May 312023
 

Residents gathered in Davenport, Iowa, on Monday and Tuesday to demonstrate against the planned demolition of a partially collapsed century-old apartment building.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/05/31/ovxm-m31.html

 2023-05-31  Comments Off on World Socialist Web Site (en) – Protest erupts against demolition of collapsed building in Iowa while five residents remain unaccounted for
May 272023
 

On certain special occasions we bust out the D20 drink special: you roll a die and take what you get. That special occasion was this week’s Rhapsody of Fire show, which I am told featured the nascent genre of Dwarf Metal. Lots of attendees had plastic swords, and one dude was in plate mail.

Anyway, this was possibly the most popular drink special we’ve ever had — we sold 160 of them, which means that statistically we’d have sold like eight Cement Mixers in one night, and people paid for them, which also has to be a record of some kind!

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2023/05/27.html

 2023-05-27  Comments Off on jwz – DNA Lounge: Wherein we roll a D20
May 272023
 

The State Security Department at the Berlin State Criminal Police Office has announced that a criminal investigation has been initiated against Roger Waters for “incitement of hatred” for dressing in a Nazi-like uniform during his recent concerts in the capital city of Germany.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/05/27/fheu-m27.html

 2023-05-27  Comments Off on World Socialist Web Site (en) – Berlin police open criminal investigation aimed at silencing Roger Waters
May 262023
 

Do you think Tcl/Tk GUIs are doomed to look outdated? Fear not! A treeview widget: The official example of Forest Light: The ttkthemes gallery Plus, Tk itself has a little choice of built-in themes: We can use these themes with nodgui, the Ltk fork. In June of 2020, @cage added a little function to load a .tcl file: (defun eval-tcl-file (file-path) “This function will feed the TCL interpreter with the contents of the file `path’. Please, as this function will load and execute a script, ensure to load files only from trusted sources otherwise severe security problem may arise.” (assert (stringp file-path))…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://lisp-journey.gitlab.io/blog/pretty-gui-in-common-lisp-with-nodgui-tk-themes/

 2023-05-26  Comments Off on Planet Lisp – vindarel: Pretty GUI in Common Lisp with nodgui’s Tk themes
May 262023
 

In a landmark May Day ruling called Lion Elastomers, the National Labor Relations Board restored the rights of union representatives to use heated language, including occasional profanity, during arguments with management.

The Board ordered employer Lion Elastomers to reinstate steward Joseph Colone with full back pay going back to a 2018 discharge.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://labornotes.org/2023/05/biden-labor-board-restores-right-use-heated-language

 2023-05-26  Comments Off on [Unknown] – Biden Labor Board Restores Right to Use Heated Language
May 262023
 

In his concurrence, Justice Gorsuch called the Supreme Court’s decision last week in the Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith case a narrow one of statutory interpretation, ostensibly doing nothing more than interpreting the breadth of the first fair use factor (“the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes”) the copyright statute lists for determining whether the use of an existing copyrighted work is fair.
But the majority’s decision, written by Justice Sotomayor, was hardly narrow; it was a decision that fundamentally rewrote the operational axis of our current copyright law. As a result, it does enormous damage to expressive freedom while also creating…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/2023/05/25/the-warhol-decision-how-scotus-forgot-the-first-amendment-turned-copyright-into-a-liability-time-bomb/

 2023-05-26  Comments Off on Techdirt. – The Warhol Decision: How SCOTUS Forgot The First Amendment & Turned Copyright Into A Liability Time Bomb
May 262023
 

SAN FRANCISCO—Seventy-one California police agencies in 22 counties must immediately stop sharing automated license plate reader (ALPR) data with law enforcement agencies in other states because it violates California law and could enable prosecution of abortion seekers and providers elsewhere, three civil liberties groups demanded Thursday in letters to those agencies.
The letters from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California (ACLU NorCal), and the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California (ACLU SoCal) gave the agencies a deadline of June 15 to comply and respond. A months-long EFF investigation involving hundreds of public records requests uncovered that many California police departments share records containing detailed driving profiles of local residents…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.eff.org/press/releases/civil-liberties-groups-demand-california-police-stop-sharing-drivers-location-data

