YouTube being YouTube, its very next recommendation after a Japanese ring juggler was J. Draper talking about attitudes towards #homosexuality in the English establishment, as seen in parliamentary debates and medical books, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
It's good to see that old-style music hall acts still exist in the 2020s, despite the best efforts of those 'Got Talent' shows to kill off the genre. (-:
Damn!
It looks like the phones(5) manual page is out of date everywhere.
http://jdebp.info/FGA/BSDs-for-Linux-users/use-the-man-man.html
#FreeBSD #NetBSD #OpenBSD #DragonFlyBSD #MidnightBSD #GhostBSD #LinuxMigration
I actually read the #FreeBSD Handbook's chapter on how FreeBSD bootstraps.
It's stuck in 2010. I'm not kidding. There's stuff in there that changed in the FreeBSD 7.3 release notes.
FreeBSD can boot on UEFI firmware nowadays, and directly from ZFS datasets. There's a gpart bootstrap command, and syscons does not use bright white for kernel messages any more.
In the meantime, the Handbook is telling people how to accidentally destroy their MBR or GUID partition tables with bsdlabel.
Do you think that we can get the Handbook people to catch up with the actual operating system, that is 16 years ahead? (-:
1991: With the release of Net/2, #BSD changes the old /usr/dict to /usr/share/dict .
1997: FHS 2.0 is released, changing the /usr/dict from FSSTND 1.x to /usr/share/dict .
1998: #Debian changes /usr/dict to /usr/share/dict in its spelling packages, the change taking about a year to propagate to all packages.
2001: #Wikipedia is invented.
2009: A 2-edit account puts the old /usr/dict name into Wikipedia. where it has stood ever since.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Diff/325776830
Remember: Sometimes Wikipedia is so out of date that what it says stopped being true before Wikipedia even existed.
I have had a quick look through the several new issues arising from the #AIslop that was put into #rsync 3.4.3 by its creator, and one commonality seems to be that the 'vibe code' did not bother to account for building on systems that don't exactly match the current Linux openat() and mknodat() system calls.
https://aidirtylist.info/citations/andrew-tridge-pushes-flurry-of-code-slop-to-rsync-respository/
This has already caused a whole bunch of extra work for real humans. e.g.:
https://github.com/RsyncProject/rsync/pull/925
The major change is exemplified by this, but there has been wider work across several syscalls:
https://github.com/RsyncProject/rsync/pull/887
That itself was spurred by this AI slop from rsync's Debian maintainer, who took an earlier commit as a green light:
I'm calling it first. Before @cstross gets here. (-:
Some insane corporation is going to have the bright idea of making its generative AI be a property owner in Delaware, and locate it in Delaware; which will give it the right to vote in elections under #DelawareLaw .
https://courts.delaware.gov/opinions/download.aspx?id=395960
https://legis.delaware.gov/SessionLaws/Chapter?id=17985
There have been #SciFi stories for decades about androids and aliens not being presumed to have human rights, from Asimov to Star Trek. I've long thought that no real-world legal system would actually have done this, though.
It turns out that #Delaware, with no fanfare, extended voting rights to all 'artificial entities' in 2006. (Notice that the list is 'including but not limited to' rather than exhaustive. That's legally important.)
Another 2nd chance to tell legislators that the mechanisms that we have inherited from #Unix, and used in loads of #FreeSoftware operating systems from #NetBSD to #Tribblix, do not have date of birth/age fields for user accounts, is #Illinois, where HB5511 is the very same text as #California's, too.
https://my.ilga.gov/Legislation/BillStatus?DocTypeID=HB&DocNum=5511&GAID=18&LegID=167486
It really does seem at this point that this is model legislation.
Sponsors in Illionois are Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz, Margaret Croke, Janet Yang, Rohr, Kimberly Du Buclet, Natalie A. Manley, Angelica Guerrero-Cuellar, Rick Ryan, Michelle Mussman, Martha Deuter and Tracy Katz Muhl.
