Richard Stallman’s Political Notes – Section 230

Feb 082021
 
Article note: As someone on the board of a hosting cooperative, this is pretty concerning: limiting Section 230 protections for companies where the user is the product might make some sense (I’m still iffy on that too, as it could be similar to the speech bans on folks Alex Jones that have since snowballed into regular censorship for anyone outside of the mainstream), but revoking protections for services the user pays for is extremely dangerous and would have disastrous effects on political dissent.

A proposal to reform section 230 of the CDA would have sweeping disastrous
consequences.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://stallman.org/archives/2020-nov-feb.html#8_February_2021_%28Section_230%29

 2021-02-08  Comments Off on Richard Stallman’s Political Notes – Section 230

– The Conversation – Home – Latest jobs report shows why the unemployment rate needs fixing

Feb 072021
 

The number of people seeking jobless benefits has soared during the pandemic. AP Photo/John Locher CC BY-NC-ND Many economists would agree that the official U.S. unemployment rate is an inadequate measure of actual labor market conditions. Although this is one of the most cited pieces of data on the economy as a whole, not many people understand how this indicator is calculated and who is and – more importantly – who isn’t included in it. The latest data, which found that joblessness fell from 6.7% in December to 6.3% in January, shows why. As a labor economist, I believe it’s important for more Americans to take a closer look under…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://theconversation.com/latest-jobs-report-shows-why-the-unemployment-rate-needs-fixing-154695

 2021-02-07  Comments Off on – The Conversation – Home – Latest jobs report shows why the unemployment rate needs fixing

Planet Scheme – Akku.scm 1.1.0 released

Feb 072021
 

Akku.scm version 1.1.0, a language package manager for R6RS
and R7RS Scheme, is now generally available. It can be downloaded
from GitLab. This version adds support for Guile 3.0,
Digamma, and includes some bug fixes and new features.

Akku is a language package manager designed for Scheme. In Scheme,
libraries can be analyzed to find their names, exports and imports.
Akku uses this information, plus knowledge of how the various Scheme
implementations work, to automatically install libraries where they
will be found. Libraries can come from the current project or from
packages downloaded from the Internet.

Akku installs libraries to a per-project library directory that works
across all supported Scheme implementations. On top of this there is a
traditional package index and a dependency solver. Packages are
manually reviewed…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://weinholt.se/articles/akku-scm-1-1-0/

 2021-02-07  Comments Off on Planet Scheme – Akku.scm 1.1.0 released

Hackaday – Ice40 Runs DOOM

Feb 072021
 

Spec sheets are an important tool in determining the performance of a given part or system, but they’re not the be all and end all when it comes to engineering. However, specs alone don’t prove whether a given system can complete a given task. Sometimes, you need to actually do the work to prove it instead – as [Sylvain] has done, running DOOM on the iCE40 FPGA.
DOOM’s minimum specifications demand a 386 with 4MB RAM minimum, but it’s commonly agreed that a 486 DX2 running at 66MHz with 8MB of RAM is required to play the game smoothly. With an iCEBreaker v1.0b running a RISC V softcore at 25MHz, it may seem like a difficult task,…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://hackaday.com/2021/02/07/ice40-runs-doom/

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Hackaday – Feeling the KiCad 6 Electricity

Feb 072021
 

In 2018, when KiCad Version 5 modernized the venerable 4.X series, it helped push KiCad to become the stable and productive member of the open source EDA landscape that we know today. It has supported users through board designs both simple and complex, and like a tool whose handle is worn into a perfect grip, it has become familiar and comfortable. For those KiCad users that don’t live on the bleeding edge with nightly builds it may not be obvious that the time of version 6 is nearly upon us, but as we start 2021 it rapidly approaches. Earlier this month [Peter Dalmaris] published a preview of the changes coming version 6 and we have to…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://hackaday.com/2021/02/04/feeling-the-kicad-6-electricity/

 2021-02-07  Comments Off on Hackaday – Feeling the KiCad 6 Electricity

World Socialist Web Site (en) – Kroger grocery chain closes Southern California stores due to new “hero pay” laws leading to worker protests

Feb 072021
 

The grocery chain made $2.6 billion in profits between February 2 and November 7 last year, out of which it used $989 million for stock buybacks. …

External feed Read More at the Source: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/02/05/lgbh-f05.html

