Joe Lee @jpl@mastodon.aspisdata.com

My mother was upset today that my phone didn't have some functionality but instead of saying that I needed to change my choices, she said "it's ridiculous that software hasn't been released freely"! So nice.

Gates and Dean are the public face of a vast pharma lobbying effort to head off open access vaccines: more than 100 lobbyists are working DC right now, trying to get the US to oppose a WTO petition to grant emergency patent-waivers on covid vaccines.

https://theintercept.com/2021/04/23/covid-vaccine-ip-waiver-lobbying/

Lobbying disclosures reveal that Big Pharma is paying key Democrat fundraisers, ex-US Trade Rep officials, and GOP power-brokers to fight the proposal, as Lee Fang reports for The Intercept.

5/

Deere bolstered this argument with a paternalistic warning that farmers are just not qualified to service tractors, prompting electronics specialist Willie Cade - grandson of a legendary Deere engineer - to speak out against the company.

https://securityledger.com/2019/03/opinion-my-grandfathers-john-deere-would-support-our-right-to-repair/

Cade explained that his grandfather Theo Brown - who filed 158 patents for Deere - got all of his ideas by going into the field and observing the modifications that farmers had made to their tractors.

3/

It's live! My video showing how to install osboot on a ThinkPad T430s. osboot is a coreboot distro (forked from Libreboot's build system). It provides hardware initialization and a bootloader, to boot your OS. Enjoy!

Here is the video: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=P3BuHI7Gg5w

Re-posted with a different invidious link because the first one b0rked and didn't work when trying to play the video directly in mastodon

Hey, here is a new video "Krita Colorize-Mask: Advanced Tips" where I share what I found to get better results and work faster while coloring my previous episode of Pepper&Carrot.
Ptb: https://peertube.touhoppai.moe/videos/watch/d2f80555-dc0e-4ba1-aab1-4e26c12df770
Ytb: https://youtu.be/M-NNUdnPgbM
#krita #tutorial #webcomics

"Every billionaire is a policy failure": it's a controversial aphorism, but there's an undeniable truth to it.

There's no justifiable rationale for a person to be worth billions: is Jeff Bezos's social value really 14,285,714 times that of his median factory worker?

But moreover, billions of dollars are a force multiplier that magnifies the power of the individual without accountability or check.

1/

Another happy ThinkPad. ThinkPads are happier when you flash freedom on them; whether it's coreboot, osboot or Libreboot, ThinkPads are happier and healthier with GNU GRUB in boot flash.

The customer who sent this T430S in for flashing will be happy too!

I have just sent the author of untrunc (the one I linked) an email, to thank that person. I'm really happy that I was able to fix this corrupted mp4 file. Stay tuned for T430s video! (osboot installation tutorial)

this software fixed my broken mp4 recording: https://github.com/anthwlock/untrunc

best software ever. it really saved my bacon

Just to prove I'm not full of it. This is a KCMA-D8 mainboard I'm flashing for a customer. Socketed flash. Libreboot supports it.

The customer wants 16MiB chip but I couldn't find DIP8, so I used a SOIC8 on a 208mil SOP8 to DIP8 adapter and 2.54mm headers.

Here you see the original flash chip, a 2MiB winbond chip. It's DIP8. I removed it, and inserted the 16MiB (also a winbond chip) but on the adapter board with the 2.54mm headers pins.

Context: https://mas.to/@libreleah/106099544589796053

Nice trick for KCMA-D8/KGPE-D16 flashing (libreboot/osboot) and no DIP8 chips available to buy: solder SOIC8 onto SOP>DIP adapter. Put 2.54mm headers in breadboard, chip+adapter on that, and solder (breadboard keeps pins straight).

Slot into DIP8 socket. I do it all the time!

You *can* also just flash the default 2MiB chip (on D8/D16); remove it, put it in breadboard and flash, but I always upgrade the default 2MiB flash to 16MiB. I'm doing a KCMA-D8 for someone.

GNU/Linux is stupid.

Say GNU+Linux

+ means and
/ means or

wtf is the / for.
no!

the / is why most people call it linux, because "foo/bar" means "foo or bar" but then, people think foo and bar are the same thing. and linux is easier to pronounce than GNU so people say linux

if you say GNU+Linux, people can see clearly that it's *2* different things side by side, so they're more likely to say GNU as a component of the core operating system that is GNU+Linux

reject /. embrace the +. + is life

https://stallmansupport.org/

Something very wonderful, written in HTML by a very wonderful person, is now live. I didn't make this site, but it's an entire site defending RMS.

The cancellers are officially on notice.

#SupportRMS #DefendRMS #RMS #richardstallman

Studies for Pepper&Carrot episode 35.
#krita

Statement of FSF board on election of Richard Stallman (RMS): https://u.fsf.org/3bf

@pluralistic its such an obviously fake argument too—if poor countries couldnt make the vaccine then giving them vaccine production info wouldnt even result in the royalty infringements big corporations are so worried about

The only reason giving them that info would cause them not to buy the vaccine is if they are in fact capable of making the vaccine themselves

Now listening to the USC IP Clinic folks advocating for a DMCA exemption to expand patient access to their data on more devices, which was filed on behalf of Hugo Campos, Jay Radcliffe and me! So grateful for their work!

Tomorrow's 1201 (DMCA) Hearings continue w/Aaron Williamson representing us in our request to permit testing, investigation, & correction of privacy issues. Tune in at 10:30 ET (you can watch via the browser, but there's still registration + captcha).
https://www.copyright.gov/1201/2021/public-hearings/

We had a year to design a fair rollout of vaccine appointments and we just didn't even try. This is where ethics in tech comes in. This is why we need to train us all to ask from day one "how do we make sure everybody has access?" That didn't happen anywhere, as far as I can tell, and everywhere you look, vax access reflects the same patterns of privilege as every other precious thing in our society. It's a huge failure for tech ethics.

After 18 years with the Free Software Foundation, I've decided to resign my position as executive director, effective at the end of a transition period. We'll be sharing further details, including information about that transition, and a few more words, in the coming days. It's been a humbling honor to serve this institution, and to work alongside the FSF's staff, members, and volunteers over the years. The current staff deserve your full confidence and support -- they certainly have mine.