amcooper @amcooper@mastodon.technology

I’m told that many Germans are stockpiling cheese and sausages in anticipation of a COVID lockdown — planning, in other words, for a Wurst-Käse scenario

After more than three years of not using #Diaspora, I decided to make it kinda sorta official:
https://joindiaspora.com/posts/19482136

I feel Diaspora developers are being difficult about implementing #ActivityPub, which they could do for public posts and private messages.

I remember Diaspora being the biggest FLOSS social network and being somewhat smug about it, especially in any interoperability discussions. It's interesting to see the tables turned nowadays...

Still, hoping beyond hope they change tack.

The RIAA threw an October Surprise late last month when it sent a takedown demand to Github over Youtube-dl, a general purpose, lawful tool that allowed people to download Youtube videos.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/28/trumpcicles/#yt-dl

The RIAA's position on this was downright bizarre. First, it asserted that the kind of obfuscation that Youtube uses to hide the download URLs for its videos were a form of DRM, illegal to bypass under Section 1201 of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

1/

Imagine being so racist that you're triggered by random illustration pictures.

I don't want to see blacks in my Nextcloud event images. How do I disable the image suggestions?
Blacks are in many of in the image suggestions of the Nextcloud calendar. I don't like seeing them.

https://github.com/nextcloud/calendar/issues/2697

Je viens de retrouver mes filles. La grandette, outrée. Un débat sur la laïcité en cours de philo, le prof affirme que les femmes voilées ne sont pas libres. Un élève lui répond que sa mère porte le voile par choix et contre l'avis de son propre père. Réponse du prof : "ne me parlez pas de votre famille, je ne veux pas me faire décapiter." Aux élèves qui lui disaient que ces paroles n'étaient pas admissibles et qu'il devait s'excuser, le prof a répondu "oh ça va, depuis 2015 c'est qui qui tue ?"

"A room, a bar and a classroom: how the coronavirus is spread through the air.

Here is an overview of the likelihood of infection in three everyday scenarios, based on the safety measures used and the length of exposure":

https://english.elpais.com/society/2020-10-28/a-room-a-bar-and-a-class-how-the-coronavirus-is-spread-through-the-air.html

This graph is infuriating

FYI the "echo" command is basically made out of footguns and should never be used in a shell script - use printf(1) instead.

Russia gives whistleblower Edward Snowden permanent residency rights:

https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-security-snowden-russia-int-idUSKBN2771Q3

For most of this year, @zwol and I have been working on a pretty ambitious project:
* to make a fresh release of GNU Autoconf, a crucial #FLOSS build tool that hadn't had a new release since 2012
* to get paid for that
* to help put Autoconf on a more sustainable footing so it doesn't have to get rescued again a little while down the road

Autoconf 2.70 is due out next month, and you can read my fresh LWN story about the rejuvenation & what's next:

https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/834682/a90b9cdbc37077f4/

Jeffrey Paul: The Case Against Microsoft and GitHub

https://sneak.berlin/20200307/the-case-against-microsoft-and-github/

(usual disclaimer that I represent an interest in the same domain as github)