Matthew Garrett wrote an interesting and insightful blog post about the license of software developed or co-developed by machine-learning systems [1]. One of his main points is that people in the FOSS community should aim for less copyright protection.
The USENIX ATC ’21/OSDI ’21 Joint Keynote Address titled “It’s Time for Operating Systems to Rediscover Hardware” has some inssightful points to make [2]. Timothy Roscoe makes some incendiaty points but backs them up with evidence. Is Linux really an OS? I recommend that everyone who’s interested in OS design watch this lecture.
Cory Doctorow wrote an interesting set of 6 articles about Disneyland, ride pricing, and crowd control [3]. He proposes some interesting ideas for reforming Disneyland.
Benjamin Bratton wrote an insightful article about how philosophy failed in the pandemic [4]. He focuses on the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben who has a history of writing stupid articles that match Qanon talking points but with better language skills.
Arstechnica has an interesting article about penetration testers extracting an encryption key from the bus used by the TPM on a laptop [5]. It’s not a likely attack in the real world as most networks can be broken more easily by other methods. But it’s still interesting to learn about how the technology works.
Jacobin has an insightful article titled “You’re Not Lazy — But Your Boss Wants You to Think You Are” [7]. Making people identify as lazy is bad for them and bad for getting them to do work. But this is the first time I’ve seen it described as a facet of abusive capitalism.
Jacobin has an insightful article about free public transport [8]. Apparently there are already many regions that have free public transport (Tallinn the Capital of Estonia being one example). Fare free public transport allows bus drivers to concentrate on driving not taking fares, removes the need for ticket inspectors, and generally provides a better service. It allows passengers to board buses and trams faster thus reducing traffic congestion and encourages more people to use public transport instead of driving and reduces road maintenance costs.
Interesting research from Israel about bypassing facial ID [9]. Apparently they can make a set of 9 images that can pass for over 40% of the population. I didn’t expect facial recognition to be an effective form of authentication, but I didn’t expect it to be that bad.
Edward Snowden wrote an insightful blog post about types of conspiracies [10].
Kevin Rudd wrote an informative article about Sky News in Australia [11]. We need to have a Royal Commission now before we have our own 6th Jan event.
Steve from Big Mess O’ Wires wrote an informative blog post about USB-C and 4K 60Hz video [12]. Basically you can’t have a single USB-C hub do 4K 60Hz video and be a USB 3.x hub unless you have compression software running on your PC (slow and only works on Windows), or have DisplayPort 1.4 or Thunderbolt (both not well supported). All of the options are not well documented on online store pages so lots of people will get unpleasant surprises when their deliveries arrive. Computers suck.
Steinar H. Gunderson wrote an informative blog post about GaN technology for smaller power supplies [13]. A 65W USB-C PSU that fits the usual “wall wart” form factor is an interesting development.
- [1] https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/57615.html
- [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36myc8wQhLo
- [3] https://tinyurl.com/yzo22rub
- [4] https://tinyurl.com/yf3q8p4y
- [5] https://tinyurl.com/ydr79yqf
- [6] https://theportalist.com/david-brin-startide-rising-introduction-uplift
- [7] https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/02/laziness-work-capitalism-review-devon-price
- [8] https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/08/public-transportation-brussels-free-tickets
- [9] https://tinyurl.com/yek4p8sv
- [10] https://edwardsnowden.substack.com/p/conspiracy-pt1
- [11] https://tinyurl.com/yh88rj5u
- [12] https://tinyurl.com/y6on8jcd
- [13] https://tinyurl.com/yegot6qv