 2023-05-26  Comments Off on Deeplinks – Civil Liberties Groups Demand California Police Stop Sharing Drivers’ Location Data With Police In Anti-Abortion States
May 262023
 

The US hospice system is supposed to provide compassionate end-of-life care. But private equity firms have swallowed up the industry: 7 out of 10 hospice agencies are now for-profit, putting profit maximization over patient well-being.
In recent years, private equity has exploited both fragmentation in the hospice sector and gaping holes in oversight left by federal agencies. (Justin Paget / DigitalVision via Getty Images) Though the majority of Americans spend the final weeks of their lives in hospice care, the United States only got its first hospice, the Connecticut Hospice, in 1974. Today, just under a half century later, over 5,500 hospices provide services for the dying; in 2020, 1.72 million…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://jacobin.com/2023/05/private-equity-hospice-care-profit-regulation/

 2023-05-26  Comments Off on Jacobin – Profit-Obsessed Private Equity Is Now Dominating the US Hospice System
May 262023
 

We’ve all been there before — you need some 3D printable design that you figure must be common enough that somebody has already designed it, so you point your browser to Thingiverse or Printables, and in a few minutes you’ve got STL in hand and are ready to slice and print. If the design worked for you, perhaps you’ll go back and post an image of your print and leave a word of thanks to the designer.
Afterwards, you’ll probably never give that person a second thought for the rest of your life. Within a day or two, there’s a good chance you won’t even remember their username. It’s why most of the model sharing sites will…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://hackaday.com/2023/05/25/3d-model-subscriptions-are-coming-but-whos-buying/

 2023-05-26  Comments Off on Hackaday – 3D Model Subscriptions are Coming, But Who’s Buying?
May 262023
 

Perfectly normal, non-dystopian timeline. NEDA, the largest nonprofit organization dedicated to eating disorders, has had a helpline for the last twenty years that provided support to hundreds of thousands of people via chat, phone call, and text. […] “We asked for adequate staffing and ongoing training to keep up with our changing and growing Helpline, and opportunities for promotion to grow within NEDA. We didn’t even ask for more money,” Harper wrote. “When NEDA refused [to recognize our union], we filed for an election with the National Labor Relations Board and won on March 17. Then, four days after our election results were certified, all four of us were told we were being let go…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2023/05/eating-disorder-helpline-fires-staff-transitions-to-chatbot-after-unionization/

 2023-05-26  Comments Off on jwz – Eating Disorder Helpline Fires Staff, Transitions to Chatbot After Unionization
May 242023
 

Enlarge (credit: Chip Somodevilla / Staff | Getty Images North America)
The FBI isn’t supposed to use its most controversial spy tool to snoop on emails, texts, and other private communications of Americans or anyone located in the United States. However, that didn’t stop the FBI from sometimes knowingly using its Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Section 702 powers to conduct warrantless searches on US persons more than 280,000 times in 2020 and 2021, according to new disclosures. US Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) described the searches as  “shocking abuses.”
Among the most concerning so-called backdoor searches on Americans were disclosures that the FBI ran more than 23,000 queries on people involved in storming the US Capitol,…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1941492

 2023-05-24  Comments Off on Ars Technica – Widespread FBI abuse of foreign spy law sets off “alarm bells,” tech group says
May 232023
 

I’m about to write an essay that will lead to mass misinterpretation or out of context quoting, and before I get into that situation (intentionally), I have to create this entire sidebar to talk about a social construct I’ve observed over the years. I’ve spoken elsewhere about the Inside Out, but this is a different online (and offline) situation to that. Very quickly: The “Inside Out” is my belief that there are people who believe they are in private spaces online that are in fact not private at all but they’re absolutely convinced of it and the resulting friction is nearly blinding when it comes to a head. What I’m talking about is something else entirely….

External feed Read More at the Source: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5528

 2023-05-23  Comments Off on ASCII by Jason Scott – The Great Aboveground Empire
May 222023
 

This is the latest installment of our Licensing and Compliance Lab’s series on free software developers who choose GNU licenses for their works.

