Steve Hammett @bitflips@social.cleverlibre.org

#UK: NOW: Mass sit-in at Waterloo Station, #London calling for a #CeasefireNOW on #Gaza. #Israel #Palestinians

https://e.pcloud.link/publink/show?code=XZYIBsZWSpjwcQK15HghpAv71ABmycYDb3X

DEMAND A CEASEFIRE NOW!

#CeasefireNOW
In the face of unfettered devastation and suffering, humanity must prevail. Demand a ceasefire by all parties to end civilian suffering.

Act now ⬇️
https://www.amnesty.org/en/petition/demand-a-ceasefire-by-all-parties-to-end-civilian-suffering/

They say at least 100,000 are protesting to stop the #GazaGenocide in #London right now. This crowd looks MUCH bigger than the two previous marches that were estimated at 100,000 by the MetPol. This is organic, and it is growing with every day of #IsraeliGovernment atrocity in #Gaza.

STOP THE GENOCIDE! #FreePalestine

#UKpol

KDE: February 2024 MegaRelease

Just a heads-up to you people who wondered when Alien BOB would pick up on the KDE Plasma bleeding edge again.
Simply put: Patrick did a hell of a job pushing every new KDE Plasma update into the slackware-current package tree (even before the 15.0 release) in no time. There was nothing for me to do (or to improve on) since Plasma5

https://alien.slackbook.org/blog/kde-february-2024-megarelease/

#Software #frameworks #gear #kde #liveslak #plasma #qt6

New report - A snapshot of the academic research culture in 2023 & how it might be improved

@octopus_ac platform founder @alex_freeman said: "It's heartbreaking to read how researchers currently feel. The current system incentivises the wrong things."

https://www.octopus.ac/research-culture-report

Oh man - this makes for grim reading....
https://www.octopus.ac/research-culture-report

Good morning nerds

Happy International #RepairDay, wherever you are!

Over 1,300 events are taking place globally this weekend to mark the day, all over the UK and in every continent, from Argentina to Australia, from Benin to Taiwan

Find your nearest or celebrate online: https://repairday.org

Party like it's 1993! 🥳​

@SinclairSpeccy Happy birthday, @volkerdi!

Thank you for dedicating more than half of your life to making us slackers less grumpy when using our computers.

57 years ago on October 20, 1966, Patrick Volkerding was born.
Volkerding is best known as the founder and creator of Slackware, one of the earliest Linux distributions.

Slackware, introduced in 1993, quickly gained recognition for its simplicity and adherence to the Unix philosophy. While other Linux distributions embraced modern package management systems, Slackware maintained a more traditional approach

#Tech #TechHistory #Linux #Slackware

Remembering Heather Rodgers

The value of an independent and fearless bar

https://emptycity.substack.com/p/remembering-heather-rogers

"Cochrane ignored this epidemiological evidence because it didn't meet its rigid standard. I have called this approach “methodological fetishism,” when scientists fixate on a preferred methodology and dismiss studies that don't follow it. Sadly, it's not unique to Cochrane. By dogmatically insisting on a particular definition of rigor, scientists in the past have landed on wrong answers more than once."

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-went-wrong-with-a-highly-publicized-covid-mask-analysis/

Chromium 118 (also ungoogled) is a security update

I uploaded new 64bit packages for Chromium 118.0.5993.70 (also the un-googled variant) for which the sources were released a few days ago. This first release in the 118 series addresses a critical vulnerability (CVE-2023-5218) so it's wise to upgrade.
As mentioned in a previous blog post,

https://alien.slackbook.org/blog/chromium-118-also-ungoogled-is-a-security-update/

#Software #chrome #chromium #cve #google #privacy #ungoogled

BREAKING: Agreement has been reached on the full restoration of USS pensions. 69 days of strike action in the making. This will now be put before the Higher Education Committee and if agreed a full member vote will take place.

#UCU #USS #ucurising

https://www.ucu.org.uk/article/13215/Agreement-paves-way-for-full-restoration-of-university-pension-benefits-by-April?utm_source=Mastodon&utm_medium=Social&campaign=ucuRISING

Chromium package and release update

You have surely noticed an increase in the frequency with which I am releasing new chromium and chromium-ungoogled packages. This is caused by a new release policy from Google, with an update every week and a bump in the major version (currently 117) every month.
I have tried keeping up with that schedule, but I am giving up.

https://alien.slackbook.org/blog/chromium-package-and-release-update/

#Software #chrome #chromium #cve #google #ungoogled

Now that's outrageous, even for Google: the search giant disregards your search query and alters it such that you don't find what you are looking for, but what Google wants you to click on.

"How Google Alters Search Queries to Get at Your Wallet"
https://www.wired.com/story/google-antitrust-lawsuit-search-results/

This ought to be the downfall of the corporation - but it likely won't be.

The "New Outlook" demands that when adding your Gmail account, you also give Microsoft a copy of all your email, contacts, and calendar data.

The "Learn More" link confirms:

"Syncing your account to the Microsoft Cloud means that a copy of your email, calendar, and contacts will be synchronized between your email provider and Microsoft data centers."

WOW.

Good time to switch to @thunderbird, folks!

#Privacy #Outlook #Email