September 2020 – The Death of the Mind

FTP Is Almost 50 Years Old—and It’s Ready to Retire Motherboard

Sep 302020

A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail. Here’s a small piece of news you may have missed while you were trying to rebuild your entire life to fit inside your tiny apartment at the beginning of the COVID crisis: Because of the way that the virus shook up just about everything, Google skipped the release of Chrome version 82. Who cares, you…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5dzx43/ftp-is-almost-50-years-oldand-its-ready-to-retire

2020-09-30 Comments Off

Philly Activists Reclaim 50 Vacant Houses, Creating a Model for Organizing as Mass Evictions Loom Democracy Now!

Sep 302020

In a historic victory for unhoused people, Philadelphia city officials agreed to hand over 50 vacant homes to a community land trust, following months of organizing and protest encampments. We hear from one of the organizers and speak to Philadelphia-based Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, who has written extensively about housing insecurity and says the direct actions there are applicable across the U.S. “This dynamic exists all over the country where you have both empty housing and houseless…

External feed Read More at the Source: http://www.democracynow.org/2020/9/29/keeanga_yamahtta_taylor_philadelphia_housing

2020-09-30 Comments Off

US Accountant Found Guilty In Panama Papers Case PopularResistance.Org

Sep 302020

A U.S. accountant who helped American residents evade taxes in a case exposed by the Panama Papers investigation has been sentenced to more than three years in prison. Over a sometimes choppy internet connection on Thursday, federal judge Richard M. Berman in New York sentenced Richard Gaffey, 74, to jail. Gaffey, a Massachusetts-based accountant, previously pleaded guilty to eight crimes, including conspiracy to commit tax evasion and defraud the United States. From 2000 to 2018, prosecutors said,…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://popularresistance.org/us-accountant-found-guilty-in-panama-papers-case/

2020-09-30 Comments Off

There might be even more underground reservoirs of liquid water on Mars New on MIT Technology Review

Sep 282020

Four underground reservoirs of water may be sitting below the south pole of Mars. The new findings, published today in Nature Astronomy, suggest Mars is home to even more deposits of liquid water than once thought. The background: In 2018, a group of Italian researchers used radar observations made by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter to detect a lake of liquid water sitting 1.5 kilometers below the surface of Mars. The lake, which…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/09/28/1008958/there-might-be-even-more-underground-reservoirs-of-liquid-water-on-mars/

2020-09-28 Comments Off

Russell Coker: Bandwidth for Video Conferencing Planet Debian

Sep 272020

For the Linux Users of Victoria (LUV) I’ve run video conferences on Jitsi and BBB (see my previous post about BBB vs Jitsi [1]). One issue with video conferences is the bandwidth requirements. The place I’m hosting my video conference server has a NBN link with allegedly 40Mb/s transmission speed and 100Mb/s reception speed. My tests show that it can transmit at about 37Mb/s and receive at speeds significantly higher than that but also quite…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://etbe.coker.com.au/2020/09/26/bandwidth-video-conferencing/

2020-09-27 Comments Off

Bill Barr Declares Ipswich Middle School Anarchist Jurisdiction After Finding ‘Circle-A’ Symbol Drawn On Notebook Cover The Onion

Sep 272020

IPSWICH, MA—In an effort to restore the rule of law, Attorney General Bill Barr declared Ipswich Middle School an anarchist jurisdiction Friday after finding a circle-A symbol scrawled on a notebook cover. “We’ve discovered verifiable evidence that this middle school is a hotbed of left-wing extremism,” said Barr of…Read more…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.theonion.com/bill-barr-declares-ipswich-middle-school-anarchist-juri-1845173206

2020-09-27 Comments Off

Judge Amy Coney Barrett Ruled Unfavorably in Her Only Ballot Access Case Ballot Access News

