Link – Page 68 – The Death of the Mind

Hackaday – The Modding, Restoration, and Demise of a $3M Analog Computer

Feb 102021

How do you rapidly record the output from your three million dollar analog computer in the 1940s when the results are only available on analog meters? The team responsible for the Westinghouse 1947 AC Network Calculator at Georgia Tech was faced with just this problem and came up with a nifty solution — hack the control panel and wire in a special-purpose drafting table.
What Is It?
What is this beast of a computer? Machines of this type were developed during and after World War 2, and strictly speaking, belong in the category of scale models rather than true computers. Although these machines were very flexible, they were primarily designed to simulate power distribution grids. There is a…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://hackaday.com/2021/02/09/the-modding-restoration-and-demise-of-a-3m-analog-computer/

2021-02-10 Comments Off

World Socialist Web Site (en) – Facebook’s “depoliticization” aimed at censorship of left-wing and socialist organizations

Feb 102021

The recent announcement by Facebook that it would “reduce the amount of political content” on its platform is part of the drive by the US ruling establishment to block the spread of progressive, left-wing and socialist ideas on social media.

External feed Read More at the Source: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/02/10/poli-f10.html

2021-02-10 Comments Off

Richard Stallman’s Political Notes – Voting machines in 2020

Feb 102021

Although we have no evidence that voting machines were used for election
fraud in 2020, we know some are vulnerable to such use.

People should vote on paper, marking ballots with a pen. Then a
computerized machine can be used to count them. That machine should
not be able to alter them.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://stallman.org/archives/2020-nov-feb.html#9_February_2021_%28Voting_machines_in_2020%29

2021-02-10 Comments Off

Techdirt. – Amazon Transparency Report Indicates Its Multiple IoT Devices Are Juicy Targets For Law Enforcement

Feb 102021

Never forget the IoT device you invite into your home may become the state’s witness. That’s one of the unfortunate conclusions that can be drawn from Amazon’s latest transparency report.

Amazon has its own digital assistant, Alexa. On top of that, it has its acquisitions. One of its more notable gets is Ring. Ring is most famous for its doorbells — something that seems innocuous until you examine the attached camera and the company’s 2,000 partnerships with law enforcement agencies.

Ring is in the business of selling cameras. That the doorbell may alert you to people on your doorstep is incidental. Cameras on the inside. Cameras on the outside. All in the name of “security.” And it’s only…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210204/09284546183/amazon-transparency-report-indicates-multiple-iot-devices-are-juicy-targets-law-enforcement.shtml

2021-02-10 Comments Off

Deeplinks – EFF, Freedom of the Press Foundation and 22 Other Press Freedom Organizations Call on Attorney General to Drop Assange Prosecution

Feb 092021

The prosecution of Julian Assange for charges related to his publications of government documents on the whistleblower website Wikileaks poses a grave threat to press freedom, EFF, Freedom of the Press Foundation and other human rights organizations argue. In an open letter published today, we call on President Biden’s acting Attorney General Monty Wilkinson to halt the prosecution and the threat of extradition.
The majority of the charges against Assange relate to the Espionage Act, a federal law passed in 1917 designed to punish espionage. The law’s broad language criminalized those who obtain and/or transmit materials related to the national defense (read the text of the law). While the authors of the law may have intended to…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/02/eff-freedom-press-foundation-and-xx-other-press-freedom-organizations-call

2021-02-09 Comments Off

The Onion – City’s Outdoor Dining Solutions Slowly Advancing Beyond Rest Of Civilization

Feb 092021

NEW YORK—Noting that the structures along the city’s sidewalks had adopted technology that appeared to come from at least 200 years in the future, local restaurant patrons observed Monday that outdoor dining solutions were now the most technologically advanced aspect of human civilization. “Since autumn, patio service…

Read more…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.theonion.com/city-s-outdoor-dining-solutions-slowly-advancing-beyond-1846199404

2021-02-09 Comments Off

Fedora People – Marcin ‘hrw’ Juszkiewicz: FOSDEM 2021 was the best online event ever

Feb 092021

My family got used to the fact that I am not available at beginning of February.
Because of my FOSDEM trip. This year was not both not so different and different
at same time.
Due to COVID-19 pandemic FOSDEM 2021 was online. So there was no reason for any
trip other than to local shops to buy some Belgian beers. And I was not
available to anyone during weekend.
Online? It will be terrible!
During 2020 I attended several online events. For some of them I prefer to not
remember that I did it. Terrible recordings of talk, some had bandwidth issues.
On some organizers did not managed to get presenters agree on online presence so
some meetings had to be dropped when they were supposed to start.
Matrix to the rescue
FOSDEM…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://marcin.juszkiewicz.com.pl/2021/02/08/fosdem-2021-was-the-best-online-event-ever/

2021-02-09 Comments Off

Planet PostgreSQL – Hamid Akhtar: Troubleshooting Performance Issues Due to Disk and RAM

Feb 092021

Quite a few managers or clients expect DBAs to type away a few commands to fix a sluggish PostgreSQL instance. If only things were that simple. Unfortunately, debugging a sluggish instance that was previously running optimally requires analysis at many levels. In this blog, I will attempt to help that debugging process on Linux by identifying tools, tips and tricks that one can use when digging away a performance issue. I thought I could cover all the relevant topics in a single blog, but there is just far too much to write, so expect a series instead and this blog to be the first in the series of blogs. Remember, a lot of things can go…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://postgr.es/p/4_Z

2021-02-09 Comments Off

CounterPunch.org – Appalachian Trail Conservancy Refuses to Make Public $19.5 Million Pipeline Agreement

Feb 092021

Photograph Source: daveynin – CC BY 2.0
For six years, the Appalachian Trail Conservancy (ATC) fought the Mountain Valley Pipeline’s proposal to dig under the Appalachian Trail for its 303-mile natural gas pipeline.
Then last year, the ATC announced that it was taking up to $19.5 million from Mountain Valley Pipeline.
Predictably, the ATC’s active opposition to the pipeline ceased.
This did not sit well with the Appalachian Trail community, including many active ATC members who quit the group in protest.
Now, those members and others are calling on the ATC to release the secret agreement with Mountain Valley Pipeline.
Many ATC members like Dr. Dana Olson, who lives right next to the trail in Peterstown, West Virginia, was not happy with…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/02/08/appalachian-trail-conservancy-refuses-to-make-public-19-5-million-pipeline-agreement/

2021-02-09 Comments Off

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

– 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

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

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/

2021-02-07 Comments Off

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

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

INDY Week – Buc-ee’s Pulls Out of Orange County, Citing Commissioner Reception

Feb 072021

The gas station has been the subject of controversy for months. …

External feed Read More at the Source: https://indyweek.com/news/orange/buc-ees-pulls-out-of-orange-county/

2021-02-07 Comments Off

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

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

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

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

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