An Experiment

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Oct 262018
 

To all zero of my readers,

Actually writing things seems to be something I can’t muster up the will to do.

So I hacked up an rss plugin for wordpress last year to repost excepts from my tt-rss shared feed, but have left the posts it generates private. Since it’s OK if not ideal, I’m just gonna set the plugin to post publicly for now to see if it works out, and maybe as motivation to hurry up and finish tweaking the format, or writing a fresh plugin from scratch that only does what I need.

For now it will post every time I update my shared feed from tt-rss; I am leaning toward modifying it so that it collects all posts and makes a single daily entry, but I’ll see how this works first.

jwz – Mosaic Netscape 0.9 was released 30 years ago today

Oct 132024
 

According to my notes, it went live shortly after midnight on Oct 13, 1994. We sat in the conference room in the dark and listened to different sound effects fired for each different platform that was downloaded. At some point late that night I wandered off and wrote the first version of the page that loaded when you pressed the “What’s Cool” button in the toolbar. (A couple days later, Jim Clark would go ballistic in a company-wide email because I had included a link to Bianca’s Smut Shack.) For those of you who are unaware of these finer details, 0.9 was the first release of the Netscape browser (which begat Firefox) available to the…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/10/mosaic-netscape-0-9-was-released-30-years-ago-today/

 2024-10-13  No Responses »

Internet Archive Blogs – Vanishing Culture: Keeping the Receipts

Oct 082024
 

The following guest post from editor and journalist Maria Bustillos is part of our Vanishing Culture series, highlighting the power and importance of preservation in our digital age. On August 13, 1961, the Sunday edition of The Honolulu Advertiser published its official Health Bureau Statistics (“Births, Marriages, Deaths”); on page B-6, in the leftmost column—just below the ads for luau supplies and Carnation Evaporated Milk—the twenty-second of twenty-five birth notices announced that on August 4, Mrs. Barack H. Obama of 6085 Kalanianaole Highway had given birth to a son. The Honolulu State Library subsequently copied that page, along with the rest of the newspaper, onto microfilm, as a routine addition to its archive. Decades later, as Donald Trump…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://blog.archive.org/2024/10/08/vanishing-culture-keeping-the-receipts/

 2024-10-08  No Responses »

LWN.net – [$] ClassicPress: WordPress without the block editor

Oct 082024
 

The recent WordPress
controversy is not the first time there’s been tension between the
WordPress community, the interests of Automattic as a business, and Matt
Mullenweg’s leadership as WordPress’s benevolent dictator for
life (BDFL). In particular, Mullenweg’s focus on pushing WordPress to use a new “editing experience” called Gutenberg caused significant
friction—and led to the ClassicPress fork. Users who
want to preserve the “classic” WordPress experience without straying
too far from the WordPress fold may want to look into ClassicPress.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://lwn.net/Articles/992219/

 2024-10-08  No Responses »

Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow – Pluralistic: Prime’s enshittified advertising (03 Oct 2024)

Oct 032024
 

Today’s links

Prime’s enshittified advertising: Don’t touch that dial. No, seriously, DON’T.

Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.

This day in history: 2009, 2014, 2019, 2023

Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.

Recent appearances: Where I’ve been.

Latest books: You keep readin’ em, I’ll keep writin’ ’em.

Upcoming books: Like I said, I’ll keep writin’ ’em.

Colophon: All the rest.

Prime’s enshittified advertising (permalink)
Prime’s gonna add more ads. They brought in ads in January, and people didn’t cancel their Prime subscriptions, so Amazon figures that they can make Prime even worse and make more money:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/10/amazon-prime-video-is-getting-more-ads-next-year/
The cruelty isn’t the point. Money is the point. Every ad that Amazon shows you shifts value away from you – your time, your attention – to the company’s shareholders.
That’s…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/03/mother-may-i/

 2024-10-03  No Responses »

The Intercept – Facebook and Instagram Restrict the Use of the Red Triangle Emoji Over Hamas Association