Sep 272020

On September 26, President Trump nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett of the Seventh Circuit for the U.S. Supreme Court. It appears she has only written one ballot access decision. In 2019 she wrote the opinion in Acevedo v Cook County Electoral Board, 18-2979. She upheld requiring a candidate for the Democratic nomination for Sheriff of Cook County to collect 8,236 signatures. The plaintiff-Candidate had sued, arguing that the state could not constitutionally require more than…

External feed Read More at the Source: http://ballot-access.org/2020/09/26/judge-amy-coney-barrett-ruled-unfavorably-in-ballot-access-case/

2020-09-27 Comments Off

Trump Taps Amy Coney Barrett — Memo Lays Out Tactics for Opposition The Intercept

Sep 262020

President Donald Trump has nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett to replace the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court, setting up a ferocious confirmation battle as votes are already being cast for the November 3 election. Barrett, who was previously named to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals by Trump, is an outspoken social conservative, broadly hostile to abortion rights, and a strong supporter of corporate rights. Her confirmation would give conservatives a 6-3 majority…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://theintercept.com/2020/09/24/memo-laying-out-delay-tactics-circulates-among-senate-democrats/

2020-09-26 Comments Off

Not Particularly Mortifying: IEEE eggheads probe npm registry, say JavaScript libs not as insecure as feared The Register

Sep 262020

Oh sure, there are plenty of flaws in those packages though not even one in ten are anything to worry about For the past few years, the security of JavaScript software packages available through the Node Package Manager, or npm, has been the subject of skepticism as a result of blunders, brouhahas, and tepid countermeasures.…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/09/25/npm_security_risks/

2020-09-26 Comments Off

Rare case of black licorice poisoning kills man in Massachusetts Ars Technica

Sep 262020

Enlarge / Bulk black licorice candy. (credit: Getty | Andia) Because 2020 hasn’t provided enough extraordinary ways to die, the universe offers a grim reminder that eating too much licorice candy can be deadly. A 54-year-old construction worker died in Massachusetts recently after eating an excessive amount of black licorice—which naturally contains a toxin called glycyrrhizin, aka glycyrrhizic acid. Doctors published a case study of his poisoning in the New England Journal of Medicine this…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1709881

2020-09-26 Comments Off

Memo Laying Out Supreme Court Delay Tactics Circulates Among Senate Democrats The Intercept

Sep 252020

As Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer faces increasing pressure from Democrats around the country to use every tool at his disposal to oppose the Republican effort to push through a Supreme Court nominee before the election, one question has bedeviled activists: What exactly is possible? A memo circulating on Capitol Hill, put together by several people with knowledge of congressional procedure and obtained by The Intercept, lays out some of the options that could be…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://theintercept.com/2020/09/24/memo-laying-out-delay-tactics-circulates-among-senate-democrats/

2020-09-25 Comments Off

‘Ready to Deliver:’ Read the Post Office’s Mandatory Pep Talk About Election Mail Motherboard

Sep 252020

The United States Postal Service will be telling all of its employees that it is undoing virtually all of the policies Postmaster General Louis DeJoy initiated more than two months ago that delayed mail across the country, according to a memo obtained by Motherboard. The memo, titled “Ready to deliver Election Mail for the nation,” comes after the USPS’s hand was forced. As the memo itself acknowledges, two separate federal judges issued injunctions requiring the…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/4ayzap/usps-election-mail-leaked-speech-undo-changes

2020-09-25 Comments Off

Amazon’s Ring Announces an Entire Line of Dystopian Surveillance Devices Motherboard

Sep 252020

On Thursday, Amazon’s Ring surveillance platform announced a new line of products, including a drone with a camera designed to fly around your home, that would expand its surveillance network beyond the Ring doorbell camera.. The Always Home Cam and a new line of Ring security cameras for cars are set to launch next year: the Car Cam, Car Alarm, and Car Connect platform. Amazon says that much like the Ring doorbell surveillance cameras, it’ll…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bv8qjq/amazons-ring-announces-an-entire-line-of-dystopian-surveillance-devices

