Ah, I suppose it’s TOTP/HOTP or HMAC challenge.

I am waiting for FIDO2 to work between keepassxc and yubikey. 🥳

TerraCycle dumping “recycling” items in poor countries with inadequate regulations/enforcement (article in French). Moreover, a insightful documentary available on CBC The Recycling Myth regarding all the recycling fraud many multinational companies engages in.

It is not surprising to see environmental fraud happening so overtly under our nose or in plain sight in front of our eyes when there is little to no repercussions for doing so (legal or otherwise). I would even go as far as to suggest it is currently financially extremely profitable for corporation (and people) to lie about all the greewashing they carry out.

Youtube: The Recycling Myth

Hmm… I may be mistaken but can they not already arrest troublemakers, arsonists, violent/aggressive individuals and other sort of rioters/agitators with preexisting laws/bylaws/regulations ?

On the other hand, I’m trying to see the silver lining here… perhaps this new law will make it difficult for agent provocateur¹ from operating without repercussions and anonymity unless the law specifically has a carve out for them (I wouldn’t be too surprised, but it would be another major blow to the resiliency of democracy in the United Kingdom).

Source: Pentney, K. (2021). Licensed to kill…discourse? agents provocateurs and a purposive right to freedom of expression. Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, 39(3), 241-257

I’ll skip. Just like how I skipped AOL, MySpace, LiveJournal, 4Chan, Friendster, Hi5, Orkut, Bebo, Tumblr, Facebook, Pinterest, Blogger, Google+, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram, Quora, Twitch, YouTube, Vine, Netflix, OkCupid, Tinder, Grindr, Bumble, Discord, TikTok… oh all of the Apple ecosystem, and many other I missed by being oblivious or simply never heard of…

I liked the Slashdot, Digg, Reddit and now the Lemmy format/style. Will continue to move on to whatever I find stupid simple and publicly accessible I guess. I am naturally lazy, advertisement averse and hate having to provide personal info just to use something non-governmental or non-essential.

Now, with the increasing prevalence of LLM based bots, I will probably ineluctably reduce my time spent posting anything (I certainly hope it doesn’t get that bad, only time will tell) on any kind of “social media” and focus on current and new family, friends, coworkers, colleagues and acquaintances.

Yes, 😅. Thank you for letting me know.

I typed correctly I’m pretty sure, but typing it again now it autocorrects to “C - C - P” now 🫤. Even more confused.

I’ll edit my original post.

• Alpine on Pi4.

• LMDE on recycled AMD systems (phenoms, opterons, FM2 APUs, oh and a recently dead bulldozer fx-8150).

• TrueNAS, OPNsense on dedicated hardware.

• VMware ESXi on my older workstations (currently transitioning toward LXD/Incus and XPG-ng XCP-ng with Xen Orchestra).

Wow, asbestos pipes, that’s something new I learned today…

Total genius move by whomever designed it and the organization that approved/certified it for human potable water use.

How am I still surprised by these things, long ago we once thought lead pipes were perfect for moving/transporting potable water (apparently, one of the many things that contributed to the collapse of the Roman Empire).

Nowadays, high density polyethylene pipes are selling like hotcakes and certified for potable water use. Will we find, in a few decades, that micro-plastics are more prevalent than expected and cause innumerable long term health issues? Hence, the new thing to avoid like the Black Plague.

What is wrong with plain old copper pipes, outside of just being expensive due to low supply vs huge demand? (I may have missed the news on how they too affect health)

Whelp.

Is this some LLM copy-paste meme? Did I miss some viral post/thread that led to the above text?

I may need some help/context trying to understand all this…

Like most others have stated here, I’ll also add my recommendations for Linux Mint.

I have helped most of my family, relatives and several friends move and familiarize themselves with Linux Mint, especially those that do almost everything within the web browser (shopping/email/Facebook/youtube/travel reservation/etc…). Since I already was their goto tech support, I showed them around on Linux Mint and they pretty easily got going as everything was intuitively similar to Windows. All was point and click (after my initial setup with their network, peripherals, printer and some basic automatic updates configuration), no terminal voodoo magic for them.

For the younger ones I typically set them up with Pop!OS and Steam and they are ready to jump without me having to explain much. Sometimes, I had to install and help setup a server (Minecraft) so they can play with their friends.

Personally, I use a mix of LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition), Alpine Linux, TrueNAS Scale, OPNsense and VMware ESXi/Workstation/vSphere for virtual machines.

Mind you, I would not recommend VMware as I am currently evaluating my transition options toward XCP-ng with Xen Orchestra or LXD/Incus or something else entirely.

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I regularly “deep freeze” or make read-only systems from Raspberry Pi, Ubuntu, Linux Mint LMDE and others Linux Distros whereas I disable automatic updates everywhere (except for some obvious config/network/hardware/subsystem changes I control separately).