Oct 022024
 

Meta is restricting the use of the upside-down red triangle emoji, a reference to Hamas combat operations that has become a broader symbol of Palestinian resistance, on its Facebook and Instagram, and WhatsApp platforms, according to internal content moderation materials reviewed by The Intercept. Since the beginning of the Israeli assault on Gaza, Hamas has regularly released footage of its successful strikes on Israeli military positions with red triangles superimposed above targeted soldiers and armor. Since last fall, use of the red triangle emoji has expanded online, becoming a widely used icon for people expressing pro-Palestinian or anti-Israeli sentiment. Social media users have included the shape in their posts, usernames, and profiles as a badge of…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://theintercept.com/2024/10/02/meta-facebook-instagram-red-triangle-emoji/

 2024-10-02  No Responses »

The Register – US govt hiding top hurricane forecast model sparks outrage after deadly Helene

Oct 022024
 

Taxpayer-funded data locked behind insurance firm’s paywall

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) cannot reveal weather forecasts from a particularly accurate hurricane prediction model to the public that pays for the American government agency – because of a deal with a private insurance risk firm.…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/10/01/government_hurricane_forecast_secrecy/

 2024-10-02  No Responses »

Planet Mozilla – fair use alignment chart

Sep 292024
 

Tantek Çelik suggests that Creative Commons should add a CC-NT license, like the existing Creative Commons licenses, but written to make it clear that the content is not licensed for generative AI training. Manton Reece likes the idea, and would allow training—but understands why publishers would choose not to. AI training permissions are becoming a huge deal, and there is a need for more licensing options. disclaimer: we’re taking steps in this area at work now. This is a personal blog post though, not speaking for employer or anyone else. In the 2024 AI Training Survey Results from Draft2Digital, only 5% of the authors surveyed said that scraping and training without a license is fair use….

External feed Read More at the Source: https://blog.zgp.org/fair-use-alignment-chart/

 2024-09-29  No Responses »

The Register – That doomsday critical Linux bug: It’s CUPS. May lead to remote hijacking of devices

Sep 272024
 

No patches yet, can be mitigated, requires user interaction

Final update  After days of anticipation, what was billed as one or more critical unauthenticated remote-code execution vulnerabilities in all Linux systems was today finally revealed.…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/26/unauthenticated_rce_bug_linux/

 2024-09-27  No Responses »

Ballot Access News – Green Party Will Remain Ballot-Qualified in North Carolina Through 2028

Sep 262024
 

North Carolina law says a party gains or retains qualified status if its presidential nominee was on the ballot in at least 35 states. The party label doesn’t matter. Jill Stein will be on the ballot in 36 states in November 2024, so the party is now on the ballot for 2026 and 2028.
Parties also retain if they poll 2% for either President or Governor. Both offices are up in presidential years.
If Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. had not withdrawn, his party, the We the People Party, would also have qualified. However, he withdrew his name from North Carolina and eighteen other states, so he is only on in 31 states (plus D.C., but D.C. doesn’t count…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://ballot-access.org/2024/09/24/green-party-will-remain-ballot-qualified-in-north-carolina-through-2028/

 2024-09-26  No Responses »

World Socialist Web Site (en) – After Vice President Harris doubles down on global war and genocide in Gaza, Uncommitted Movement commits to electing Harris

Sep 262024
 

Resolving to continue working within, and for, the Democratic Party, in a statement issued last week, leaders of the group urged followers to “block Trump” and “avoid third-party candidates.”

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/09/26/lkgg-s26.html

 2024-09-26  No Responses »

Planet PostgreSQL – Amit Kapila: Online Upgrading Logical and Physical Replication Nodes

Sep 262024
 

In my last blog post, Evolution of Logical Replication, I mentioned the future development of a feature to allow “upgrades of logical replication nodes.” The upcoming release of PostgreSQL 17 includes this feature. Previously, after major version upgrades (via pg_upgrade), users couldn’t immediately connect and write data to logical replication nodes. This was because the slots were lost during upgrades, preventing replication from continuing. As a result, new writes wouldn’t get replicated, causing data on both nodes to become out of sync. As explained in this blog post, users had to block applications from writing until the replication setup was re-enabled after the upgrade.With PostgreSQL 17, logical replication nodes can be upgraded without blocking writes or…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://postgr.es/p/6DR

