Aug 302023
 

Having been involved in open source for thirty years, I have seen many open source distribution methods, packaging systems, licensing options, and business models. In the early days there were only two
classes of licenses — public domain-style licenses like BSD and
MIT, and the GNU licenses. Though the GNU licenses had confusion around applications linking
to static GNU libraries, the general goals of the two licenses were well understood. The Postgres license is similar to public domain-style licenses, and is
accepted as an OSI-certified license.

As open source took over the enterprise IT infrastructure, companies formed around open source, and diverse licenses started to
proliferate. Rather than align with the previous two popular open styles, they created new licenses that were…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://postgr.es/p/68l

 2023-08-30  Comments Off on Planet PostgreSQL – Bruce Momjian: Open Source Bait and Switch: Licensing and Beyond
Aug 272023
 

Eighty years ago today, Richard Winger was born. He is the foremost expert on ballot access in the United States today–and probably ever. He is a national treasure. A person who is irreplaceable by any measure. Please join me in … Continue reading

External feed Read More at the Source: https://ballot-access.org/2023/08/27/happy-birthday-richard-winger/

 2023-08-27  Comments Off on Ballot Access News – Happy Birthday, Richard Winger!
Aug 272023
 

We are used to seeing Linux running on almost everything, but we were a bit taken aback to see [semu-c64] running Linux on a Commodore 64. But between the checked-out user name and the caveat that: “it runs extremely slowly and it needs a RAM Expansion Unit”, one can already start piecing together what’s happening here.
The machine running Linux is really a RISC-V32. It just so happens that the CPU is virtual, with the C64 pretending it is a bigger machine. The boot-up appears to take hours, so this is in no way practical, even though the comment is that optimization might be able to get a 10X speed up. It would still be about as…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://hackaday.com/2023/08/27/linux-on-a-commodore-64/

 2023-08-27  Comments Off on Hackaday – Linux on a Commodore 64
Aug 242023
 

On August 14th, DNA biometrics testing identified a body that was found on pilings in a Washington river a year ago, according to a release from the Cowlitz County Sheriff’s Office. It was too decomposed to conduct facial recognition or take fingerprints, the Tri-City Herald reports. Investigators partnered with Othram, a forensic genetic genealogy lab in Texas, which was able to identify the brother of the unidentified body. The brother confirmed the deceased man was 55-year old Bryan M. Heinrich Sr. based on a tattoo. While there was no foul play in this instance, the case raises questions about privacy concerns with the use of DNA databases in criminal investigations. By using a privacy loophole…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.biometricupdate.com/202308/gedmatch-loophole-allows-the-police-to-access-user-dna-without-their-consent

 2023-08-24  Comments Off on Biometric Update – GEDmatch loophole allows the police to access user DNA without their consent
Aug 222023
 

Do you remember who suggested New Order’s “Confusion (Pump Panel Reconstruction Remix)” for the Blood Rave? Nothing we had for the blood club worked, every track was too tuneful and distracting. Almost as a joke I tried some monstrously repetitive industrial tracks and discovered that was exactly the oppressive vibe that was needed. I scoured the library for candidates and the Pump Panel remix stood out as the gold cut. I did a complex music edit to give the track the progressive structure you hear in the movie (builds and builds to a climax) and from that point on the whole scene was built to the track and the tracks surrounding it, which is why everything…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2023/08/blood-rave-2/

 2023-08-22  Comments Off on jwz – Blood Rave
Aug 162023
 

Readers have been pointing us to HashiCorp’s announcement
that it is moving to its own “Business Source License” for some of its
(formerly) open-source products. Like other companies (example) that have taken this path, HashiCorp
is removing the freedom to use its products commercially in ways that it
sees as competitive. This is, in a real sense, an old and tiresome story.

The lessons to be drawn from this change are old as well. One is to beware
of depending on any platform, free or proprietary, that is controlled by a
single company. It is a rare company that will not try to take advantage
of that control at some point.

