Anyone have examples of creative challenges that have gotten co-opted/enshittified by AI sponsorship this past year besides #NaNoWriMo and #GlobalGameJam?
I go with the gvfs-fuse approach for this kind of job, managed from and bookmarked in Thunar. Once it's working, it's pretty transparent if you can deal with weird FUSE mounts in /run/user/UID.
Gio/GVFS stuff ought to work from GNOME/Nautilus and LXQt/PCManFM-Qt too, but I'm not sure about KDE. It might be a different thing on that.
Nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses, or ‘giant viruses’, infect a wide range of eukaryotes and can exchange genetic material not only with their hosts but also with bacteria and phages.
Content warning: anxious NaNoWriMo-related legal mumbling, hoping it doesn't come true
I'm excited about the idea of Writing Month (or any alternate writing events, really) and will try to participate, I'm just afraid that the NaNoWriMo people will come down on them for trademark infringement via confusing or deceptive similarity. Especially with "Writing Month" being a substring of "National Novel Writing Month" which the organization has a trademark on, the similar purpose of the events, and the November time period. https://nanowrimo.org/terms-and-conditions
My concern is that a cease-and-desist itself would be enough to shut Writing Month down, not even that the NaNo org's case would be all that strong. From very brief descriptions of some cases, https://www.tramatm.com/en/blog/category/other/sound-alikes-5-high-profile-trademark-disputes-involving-phonetic-similarity I think having very different logos and otherwise differentiating itself from NaNo will put WM on firmer legal grounding--but that's not the point. The point is NaNo HAS to defend its trademark or risks losing it, and small passion projects like WM are in no position to fight a huge "non" *snort* profit.
I doubt it'll happen within the first couple of years because indie writing events are everywhere and the org can't be bothered to chase after all of them, but if WM does catch on and turn out to have some longevity? At that point NaNo will pretty much be legally forced to go on the offensive. That may mean the end of WM, or at least the name and website that it's built a presence around.
So if it were me I'd proceed with extreme caution. Tbh the name and November date, plus the default offering of word counts as goals, make me really jumpy. Idk maybe this will never happen and I certainly hope it won't. But if WM does get traction I'd work like hell to distance it from NaNo because IP law and lawyers are pure evil.
Disclaimer: I am NOT giving legal advice with this post, I am not an intellectually property lawyer, and I am no longer licensed to practice law in any jurisdiction since declining to renew my license to practice in a U.S. jurisdiction. My main claim to knowledge is legal training from decades ago and my current work translating legal documents.
There's an infosec influencer who put out an IPv6 hit piece. In the ensuing discussion, I've learned a surprising number of networking and infosec professionals have no idea that: * v4 firewalls exist * v4 firewalls have used default deny with established and related allowed for decades * Those v4 firewalls are also used with NAT * NAT is only adding an address rewrite _after_ being accepted by the WAN-to-local firewall rules * v6 firewalls have existed for decades * stateful firewalls only start keeping state for a session once the initial traffic makes it past the firewall. A port scan from many IPs does not explode the state table.
I’ve also encountered networking professionals who appear unaware that IPv4 firewalls with default deny exist (“you’re using globally unique IPs internally, that means anyone on the Internet can connect directly to your internal systems” 🤯)
There are entire generations (plural 😬) of network / security professionals who don’t seem to have encountered a World Without NAT. And see NAT as an Important Security Feature, rather than an “OMG so out of addresses” kludge 😢
Why _do_ you need "IPv4 firewalls with default deny"? Default deny sounds useful for IPv6 _precisely_ because no IPv6 NAT means addresses are exposed unless a firewall drops connections.
“…as climate change makes heat waves more frequent, intense and long-lasting, experts say the increasingly severe conditions are testing some iconic desert plants known for their resilience — including saguaro cacti and agave.”
Yet another story of "build a safe cycle lane, and people will use it." It's time to ditch paint-only "bike lanes" and start using real protection for people cycling.
Written by: Ron Johnson, reprinted from Momentum Magazine A recent study shows that a separated bike lane installed in Cambridge, Massachusetts has been a resounding success. The study [...]
buffer with plastic post + green paint??? There's got to be more to it than that, like maybe you don't have to share with right turning truck drivers at every intersection and it doesn't end in 3.5 blocks?
a half-mile section, they say? I had to "share" the spare car lane on a state highway for 1.2 miles each way today (BH-Hwy west of the Multnomah county line) besides the places where the painted bike gutter was unusable with broken glass etc. And there's still a couple miles beyond that with 5 car lanes where they ran out of room for bikes.
@enobacon In North America, that's a pretty standard PBL configuration. No, that's not very safe - at least not nearly as safe as real concrete barriers or heavy planters. The fact that this cycle lane upgrade in Cambridge has drawn so many more people to use it, tells you how horrible the baseline is here.
@enobacon I think it's actually showing how close Cambridge is to having a real network. This short section was a major missing link to the network and opened up a bunch of routes for people at either end.
Also, unlike much of the US, Cambridge just doesn't have crazy wide roads. Our widest roads are 2 lanes in each direction.