The bill is in the judiciary–civil committee as of yesterday.
It was introduced last month, 1 day after it was introduced in Colorado. I wonder in what other states it has just turned up.
A lobby organization handing pre-drafted bills to multiple sets of legislators is not unknown.
@nileane @RunxiYu
#CaliforniaLaw #USLaw #IllinoisLaw #FreeSoftware #AgeVerification
In case people wanted a 2nd chance to object to a compulsory user account age recording + reporting law (the only people who objected in #California that I have found being only interested in 'gratis' free software on the Google and Apple Stores), #Colorado has a bill going through its state legislature right now.
It is much the same text, which seems on course to be model legislation, as #California's, and so will also apply to 'operating system's on 'general purpose computing device's that have 'software application's (package managers) with 'publicly available internet website's that 'facilitate the download of applications from third-party developers' .
The sponsors of the bill are (state) senators Matt Ball & Larry Liston, and representatives Amy Paschal & Naquetta Ricks. It has already passed the committee stage and third senate reading.
https://mastodonapp.uk/@JdeBP/116174134208480252
https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/SB26-051
@nileane @RunxiYu
#USLaw #CaliforniaLaw #ColoradoLaw #FreeSoftware #GDPR #Unix
I foresee:
1. #Debian eventually following #MidnightBSD's lead and cutting #California off from #FreeSoftware; after lengthy mailing list discussions where at least one person tries to deny with convoluted nonsense the plain reading of the statute.
1. A storm when someone points out that the# MobaXTerm version of APT isn't exempt, nor is RPM. (Goodness knows what IBM is going to do.)
1. An even bigger storm when someone adds an 'age' field to systemd's JSON User Records, to be enforced and served out over Desktop Bus via a systemd-aged service or some such. Much fun if that someone comes from a #GDPR country.
1. Some nutter taking a Linux distribution to court because it doesn't enable developers to control whether 16-year-olds can install rustc and busybox.
#CaliforniaLaw #Unix #rust #USLaw #AgeVerification #FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD
#CaliforniaLaw is written by people who are either very ignorant or very incompetent.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billStatusClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1043
They have assumed that all operating systems are like Microsoft Windows 11, Android, or iOS; and have written legislation for operating systems where people download glorified WWW client 'apps', from 'stores', which use 'accounts' that they have with vendors or Microsoft/Google/Apple.
But the legislation *as worded* *also* covers everything from #Debian and #Ubuntu through #Arch Linux and #MobaXTerm to #FreeBSD and #NetBSD and #OpenBSD; where users anonymously use package managers or ports systems to install applications, written by developers, on operating systems, from 'publicly available internet website' repositories.
There is no age field in the GECOS data in master.passwd(5) of course, and the reality is that no BSD or Linux-based operating system has this concept of apps/stores/accounts.
#MidnightBSD #FreeSoftware #Unix #California #USLaw #AgeVerification #GDPR
It is even more amusing when you spot the old MS-DOS TSR program named GOLD.COM being redacted in the same document. We aren't supposed to know what GOLD22.ZIP contains, apparently.
Not without finding an old Simtel CD, at any rate. (-:
https://discmaster.textfiles.com/view/10857/simtel_1193.iso/msdos/keyboard/files.bbs
There's supposed to be a legal explanation published for every redaction. What do you think it is going to be for blacking out the name of an MS-DOS TSR utility program?
#MSDOS #EpsteinFiles #SimtelCD #emacs #MSKermit #GoldKey #DECVTs
Keeping clear of the political stuff, one can still find amusement in the fact that the U.S.A. Department of Justice spent time redacting Kevin Gallagher's email address from the EDT for emacs doco that is in the #EpsteinFiles.
https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA00525226.pdf
Before you, too, are caught out by YouTube recommending videos from that 'Imagine the Physics' channel purporting to be #RichardFeynman giving #physics lectures; note that it is expressly stated in the video descriptions that these are #AIslop, and #YouTube has put the AI slop flag on them.