 2024-09-26  No Responses »

Techdirt. – Ex-Congressmen Pen The Most Ignorant, Incorrect, Confused, And Dangerous Attack On Section 230 I’ve Ever Seen

Sep 262024
 

In my time covering internet speech issues, I’ve seen some truly ridiculous arguments regarding Section 230. I even created my ever-handy “Hello! You’ve Been Referred Here Because You’re Wrong About Section 230 Of The Communications Decency Act” article four years ago, which still gets a ton of traffic to this day.
But I’m not sure I’ve come across a worse criticism of Section 230 than the one recently published by former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt and former Congressional Rep. Zach Wamp. They put together the criticism for Democracy Journal, entitled “The Urgent Task of Reforming Section 230.”
There are lots of problems with the article, which we’ll get into. But first, I want to focus on the…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/2024/09/25/ex-congressmen-pen-the-most-ignorant-incorrect-confused-and-dangerous-attack-on-section-230-ive-ever-seen/

 2024-09-26  No Responses »

The Register – WordPress.org denies service to WP Engine, potentially putting sites at risk

Sep 252024
 

That escalated quickly

WordPress on Wednesday escalated its conflict with WP Engine, a hosting provider, by blocking the latter’s servers from accessing WordPress.org resources – and therefore from potentially vital software updates.…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/09/26/wordpressorg_denies_service_to_wp/

 2024-09-25  No Responses »

Ballot Access News – Georgia Supreme Court Says Votes for Cornel West and Claudia De la Cruz Can’t be Counted

Sep 252024
 

On September 25, the Georgia Supreme Court issued an opinion in Al-Bari v Pigg, S25A0177. It agrees with the lower court that independent presidential candidates cannot petition in Georgia. Instead, only independent presidential elector candidates may petition.

Because the ballots are already being printed, the candidates who had petitioned are on the ballot. The Court said votes for them should not be counted. The two presidential candidates who petitioned, and who were told they had enough valid signatures, are Claudia De la Cruz and Cornel West.

This is another instance at which the candidates followed the instructions of the Secretary of State, and yet were kept off the ballot even though they submitted enough signatures.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://ballot-access.org/2024/09/25/georgia-supreme-court-says-votes-for-cornel-west-and-claudia-de-la-cruz-cant-be-counted/

 2024-09-25  No Responses »

Ballot Access News – Ohio Secretary of State Will Refuse to Count Votes for Jill Stein Because the Green Party Tried to Substitute a New Vice-Presidential Nominee

Sep 252024
 

On September 25, the Ohio Secretary of State said he won’t count votes for Jill Stein, even though she is on the ballot as an independent presidential candidate. This is because the Ohio Greens sent in paperwork to swap out the stand-in vice-presidential nominee, Anita Rios, with the actual vice-presidential nominee, Butch Ware. The paperwork caused the problem. The due date for withdrawal is later than the due date for a new nominee. Therefore, the Ohio Secretary of State deemed the withdrawal of the stand-in to be timely, and he interpreted it as a withdrawal of Jill Stein herself and the stand-in vice-presidential candidate. But he deemed the new vice-presidential name to be too late.
There are…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://ballot-access.org/2024/09/25/ohio-secretary-of-state-will-refuse-to-count-votes-for-jill-stein-because-the-green-party-tried-to-substitute-a-new-vice-presidential-nominee/

 2024-09-25  No Responses »

jwz – THE CYBERIZER, Mk.2

Sep 212024
 

I turned THE CYBERIZER into a macOS desktop app. Please let me know how it works. THE CYBERIZER takes a bunch of videos, finds the scene breaks in them, shuffles those scenes randomly, and appends them back together with a burst of cleansing static in between. Help needed: I would be curious as to the oldest macOS / hardware combo on which this works, and if it works on x86 at all. The ffmpeg I built for x86_64 does not work on my macOS 10.13 system, which reports itself as arch = i386, config.guess = x86_64-apple-darwin17.7.0. It says “load command 0x80000034 is unknown”. Any ideas? If that machine in fact…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/09/the-cyberizer-mk-2/

 2024-09-21  No Responses »
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