Jan 062022
 

Today the workers of Image Comics voted 7-2 in favor of unionizing with the Communications Workers of America. Previously, management refused to voluntarily recognize what is now, officially, the first union in comics. Comic Book Workers United, the union of Image Comics workers, previously told Motherboard that it had a supermajority of workers eligible to vote. It’s appropriate that Image is the first comics shop to unionize, despite the fact that the company didn’t recognize the union and has generally been reticent to say much about it. As we wrote in November: “Image was founded in 1992 as a response to the predatory relationship between publishers and creators. Superstar artists working for the traditional publishing…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/y3v355/image-comics-workers-win-union-election-in-historic-first-for-comics-industry

 2022-01-06  Comments Off on Motherboard – Image Comics Workers Win Union Election in Historic First for Comics Industry
Jan 062022
 

It’s been four years now since the US finally started allowing old works to enter the public domain after decades in which cultural landlords continually moved to actively remove works from the public domain. Every year since the US got back into the public domain business, we’ve happily run a game jam, encouraging people to make use of these newly public domain works, and this year is no different (check out the Gaming Like It’s 1926 game jam page if you’re interested!).

I’m not entirely sure why, but this year, people seem even more interested than in the past few years. We’ve received way more initial signups than in the past, and more community activity as well….

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20220103/12164148225/great-that-winnie-pooh-is-public-domain-he-should-have-been-free-1982-earlier.shtml

 2022-01-06  Comments Off on Techdirt. – It’s Great That Winnie The Pooh Is In The Public Domain; But He Should Have Been Free In 1982 (Or Earlier)
Jan 052022
 

Assange is imprisoned without charge to facilitate an extradition request from the American government, which plotted his illegal kidnapping or assassination.

External feed Read More at the Source: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/01/05/assa-j05.html

 2022-01-05  Comments Off on World Socialist Web Site (en) – Julian Assange passes one thousand days in Belmarsh Prison, dubbed “Britain’s Guantanamo Bay”
Jan 042022
 

Ping-pong balls have many uses: apart from playing table tennis, they have been used for countless art projects, science experiments, and even to raise ships from the bottom of the ocean. As it turns out, they also come in handy as diffusers for LED pixels, allowing the construction of large-size displays without requiring large individual LEDs.
[david] designed an LED ping-pong ball display using 3D printed components, which allows for the construction of arbitrarily-large LED displays thanks to a strictly modular design. The basic unit is a small piece that holds a single LED module and has a cup-like structure for attaching a standard table tennis ball. Twenty-five of these basic units combine together into a panel…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://hackaday.com/2022/01/04/modular-design-enables-huge-ping-pong-ball-led-displays/

 2022-01-04  Comments Off on Hackaday – Modular Design Enables Huge Ping-Pong Ball LED Displays
Jan 042022
 

While most Linux gamers are making use of DXVK these days for efficiently mapping Direct3D 9/10/11 over Vulkan when running Wine/Proton for enjoying Windows games on Linux, Wine developers still maintain WineD3D for going from Direct3D to OpenGL for cross-platform compatibility. Out today is a new patch series improving the WineD3D performance…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=WineD3D-D3D11-CS-Fence

 2022-01-04  Comments Off on Phoronix – New Patches Help WineD3D Performance – Doubled FPS In Some Micro-Benchmarks
Jan 042022
 

People have been stranded on a Virginia interstate for almost 24 hours after a blizzard, and many are still there as of Tuesday morning.  Six tractor trailers crashed along the I-95 roadway on Monday afternoon, according to the Associated Press, and the foot of snow that fell in some places, plus ice on the roads, made it nearly impossible to clear the path for traffic to get through. About 400,000 people lost power in Fredericksburg, Virginia near the backup, making it even harder for transportation authorities to reach people. I-95 has been stalled in both directions from Ruther Glen, Virginia, in Caroline County and Dumfries in Prince William County, a 50-mile stretch. Some drivers reported on…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bvnvmm/i-95-virginia-traffic-drivers-stuck

 2022-01-04  Comments Off on Motherboard – Drivers Have Been Stuck on a Frozen Highway for More Than 24 Hours
Jan 042022
 

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last 20-odd years, you will have come across The Matrix series of movies, and the cool green ‘digital rain’ effect used frequently. This inspired [Oli Wright] to wonder what it would look like if instead of running the animation on a modern display, using a digitally produced phosphor persistence effect, it was implemented on some retro PC hardware, using an actual high-persistence phosphor Green Monochrome monitor. (Video embedded, below) As luck would have it, [Oli] owns a 40-year-old IBM PC 5150 as well as the matching IBM 5151 monitor, so it was a simple matter to implement the effect in 8088 assembler to create falling sequences of…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://hackaday.com/2022/01/03/matrix-digital-rain-on-the-ibm-pc-with-a-high-persistence-monitor/