I have had systems running 24/7 (no internet, WiFi) for 2-3 years before I got around to update/upgrade them. Almost never had an issue. I always expected some serious issues but the Linux package management and upgrade system is surprisingly robust. Obviously, I don’t install new software on a old system before updating/upgrading (learned that early on empirically).

Automatic updates are generally beneficial and helps avoid future compatibility/dependency issues on active systems with frequent user interaction.

However, on embedded/single purpose/long distance/dedicated or ephemeral application, (unsupervised) automatic updates may break how the custom/main software may interact with the platform. Causing irreversible issues with the purpose it was built for or negatively impact other parts of closed circuit systems (for example: longitudinal environmental monitoring, fauna and flora observation studies, climate monitoring stations, etc.)

Generally, any kind of update imply some level of supervision and testing, otherwise things could break silently without anyone noticing. Until a critical situation arises and everything break loose and it is too late/too demanding/too costly to try to fix or recover within a impossibly short window of time.

I attempted to try Garuda Linux (cinnamon) on a mini PC (Ryzen 5800H based APU), but graphic artefacting was a constant issue as soon as the install started.

After several tries I had to abandon ship and wait till a new release to maybe try again, if I remember. Not exactly “Nope, this one’s not for me” as I had yet to properly try it.

Otherwise, I tried Crunchbangplusplus and just gave up for being a bit too minimalist or not yet ready for prime time as I kept geting issues after issues and did not have the patience to wrangle the whole OS for everything from getting network working to audio and screen issues on my system.

Anyways, it is always fun to try new systems/apps/protocols and see where thing are headed towards.

Copyright should have stayed the original initial 14 years with possible renewal to 28 years. But like in France back then, also include the original authors (last one alive, if several) lifespan. Hence, a copyright would last either the authors lifespans or 28 years, whichever is longer.

Moreover, the patent system is being abused and does not serve the original goal of “any useful art, manufacture, engine, machine, or device, or any improvement there on not before known or used.” It granted the applicant the “sole and exclusive right and liberty of making, constructing, using and vending to others to be used” of his invention.. It needs major changes, including the requirement to have the “invention” be under examination by reputable third-party laboratories (such as Intertek, SGI, Underwriters Laboratories, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Technischer Überwachungsverein, SGS - Société Générale de Surveillance, etc…) before being granted a patent. Nowadays, patents are given almost willy-nilly to anyone no matter how vague or obvious the supposed invention.

Nowadays, patents are being misused in Patent Ambush mechanisms and scenarios, meanwhile Patent Trolls and Hoarders whole existence is are to impede/obstruct legally and impose exorbitant levies/fees onto organization and companies actually innovating and developing useful art/process/devices. Even more incredible, there are Submarine Patents being hidden away to suddenly take hostage existing products and process of various companies by imposing extortionate royalties.

Man, is this seriously going turn into into the Iraq has WMD boondoggle/fiasco:

“Secretary of State Colin Powell gave a presentation to the UN on February 5, 2003, in which he detailed false intelligence gatherings provided by the Israeli government regarding Iraqi WMD.”

Source 1: Senate Report on Iraqi WMD Intelligence

Source 2: Israel knew Iraq had no WMD, says MP

I forgot it was Israeli Intelligence source back then 🤔. I only remember Bush insisting there are WMDs and Colin Powell’s declaration at the UN. All of it was proven fake of course, and 20 years later it has become the biggest and most expensive Intelligence blunder.

Hopefully, I am wrong and we were smarter to verify everything before repeating the same reckless mistake.

I try to not comment on controversial issues particularly when I don’t have any qualification or first hand knowledge/experience, however this is looking more and more like an unmitigated overreaction.

All these first-past-the-post voting systems (here in Canada too it’s a problem) need to be relegated to a bygone era, it’s so bad that even placings names on a board and throwing darts blindfolded for every MP positions would probably give a better and more representative outcome.

Welp… it will probably be after something akin to world war 3 that we (the ones luckily still alive) would all sit down and set out to fix the many obvious and perhaps not so obvious issues with governance, lack of immediate consequence to lying, independently peer reviewed education system absent of political/religious/vested/private interest or influence, broken taxation system enabling billionaires, the lack of thorough independent study of environmental or health concerns before even granting any permit (problems tend to always be discovered long after it was commercialised/contructed/).

Sad to see the state of affairs in every country 😰😱, nevertheless just as we can see/imagine/iterate/improve our ideas of what each one of us would consider better systems, we should implement, test, cross pollinate, evaluate (scientifically, quantitatively and qualitatively) and keep what works better than before and reject/shun/disqualify what obviously causes issues or collateral damages.

