Joe Lee @jpl@mastodon.aspisdata.com

Hooray #GNOME40!

https://floss.social/@gnome/105952169636960282

I don't know about you, but I've been worried about Gwyneth Paltrow. We've had the plague for a year and the Paltrow-Industrial Complex hadn't shown up with any kind of wellness grift!

Finally, we can breathe easy. As Beth Mole writes in Ars Technica, Paltrow has finally entered the covid profiteering racket, and she's going *big*, with a blog entry detailing the many ways you can shop your way out of long covid.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/02/it-took-a-year-but-gwyneth-paltrow-figured-out-how-to-exploit-the-pandemic/

1/

Say it with me now: a fine is a price. When companies profit from inflicting harm on the rest of us, a fine is just part of the price of doing business.

It's a numbers game: multiply the likelihood of getting caught by the expected fine and divide by the expected profit, and that's how many people you can murder for a buck.

1/

The problem with Giuliani's conspiracy theory isn't that voting machines aren't garbage - it's that he's wrong about how they're garbage, and what that means for election integrity.

Giuliani's targeting of voting machines isn't a signal that they're good because he's an idiot who's wrong about everything - it's that he's so wrong that he's even wrong about the things that he's wrong about.

11/

Today I'm reminded that the worst hosting company on the planet is Godaddy. Absolute garbage.

El Free Software Supporter está disponible en español. Para ver la versión en español haz click aqui: https://u.fsf.org/392

From the new FSF Bulletin (https://u.fsf.org/37z): Professor Christian Grothoff introduces the first free software payment system, GNU Taler! https://u.fsf.org/386

The International Day Against #DRM #IDAD sent Netflix an important message -- we heard that they got enough calls from our anti-DRM crusaders to take the phone number we listed offline. Well done! https://u.fsf.org/384

Raising money for Chelsea Manning: The whistleblower and torture survivor needs our help.

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/105380298565331224

5/

The International Day Against DRM, #IDAD, is TOMORROW -- Friday, December 4! Learn what you can do to take a stand: https://u.fsf.org/37v

Kroger is one of America's largest, most profitable grocery chains, with $2b in profits in 2019. Ohio just gave it a 15-year, 75% tax subsidy in exchange for locating some data centers in the state. Pat Garofalo offers some sharp comments on the deal.

https://publicseminar.org/2020/11/how-taxpayers-are-picking-up-the-bill-for-the-destruction-of-local-restaurants/

1/

Data center subsidies are the ultimate sucker-bet. States and cities that subsidize data-centers to get local jobs end up spending $2 million (up to $6m!) PER JOB. Data centers are expensive but they also employ very few people, after all.

https://boondoggle.substack.com/p/facebook-and-the-data-center-scam

Now, you may be asking yourself, wait, why does a grocery chain - even one with $2B/year in profits - need a pair of data centers? Groceries are a data-intensive business, but they're not THAT data-intensive.

2/

The answer: Kroger's starting a "ghost kitchen" sideline. That's when giant corporations set up predatory sweatshops in shipping containers where employees (misclassified as contractors) earn sub-minimum-wage pennies to produce delivery meals.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/19/we-are-beautiful/#man-in-the-middle

3/

These are often owned or partnered with delivery apps, and, like delivery apps, they use investor cash to subsidize both the food and the delivery, losing money on each transaction, in a bid to drive out local, productive restaurant businesses.

4/

Ghost kitchens ARE data-intensive, because their corporate masters do deep analysis from their predatory delivery business to find vulnerable local restaurants to clone and drive out of business, replacing searches for the local eatery with their ghost-kitchen knock-off.

And Kroger doesn't even need to tap its investors to subsidize the destruction of Ohio's beloved local restaurants - already weakened by the pandemic and weak stimulus for small businesses, especially bars and restaurants.

5/

The Ohio taxpayers - including restaurants that will be driven out of business by this subsidy - are footing the bill for it.

The sadists of China's Cultural Revolution would execute your dad and send you a bill for the bullet. In America, we're much more genteel.

eof/

Comparte el mensaje de software libre usando el hashtag #UserFreedom en las redes sociales, y ayuda a impulsar el movimiento de software libre hoy: https://u.fsf.org/37o