Whoops, was so busy on so many things yesterday that we forgot to post a song. While the movie Black Dog was crap, the soundtrack was awesome, lots of great covers on their, but today we're focusing on Rhett Akins cover of Eddie Rabbit's Drivin' My Life Away.
Provided to YouTube by Universal Music GroupDrivin' My Life Away (From "Black Dog" Soundtrack) · Rhett AkinsBlack Dog Soundtrack℗ 1998 UMG Recordings, Inc.Re...
Call me crazy, but I don’t think an official government app should be loading executable code from a random person’s GitHub account. Or tracking your GPS location in the background. Or …
⚠️ Do not move your account to mastodon.cloud. If you know someone already on mastodon.cloud you might want to suggest they move to a different server.
-Mastodon.cloud's admin hasn't posted since Feb 2023 -There doesn't seem to be any moderation, really awful bigotry is still there months after being reported -The server software is very outdated and full of unpatched security holes -Because of all the above, many other servers have defederated mastodon.cloud
I'm genuinely surprised that it can still still survive in this zombie state. A lot of Wordpress and similar sites have pretty quickly attracted from the hosting or co-location company's interest after enough reports have been filed against it for objectionable concept or it just being a trojan payload sharing site.
I don't know, but generally when something web based gets pwned hard enough, sysadmins typically start to raise stink about it. If I spot port scanners or obvious stuff being run against the systems I maintain, I might fire an e-mail to their ISP's abuse address, depending on where they from. With China, Russia etc. I don't bother, US and Europe likely, the Nordics, very likely.
As if we needed any more evidence showing just how deep and thoroughly corrupted the Trump administration is. It’s an endless cycle of self-serving actions, pushed forward by bigots, grifters…
Ooops, guess I'm re-inventorying the comics, was trying to figure out how to remove some of the books and accidentally erased them all. 11000 comics… This is going to be a project to redo. Oh well, was already thinking of doing it as some books turned up around the library when I first did it, and around the house while doing the books, so things are a bit of a mess. Plus I used existing boxes, so I have a fair number of long boxes, it'd prolly be good to use only short boxes as there's already more of those. I think I'll be giving the graphic novels to the book buyers, they might not give me much for them, but with the scale of the collection, most shops won't give me much either, prolly 50¢/book, maybe 75¢ if I'm lucky, so its not like it'll hurt me, and it'll let me thin the collection down, prolly not enough to make a difference, but we'll see.
Giggles, "Some mentions of Star Trek on my timeline made me dig this video out. I don't think this is the one I originally saw, that included the sixth movie, but this is still a good video."
Ok, its been a rather productive week. I'd've done this as a #Loops video, but its back to crashing when I try to record there, so…
Any how, as I've mentioned in other posts, I've been working on blowing out my husband's book collection using apps, three apps to be precise. Sure, they don't pay great, and it leaves me to deal with the books they don't want, but its fast and convenient, and got rid of about 900 books. The result is that the library is much smaller, with the books fitting on one wall now, plus one case in the living room. That's down from around 9 cases downstairs, 2 in the living room and 1 in the bedroom.
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Those haven't gone to waste, being used to upgrade my bookcases in the bedroom and rearrange them a bit, that narrow case for example is going to be used as a display case.
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But, this is just the tip of the iceberg, I'm also replacing the bed, dropping down from Queen to TwinXL, and I had thought about relocating it to the one wall over there, since late 60's design only leaves me two walls to use, but I'm also thinking of moving my desks and computers in there, so that won't work. Sure, I could put the desks where the bed is now, but that'd leave one sticking out into the room, and I suspect that'd make moving around the room difficult. Putting them on the back wall, aside from the standard electrical nuisance that I'll need to fix, will make for a more balanced space where the bed is in the front, and the bookcases and desks are in the back. And the TV will be floating around, as there's no good space for it. I might throw out that stereo that's sitting on the floor, I'd bought it in a thrift store, and it works… so long as you don't want any lights or digital displays. I'd figured it'd be an easy fix, that'd have to be a lighting circuit common wire, right? Yeah, the design and wiring of that thing is a nightmare, and with my computer room stereo coming with the computers and desks, I don't really need it as I have a record player in the living room. It was cheap new, it was cheap used, and its prolly too much work to fix it so we'll see.