I only read the description after getting to a part where the explanation was some pop science oversimplification that misrepresented things and also talked about things that did not exist during Feynman's lifetime.
It's time for the reverse of what every channel tries to get you to do to algorithmically boost its numbers and advertising take: don't like, don't comment, and don't subscribe.
That said: I've been watching a series of rather different videos from a channel named eigenchris with some interest. It's full of tensors and 4-D vectors and metrics and physicist #maths tricks like dividing by an infinitesimal on both sides, and whatnot; so not for the faint of heart. (-:
The sort of #Mithridatism that is in the 3rd #Riddick movie is theoretically possible, as it can be done with snake venom. But it does rather hinge on how well the biochemistry of the alien world matches Riddick's Furyan #biochemistry.
Of course, it's a bit of a suspension of disbelief point in the Riddick universe that all planets seem to be capable of supporting Terran life; even Crematoria which has (per the effects department) a continuous semi-circle of combustion circling the planet once per day eating up the oxygen in the atmosphere. (And, magically, no convection currents causing a permanent windstorm.)
Riddick certainly seems to be able to survive on the alien organisms as food.
Consistent planetology and ecology is not this franchise's strong suit. Vide the organisms in #PitchBlack destroying their own food source entirely, yet being able to survive in large numbers for decades. In the real world, overpredation causes population collapse.
Well that has cleared the 3 #Riddick movies out of the TiVo, watched in order for the first time.
Some of the dialogue in the third movie is Riddick being oblique, and only really makes sense if one has actually seen #PitchBlack, which as I recall wasn't the case when I first watched movie 3.
It's basically a #SciFi slasher movie with a bit of man+dog buddy movie (Sci-Fi style) mixed in. #TheChroniclesOfRiddick is still the best one of the three by a significant margin.
It's interesting that movie 1 had Australian locations and several Australian actors, and movie 3 was Canadian locations and mostly U.S.A. actors.
Also interesting is that the set-up for what we know about the forthcoming movie 4 has been dangling at the end of movie 3 for 13 years. Movie 3's dialogue established a 10-year in-universe gap from movie 1, the real world gap being 13 years. I wonder whether it is going to be another decade in-universe.
I have long been of the opinion that #TheChroniclesOfRiddick is the best of the 3 #Riddick movies, and that hasn't changed from watching them in the right order. (TCOR was the first that I ever watched.)
And that's not just because it has #LinusRoache and the most terrifying (albeit chemically ludicrous) sunrise in movie #SciFi.
Instead of going for the mega-corporate future of Alien, it went for the Dune-style future of court intrigue, multiple planets and civilisations, and enslaved humans turned into specialized cyborgs. It's greater in scope than the other two, which are are pretty much single-planet slasher movies.
It has interstellar daring raids, a prison break, a chase, and a duel.
The #Necromongers's set decorations are impressive; Islam is still the only religion (of "many religions") that gets an actual mention; and France is out of the picture.
One unanswered question: Why is the sled display on Crematoria in #Cyrillic?
'Skittish, Toombs. Very skittish.'
It was sad to see a 17-year-old girl in the #RoyalInstitution #ChristmasLectures this year preaching that billionaires have given us access to space and that Elon Musk is a great guy who will take humanity to Mars.
The reality is that it is governments who gave us access to space.
Billionaires, on the other hand, have given us space *pollution*, the shuttering of NASA and NOAA, wasteful vanity projects, and the extension of the category of 'astronaut' to encompass #KatyPerry.
#ElonMusk is meanwhile recycling 20th century boy's fiction sci-fi fantasies about techno-feudal rich-equals-superior inventors-cum-capitalists, not the least of which is E.E. Smith's 'Skylark' series.
In these male fantasies the rich industrialist hero's girlfriend sometimes does indeed get to be a passenger in his rocketship.
Juvenile pulp sci-fi was not supposed to be the roadmap for the future.
@keefeglise is back with the #CrapNaturePhotography hashtag, everyone.