 2022-01-04  Comments Off on Hackaday – Matrix Digital Rain On The IBM PC With A High Persistence Monitor
Jan 032022
 

A year ago, Techdirt wrote about an important lawsuit in India, brought by the academic publishers Elsevier, Wiley, and the American Chemical Society against Sci-Hub and the similar Libgen. A couple of factors make this particular legal action different from previous attempts to shut down these sites. First, an Indian court ruled in 2016 that photocopying textbooks for educational purposes is fair use; the parallels with SciHub, which provides free access to copies of academic papers for students and researchers who might not otherwise be able to afford the high subscription fees, are clear. Secondly, the person behind Sci-Hub, Alexandra Elbakyan, is fighting, rather than ignoring, the case, as she has done on previous occasions.

One manifestation…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20211229/08580848194/sci-hubs-creator-thinks-academic-publishers-not-her-site-are-real-threat-to-science-says-any-law-against-knowledge-is.shtml

 2022-01-03  Comments Off on Techdirt. – Sci-Hub’s Creator Thinks Academic Publishers, Not Her Site, Are The Real Threat To Science, And Says: ‘Any Law Against Knowledge Is Fundamentally Unjust’
Jan 032022
 

A trial will be held this week in North Carolina state court, over whether the new U.S. House and legislative districts constitute an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. The North Carolina Supreme Court has previously ruled that the state constitution prohibits partisan … Continue reading

External feed Read More at the Source: https://ballot-access.org/2022/01/03/trial-begins-in-north-carolina-partisan-gerrymandering-lawsuit-in-state-court/

 2022-01-03  Comments Off on Ballot Access News – Trial Begins In North Carolina Partisan Gerrymandering Lawsuit in State Court
Jan 032022
 

We’ve joked in the past about how Republicans hate Section 230 for letting websites moderate too much content, while Democrats hate it for letting websites not moderate enough content. Of course, the reality is they both are mad about content moderation (at different extremes) because they both want to control the internet in a manner that helps “their team.” But both approaches involve unconstitutional desires to interfere with 1st Amendment rights. For Republicans, it’s often the compelled hosting of speech, and for Democrats, it’s often the compelled deletion of speech. Both of those are unconstitutional.

On the Republican side, we’ve already seen states like Florida and Texas sign into law content moderation bills — and both have…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20211229/17174248199/ny-senator-proposes-ridiculously-unconstitutional-social-media-law-that-is-mirror-opposite-equally-unconstitutional-laws.shtml

 2022-01-03  Comments Off on Techdirt. – NY Senator Proposes Ridiculously Unconstitutional Social Media Law That Is The Mirror Opposite Of Equally Unconstitutional Laws In Florida & Texas
Jan 032022
 

While they don’t give the physical thrill of a real one, model roller coasters are always fun to watch. However, they actually make a poor analog of a full-sized ride, as gravitational force and aerodynamic drag don’t scale down in the same way, model roller coasters usually move way faster than the same design would in the real world. [Jon Mendenhall] fixed this deficiency by designing a model roller coaster that accurately simulates a full-sized ride.
The track and cart are all made of 3D printed pieces, which altogether took about 400 hours to print. The main trick to the system’s unique motion is that the cart is motorized: a brushless DC motor moves it along the…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://hackaday.com/2021/12/30/3d-printed-model-roller-coaster-accurately-simulates-the-real-thing/

 2022-01-03  Comments Off on Hackaday – 3D Printed Model Roller Coaster Accurately Simulates the Real Thing
Jan 032022
 

Longtime Linux kernel developer Ingo Molnar posted a massive set of patches today: 2,297 patches that have been in the works since late 2020 and completely rework the Linux kernel’s header file hierarchy. The goal of this “fast kernel headers” effort is to speed up kernel build times and also clean=up a lot of things in the proces to address the “dependency hell”…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-Fast-Kernel-Headers

 2022-01-03  Comments Off on Phoronix – Massive ~2.3k Patch Series Would Improve Linux Build Times 50~80% & Fix “Dependency Hell”
Jan 022022
 

The date is now Friday, March 671st, 2020.”Happy” “New” Year.

perl -e 'use Date::Parse; use POSIX; my @t = localtime; print strftime ("%a Mar ", @t) . int (1 + 0.5 + ((str2time (strftime ("%Y-%m-%d 3:00", @t)) - str2time ("2020-03-01 3:00")) /(60*60*24))) . strftime (" %X %Z 2020\n", @t);'

