Journalist: Do you believe that Israel has a right to exist?
UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese:
made me chuckle - For de av oss som trenger en oppmuntrin på morgenkvistenen: https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2024/11/05/curl-v-google-com/ via @bagder #curl #https #google #therealstory
Tech workers don't need unions.
We can, after all, just hop jobs if we want significant salary increases. We all love intermittent employments and hustle culture. We dislike forming stable attachments, becoming experts on projects, and seeing them to fruition.
9,4% p.a. - or a total of 38% for the next four years - is something every single one of y'all individually successfully negotiates, right?
https://www.dw.com/en/boeing-factory-workers-end-7-week-strike/a-70690180
“You know," said Arthur, "it's at times like this, when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young."
"Why, what did she tell you?"
"I don't know, I didn't listen.”
~ Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
"Isn’t it ironic that we’re banking on a technology we don’t have the resources to power sustainably, expecting it to save us from a problem it’s actively contributing to?"
How AI is fuelling the climate crisis, not solving it:
https://energytransition.org/2024/10/how-ai-is-fuelling-the-climate-crisis-not-solving-it/
Software liability comes to the EU.
The new EU liability law extends the definition of “defective products” to include software, holding manufacturers accountable for harm caused by software vulnerabilities.
If a software flaw leads to damage, manufacturers can now be held liable, emphasizing the importance of security throughout the product lifecycle. This change encourages companies to prioritize cybersecurity measures and regular updates to protect consumers, shifting some risk from users to software providers.
The law also allows easier access to evidence in legal claims, balancing the power dynamics between consumers and manufacturers.
There is a carve out for open source software. Importers and the EU representatives of foreign software can be held liable too.
You ever seen something so painfully out of touch and oblivious it hurts?
I'm sure many have seen https://stallman-report.org/ detailing Richard Stallman's misconduct and how it and his enablers have harmed the free software movement. Much of this is not new but I was still shocked by a line early in the "Why publish this report?" section: "Women represent just 3% of the free software community, compared to 23% of industry programmers generally." Obviously not all of that disparity can be attributed to #Stallman alone, but his continued position of prominence is a symptom of a broader disease in the community's culture. Paying attention to these problems rather than turning a blind eye to them is a necessary step towards healing.
Results of the 2024 TAB (the Linux Foundation's Technical Advisory Board) election:
https://lore.kernel.org/all/87y13bc05z.fsf@trenco.lwn.net/
"'There were 934 eligible voters in this year's TAB election; 229 of them cast ballots. The results were (with the top five winning seats):
1 Kees Cook
2 Dan Williams
3 Miguel Ojeda
4 Dave Hansen
5 Shuah Khan
[...]
Thanks to everybody who participated.'"
#BPF #kernel changes up to now normally came as part of the big -net pull. Seems for #Linux 6.12 the involved developers try something new, as Alexei send the changes straight to Linus this time:
https://git.kernel.org/torvalds/c/440b65232829fad69947b8de983c13a525cc8871
What happened to Greta Thunberg?
_________________________________
As Greta’s politics have grown and evolved, they reached a point where they now make billionaire media owners, milquetoast executives of major non-profits, and more than a few politicians a little uncomfortable. All she’s done is follow the science, but over time the science has led her to see that the climate crisis doesn’t exist in a vacuum. There are massive monetary incentives to destroy the planet in this capitalist system.
ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP made over $100 billion in profits in 2023 alone. In following the science, Greta had to start examining the capitalist system if she wanted to get down to the root of the climate crisis.
But Greta kept going. When she published The Climate Book in 2022, the then 19-year-old activist had some words for the entire system we live under today:
"We are never going back to normal again because ‘normal’ was already a crisis. What we refer to as normal is an extreme system built on the exploitation of people and the planet. It is a system defined by colonialism, imperialism, oppression and genocide by the Global North to accumulate wealth that still shapes our current world order.”
That was two years ago, and it’s no surprise she hasn’t been given the spotlight nearly as often since. In fact, in the wake of that book launch, she’s been the subject of countless hit pieces, and her Palestine solidarity activism has been denigrated as well.
Greta went from a cute kid saying that climate change is bad to a young adult rightly charging global systems with not only fueling the climate crisis but also being oppressive and grossly harmful to life in numerous other ways. And, perhaps most importantly, she sees these systems as interconnected and knows that radical change is necessary for the future of life on this planet.
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FULL ESSAY -- https://www.jphilll.com/p/gretas-growth
#Politics #Economics #Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange
"It is not the case that “AI gathers data from the Web and learns from it.” The reality is that AI companies gather data and then optimize models to reproduce representations of that data for profit."
"The productivity myth suggests that anything we spend time on is up for automation — that any time we spend can and should be freed up for the sake of having even more time for other activities or pursuits — which can also be automated."
https://www.techpolicy.press/challenging-the-myths-of-generative-ai/
Read the whole thing!
Darth Vader in a kilt, on a unicycle, playing bagpipes.
It's good to be alive.
"Humans think they are smarter than dolphins because we build cars and buildings and start wars etc... and all that dolphins do is swim in the water, eat fish and play around. Dolphins believe that they are smarter for exactly the same reasons."
~ Douglas Adams
I love this article about the US debate.
If you're American or British and it rubs you the wrong way, please note that this is how your press writes about us.
H/T to @meena for bringing it to my attention.
If you want to keep using @signalapp in the EU, say no to #ChatControl
https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/take-action-to-stop-chat-control-now/