Notices by Mike Knell (m@blat.at)

okay #amateurradio people or #hamradio people if you prefer it. asking this same question on both fedi and bluesky: who can recommend any digi voice reflectors (C4FM or D-Star or anything cross platform gated) which are reasonably bigot-free? let’s hang out.

@dgerard @o7___o7 He was weird and creepy before that (see his attempts to make the Jargon File say that everyone in hackerdom was just like him), but yeah, hoo boy. Him and the LGF guy were prominent cheerleaders for Dick Cheney's wilder fever dreams back in the day. The LGF guy got better, ESR didn't.

Quick reminder both for myself and anyone else who's seeing the news headlines in the English-speaking world about the Austrian election: yes, it's true that the FPÖ got 28-ish% of the vote. It's true they're the largest single party by a point or two. BUT it's also true that more than seven out of 10 Austrians who voted did _not_ vote for the FPÖ. It wouldn't be a surprise to find that for every FPÖ voter there's another voter who loathes the the FPÖ and everything it stands for.

And nobody has "won" this election. We've just had the election, and now begins a month or two of coalition negotiations to see who can actually put together a majority in the Nationalrat, where the FPÖ have many more foes than they have friends. There aren't any small far-right parties represented in Parliament who they could draw on for support. Their only real coalition prospect would be with the ÖVP, and while the ÖVP have a history of thinking that they can "control" the FPÖ in a coalition the prospect of being the junior partner might just give them pause for thought.

I know it's cold comfort, but here I am being all optimistic because it's either that or go and scream into the void and right now the local void in Vienna is so busy with people screaming into it that I can't get an appointment until next Thursday.

#nrw24 #nrw2024

It's important to look at the overall results for the EP elections, which tell a very different story to results out of France and Germany. The far right is _not_ making broad gains across Europe -- it's only in a few countries that should know better but which get all the headlines, and European parliamentary business is not decided by countries, but by the EP as a whole. Even Austria is better than I'd expected - however hard people say "FPÖ victory", the actual numbers are pretty close to a three-way tie and the SPÖ has maintained its vote share since 2019. We are not doomed, kids.

@goatsarah Ah, another cartographer convinced that Harry Beck had it all wrong because he wasn’t a cartographer when in fact he got it all *right* because he wasn’t a cartographer.

FM4 presenter: “.. it’s unlikely that today’s young people will ever earn as much as their Millennial parents or their Boomer grandparents”

Me:

@bellinghwoman @Antiqueight Ohhhhh. Suddenly enlightened - I’d been confused by your post as surely you must have seen “An Unearthly Child”? 😸

@bellinghwoman @Antiqueight I had no idea the new series had begun, which is why I was so confused.. but having now read the Grauniad’s synopsis all I can think is “oh dear”.

"Introducing Apple Pencil Pro. It takes the pencil experience to a whole new level." is one of those ridiculous sentences which make me laugh out loud .

@davidgerard Let it be known: millennials (she was born in 1985) have now given up on yelling at boomers and have pivoted straight to yelling at Gen Z. Meanwhile, Gen X pours itself another glass of wine.

@thisismyglasgow My grandmother was sent into service by her father in the 1920s at 14 and her first job as the most junior of the scullery-maids (getting up at 4:30) was not even just to clean and re-set the fires in the living rooms, it was to clear and set the fires in the rooms of the more senior servants so it was warm when *they* got up. Sounded just absolutely miserable, and fortunately she had the common sense to run away after a while and tell her father than no way in hell was she staying there. So she trained as a seamstress instead.

The daughter (she’s 13) has been having a miserable time at school recently because the Austrian gymnasium system is about the least ADHD-friendly school system on the planet and it obsesses about stuff like maths and grammar and testing, none of which she’s good at. So I thought I’d sneak a photo of the last couple of pages of her notebook and share these illustrations she’s done which I think are pretty damn good. If you think they’re good as well, let me know as she needs all the encouragement she can get right now.

@MnemosyneSinger It’s not actually true, though.

Hey, it's November 5th, so here's your annual reminder that all the stuff about Guy Fawkes having "honourable intentions" or wanting to bring in a new age of freedom and democracy or anything at all along those lines is bunk. The objective of Fawkes and the rest of the Gunpowder Plot was to install a puppet monarch (most likely James I's unwitting daughter) and join the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland to an imagined pan-European Catholic theocracy, to undo the Reformation and put power back in the hands of the Pope. That... doesn't sound like a great deal, really. Even for Catholics.

@simonlbn @delroth The USB-PD spec supports a maximum of 5A at all voltages, but most implementations top out at 3A at 5V because apparently nobody is going to want 5V at 5A, right?

Pretty sure they’re not violating the spec - it’s more that a lot of chargers violate the spec by making assumptions. Given the ferocious heat budgeting that must go on in RPi design and the fact that buck/boost converters will always generate heat (and the higher the current, the more heat) I can understand not wanting to do that on the board.

Stick a fork in PiS - they are so done.

96,75% counted
35.9% PiS
30.23% PO
14.44% PSL
8.5% NL

PO+PSL+NL=53.17%

Last time around PiS got 43.6% of the vote.

@jalefkowit An early TV appearance for Simon Jones there as well. He later became famous for playing a different character.

This is a stupid, tone deaf, appalling thing for a prime minister who's boasted of how lovely and inclusive his policies are to say. Kudos (I never thought I'd say this) to the unnamed Tory MP who presumably took it upon themselves to record it:

“It is profoundly depressing – this whole ‘othering’ of minorities – pretty much any minority. Without stopping to think we have equalities legislation for a reason, to stop discrimination against anyone with a protected characteristic – we should be trying to understand and support, not belittle and demonise.”

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jun/19/rishi-sunak-accused-of-mocking-trans-people-in-joke-to-tory-mps

I only realised today that many crypto bros are basing their beliefs on the idea that near-instant and low cost electronic currency transfers are impossible using the regular banking system. So basically… we’re all having to suffer because the US banking system is antiquated. They have not grasped that for the vast majority of the world crypto is a nothingburger because its sole value proposition is only really of interest to drug traffickers and a few enthusiasts. Huh..

@Hyolobrika Last I looked, PayPal was not part of the banking system. It’s a private company, not the government.