Any how, this is the most productive I've been since he passed, between how much has been on my plate since November, and a lack of motivation to do anything here, not much has been done. That said, time is never on my side, and I have a lot to do, tons to sell, throw, etc. I have for the last month or so been cleaning out the shed, throwing out about half a can a week, but the house has mostly been ignored, and now I'm making it my house, or at least a test version, I'm still expecting to downsize and relocate as I live in a Republican state, something I'd like to change.
You know, the really fun part of cover songs is finding out that some of your favorite songs are covers. Move It On Over is a great George Thorogood song, something I found because my dad really loved the band, but did you know it was a cover? Yeah, the original is by Hank Williams, yes, Hank Williams the first, and a quite good country song, but I don't think I could've imagined this as a old school country song if'n I hadn't heard it.
Oops, forgot to buy a headboard, need a bookshelf style, though I'll have to make sure it'll work with the short bed frame (9") that I chose, otherwise its worse than no headboard at all. Also need some 'trees' for the updated version of Vik's memorial.
Lets go spend lots of money on Amazon. Yeah, I usually avoid them, part of the evil empire and all, but convenience and price wins out sometimes, especially when you need a bed, mattress and bedding, even at their prices its like $500 I suspect, and the only local option would be a furniture store, and that'd prolly double the bill. WalMart might save me a dollar or two, but not much and they'd be less convenient.
Sure, it'd prolly be easier if'n I bought a normal bed size rather than a TwinXL, but a Twin is 74½ inches, and I'm 5'12, unless I sleep with my head against the headboard, my feet'll be hanging off of that, so TwinXL at 79½ it is. I could prolly make my existing bedding work, its all Queen size, so same length just wider, but that's the smallest part of the bill, so not much point in saving at that point.
Boy, today is going to be a mess, thankfully I have a few days to get back on track before I return to work. So, this week I'm finally starting to do stuff estate related, this week was cleaning out the book collection. No, seriously, I've basically spent something like five days working from one app to another, three apps total, selling Vik's book collection. Roughly 900 books went, and there's still plenty more if'n anyone wants a book. But, that's been this week's focus, took off work, and did nothing but that including re-arranging yesterday's plans to do one last pass. Wasn't the plan, but it kinda made sense as I went to clean and sort the downstairs bedroom, and decided I wanted the books all on one wall. This would require either moving full bookcases, emptying them, moving them and putting the books back or using some of the already empty cases and shifting books to them. If'n I'm doing that, why wait to sale scan them until after? So, about 30 more books boxed up, gotta ship that out Monday, and we're done.
So today? Time to rearrange and clean the bedroom, and we're also continuing the shed cleaning which we've been doing for a month, not because its a big job, but once a week, I sort and throw out trash until the curbside can is about half full, so maybe an hour a week if'n that. Once I get this part of the bedroom done, we'll decide on its future, I might replace the bed with a TwinXL, and move my desk and computer into there, not sure. Beyond that all the weekend calls for is a little work on household finances and grocery shopping, so not much. Oh, wait, gotta cut the lawn too.
Yeah, nothing really huge this weekend, so mostly just rest, maybe some extra cleaning, not sure.
Brazil's authoritarian age verification law became active this month. It won't be implemented by GrapheneOS. Complying would require integrating a mandatory process for each user where a third party service checks government identification and confirms a match using the camera.
It doesn't stop there. It would require keeping data for auditing and providing a token for connecting age verification checks by apps and websites to the data. The law is a privacy disaster and exposes minors to being exploited by leaking their age bracket to apps and websites.
GrapheneOS has no team members or operations in Brazil. São Paulo in Brazil is by far the biggest network hub within South America. Miami is also a major network hub for South America and is currently where our update server is for South America since it's dramatically cheaper.
