@heyoka to be clear, *trump* lost his re-election bid in 2020. nobody has any doubts about that, at least not anyone sane.
i was only talking about nicholas maduro, current head of state in the country of venezuela. several reputable news sources have said he lost 2-1, based on brave leaks by activists within that country, for example:
@uastronomer I was referring to Starlink, specifically its operation in Brazil; the Brazil government froze their assets while Starlink refused to censor X; ISPs were ordered by the courts to block X, after it refused to block certain accounts inside the country.
The context is that X no longer moderates hate speech/disinformation.
Censoring doesn't work in practise; in only causes more people to see what you tried to block (streissand effect).
Call me crazy, but I think banning an ISP that otherwise isn't breaking any laws from operating in a country because its owner has a certain political view that clashes with that country's government, would be wrong.
Ordering a social media company to censor speech is equally dubious.
When I don't like someone, especially if I think they're a dangerously ignorant fool, I just stop listening. I don't feel threatened by the fact that they exist; I can even challenge their assertions, and I do.
Dora Richter was the first person in the world to successfully undergo treatment, at that clinic. Her operation was in two parts: removal of the testicles in 1922, and full vaginoplasty in 1931.
She survived the Holocaust too.
The surgeon who operated on her later worked for the Nazis in the eugenics program:
Turns out we're not much better than the US, where many books are being censored from libraries and stores.
To any parents (of school children) who follow me, I ask:
Contact your kid's school; ask what their policy is, and what they're doing to facilitate access to LGBT material.
Banning access to such material doesn't protect anyone. The freedom to be yourself is an important human right, and LGBT youths deserve recognition, especially in education.
Project 2025 is a far-right plan for what neo-nazis running the GOP plan to do if Trump is re-elected.
P25 is run by Heritage Foundation and basically guts democratic institutions within the USA. E.g. they'll sequester the DoJ, put loyalists in key positions, *completely ban abortion*, etc. Trans rights? They want trans people dead.
My most recent email was about how much of an absolute waste of money it would be to install heat pumps everywhere - which is the current plan for "sustainable" home heating in the UK.
Heat pumps are inefficient, loud, noisy and actually use about as much energy, and therefore still cause more pollution if connected to the national grid, which is still about 50% fossil-fuel-based.
A better solution is thermal solar panels and a big hot water tank. Cheaper, reliable and uses *zero electricity*.
Personally, I would love it if British politicians stopped using X/Twitter - if they all come to Mastodon, I'll be able to start heckling them again, or when I'm in a good mood, telling them my thoughts about the state of the world and how they (except a few good people, from various parties) can tackle it more competently.
I've been doing some of that recently but on email.
The lifting of the ban against onshore wind is at least good - the UK is one of the windiest countries in the world. Plans to build solar farms all over the UK - very stupid, because they don't really work as a base load, and ruining the countryside is just obviously the wrong thing to do - growing food is a better idea, or more houses on that same land.
PV solar is better on your roof. UPS battery manufacturing is environmentally unsound though - onshore wind can easily meet night time demand.
@alexhaydock@neil@JustineSmithies If your IP range isn't on any blacklists, and you set it up properly, you should be fine. E.g. set up SPF, DMARC, DKIM, PTR records - and for dual stack ipv6/v4, that last part is critical; a&a lets you set the PTR record on your IPs, so you can make it match for both v4 and v6.
Some mail servers do whitelist mail server IPs, but that practise is rare. In general, I've not had issues sending mail to anyone, and I even run my business email on this connection.
I'm updating upstream revisions in lbmk (Libreboot build system). E.g. coreboot, grub, seabios etc. Hopefully finished tonight.
New Libreboot release ETA August 2024. After the recent audit (lbmk audit 6), the build system design is about as efficient as possible, pretty much, so my focus now is on new hardware. Quite a few new ports.
I'm also looking at two new payloads: zfsbootmenu(stripped down kernel so it fits in flash) and u-boot(x86). No promises that they'll be in this August release.
From June 2023 to June 2024, my focus was pretty much focused purely on auditing of the build system, lbmk. This is what Libreboot uses to build itself, and it's what releases are built with. It's basically a source-based package manager that downloads, patches and builds all the sources, to make coreboot images for installation.
My auditing removed bloat: Libreboot 20230625's lbmk was about 3300 lines of bash. *Today's* lbmk is 1096 lines of sh, with *more features* and just works much better.
I'm linking this guide they made, for how to lobby the European Commission about NGI (Next Generation Internet).
NGI is a funding scheme that supports many free and opensource projects.
The EC is *removing* NGI from 2025's Horizon budget. This would completely derail a lot of projects. Please write to the EC asking NGI to continue. I've already done so, despite not being an EU citizen.
In the last few years, I've had a feeling of intuition that everything stays the same; things that used to excite me no longer seem novel. I just see everything repeat.
Take technology. I look at modern computer games, and yes, the graphics are better, but it seems fundamentally the same as the games I played in 2005. Music is and film is worse.
Everything. Arts, politics...
Science has progressed a lot over the years, and we've somewhat evolved politically; but I am jaded.
to be fair, 400+ US Dollars for one vial of insulin is indeed an "insult cost", as is 35 US Dollars; therefore a "90% reduction of insult costs" is quite accurate.
the non-insult cost is $0. it's ridiculous in any civilised and wealthy country that anyone should pay for their medications.
one might argue for lower taxation, and a well-run system of private care, with reasonable insurance costs - america doesn't have this either.
and america *also* has higher tax rates than most of europe, FYI
ping me on irc maybe (leah on libera irc). libreboot founder and lead developer (libreboot.org). they/themi occasionally talk politics, but mostly talk about my projects. i'm an avid free software enthusiast and vim user. i occasionally talk about other people's projects, software or otherwise. i have a general interest in technology.i don't always know everything. judge me on the merits of my words and actions.