 2021-02-07  Comments Off on World Socialist Web Site (en) – Kroger grocery chain closes Southern California stores due to new “hero pay” laws leading to worker protests

Deeplinks – Some Answers to Questions About the State of Copyright in 2021

Feb 072021
 

In all the madness that made up the last month of 2020, a number of copyright bills and proposals popped up—some even became law before most people had any chance to review them. So now that the dust has settled a little and we have some better idea what the landscape is going to look like, it is time to answer a few frequently asked questions.
What Happened?
In December 2020, Congress was rushing to pass a massive spending bill and coronavirus relief package. This was “must-pass” legislation, in the sense that if it didn’t pass there would be no money to do things like fund the government. Passing the package was further complicated by a couple of…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/02/some-answers-questions-about-state-copyright-2021

 2021-02-07  Comments Off on Deeplinks – Some Answers to Questions About the State of Copyright in 2021

Phoronix – seL4 Micro-Kernel Working Towards A General-Purpose, Multi-Server OS

Feb 072021
 

The seL4 micro-kernel that has been in development for over a decade saw the creation of the seL4 Foundation last year to further the project’s goals. In 2020 the seL4 micro-kernel also added RISC-V as one of its primary CPU architectures… …

External feed Read More at the Source: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=seL4-Microkernel-In-2021

 2021-02-07  Comments Off on Phoronix – seL4 Micro-Kernel Working Towards A General-Purpose, Multi-Server OS

PopularResistance.Org – Nevada Bill Would Allow Tech Companies To Create Governments

Feb 072021
 

Carson City, NV – Planned legislation to establish new business areas in Nevada would allow technology companies to effectively form separate local governments.
Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak announced a plan to launch so-called Innovation Zones in Nevada to jumpstart the state’s economy by attracting technology firms, Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Wednesday.
The zones would permit companies with large areas of land to form governments carrying the same authority as counties, including the ability to impose taxes, form school districts and courts and provide government services.
The measure to further economic development with the “alternative form of local government” has not yet been introduced in the Legislature.
The post Nevada Bill Would Allow Tech Companies To Create Governments appeared first on PopularResistance.Org. …

External feed Read More at the Source: https://popularresistance.org/nevada-bill-would-allow-tech-companies-to-create-governments/

 2021-02-07  Comments Off on PopularResistance.Org – Nevada Bill Would Allow Tech Companies To Create Governments

Boing Boing – Super Mario World soundtrack “restored” with original samples

Feb 072021
 

The music in the SNES game Super Mario World uses heavily-compressed samples to fit within the constraints of early 1990s’ hardware. Fans exploring the Nintendo leak were able to figure out the sample libraries that composer Koji Kondo used and “restore” the sountrack as it sounded on the hardware he presumably created it with. — Read the rest …

External feed Read More at the Source: https://boingboing.net/2021/02/06/super-mario-world-soundtrack-restored-with-original-samples.html

 2021-02-07  Comments Off on Boing Boing – Super Mario World soundtrack “restored” with original samples

PopularResistance.Org – ICC Clears Way For War Crimes Probe Of Israeli Actions

Feb 072021
 

Jerusalem – The International Criminal Court said Friday that its jurisdiction extends to territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, potentially clearing the way for its chief prosecutor to open a war crimes probe into Israeli military actions.
The decision was welcomed by the Palestinians and decried by Israel’s prime minister, who vowed to fight “this perversion of justice.” The U.S., Israel’s closest ally, said it opposed the decision.
The ICC’s chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, said in 2019 that there was a “reasonable basis” to open a war crimes probe into Israeli military actions in the Gaza Strip as well as Israeli settlement activity in the occupied West Bank.
The post ICC Clears Way For War Crimes…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://popularresistance.org/icc-clears-way-for-war-crimes-probe-of-israeli-actions/

 2021-02-07  Comments Off on PopularResistance.Org – ICC Clears Way For War Crimes Probe Of Israeli Actions

jwz – DNA Lounge: Wherein we dream of day when parklet drinking becomes permanent.

Feb 072021
 

Scott Wiener is taking another shot at ABC. This bill would be great for everybody, and I wish him luck. California liquor bill aims to make restaurant parklets permanent, plus zones for open containers “As we start to see the light at the end of the tunnel with this vaccine, we need to help these small businesses recover,” Wiener said in an interview. “Now’s the time to make common-sense changes to our alcohol rules that…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2021/02/06.html

 2021-02-07  Comments Off on jwz – DNA Lounge: Wherein we dream of day when parklet drinking becomes permanent.

