The SpamAssassin 3.4.2 release was the first from that project in well over three years. At the 2018 Open Source Summit Europe, Giovanni Bechis talked about that release and those that will be coming in the near future. It would seem that, after an extended period of quiet, the SpamAssassin project is back and has rededicated itself to the task of keeping junk out of our inboxes.
External feed Read More at the Source: https://lwn.net/Articles/769917/rss
“Remember that everything you consider solid is a side effect of the decisions of people who aren’t substantially smarter than you are, and those decisions didn’t occur very long ago.” – Rococo Modem Basilisk(I don’t endorse the specific content of this article and I apologize for the paywall link.)
External feed Read More at the Source: http://blog.felter.org/post/179669252605
Amid all the divisive ugliness inside the Beltway, here is some good news: 2018 may well be the best year in a half century for election reform. Today’s narrative laments a crumbling democracy, alienated voters, and a political culture spiraling ever downward. While true, that narrative is incomplete. It misses the remarkable energy building across many states to confront these problems, shore up our democracy, and rebuild our political culture. Nowhere is that energy more…
External feed Read More at the Source: http://www.fairvote.org/will_voters_lead_on_electoral_reform
The battles within the Democratic Party have played out in high-profile races this year, largely featuring well-heeled establishment figures with years of elected experience challenged by left-wing outsiders running with the support of a national grassroots movement. Amidst this fight, there has been a strenuous effort from party centrists to drain the question of any ideological content. Party leaders are not pushing any particular agenda, goes the argument, but are merely pragmatists maximizing the chances…
The 14th Amendment’s citizenship guarantee is one of the bedrocks of America. President Trump said this week that he is preparing an executive order to try to take away the citizenship guarantee in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which says that people born in the United States are United States citizens. On Tuesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham announced that he would introduce legislation with the same aim. But the president cannot repeal part of the Constitution by…
Since its launch in March 2009, the Kepler Space Telescope has provided us with an incredible amount of data about exoplanets within our galaxy, proving these worlds are more varied and numerous than we could ever have imagined. Before its launch we simply didn’t know how common planets such as ours were, but today we know the Milky Way contains billions of them. Some of these worlds are so hot they have seas of molten…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://hackaday.com/2018/10/30/kepler-closes-eyes-after-a-decade-of-discovery/
Bloomberg is reporting that IBM has agreed to acquire Red Hat for over $33 billion. “International Business Machines Corp. will pay $190 a share in cash for Raleigh, North Carolina-based Red Hat, according to a statement from the companies Sunday, confirming an earlier Bloomberg News report. That’s a 63 percent premium over Red Hat’s closing price of $116.68 per share on Friday.”
External feed Read More at the Source: https://lwn.net/Articles/769762/rss
We’re pleased to announce that the Library of Congress and the Copyright Office have expanded the exemptions to Section 1201 of the DMCA, a dangerous law that inhibits speech, harms competition, and threatens digital security. But the exemptions are still too narrow and too complex for most technology users. Section 1201 makes it illegal to “circumvent” digital locks that control access to copyrighted works, and to make and sell devices that break digital locks. Every…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/10/new-exemptions-dmca-section-1201-are-welcome-dont-go-far-enough
In honor of World Day for Audiovisual Heritage (October 27) we’d like to take you on a brief tour through seven decades of digitized music and audio recordings from 1900 through 1970. We’ve been working to digitize 78rpm discs for the Great 78 Project to preserve the heritage of the first half of the 20th century, and now we’re turning our eyes toward vinyl LPs that have fallen out of print in the Unlocked Recordings collection. 1905 –…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://blog.archive.org/2018/10/27/decades-of-music/
In 2018, there has been a significant increase in editorial board support for ranked choice voting. Some highlights: Editorials Give ranked voting a shot. Our democracy would benefit. The Editorial Board on June 14, 2018 … Montgomery County and other localities should consider a reform that empowers the majority by allowing voters to rank their choices. Ranked-choice voting, also known as instant-runoff voting, has been used successfully in other countries as well as a growing…
External feed Read More at the Source: http://www.fairvote.org/editorial_board_support_for_rcv_in_2018
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.
We’ve always had a fascination with things that fly. Sure, drones are the latest incarnation of that, but there have been RC planes, kites, and all sorts of flying toys and gizmos even before manned flight was possible. Maybe the first model flying machine you had was a paper airplane. There’s some debate, but it appears the Chinese and Japanese made paper airplanes 2,000 years ago. Now there’s a database of paper airplane designs, some…
External feed Read More at the Source: https://hackaday.com/2018/10/25/paper-airplane-database-has-the-wright-stuff/
I previously wrote David Price after learning of HR 676‘s reintroduction this year, and received no response (not even a paltry form letter sent by an intern). Since the issue is back on the table, I decided to give it another shot. Feel free to borrow some of my ideas.
Representative Price,
I am writing you a second time about HR 676, the Expanded and Improved Medicare For All Act [0] which your colleague John Conyers is yet again introducing, and to request that you cosponsor the legislation.