In Canada, Apple is taking most of the increase, I wish Linux was more prevalent but I’m happy to see the downward slope for Windows:

The future I want to foresee is one where everybody runs and keeps their data locally (or their dedicated VPS):

• where everyone has access to at least 10Gbps symmetric fiber optic connection to the internet at their home/apartment at affordable price (doesn’t have to be unlimited, but pricing per TB of bandwith usage needs to be less than USD $1 as it is the actual cost of operating & peerage)
• whereas net neutrality is a prerequisite to any corporation/organization/government/municipality getting network backbone peerage with other network operators
• whereas registering to a website or service actually creates a local secure database/bucket/pod where that website/service organizes/sort/manipulates our data and stores all generated modified data/metadata within our local personnal server, every time we interact with that same external website/service it gets access to the database/bucket previously created. Look into the Solid protocol specification to get a better idea (it doesn’t have to be that specific protocol)
• whereas FIDO2 or WebAuth or their successor is widely accepted for passkey implementation or just multifactor authentication
• whereas all communications are direct peer-to-peer without transiting third party servers (as in not managed by either communicating party)

Moreover, even better would be to teach everyone from elementary school various concepts (from simpler to more complex gradually) of science, programming, critical thinking and empathy.

If I may dare to push even further, with technology (secure authentication, work from home familiarity, collaborative softwares, digital signing, distributed version control), give every citizen (from the age of 12 or earlier; because one has to start learning early to make mistakes, understand and form good habits) the ability to vote/abstain on every proposition, motion, new/modified law and decision regarding their own country. Have a publicly accessible historical account of every vote by everyone (excluding secret ballots obviously). Most importantly, every year end, 4 years, 10 years, 25 years, 60 years have a collective review/retrospective of past motions/decisions that were implemented and let everyone vote on if those were overall beneficial or harmful for the country/state/municipality. Empower those who tend to regularly vote and tend to historically vote beneficially (at least 70% of their votes after they reached 25 years old) for the country/state/municipality to become a local representative.

I know it’s getting wordy and perhaps a bit complicated but keep up with me. Give accredited/qualified individual in very specific fields the retractable/overridable power to have their votes on certain very specific motion/law/decision be inherited by active delegation by any other citizens up to a limit of ~290 (Bernard–Killworth number) per qualified inviduals. For example, a citizen could separetely delegate his/her votes:

• relating to healthcare to their own family doctor if they like/respect their judgment or even a familly member who is licensed for medical practice, it doesn’t matter who as long as they are qualified for the subject matter
• relating to renovating a specific bridge to their neighbor who is a general contractor or their nephew who is a civil engineer
• relating to military procurement to their veteran uncle still with a sharp mind and keenly informed with world event or even their weekly indoor hockey teammate who is a unstoppable adventurer exploring every part if the world but also a office worker and a reservist

All while always preserving the option to change their vote anytime for any reason; by delegating to someone else for specific issue/concerns or voting on their own (always takes priority over delegation).

Well… I am being too hopeful and probably pushed things far beyond what is realistic, but it is nice to make thought experiments on what may be possible with technology.

I think it is too late to avoid the workforce and demographic squeeze.

Considering the following simple thought experiment:

1. Even if every abled, capable and freely willing women in China were immediately given:

• 1.a. unlimited financial support

• 1.b. complete freedom in choosing their partner

• 1.c. flexible maternity leave (2 to 5 years)

• 1.d. readily available at home cleaning and at home cooking/cartering services

• 1.e. best in class psychological and medical services and follow ups

• 1.f. excellent daycare and world class education;

  2. the first children born the following year won’t be able to work and contribute to the economy until 18 years later (or whenever they enter the workforce; at best 14 and ideally at 23-25 after university).

Hence, I am inclined to suppose that, at best (least controversial), the Chinese Com·unist Part.y could do is to try and attenuate the economic slowdown and decay. How? I do not know.

At worst, they implode on themself and/or start a looks-like-we-are-doing-something war.

Random shower thought:

When a group of people that have been historicaly subject to genocide, take measures to commits genocide themselves; do they lose their “Victim of Genocide” card?

As in two opposite cancels each others? Or as in two negatives becomes a positive?

(An awful way too put it, but I kind of wondered about that just now)

I have a fairly generic full name. Searching me online comes up with everything else but anything actually about myself. So many people of all ages have my name I was pretty surprised.

Moreover, I kept myself off of Facebook and most social media including all those meetup/dating/influencer/vlogging apps.

However, a few friends, colleagues and familly may have a few inadvertent cameos of me in their photos/videos. Which I do not mind, as they are unavoidable in day to day life.

Overall, I have taken mesures to leave as much of a messy digital footprint I can with things totally unrelated to me, my preferences and my knowledge.

We can’t really have complete and true privacy in our modern age with big data, “vacuum” everything/anything and decrypt later, deep learning and multi-domain tracking/inference. We can at least consciously (by choosing more privacy aware services, or by choosing to not give any/all our info) and unconsciously (through automation, scheduling of unrelated “activity” generation and mixing of different activities with others on the same profile or tracking token) leave a noisy footprint of ourselves and others.