@DemonHusky I have to imagine the whole process would be easier if they scrapped together a skeleton of network and then refined it once there was ridership / political will for permanent infrastructure everywhere, which probably involves a critical mass of plastic posts, maybe they're getting there
@enobacon that is basically what is happening. We have a city law requiring most of the major streets to have separated bike lanes installed by '26 (though some of the last streets got their finish date delayed to '27 this year).
@Andres4NY @DemonHusky @enobacon Sounds great! It's good to know there are more cities in North America that know how to design roads properly for everyone!
the neat thing about the classism behind our transportation system, is you can borrow money to try to better protect your family from the ruling class using traffic Engineers to scare you into cars
And every part of it counts as economic growth, from hiring traffic engineers to buying modeling software for them to building/expanding the highways to building & selling the monster trucks to insuring them to repairing them when they crash to the profits the healthcare system makes from treating all the crash victims to selling gravestones for the less lucky ones. Even victim-blaming “safety” pr campaigns create jobs!
The Honda CRF450RL is a nice dual sport for some highway, fire roads, and desert terrain. It has a fatal flaw - stalling - for enduro type riding or singletrack. Where is my KTM, Husqvarna or Beta when I need one - those bikes are so much better for true enduro riding.
My KTM 500 EXC-F (2023) suffered the same until I replaced the ECU with an aftermarket. Think the emission standards are making it hard to tune correctly.
I hate the headline though. It's not a love affair, it's a hostage situation. Car dealerships refuse to order and stock anything but SUVs and trucks, so that's all that sells, so that's all the manufacturers will make.
You have to jump through a lot of hoops to buy a sedan at this point.
Meanwhile, I rode for several miles on the shoulder of I-90 with a conglomeration of several unrelated groups of riders to get around one of the worst traffic jams I've seen, and nobody batted an eye. :P #motorcycle
Also, there was a husk of a burned-out car on the freeway near Snoqualmie Pass. :(
Climate Change Can Cause Bridges to ‘Fall Apart Like Tinkertoys,’ Experts Say Extreme heat and flooding are accelerating the deterioration of bridges, engineers say, posting a quiet but growing threat. https://arr.as/p #Infrastructure #Bridges #ClimateChange
It's Labor Day in the USA, a "holiday" in which most people get the day off from work — except, that is, for many of the poorest people who do much of the actual hard work and labor that keeps everything going while being paid the minimum wage or even less. 😡
what I always wanted to know: who’s bringing or placing these random tubs on beaches and docks?
Are they naked in there? Is it just empty in there too? Or did they cork up the tub and somehow fill it with water too? Is the tub to hide their massive boner you’d see if they were laying back on a chair?
🤔asking for more wooden bridges in inner cities. With maybe a moat(how do you spell that water around old castles) surrounding. Did the Middle Ages Future proof car free inner cities? More on history channel. 👽
@SheDrivesMobility Leergewicht ca. 11 T, Kapazität: ca 25 T --- wofür zur Hölle braucht man ein Fahrzeug auf normalen Straßen, was schwerer als diverse aktuelle PANZER ist?
Evolution deadlock: when you grow bigger to avoid to be a prey, but your environment can't sustain you anymore.
Until they fork on a light-and-robust approach, these vehicles will be slowly cornered by crumbling public roads into gated communities, then will die of inbreeding and maintenance costs.
P.S. On the classism, that is unhinged in its detachment. For real, have they never met poor and working class writers and artists? We're MORE likely to work together.
wtf? we have lots of writing workshops available in my city. They are all free and usually meet at the local libraries. They are specifically made to help writers get feedback from other people.
Meanwhile in America, migrant workers are exposed to dangerous (fatal) working conditions... the violence of America takes many forms; not all deaths are the result of gun ownership - some are due both to the use & exploitation of migrant workers and the lax/non-existent safety regimes for the workplace...
Each time a European politician looks to America as a model for economic development, these are the sorts of stories they should actually be acknowledging!
For all y’all international people who think it would be super to have privatized American healthcare, I introduce you to the day you change jobs or your job chooses to change your Insurance agency - and you get a peppy email telling you how it’s time to find all new doctors today and rebuild an entire care team immediately from scratch. Cheers!
A private company (for whatever reason, right or wrong) is defying the laws of a country in which it operates, by virtue of its control of a service within that country.
Imagine if a foreign national owned your water utility and refused to abide by the water-quality laws of the US.
@TomDB @chris in the eyes of his stans this looks like a righteous act of rebellion and pretection of whatever definition of "free speech" they use to justify the rampant hate speech
@yacc143 @TomDB @chris I don't know what jurisdiction musk pretends to be in. The case for brazil is clear. Real lawyers thought about it and the results are in.
I know freedom of speech from my country (germany) Hate was never tolerated Sedition was never tolerated Disproven falsehoods were never tolerated.
I can't claim toothpaste heals cancer (lie) or the jews cause cancer (hate) or say so to incite rebel (sedition).
