Tom Rini @trini@society.oftrolls.com

This might actually get me to try a tiling window manager. I may try installing it on an old netbook. https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2019/06/install-regolith-linux-i3-gaps-ubuntu

"There are people who seem to get really offended about gender fluidity or non-binary folks- but those are just people who feel like their gender is is insecure, you know? and in this day and age it *is* important to keep your gender secure. your gender should contain lowercase letters, uppercase letters, at least one number and one symbol"

Next Long Term Supported Kernel Release https://people.kernel.org/gregkh/next-long-term-supported-kernel-release

#trolleyProblem

In light of the new http2 CVEs I feel more than ever like Battlestar Galactica's vision of the future was quite accurate:

Networking computers together is a huge mistake

Moore's law walks into a bar and buys a round for the bar. Programmers immediately buy another 10,000 rounds expecting to put it on their tab. None of them have noticed that Moore's law left the bar a while ago.

like i've been talking about building safe communications networks *in the context of the fediverse* longer than any of you folks who jumped me last night.

you want to talk shop about security? i'm always game.

but trying to pitch a feature that depends on a hostile, untrusted peer to cooperate as a "safety feature" is nonsense. when people say that it takes two people working together to have safety, they're talking about lifting heavy objects or something. they're not talking about information security.

@frumble there are SBCs with long term availability. e.g. from @olimex
https://olimex.wordpress.com/2019/05/16/long-term-olinuxino-supply-how-it-works/

me: (Finds a question on Ask Libreoffice that answers my question)

also me: (Sees that the question and answer have zero upvotes, so decides to make an account to correct this).

me: (finishes creating account. Clicks the upvote button).

site: "You need >5 points to upvote this".

me: (looks around the room, realizes the bones on the ground were not just for decoration).

I'd like to share a short lesson based on my experience working with computers for a couple of decades or so.

1) Don't ever put all the screws back in until you know it's working.

2) Putting all the screws in will stop something from working.

Sesame Street has given up working with ASAN to work with Autism Speaks instead. https://autisticadvocacy.org/2019/08/asan-has-ended-partnership-with-sesame-street/

Excerpt from the linked open letter:
====
For several years, ASAN consulted with Sesame Street on their See Amazing project and the development of their autistic character, Julia. Until this summer, the content Sesame Street produced showed parents that their autistic children could live great lives, and taught autistic and neurotypical children ways to become friends. Through this approach, See Amazing successfully encouraged the inclusion of autistic children in their communities, and had a widespread positive impact.

Sesame Street has now decided to undo that progress. Its latest PSAs featuring Julia promote Autism Speaks’ “Screen for Autism” initiative and their resource for parents of newly-diagnosed autistic children, the 100 Day Kit. Like much of Autism Speaks’ recent advertising, these PSAs use the language of acceptance and understanding to push resources that further stigma and treat autistic people as burdens on our families. The 100 Day Kit encourages parents to blame family difficulties on their autistic child (“When you find yourself arguing with your spouse… be careful not to get mad at each other when it really is the autism that has you so upset and angry”) and to view autism as a terrible disease from which their child can “get better.” It recommends compliance-based “therapies” and pseudoscientific “autism diets,” but fails to educate families about communication supports. It even instructs parents to go through the five stages of grief after learning that their child is autistic, as they would if the child had died.
====

Dumped by Cloudflare, 8chan gets back online—then gets kicked off again

"8chan and Daily Stormer now both offline as a cloud provider cuts off access."

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/08/8chan-briefly-got-back-online-with-same-cdn-used-by-neo-nazi-daily-stormer/

Random tech musing:
SSH offers stream compression with the -C flag using zlib. This was adequate in the age of slow modem links and even 10Mbit LANs, but now zlib is slower than these.

Zstandard blows the doors off zlib, but I don't forsee OpenSSH changing their compression algorithm anytime soon.

How hard would it be to write a small wrapper that would put zstd in the stdio pipeline that could easily be called with SSH?

I'm spoiled by "vncivewer -via remotehost localhost:1" simplicity.

"Consider it a part of your civic duty: driving up the costs of data breaches for corporations so they have an incentive to invest more heavily in security." https://slate.com/technology/2019/07/equifax-settlement-money-how-to-claim.html

D&D lets you live out all kinds of fantasies, such as:
-Having everyone call you by your preferred name and gender
-Having a big group of friends who do everything together
-Making a reasonable wage as a freelancer
-Being able to murder the terrible leadership of your country
-Getting 8 hours of sleep

Why libraries are the greatest places on earth:

- books
- free!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- quiet, so quiet, so peaceful is heaven
- people leave you alone
- also movies and computers and things
- staff literally know everything and want you to know everything thanks
- you can stay the whole time they're open and not have to pay anything at all
- you can get lost in the big ones and that's cool
- mmm smells of wisdom

"What came first, the chicken or the egg?"

🐔 codepoint: U+1F414
🥚 codepoint: U+1F95A

There you go, Unicode wouldn't lie to you, the chicken came first.