Fri Mar 671 13:41:08 PST 2020

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2021/12/202-2/

 2022-01-02  Comments Off on jwz – 202█
Jan 022022
 

On December 30, the Oregon Supreme Court issued a one-paragraph opinion, upholding a decision of the State Court of Appeals that signatures of persons on the inactive voter list are not valid. Whitehead v Fagan, S068382.
The decision relates to whether a statewide initiative, Petition 50, should be on the ballot. It had enough valid signatures if inactive voters counted, but now it won’t appear on the ballot. The subject of the initiative is for a carbon-free economy by the year 2050.
The decision seems irrational. The reason voters are transferred to the inactive list is that the post office has indicated the person has moved and has not re-registered at the new address. But when such a…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://ballot-access.org/2021/12/31/oregon-supreme-court-rules-that-inactive-voters-cant-sign-petitions/

 2022-01-02  Comments Off on Ballot Access News – Oregon Supreme Court Rules that Inactive Voters Can’t Sign Petitions
Jan 022022
 

Delta has jumped on the CDC’s truncation of the recommended isolation
time
, and gone even further.

Some workers will be sick enough that they shouldn’t or can’t work
after 5 days. Indeed, some of them may stay sick for weeks.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://stallman.org/archives//2021-nov-feb.html#1_January_2022_(Recommended_isolation_time_for_Delta)

 2022-01-02  Comments Off on Richard Stallman’s Political Notes – Recommended isolation time for Delta
Dec 312021
 

Every January we feature works that are entering the public domain. And this year the big story is in recorded music. Recorded Music from 1922 and earlier Approximately 400,000 sound recordings made before 1923 will join the public domain in the U.S. for the first time due to the Music Modernization Act (read more at copyright.gov). You can peruse about 38,000 of them in our collection of digitized 78rpm records. By 1922 we were solidly in the Jazz Age – F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tales of the Jazz Age was published in 1922, and the term was already in popular usage. Jazz migrated from Black American communities in New Orleans into the rest of the United States,…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://blog.archive.org/2022/01/01/welcoming-recorded-music-to-the-public-domain/

 2021-12-31  Comments Off on Internet Archive Blogs – Welcoming Recorded Music to the Public Domain
Dec 232021
 

On December 22, U.S. District Court John G. Koeltl, a Clinton appointee, upheld the New York statewide petition requirement for independent candidates and the nominees of unqualified parties. He also upheld the new definition of a political party, a group that polled 2% of the vote every two years for the office at the top of the ballot (Governor in midterm years, and president in presidential years). SAM Party of New York v Kosinski, s.d., 1:20cv-323. Here is the 37-page opinion.
Judge Koetl issued the opinion less than 24 hours after the oral argument. His opinion has serious factual errors. Page 23 says New York requires the seventh highest number of signatures, when actually New York has…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://ballot-access.org/2021/12/22/u-s-district-court-upholds-new-york-petition-requirement-and-definition-of-a-qualified-party-in-error-filled-decision/

 2021-12-23  Comments Off on Ballot Access News – U.S. District Court Upholds New York Petition Requirement, and Definition of a Qualified Party, in Error-Filled Decision
Dec 232021
 

New launch date could be a marvelous Christmas gift to humanity

The James Webb Telescope has been cleared for launch, only for weather to delay its ascent for at least a day.…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2021/12/23/james_webb_telescope_launch_rescheduled_for_christmas_day/

 2021-12-23  Comments Off on The Register – James Webb Telescope launch delayed again, this time by weather
Dec 202021
 

Announcing his opposition to the measure on Fox News Sunday, the right-wing Democrat ensured that the meager social, tax and climate bill will not be passed in anything like its current form.

External feed Read More at the Source: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/12/20/manc-d20.html

 2021-12-20  Comments Off on World Socialist Web Site (en) – West Virginia Senator Manchin kills Biden’s already stripped-down “Build Back Better” legislation
Dec 202021
 

The Hill has published an essay of mine, arguing that the modern filibuster is unconstitutional. There are many who have insisted as much — see, e.g., Gregory Diskant, Robert Reich, Erwin Chemerinsky & Bert Neuborne, Madeleine Polubinski, Kirk Jenkins; but see Michael Gerhardt, and this great debate between Josh Chafetz and Michael Gerhardt.The point I emphasize in this debate is that it is the evolution of the procedure that has rendered it unconstitutional. (Adam Jentleson’s book, Kill Switch, is a brilliant account of that history.) When it was a procedure to assure members had the opportunity to speak, it was fine (if a bother). But as a procedure to effectively block the beginning of any debate, it has…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://lessig.medium.com/on-the-constitutionality-of-the-filibuster-cc6879e4b1f5?source=rss-7239b1d04c28——2

 2021-12-20  Comments Off on Stories by Lessig on Medium – On the constitutionality of the filibuster