External feed Read More at the Source: http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/frans-de-jonge-tells-us-about-koreader-in-this-agplv3-interview

 2023-05-22  Comments Off on Planet GNU – FSF Blogs: Frans de Jonge tells us about KOReader in this AGPLv3 interview
May 212023
 

A North Carolina State Court of Appeals will soon decide how many signatures an independent candidate needs to get on the ballot for Orange County Commissioner. The law says an independent needs 4% of the number of registered voters in the district. In Orange County, there are two rounds for County Commissioner elections. In the first round, the voters of district two are the only voters. But in the run-off, the entire county votes.

See this story. The independent candidate, Connor Fraley, argues that the 4% should be calculated on the number of registered voters in district two, not in the entire county. He lost in the lower court but is appealing.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://ballot-access.org/2023/05/20/north-carolina-state-court-ponders-how-to-interpret-law-on-number-of-signatures-for-an-independent-candidate/

 2023-05-21  Comments Off on Ballot Access News – North Carolina State Court Ponders How to Interpret Law on Number of Signatures for an Independent Candidate
May 212023
 

It’s frustrating how few news organizations these days are willing to call out nonsense for being nonsense. Too many feel they need to do one of those “view from nowhere” things where they pro/con everything. That’s why I appreciate The Verge, a news site that has spent years actually taking a stand. Its latest is a piece by Emma Roth, calling out the spate of age verification laws, and what a disaster they are for privacy online.
The article is great, and goes through a number of things that we’ve highlighted over the past few months, including the French data protection agency, CNIL, saying that no age verification tech protects privacy, and a similar report from the…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/2023/05/19/the-verge-rightly-calls-out-online-age-verification-laws-as-a-threat-to-your-privacy-the-open-internet/

 2023-05-21  Comments Off on Techdirt. – The Verge Rightly Calls Out Online Age Verification Laws As A Threat To Your Privacy & The Open Internet
May 212023
 

The Supreme Court today refused to weaken one of the key laws supporting free expression online, and recognized that digital platforms are not usually liable for their users’ illegal acts, ensuring that everyone can continue to use those services to speak and organize.
The decisions in Gonzalez v. Google and Twitter v. Taamneh are great news for a free and vibrant internet, which inevitably depends on services that host our speech. The court in Gonzalez declined to address the scope of 47 U.S.C. § 230 (“Section 230”), which generally protects users and online services from lawsuits based on content created by others. Section 230 is an essential part of the legal architecture that enables everyone to connect,…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/internet-dodges-censorship-supreme-court

 2023-05-21  Comments Off on Deeplinks – The Internet Dodges Censorship by the Supreme Court
May 212023
 

Enlarge / Willow is the highest-profile show to be removed as part of these cuts. (credit: Disney)
We saw it before with HBO Max and others, but Disney has now joined the content-cutting party. More than two dozen series and movies will be removed from Disney-owned streaming channels Disney+ and Hulu come May 26.
The list of shows removed notably includes Willow, the single-season TV series follow-up to the beloved 1988 cult-classic fantasy movie directed by Ron Howard. The Willow series premiered in November 2022 but struggled to find an audience.
Other notably cut content includes but is not limited to The World According to Jeff Goldblum, a couple of Marvel-themed documentaries, and several kids…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1940691

 2023-05-21  Comments Off on Ars Technica – Willow and many other shows will be removed from Disney+, Hulu
May 212023
 

Over the past few decades, scientists have been making fewer and fewer innovative breakthroughs. The blame lies with academia’s increasingly competitive, metrics-driven model, which discourages creativity and risk-taking.
Disruptions in science have seen a steady and steep decline over the last decades. (Lea Suzuki / the San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images) When I think of “disruptive” science, I remember the first pathbreaking scientist I saw: the late Nobel Laureate Oliver Smithies. In the presentation I heard him give, he reflected on his life and advised young scientists about their careers. “Very often ideas for research come from our experiences or memories,” he said. “It takes only one moment for the…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://jacobin.com/2023/05/science-neoliberal-model-innovation-publications-quantifying-wage-labor/

 2023-05-21  Comments Off on Jacobin – The Neoliberal Model Is Destroying Innovation in Science