The other is to beware of contributor license agreements. HashiCorp’s
agreement used
to read that it…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://lwn.net/Articles/941799/

 2023-08-16  Comments Off on LWN.net – HashiCorp’s license change
Aug 152023
 

Late Friday, some of the world’s largest record labels, including Sony and Universal Music Group, filed a lawsuit against the Internet Archive and others for the Great 78 Project, a community effort for the preservation, research and discovery of 78 rpm records that are 70 to 120 years old. As a non-profit library, we take this matter seriously and are currently reviewing the lawsuit with our legal counsel.
A 78 rpm player in the foyer of the Internet Archive. Of note, the Great 78 Project has been in operation since 2006 to bring free public access to a largely forgotten but culturally important medium. Through the efforts of dedicated librarians, archivists and sound engineers, we have…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://blog.archive.org/2023/08/14/internet-archive-responds-to-recording-industry-lawsuit-targeting-obsolete-media/

 2023-08-15  Comments Off on Internet Archive Blogs – Internet Archive Responds to Recording Industry Lawsuit Targeting Obsolete Media
Aug 152023
 

Enlarge (credit: NicoElNino)
On Friday, the US Department of Energy announced that it chose the first two sites to host facilities that will pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and permanently store it underground. The sites in Louisiana and Texas will be funded by money set aside in the bipartisan infrastructure bill that was passed early in President Biden’s term in office. They represent a major step for the US, as they’re not linked to a specific source of carbon emissions, and the CO2 they capture won’t be used for extracting fossil fuels.
They also represent a major step globally, as each facility is expected to have 250 times the capacity of the…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://arstechnica.com/?p=1960812

 2023-08-15  Comments Off on Ars Technica – US picks the first two sites for carbon-capture hubs
Aug 152023
 

*CNET Deletes Thousands of Old Articles
to Game Google Search.*

This is an atrocity to records of the past. It is bad for secondary reasons
too, as the article says, but the harm to society is the principal issue.
I hope these pages are all saved in archive.org.

Google ought to provide instructions for new sites about how how they
can obtain, in some other way that deletes nothing, whatever SEO
benefit (albeit small) they might have obtained by deleting anything.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://stallman.org/archives/2023-may-aug.html#14_August_2023_(Deleting_journalistic_works_en_mass)

 2023-08-15  Comments Off on Richard Stallman’s Political Notes – Deleting journalistic works en mass
Aug 152023
 

Legal strategies are being formed to prevent U.S. states from imposing new restrictions, including age-verification policies, on online publishers of adult content. Publishers don’t want more restrictions on their product, of course, but others say blocking content violates the nation’s constitutional right to create and consume information without undue government intervention. Others feel governments and other organizations will collect, keep and use identification data without consent or adequate security. Utah’s new law requiring adult sites to prove their visitors are not minors easily withstood its first court challenge this month when a lawsuit opposing the regulation was dismissed. The U.S. District Court judge ruled narrowly against advocates like Free Speech Coalition, an association promoting the…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.biometricupdate.com/202308/mixed-start-for-privacy-advocates-fighting-us-age-verification-rules-for-adult-content

 2023-08-15  Comments Off on Biometric Update – Mixed start for privacy advocates fighting US age verification rules for adult content
Aug 152023
 

The entire police department of a small town in Kansas raided the local newspaper and home of its owners, one of whom died the next day, apparently due to stress.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/08/15/kcpb-a15.html

 2023-08-15  Comments Off on World Socialist Web Site (en) – Police illegally search small-town Kansas newspaper, triggering death of 98-year-old owner
Aug 142023
 

In 2020, publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, John Wiley and Penguin Random House sued the Internet Archive (IA) for copyright infringement, equating its ‘Open Library’ to a pirate site.
IA’s library is a non-profit organization that scans physical books, which can then be lent out to patrons in an ebook format. Patrons can also borrow books that are scanned and digitized in-house, with technical restrictions that prevent copying.
Staying true to the centuries-old library concept, only one patron at a time can rent a digital copy of a physical book. These restrictions were temporarily loosened at the height of the Covid epidemic when IA launched the National Emergency Library.
Mass Copyright Infringement or Fair Use?
Patrons happily use the library but not…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://torrentfreak.com/internet-archives-copyright-battle-with-publishers-leads-to-lending-restrictions-230813/

 2023-08-14  Comments Off on TorrentFreak – Internet Archive’s Copyright Battle with Publishers Leads to Lending Restrictions
Aug 072023
 

$ grep kermit /etc/services
kermit 1649/tcp

What is this mysterious protocol? Who uses it and what is its story?
This story is a winding one, beginning in 1981. Kermit is, to the best of my knowledge, the oldest actively-maintained software package with an original developer still participating. It is also a scripting language, an Internet server, a (scriptable!) SSH client, and a file transfer protocol.
And my first use of it was talking to my HP-48GX calculator over a 9600bps serial link. Yes, that calculator had a Kermit server built in.
But let’s back up and talk about serial ports and Modems.
Serial Ports and Modems
In my piece The PC & Internet Revolution in Rural America, I recently talked about getting a…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://changelog.complete.org/archives/10555-try-the-last-internet-kermit-server

 2023-08-07  Comments Off on Planet Debian – John Goerzen: Try the Last Internet Kermit Server
Aug 062023
 

This is just collection of alternatives to EPub for electronic
books and similar stuff.

