Notices by Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz), page 31

@zeh "if China uses deadly force in Hong Kong, the international community will respond in kind."

A Coalition of the Willing then
@sir ? We've seen how that pans out. The threat of this also feeds into the Beijing PR narrative that the HK movement is the result of meddling by foreign powers. I'm not sure this would help their cause. I think its better if HK solidarity efforts follow the form of the HK movement itself; self-organized mass action by citizens. Perhaps an #XR style?
(3/2 Oops!)

@zeh OTOH I think the whole "our institutionalized hive mind must discipline their institutionalized hive mind" framing of Drew's article is a bit last century. The US state is every bit as genocidal as the Chinese state and has been since its origins in mass genocides against the #FirstNations of the land it occupies. It's now busily engaged in its own cultural genocides, for example against the people of Palestine, with its client state Israel. @sir 's article neatly elides this reality.
(2/2)

@zeh I don't see any factual claims in the article
@sir wrote that I'd strongly disagree with. It's pretty clear that the Chinese state is engaged in cultural genocide against the Uighers, as they have been in Tibet for decades, and this in itself demands some action other than using China as a cheap labour. I've supported various movements demanding that for decades.
(1/2)

@quark something to look forward to when I get back from my southern summer in Aotearoa. The Kazon were a bit silly. I'm not missing them at all ;)

Microsoft claim to embrace #OpenSource now:
https://redmondmag.com/articles/2018/09/17/microsoft-outlines-open-source-shift.aspx

So why don't they liberate the source code for Windows and Office under free licenses? I suspect it's because they are embarrassed to let the world's programmers audit the paper machet of patched patches they've been selling as "professional" software all these years.

"Changing from [Microsoft] Word to #LibreOffice is saving us 28 million euros."
- #CamilloSileo, Italian Army General, interviewed in a #documentary called 'The Microsoft Dilemma: Is Europe Being Colonized by Software'
https://mastodon.nzoss.nz/@lightweight/103286918755017016

@mala I've been using #Mate since it replaced #GNOME Fallback as the default desktop for #Trisquel. I'm very happy with it, even on a 10 year old 32-bit netbook bought with XP on it. I shudder to think what it would be like trying to run a newer Windows OS on it. Without desktop GNU/Linux, I'd probably have to buy a newer 2nd hand laptop every couple of years to have a useable PC.

> This is an HTML email, please update your email client to view.

This is an email client. Please update your mail generator to stop wasting electricity and emitting extra carbon with HTML mail, or at least provide graceful degradation for users whose email clients only receive plaintext (as anyone who cares about there computer security does).
#MakeHTMLemailOptional!

@zeh no idea what you mean. Can you explain in a bit more detail?
@sir

@felix is Scandinavia still sane in this regard? Maybe ask some #PirateParty folks from there?
@restioson

Correction: 5.13g is not what 28 trees absorbs in a year. Rather the WebsiteCarbon calculator reckons that 28 trees worth of carbon is what Teamhuman.fm emits in an average year, based on that per-page footprint.
#MeaCulpa

"I think it's fine for a video streaming platform to click 3 times to download a video file."
https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/issues/1797#issuecomment-561104642

Disagree? Think it's a good idea to tweak the #UX of video downloads on #PeerTube as described here?
https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/issues/1797#issuecomment-490925353

Share that opinion in the issue and ask for it to be re-opened.

@sean ... and #Pinafore
(nudge, nudge, @nolan ;) @ericbuijs

@wizard "The problem with the whole 'activism' mindset is it doesn't actually target the people who created the problem, it just creates lots of noise – and the problem with noise is facts get lost."
- #BenFellows

I agree that this is a growing problem. Online lynch mobs who think they are doing "activism", but once there's blood in the water, they stop caring about truth or justice (eg innocent until proven guilty or punishment fitting the crime) and press on until someone (anyone) hangs.

@Wolf480pl yes, AFAIK issues and wikis on GitLab are #Git repos. I'm not sure if this is what Drew meant by "Git objects", reading it again I'm wondering if he meant making individual tickets and wikipages things that Git can pull and push. Not sure if GL wikis/ tickets are like that, and if they are, it doesn't seem to help with pushing or pulling them between GL instances AFAICT.

@publius
> the wealthy can find ways of hedging their holdings against inflation

They've mainly done this by using monetarist economic policy to keep inflation low, regardless of the horrific effects it has on almost everything else. A UBI/ progressive tax presupposes that the wealthy and their lapdogs no longer have (total) control of economic policy. You're right that it can't happen for as long as they do.
@dsfgs

@publius so your argument is that if UBI can't be implemented then it won't work? You're not wrong, but that's not really a cogent criticism. If we can't find a way to either radically redistribute wealth, or properly tax it, we're fucked, as Picketty's work demonstrates.
@dsfgs

@duncan_lithgow or reverse the concept, and make space heaters that use computers to produce heat instead of resistors that turn electricity into heat without producing anything. Swarms of them could feed computing power into distributed server networks using something like #Holochain.

@duncan_lithgow there are already huge energy costs. Like #HybridBrakes, #GenerativeCooling would massively reduce them for the same computing output.

> Works well when the datacentre is reasonably close to a town.

Or if you decentralize datacentres somewhat, put smaller ones into the basement floors of office or apartment buildings, and feed the waste heat into a central heating system for the building.