Open source #PinePhone modem firmware now supports audio, GPS, and power management
Google Alerts continues to be a hotbed of scams and malware
I finally gave in and tried #factorio.
Hopefully this won't be a repeat of when I found OpenTTD.
Fun fact: the mutineer site attempting a hostile takeover of the GNU project is using a Linode IP address. The *real* gnu.org runs on libreboot D16 hardware.
IP block: 172.105.0.0/19, AS63949 Linode, LLC
https://ipinfo.io/AS63949/172.105.0.0/19
Linode is a non-free VPS hosting provider. You need non-free javascript to use the control panel!
I'm making a site (on libreboot server!) to warn people.
They failed to remove RMS from FSF. Now they're after GNU. If you see their site: it is *NOT* the GNU project.
Reminder that this exists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQ5MA685ApE
AT&T hid an arbitration clause in a mountain of dense legalese that it forces its customers to sign. So a judge dismissed our lawsuit against AT&T’s invasion of location privacy. We need a legislative fix. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/04/forced-arbitration-thwarts-legal-challenge-atts-disclosure-customer-location-data
The Tor Project is hiring a Junior Systems Administrator! Please retweet and share this opportunity with your networks.
https://www.torproject.org/about/jobs/junior-system-administrator/
Google is making another attempt at personal health records - The Verge
https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/12/22379846/google-health-record-data-app-android
Under the U.S. copyright laws, reverse engineering software or hardware you legitimately obtained is perfectly legal, UNLESS the software EULA says "no RE", which is legally enforceable and overrides your fair-use rights, as the courts has repeatedly ruled.
Then what prevents a hardware vendor or a chipmaker from doing the same thing? Why hasn't every chipmaker started to sell chips with EULA attached at this point? "Take a photo and we'll sue you out of existence..."
The ad industry is moving away from the anonymous profiling that cookies enabled, and is planning to demand email addresses and other personally-identifiable information instead. This would be a step backward for users.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/04/after-cookies-ad-tech-wants-use-your-email-track-you-everywhere
We know you have been waiting patiently, but the wait is finally over.
Manjaro ARM 21.04 has just been released, with a slew of new images for your devices!
https://forum.manjaro.org/t/manjaro-arm-21-04-released/61974
Using, re-using, and re-implementing software interfaces is the industry standard. EFF will keep fighting to make sure it stays that way. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/04/victory-fair-use-supreme-court-reverses-federal-circuit-oracle-v-google
swiley.net
Email mastodon+swiley@swiley.net (this makes all of my computers beep and turn on an indicator light and is always the fastest way to reach me.) I was on octodon a while ago but abandoned my account. I've never been a member of gab or parlor.
If you’d like to learn to program I would consider the SICP [1] more or less the peak of American CS pedagogy (at least as far as beginners go) along with “The Practice of Programming” once you get through that.
I play ukulele, I’m ok at reading music and decent at improv. I learned from Walter Piston’s “Harmony” and some of Adam Neely’s videos.
My main phone is a pine phone so if I don’t pick up when you call the battery is probably dead, the modem is probably dead, or I’m currently swearing at calls/pulseaudio/alsa. I’d strongly recommend sending an email instead.
Dispite what my web page says I’ve stopped uploading my scratch projects to GitHub once I started to understand the basics of collaboration with git. I was using the flamegraph as gamification/motivation but it doesn’t work as well with feature branch/squash merge workflows so I just keep most things on my VPS until I’m happy with publishing updates.
[1] https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/full-text/book/book.html