We have a tiny VPS in São Paulo for our ns1 anycast DNS and a second for our website/network services. It probably isn't an issue and those can be removed if necessary. Santiago could be added for both instead but wouldn't work very well as a replacement for having São Paulo.
There aren't yet devices supporting GrapheneOS directly sold in South America. Brazil in particular has unusually high import duties/taxes which add up to around 100%. This has resulted in us not having a lot of users there but our Motorola partnership will start changing this.
People are going to have their personal info leaked by third party age verification services due to these laws. Children are going to be harmed by apps and websites changing their behavior to exploit them. It isn't going to stop minors finding pornography if they want to find it.
Australia’s first community-owned solar farm – with battery – was officially opened last Saturday, as Sophie Vorrath reported earlier this week.
It’s not big, just 1.4 megawatts of solar and a 4.4 megawatt hour battery, but it’s the community effort that got it built at all that makes this such an uplifting and significant story, particularly in the world that we live in now.
The story of the Goulburn community owned solar farm actually began at least 12 years ago. The regional city’s then elected representatives – current federal Liberal leader Angus Taylor and state MP Pru Goward – were making a lot of noise opposing nearly every large scale renewable project in the region.
But it was the actions of then prime minister Tony Abbott that really jolted the local community into action.
“We really owe the existence of this solar farm to Tony Abbott,” Mhairi Fraser, a member of the Goulburn solar farm co-operative, says in an interview with Renew Economy’s weekly Energy Insiders podcast.
“He was just attacking climate scientists, attacking science … you know, climate change is crap stuff, dismantling a lot of the kind of government institutions that were supporting climate action and emissions reduction and certainly really trying to get rid of the Renewable Energy Target.
“There were a lot of us in Goulburn that were furious and we were frustrated. A lot of us are grandparents and parents and feeling like what is going to happen to the future generations … if we continue to along a trajectory of reliance on fossil fuels.”
And so a bunch of them travelled to Canberra for the first Australian community energy congress. “That was a turning point,” Fraser said. “We thought, why don’t we build a solar farm? Can’t be that hard.”
Tony Abbott's climate attacks inspired a local community to build a first of its kind solar farm. They literally had to watch the grass grow under their feet, but it is now complete.
Decades ago, it was possible to build your own Mac using spare parts and generic PC components. Given the tools and options available to vintage computing enthusiasts today, let’s see what happens when old meets new!
Remember when Elon Musk told advertisers to “go fuck” themselves and then sued them for the crime of taking his advice? A federal judge has now dismissed that lawsuit — with prejudice —…
Fedi.Tips
in reply to Fedi.Tips • • •p.s. If you want an easy way to discover reliable good servers, there are human-curated server lists at fedi.garden and joinmastodon.org/servers
All the servers listed on these sites have to comply with certain standards of technical reliability and moderation.
p.p.s. If you want help with moving there's a guide at fedi.tips/transferring-your-ma…
Fedi.Garden – An easy way to join Mastodon and the Fediverse
fedi.gardenHumphrey Archer
in reply to Fedi.Tips • • •I just moved there with my non-fiction accounts
This is so tiresome
Fedi.Tips
in reply to Humphrey Archer • • •@screwturn
Oh no, really sorry to hear 😞
Hopefully the human-curated server lists can help reduce this kind of situation happening to people.
Ari Sovijärvi
in reply to Fedi.Tips • • •Fedi.Tips
in reply to Ari Sovijärvi • • •I wonder if anyone has reported it to the providers higher up the chain? 🤔
There have been reports via Mastodon's own moderation tools but these have AFAIK all been ignored.
Ari Sovijärvi
in reply to Fedi.Tips • • •Cadu
in reply to Fedi.Tips • • •stux⚡️
in reply to Fedi.Tips • • •Hm.. I believe they are part of some other instance, maybe pawoo?
I remember a company being behind .cloud and another big instance
Skwerlgyrl
in reply to Fedi.Tips • • •Sam Nabi
in reply to Fedi.Tips • • •@crimini