As you are likely aware, Senator Sanders has announced plans to introduce either a Medicare for All or Public Option in the Senate in the coming weeks. With the collapse (and moreso with the grumblings of revival) of the AHCA efforts, it is my opinion that the time is ripe for Democrats to show that they are still capable of pushing for social progress, instead of merely defending the status quo as seems to be their way in recent years.
My hope is that strong support for HR676 in the House will result in a Senate version, instead of a watered-down Public Option that is, purely from a financial perspective, doomed to failure as it would be forced to take on the sickest citizens and would not have the needed clout to effectively manage costs.
Although I was unable to take off of work to attend any of your recent Town Halls, I was glad to read [1] that several of my fellow constituents asked about your stance on single-payer and called upon you to support Medicare for All. I was, however, disappointed hearing that your response was not one of support, but a declaration it was off limits for another 20 years.
A progressive party cannot progress society if they lack forward thinking ideals and goals. I fear that the democratic party has now become a conservative party, fiercely defending the status quo, attacking progressive politics, and having the mere appearance of progressiveness relative only to the republican party now that it has devolved into a regressive party of neofascists.
Although it is true we still need to defend and expand basic access to healthcare, and perhaps the bill would be dead on arrival this session, I still believe your party supporting it would go a long way toward repairing your tarnished image with the public, possibly ensuring strong wins in the House and the ability to push positive legislation come 2019.
There is also the human cost — at a time when the majority of your constituents support a single-payer system, when insurance company profits are bolstered by the private-industry bailout of the ACA, when real health care costs are unaffordable for far too many despite nominally having insurance — you ask us to suffer and die destitute upon the streets for twenty more years before even considering the idea that profit and human health are incompatible?
Economic reality supports single-payer sooner than later as well — all resources expended enhancing the intrinsically broken for-profit healthcare industry instead of building up a public not-for-profit one is wasted, and with each year the population grows and ages, and the problem of building a public system sufficient for all becomes that much more financially disruptive; perhaps insurmountable.
We simply do not have time as a society to delay more than another four years (and even that is too long, but your party decided against single-payer when there was a chance, and I suspect the current President wouldn’t be amenable to signing such a bill). If the discussion is not started now, the prospects for passage in time to save the country from a public health crisis not seen since the 19th century seem dim.
I end my plea with a warning — I suspect you are aware of the strong support for Sanders during the 2016 primary in your district, and the growing disaffection with status-quo democrats. A failure to take a stand for something so popular reinforces the perception that your party no longer cares to represent the common citizen.
I am already leaning toward lending material support to any more progressive primary challenger for your seat, and your refusal to make a stand with HR676 will certainly seal that decision. The North Carolina Green Party also may very well have ballot access in 2018 (emboldened by a recent 11th circuit ruling [2] they have now filed to overturn our ballot access laws as unconstitutional [3]), so you may no longer rest easy, assured that your gerrymandered constituency will re-elect you without challenge.
Best Regards,
Clinton Ebadi
[0] https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/676]
[1] http://carycitizen.com/2017/03/07/david-price-talks-health-care-budget-cuts-in-cary-town-hall/
[2] http://www.ajc.com/news/state–regional-govt–politics/court-upholds-ruling-for-third-party-presidential-candidates/hKV5eClapgz7Tgj3k6OK6N/
[3] http://ballot-access.org/2017/02/24/green-party-and-constitution-party-file-ballot-access-case-in-north-carolina/
Good news for the Netherlands:
The big winner of Wednesday’s election – and now the largest party of the Dutch left for the first time – was GreenLeft, headed by 30-year-old Jesse Klaver, hailed by his enthusiastic supporters as the “Jessiah”.
…
Sometimes compared to Canada’s youthful prime minister, Justin Trudeau, Klaver – who has a Moroccan father and a mother of Indonesian descent – said on polling day that the left’s answer to the far right’s rise in Europe was to stand up for its ideals.
“What I would say to all my leftwing friends in Europe: don’t try to fake the populace,” he said.
“Stand for your principles. Be straight. Be pro-refugee. Be pro-European. We’re gaining momentum in the polls. And I think that’s the message we have to send to Europe. You can stop populism.”
The Netherlands’ youngest ever party leader, Klaver built a strong following on social media through small Meetup events after taking over GreenLeft’s leadership in May 2015.
I designed a thing, I think.
Something about blue teeth and video games.
Where were these people when the Democrats scuttled socialized healthcare and gave us the capitalist abomination that is the ACA?
I think they were busy calling me a communist for suggesting that for-profit enterprise was intrinsically incompatible with a universally required service like “preventing people from dying on the streets.” But economic eugenics is ok — those poor undesirables really should have had a better lineage if they wanted healthcare after all — until the petit-privileged classes find out they too get to die on the streets as inequality rises.
And yet they still fight for their privileged capitalist healthcare (we just want the leeches to die, not proper middle class wage slaves, get it?) instead of fighting for something that would be unassailable when the forces of regression rise to attack again.