2020-09-25 Comments Off

News Roundup: Ranked choice voting comes to presidential elections What’s New – Fairvote

Sep 252020

Have you been following the debate about ranked choice voting (RCV) in Maine? This week, RCV took a major step forward when the Supreme Judicial Court ruled that it can be used in the state’s presidential elections. Here are some of the best articles that have come out about the ruling in the last few days. The Fulcrum reported on the historic nature of the ruling and how RCV can encourage more positive campaigning. “The…

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

2020-09-25 Comments Off

Legal Marijuana Now Party Nominee for U.S. House Dies, so Minnesota Can’t Fill That Seat Until February 9, 2021 Ballot Access News

Sep 252020

Adam Charles Weeks, the Legal Marijuana Now Party nominee for U.S. House in Minnesota’s 2nd district, died recently. Under a unique Minnesota law passed in 2013, the death of the nominee of a qualified party in a partisan race closer than 79 days before an election means the seat can’t be filled until the following February. See this story. Although voters will see the race on their November ballots, the votes in that race will…

External feed Read More at the Source: http://ballot-access.org/2020/09/24/legal-marijuana-now-party-nominee-for-u-s-house-dies-so-minnesota-cant-fill-that-seat-until-february-9-2021/

2020-09-25 Comments Off

This is a pretty dire assessment of Mozilla jwz

Sep 242020

Firefox usage is down 85% despite Mozilla’s top exec pay going up 400%Mozilla recently announced that they would be dismissing 250 people. That’s a quarter of their workforce so there are some deep cuts to their work too. The victims include: the MDN docs (those are the web standards docs everyone likes better than w3schools), the Rust compiler and even some cuts to Firefox development. Like most people I want to see Mozilla do well…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2020/09/this-is-a-pretty-dire-assessment-of-mozilla/

2020-09-24 Comments Off

New Patriotic 1776 Commission Struggling To Find Ways To Improve Upon Education System’s Existing Propaganda The Onion

Sep 242020

WASHINGTON—Frantically scouring textbooks to find sections in need of revision, members of President Donald Trump’s new patriotic 1776 Commission struggled Wednesday to find ways to improve upon the education system’s existing propaganda. “We cut out every mention of Native Americans, but I’m not sure how else we…Read more…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://politics.theonion.com/new-patriotic-1776-commission-struggling-to-find-ways-t-1845156727

2020-09-24 Comments Off

Teleconferencing Like It’s 1988: Connecting Vintage Hardware to Zoom Hackaday

Sep 232020

Hang up your car phone and toss that fax machine in the garbage. Even back in the late 80s it was possible to do away with these primitive technologies in favor of video conferencing, even though this technology didn’t catch on en masse until recently. In fact, Mitsubishi released a piece of video conferencing equipment called the VisiTel that can be put to use today, provided you can do a bit of work to get…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://hackaday.com/2020/09/23/teleconferencing-like-its-1988-connecting-vintage-hardware-to-zoom/

2020-09-23 Comments Off

New York Times Article on Green Party Ballot Access News

Sep 232020

The New York Times has published a long article about the Green Party. The theme is that the Republican Party in the past and currently has helped in a few states to get the Green Party on the ballot. The story is myopic. The authors take it for granted that it is difficult for a party like the Green Party to get on the ballot. The authors should ask the big question: why should be…

External feed Read More at the Source: http://ballot-access.org/2020/09/22/new-york-times-article-on-green-party/

2020-09-23 Comments Off

Facebook vows to restrict users if US election descends into chaos Ars Technica

Sep 232020

Enlarge / United States Map – State with glow with malicious code background in a 1970 dot matrix font on a computer screen. 8K Resolution ready. (credit: Matt Anderson Photography | Getty Images) Facebook has said it will take aggressive and exceptional measures to “restrict the circulation of content” on its platform if November’s presidential election descends into chaos or violent civic unrest. In an interview with the Financial Times, Nick Clegg, the company’s head…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1708560

2020-09-23 Comments Off

Older Entries