Why to have alternative to EPub: The publishing industry has
a problem, and EPUB is not the solution ? … the author (Jani
Patokallio) has a bit of problem confusing EPub with DRM, but
otherwise his point that ZIP archive of HTMLs would do at
least as well as EPub is a valid one. Except of course there is
absolutely no reader for such animal.
Portable Documents for the Open Web (Part 1) (part 2 and
part 3) how this is seen by the publishing industry (by the
chairman of IDPF).
Forest of evergreen notes … personal storage of knowledge,
quite related to the concept of public Zettelkasten by Andy
Matuschak. Right, Zettelkasten. There I…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://matej.ceplovi.cz/blog/ebook-formats.html

 2023-08-06  Comments Off on Fedora People – Matěj Cepl: Ebook formats
Aug 052023
 

So, you’re doing some sync stuff.
But you also need to do some async stuff,
without making everything async.
Maybe the sync stuff is an existing application.
Maybe you still want to use your favorite sync library.
Or maybe you need just a little async,
without having to pay the full price.
Of course,
you can run a coroutine with asyncio.run(),
and blocking sync code from a coroutine with asyncio.to_thread(),
but the former isn’t granular enough,
and the latter doesn’t solve async code being at the top.
As always, there must be a better way.

Maybe something like this?
async def do_stuff(i): return i * 2 async def generate_stuff(i): for n in range(i): yield n runner = ThreadRunner()
print(runner.run(do_stuff(2))) # 8
print(*runner.wrap_iter(generate_stuff(4))) # 0 1 2 3

Now, it would take a long…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://death.andgravity.com/asyncio-bridge

 2023-08-05  Comments Off on Planet Python – death and gravity: Running async code from sync in Python asyncio
Aug 042023
 

WASHINGTON—Granting the cleaning implement full legal authority over her personal affairs, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) reportedly ceded her power of attorney on Friday to a broom resembling her daughter. “At my age, it’s important to have a dependable family member I can rely on, and there’s no one I trust more than…

Read more…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.theonion.com/sen-feinstein-cedes-power-of-attorney-to-broom-resembl-1850708197

 2023-08-04  Comments Off on The Onion – Sen. Feinstein Cedes Power of Attorney To Broom Resembling Daughter
Aug 032023
 

Sugiura found that 93 percent of the beetles he fed to the frog Pelophylax nigromaculatus escaped the predator’s vent within four hours, frequently entangled in fecal pellets.

The quickest run from mouth to anus was just six minutes.

“Further experiments are needed to investigate how to stimulate the frogs to defecate,” says Sugiura. “However, I speculate that R. attenuata use legs and the body to stimulate the frog’s hind gut.”

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

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2023/08/frog-anus-speed-run/

 2023-08-03  Comments Off on jwz – Frog Anus Speed Run
Aug 032023
 

I created my first “World Wide Web Home Page” in March 1993. The original URL was ftp://lucid.com/pub/jwz/index.html. In July 1994, that became http://home.mcom.com/people/jwz/, then http://people.netscape.com/jwz/ in 1995, and finally I registered jwz.org on Aug 2, 1998. It took me a little while to accept that having my email and web presence completely beholden to my employer was perhaps not the greatest plan. That is obvious to you now, but it was the 90s, we were like little children. Why that date, though? Oh, there was a stupid Netscape PR disaster that made the comms team pull the plug on all of the employee home pages. There were five days, Friday through Tuesday, when nobody could download…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2023/08/jwz-org-is-now-25/

 2023-08-03  Comments Off on jwz – jwz.org is now 25
Aug 022023
 

Three people died in an Amtrak derailment in September 2021 because the freight rail company that owns the tracks did not properly maintain them, partly as a result of cost-cutting measures that slashed the track inspection workforce, according to a two-year government investigation.  The crash occurred after a Motherboard investigation earlier in the year that warned the freight rail industry was courting catastrophe by slashing maintenance and inspection programs to save on labor costs. The report, which was published on Thursday by the National Transportation Safety Board, says the derailment of the Amtrak Empire Builder train in Joplin, Montana occurred because of “a combination of conditions that affected the BNSF Railway track” including worn rail and…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wxjgbb/three-people-died-in-an-amtrak-derailment-caused-by-faulty-freight-rail-tracks-overworked-track-inspector-missed-report-finds

 2023-08-02  Comments Off on Motherboard – Three People Died in an Amtrak Derailment Caused by Faulty Freight Rail Tracks Overworked Track Inspector Missed, Report Finds