are they open source to an extent that you're comfortable with? Do they ask you to run proprietary software on your devices? Is the code running on their servers open?

2. If they claim to be open source, do they use an OSI-approved or FSF-approved software license? If not, they're misleading you.

3. Is your personal data handled by such proprietary software? Do you ever transmit your personal data to their servers? Even if open source, they would be able to read and use this data however they wish and you wouldn't be able to tell - do you trust them to? What if they're compelled by law enforcement?

4. Do the needs justify the personal data they are collecting about you? If not, why are they collecting it?

5. If they claim to use encryption for the data which is transmitted to their server - question whether or not it's really private. Do they ever handle the unencrypted data? For example, if an email service claims to encrypt incoming emails, they have an opportunity to read the unencrypted email before they store it. Do they disclose these "gotcha"s, or do they make clear the limitations of their encryption? Is any encrypted information decrypted by software they control, like their web application, or a desktop application which is automatically updated without your consent? If so, they could decrypt it on your computer and transmit the decrypted data back to their servers.

6. Are they responsible for any scarce resources, like an email address, phone number, and so on, which you wouldn't be able to take with you if you leave? Are there ways to provide the same functionality without scarcity, such as the use of your own domain? If so, why aren't they offering them? How important are these resources to your identity, will your friends be able to find you if you choose to stop using the service?

7. How do they make money? What is their motivation for providing services to you? If their circumstances change, will their values change? How likely is change?

@markosaric @freddyym my answer is to use ublock origin to tell them to get fucked, really. If you can't get it through your head that spying on people is not okay then I am not really interested in empathising with you

@freddyym you could get the same info by running awk over your HTTP logs. Client-side analytics is much more invasive.

Rather than trying to reform Facebook/Google/Zoom/Microsoft for their totalitarian leadership, terrifying excesses, breaches of trust, & flagrant abuses of power for shareholder return - clearly a fool's errand - nations should simply do the obvious: stop using them.

That's right. Just stop feeding the machine that's running roughshod over all we (used to) value. We're no where near as helpless as we think. But our gov'ts need to stop listening to the lobbyists. Cooler heads can prevail.

@kmic

As far as I'm aware:

1) very strong anti-nuclear movement
2) large industry that requires 24/7 power supply
3) 1+2= fossil gas is the only acceptable option
4) you can bully others to go anti-nuclear and resell them the gas you imported

RT @virtualcoralie@twitter.com

"If microchips have never been invented, that's exactly what a digital watch would look today."

"The Clock", free-form electronics digital clock made by Gislain Benoit. techno-logic-art.com/clock.htm

techno-logic-art.com/clock.htm

πŸ¦πŸ”—: twitter.com/virtualcoralie/sta

@wolf480pl oh, and you can use sr.ht effectively from a Plan 9 system, the web app is mostly compatible with Mothra and you can use emails for patches and git9 for git.sr.ht and so on.

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