@yacc143 @TomDB @chris similarly I was taught hate is not an opinion.
Your opinion is "the jews cause cancer"? Well that's not an opinion. That's hate. That's not something the state (freedom of speech) needs to tolerate. That's not something I need to tolerate at my home/club/shop/... (domiciliary rights). And even if we're not at home/... you have no right to get an audience. Nobody needs to listen to you even if legal to say
@yacc143 @TomDB @chris americans like to pretend that only their interpretation of the values and morale are okay. Apparently we're living lesser lives because our freedom of speech is not "unlimited".
I look across the sea and I am very very glad that our freedom of speech is written in a way that preserves said freedoms instead of perverting it to justify arbitrary hate or arbitrary entitlement
Oh, for Brazil it is simple too. A very senior judge issues orders. You follow these, try to appeal those (that was still a possibility), or you accept the consequences.
And if you don't respect the local laws, the consequences can be quite often that you are kicked out of the country. For “virtual” Internet companies, that happens “virtually” usually by being filtered at DNS/IP level.
@yacc143 @TomDB @chris for twitter via regular cable this is quite easy. Starlink (if anyone even uses it there) does not want to comply despite having shown capabilities in the past. It's the musing of a madman who thinks he's above the law.
In a way this is a good thing. Billionaires act outside the law but only one of them is stupid enough to make big media fuzz out of it. For billionaires there are no laws like kings of old time
@yacc143 @TomDB @chris who cares if brazilians can access it via a VPN or via a proxy website. That was never the point.
When I put up a traffic cone to block a road then 99 % will turn around and perhaps 1 % will drive through anyway. That's called success and good return on effort.
Same for the great firewall of china. People circumvent it but not enough to endanger the goal on totalitarian culture management
@yacc143 @TomDB @chris i feel like when Google News pulled out of Spain or Google in China closed down it felt... calculated. Like some people met up and thought about it.
With Elon Musk und Twitter it feels like he rolled out of bed with too little sleep and too many designer drugs in his system and just tweeted whatever he felt like, later yelling at some employee why his tweet was not yet put into actual policy
@yacc143 @saxnot @TomDB @chris I will say that free speech is vital to any democracy, but that "free speech" does not include hate speech. That "freedom" Musk speaks about is just free bar for the far right. When he says "free speech" he means to be the only voice because he does not tolerate discrepancy.
We in the UK live with that reality. Most of our privatised water companies have been sold to foreign investors. One of them is currently in dispute with the regulator and wants to put up bills by 59%.
@rejzor we have all seen how effective lawsuits are (they are not effective at all because they take too long) at controlling rogue billionaires
a former POTUS was found guilty of lying about the woman he r*ped & fined tens of millions of dollars-- he has not paid her the money AND yet he still walks free
so... i wouldn't suggest Brazil pin a lot of hopes on a civil lawsuit
they need to seize assets + demand his extradition
My mother would say he's "getting too big for his britches". It's time to put the brakes on wealth accumulation - everyone knows this, that's why the wealth accumulators are all backing fascist political parties.
American companies really didn't care about European privacy laws until they increased the penalties to such a crazy amount that it would severely impact even companies like Facebook or Google. And that's what Brazil should do too.
No need to imagine, in the UK at least, no need at all. Thames Water, whose largest shareholder is a bloc of 6 offshore 'Global Wealth Funds', has demanded that its bills increase by 59%, or they will respond by diverting untreated sewage into rivers and lakes.
Musk has been trying to trample over Brazilian sovereignty for years now, especially during Bolsonaro's term, even to the point of directly assisting in criminal activity. Starlink's main user base here are Grileiros (people who burn forests to open space for cattle farming and forge land ownership documents). The Twitter debacle was mainly obstruction of justice, basically him refusing to give user info of suspected members of PCC (a criminal organization) and users violating hate speech laws (which here land you in prison w/o bail). Banning Twitter was a slap on the wrist, considering everything.
There is one positive thing to see in this dangerous mess. This unprecedented breach of territory can be put for all to see on the shoulders of an idiot. Reactions will be a useful additional way to tag people & orgs.
Didn't have time to read the thread, maybe this has been said before here, and I thank whoever is reading this in advance for telling me if this is so.
I was appalled as to how the NYT article is like PR piece for Musk. There are no Starlink connections in schools. Mostly big AG uses it because there is no internet in rural areas. Also, the army. Not surprising that Bolsonaro made those deals with Elon in 2022. It’s super expensive - comes with a hefty customs fee for regular citizens. The NYT made it seem like Starlink was taking indigenous people out of the dark ages, but here’s their major clients: illegal gold mining in Yanomami territory - a priority under Bolsonaro’s regime:
i just went down this massive rabbit hole and came across a certified AMD moment i am reasonably sure amdgpu is responsible for controlling the CPU clock speeds on the deck
steamos seems to ignore any request to change the scaling governor meaning im gonna have to get into the weeds to figure out what the hell is going on with the power management
Angry Sun
in reply to Neil E. Hodges • • •like this
Neil E. Hodges and lain like this.