If You’re Worried About Misinformation, Focus on For-Profit TV News Jacobin

Feb 052021
 

Believe it or not, the data all point to television, not social media, as the most powerful reality-warping medium for most Americans. Unsurprisingly, that is not the impression you’d get from listening to the cable news–driven discourse on the subject. Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. (Flickr) Question: What is the most powerful news medium in the world today? If you’ve even casually followed the news the past four years, the answer…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://jacobinmag.com/2021/02/for-profit-cable-news-misinformation-trump-cnn/

 2021-02-05  Comments Off on If You’re Worried About Misinformation, Focus on For-Profit TV News Jacobin

Amazon Is Forcing Its Warehouse Workers Into Brutal ‘Megacycle’ Shifts Motherboard

Feb 042021
 

On January 25, hundreds of workers at an Amazon warehouse in Chicago were presented with a baffling choice: sign up for a ten-and-a-half-hour graveyard shift, or lose your job. Management informed workers that their warehouse, known as DCH1, would be shut down, and they were being offered a shift that runs from 1:20am to 11:50am, which is known as “megacycle,” at a new Chicago warehouse.  DCH1 has been the target of protests, walkouts, and petitions…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/y3gk3w/amazon-is-forcing-its-warehouse-workers-into-brutal-megacycle-shifts

 2021-02-04  Comments Off on Amazon Is Forcing Its Warehouse Workers Into Brutal ‘Megacycle’ Shifts Motherboard

Just four titans share almost two thirds of global cloud infrastructure spend, with AWS and Microsoft dominant The Register

Feb 042021
 

Google and Alibaba playing catchup Sixty five per cent of all the money customers spent globally on infrastructure clouds in Q4 went into the pocket of AWS, Microsoft, Google and Alibaba, according to the latest research by analyst house Canalys.…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2021/02/04/clouds_canalys/

 2021-02-04  Comments Off on Just four titans share almost two thirds of global cloud infrastructure spend, with AWS and Microsoft dominant The Register

The Washington Post Deserves 324 Billion Pinocchios for Its Attacks on Bernie Sanders Jacobin

Feb 042021
 

For years now, fact-checking has been wielded by mainstream journalists against Bernie Sanders’s left agenda. Case in point: Jeff Bezos’s newspaper’s recent attacks on Sanders for telling the truth about how the Republican tax cuts benefited the rich like Bezos. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, in National Harbor, Maryland, 2018. (Alex Wong / Getty Images) Jeff Bezos this week announced that he is stepping down from his job running Amazon in…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://jacobinmag.com/2021/02/washington-post-sanders-bezos-fact-checking/

 2021-02-04  Comments Off on The Washington Post Deserves 324 Billion Pinocchios for Its Attacks on Bernie Sanders Jacobin

Huge collection of Demoscene bitmap fonts, converted to PNG Boing Boing

Feb 042021
 

Amazing work from Ian Hanschen, who uploaded a vast collection of PNG-formatted bitmap fonts to Github. From gigantic demoscene monstrosities to the finest body-text pixel fonts, it’s all in. (more, more, via Hacker News) My collection of bitmap fonts pulled from various demoscene archives over the years. — Read the rest

External feed Read More at the Source: https://boingboing.net/2021/02/04/huge-collection-of-demoscene-bitmap-fonts-converted-to-png.html

 2021-02-04  Comments Off on Huge collection of Demoscene bitmap fonts, converted to PNG Boing Boing

2021 Already Showing Promise for RCV Reforms What’s New – Fairvote

Feb 042021
 

Ranked choice voting (RCV) is gaining momentum across the country as a staggering number of state legislatures are considering reforming their local and statewide election methods. So far, 30 RCV bills have already been proposed across the country. With bipartisan support for these reforms, there is a unique ability to make future changes to the current U.S. election system. Many proposed bills seek to implement RCV, with legislators and their constituents coming together to demand…

External feed Read More at the Source: http://www.fairvote.org/2021_already_showing_promise_for_rcv_reforms

 2021-02-04  Comments Off on 2021 Already Showing Promise for RCV Reforms What’s New – Fairvote
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