Almost unstoppable wildfires in Patagonia, mostly caused by global heating, have killed many of the trees that have lived thousands of years.

The House of Representatives passed a bill to block a substantial fraction of adult US citizens from voting.

*Britons' right to protest is under threat like never before. If you value it, speak up now.*

* New evidence shows Gregory Bovino hailed [the deportation thug] who fired at Marimar Martinez five times in her car*. The thugs tried to frame her, too.

According to the latest poll, half of all Americans strongly disapprove of the persecutor's repression of immigration.

Over 60%% express disapproval of various specific aspects of it.

Global heating is starting to melt the rapidly heating Arctic permafrost, and this is releasing large quantities of methane at an accelerating rate.

This could lead to a tipping point into much faster heating.

Reportedly drug gangs in Mexico have obtained newer and more powerful arms than the Mexican government can get, including drones.

They may be a real threat to Americans, but it is minuscule compared with the threat to Americans from the deportation thugs. Let's not let the secondary threat distract us from the primary threat.

US citizens: Tell your governor, no tax breaks for Big Tech data centers.

See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.

Here's the text of the letter I sent.

I’m writing as your constituent, and as recipient of two awards from the ACM for programs I have shared with the public in freedom, to urge you to reject efforts in our state to provide Big Tech with tax breaks to build data centers. I’m concerned about the harms that data centers can do locally, including siphoning our water, using up our land, creating noise and light pollution, and hiking our electric bills. I’m also concerned that providing tax breaks to giant Big Tech corporations will deprive our schools and local budgets of their already insufficient funds. I'm also concerned that these data centers will mostly operate Pretend Intelligence (PI) -- software that *tries to* imitate what an intelligent entity would say, but without really understanding the words it plays with. The use of these digital dis-services does society harm. We should never allow business to play one state against another by making states compete to offer them the biggest tax break, because that perverse competition harms *all* the states for the benefit of business owners. So please reject efforts to give Big Tech (or *any* business) specific tax breaks to operate in our state. The states should form a union and bargain collectively with these businesses. The states could call their union the United States of America. Wouldn't that be a good thing to have?

US citizens: call on state officials to protect your state from the spread of measles.

See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.

* The world is closer than thought to a "point of no return" after which runaway global heating cannot be stopped, scientists have said.*

In honor of this important anniversary, I downloaded the original Flash SWF file from Internet Archive, played it using Ruffle in a full-screen window, and replaced the audio with the original MP3 of "Invasion of the Gabber Robots" by The Laziest Men on Mars. So this is probably the highest fidelity encoding possible, without going back to the original forum GIFs.

Make your time.

As described previously, the Linux kernel security team does not identify or mark or announce any sort of security fixes that are made to the Linux kernel tree. So how, if the Linux kernel were to become a CVE Numbering Authority (CNA) and responsible for issuing CVEs, would the identification of security fixes happen in a way that can be done by a volunteer staff? This post goes into the process of how kernel fixes are currently automatically assigned to CVEs, and also the other “out of band” ways a CVE can be issued for the Linux kernel project.

Not mentioned at the hearing: The mayor's teenage daughter, Taya Lurie, was cast in the starring role of Clara at the matinee performance that Sunday.

During stunning testimony before the Board's Public Safety Committee, Supervisor Bilal Mahmood asked PG&E CEO Sumeet Singh why the utility had chosen to help the arts venue while so many other San Francisco sites were without power.

"You prioritized the opera, where no one is living, to restore service, before you prioritized restoring service in communities and seniors living in [single room occupancies]," said Mahmood.

"We did not make that decision on our own accord," Singh replied. "We were requested by the mayor to provide temporary generation to that specific location. And we responded to that."

Singh said 10% of affected PG&E customers were still experiencing blackouts when the mayor made his request.

The mayor's comms team went ballistic and a couple days later, the PG&E CEO recanted and said: Oh, that thing that I quite clearly stated, that was a "misunderstanding". Uh huh.

So the interesting thing here is not that our oligarch mayor is both corrupt and bumbling -- I mean, water is wet -- but that PG&E chose to throw him under the bus like that. Statements like that, from people like that, about people like that, don't happen off the cuff. With the renewed and increasing calls to Eminent Domain PG&E, you'd think that PG&E would want SF's mayor on their side. This suggests that they think they just don't need him.

Previously, previously, previously, previously.

A booth having a housing enclosing a viewing station opposite an entertainment station; a robotic entertainer disposed within the entertainment station, the robotic entertainer having a humanoid appearance and comprising a plurality of actuators; and a computing system coupled to the plurality of actuators and configured to control the actuators so to move the robotic entertainer in accordance with a performance.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

"The More You Know..."

Waymo, Google's autonomous vehicle company, and DoorDash, the delivery and gig work platform, have launched a pilot program that pays Dashers, at least in one case, around $10 to travel to a parked Waymo and close its door that the previous passenger left open.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

The "very poor," as well immigrant communities and the very young and old, the amendment read, "fall outside the non-cash financial system." [...]

Nationwide, those levels are decreasing, but remain significant. A survey conducted by the FDIC found that in 2023, Black and Latino households were overrepresented in the unbanked population, with 10.6 percent of Black and 9.5 percent of Latino households in the U.S. were unbanked, down from 17 and 14 percent in 2017.

Today, approximately 4 percent of San Francisco households are "unbanked," or do not have a checking or savings account, and nearly 14 percent are "underbanked" -- have bank accounts but primarily use cash or use check cashers or money orders. [...] "These residents are often the most financially vulnerable and can face higher costs and barriers in everyday transactions," Manke said.

The destruction of cash is part of the advertising panopticon agenda. Paper money doesn't have a utm_source on it so it is useless.

Let us also keep in mind that this "vocal contingent of local business owners" are the same business geniuses who are always, always certain that a bike lane will ruin them.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

My vendetta against tape on the walls is endless. I just think it looks really tacky. Plus, one of the things about paper that it is famous for is always showing the same thing. Whereas these screens have all kinds of complications. (In watchmaking, anything that a timepiece does beyond showing hours, minutes and seconds is called a "complication", and I love that term.)

For example, they are sensitive to the room they are in and the genres of the show that is currently happening, so if it's a metal night, they're going to show flyers for other metal shows much more often. They are likewise skewed toward showing shows happening sooner than later.

And another recent complication is the dancing QR codes. I put a bunch of work into making the underlying URLs as short as possible so that the QR codes have big chunky pixels that you can scan from across the room (or from space.)

We also use a couple of screens in the Pizza checkout lane to hype our appetizers.

In summary, digital signage is a land of complications.