Notices by Nemo_bis 🌈 (nemobis@mamot.fr)

@ntnsndr Where to start? OCLC has long lost any semblance to its supposed mission. It's a rent-seeking SaaS provider like any other.

When a "non-profit cooperative" tries to sue its own members' employees into oblivion without a shred of evidence, you know for sure it's beyond redemption (like JSTOR with Aaron).
https://torrentfreak.com/alleged-annas-archive-operator-dropped-from-u-s-scraping-lawsuit-250417/

@JMarkOckerbloom Right, so it clearly fails the test of "Cooperatives are democratic organisations controlled by their members".
https://ica.coop/en/cooperatives/cooperative-identity

The current OCLC presumably exists to serve the interests of its own staff, i.e. maximising their wages and money extraction from universities. This is often the end result of 501(c) controlled by a self-perpetuating board.

Would a worker-owned cooperative avoid such a mismatch? What if members were workers at "customer" libraries?

@ntnsndr

@aral Indeed it's difficult for Palestinians, hence I was asking to figure out their individual situation. A UK resident should be able to get a SEPA account, if they are able to get a sterling bank account. (I understand that's already a big restriction.)

SEPA is not europe-only. "Anyone" can get a SEPA i.e. euro-denominated account from their bank, which will use a correspondent bank set up in the EEA.

Unfortunately this is usually easiest with big banks e.g. https://www.hsbc.co.uk/international/currency-account/

@aral Silly question, are they able to get a SEPA bank account?

«Your bank might be financing nuclear weapons», #ICAN kindly informs me by email. And sure enough it does.
https://divest.icanw.org/financial_exposure_nuclear_weapons_2026

Some of my other banks are not on the list but I bet they finance #nuclear weapons too.

@libreleah Thank you, it was so nice to have you back at FOSDEM!

Too bad the build failed due (apparently) to a DNS resolution failure, an unusually frequent occurrence with the FOSDEM network this year.

@libreleah I can confirm there were a lot of laughs at @manjiki 's presentation :)

@jon #EuropeanSleeper is raising capital right now. 😇

@evan IAB as in Interactive Advertising Bureau?

@dalias Maybe they expect everyone to have watched enough Doctor House to be aware of the dangers. https://www.auntminnie.com/clinical-news/mri/article/15578401/what-tvs-house-teaches-us-about-mri-and-safety

@libreleah "Let them eat silicon"

@libreleah Widely used for workstations with desktop environments?

@libreleah Sure. There would be a tender and they'd get offers from other companies like openSUSE, Debian consultancies etc. Fedora is just used for a proof of concept because it was easier that way for the lone volunteer doing it.

@libreleah AFAICT, "EU OS" is a volunteer-run initiative proposing the EU to do something. If the European Commission ever decided to start it and roll it out widely, it would presumably be outsourced to Red Hat or whatever.

@dajb https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fediparty/wiki/Collectively-owned-instances

@libreleah Well,,, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Omar_case

Are retaliatory #EU #tariffs on digital services possible? Do you just have to call them by another name?

Reading up on GATS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Agreement_on_Trade_in_Services

«Estimates for ad valorem tariff equivalents of services trade restrictions for cross-border trade [...] ranging as high as 2000% when trade flows are relatively inelastic, as opposed to between 20% and 300% in most other sectors.»

https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2017/04/services-trade-costs_3781532c/dc607ce6-en.pdf

"GATS the way"

https://esil-sedi.eu/esil-reflection-gats-the-way-i-like-it-wto-law-review-of-eu-legality-and-fundamental-rights/

Looks like tariffs on services are possible and are being considered, together with a bunch of other options.
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-tariffs-counter-strike-big-tech-us-banks-donald-trump/

Big Tech oligopolies are largely parasitical. If you slapped a 100 % tariff on them, replacing them would be painful but possibly not all that inflationary. (Compared to, say, rebuilding a car manufacturing supply chain from scratch.) A 30 % price increase for Office365 was apparently enough to make millions to switch to LibreOffice! Try 300 % and see.

@lxo Fair enough. I treat captchas like an addictive drug: I follow #HarmReduction principles.

@lxo Truly privacy-respecting #micropayments could open many possibilities, yes. The #digitalEuro plans are interesting too, in this regard.
https://mamot.fr/@nemobis/111951626495391352