Notices by Leah Rowe is not a Rowebot (libreleah@mas.to), page 4

I saw an anti-copyright-infringement advertisement today, and felt duty-bound to exercise my rights under Fair Use.

#FreeCulture #CreativeCommons #Copyright

@kkarhan Yes. Please read this other part of the thread:

https://mas.to/@libreleah/113135360019335923

I have determined that Stenzek is indeed violating the GPL. I will be doing more auditing for this, and submit to those entities.

I'll contact Stenzek myself first, to tell him why I think the code should remain under GPL.

The freedom to fork, including for commercial purposes, is a right everyone must have and it's the reason free software thrives.

Also, there is a fork of DuckStation:

https://github.com/libretro/swanstation

@aral I'm just pissed off that I spend my Saturday dealing with this. But this is important. The danger specifically is that many people don't understand what free/opensource means, or about the ideology behind it.

The danger is that this continues. The re-licensing was two weeks ago. If I can convince them first to change it back, that'd be great - but I'm doing research and auditing of their repository.

That is so I have something to report to https://gpl-violations.org/ and SFC, *just in case*.

I've been informed that a popular PlayStation emulator, called DuckStation, became proprietary software (was GPLv3, now PolyForm Strict 1.0.0 which restricts non-commercial usage and modification).

DuckStation was Free Software. I've decided to archive DuckStation from before the license change. Please see:

https://codeberg.org/vimuser/duckstation

If you were using it, please ask the devs to change it back to GPL.

Hardware preservation matters, as is preserving that preservation in a free-as-in-freedom way.

I watched this excellent speech today, though it was made in 2019:

https://ar.al/2019/11/29/the-future-of-internet-regulation-at-the-european-parliament/

In it, @aral makes the case in favour of smaller, more federated communication infrastructure within Europe, making use of p2p protocols like ActivityPub (which mastodon uses). He's talking to representatives within the EU parliament, on the issue of how best to fund investment in communication technology, warning against funding companies like FaceBook.

The points he makes there are still true in 2024.

This is what a non-democratic country look like:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/sep/08/venezuela-opposition-leader-edmundo-gonzalez-reportedly-leaves-country-for-spain

The Venezuelan state didn't even hide their contempt; protests broke out as Maduro remains in office, while it has emerged that Maduro's opposition won the elections, which was swiftly countered by a brutal crackdown that the state named "Operación Tun Tun" (Operation Knock Knock).

Coup d'État or "coup" is french, meaning "blow of state", but in German, the word "putsch" is used, meaning "knock". <-- Operation Coup Coup.

@heyoka the actual counted results were leaked in several places all over venezuala and say the opposition get about two thirds of the vote

@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:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/06/venezuela-election-maduro-analysis

i will state again: i'm talking about *venezuela*, not the united states.

maduro proclaimed 52% of the vote, but the data says he lost

@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).

Better to educate with strong counter arguments.

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.

And I propose that books about *all of the above* be included in British school libraries.

The world's first vaginoplasty (surgery converting male genitalia into female) was also performed by that same clinic:

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

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:

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

History is nuts.

LGBT people are the most suppressed in history.

For example, in WW2, many LGBT people were imprisoned and killed by the Nazis, in the same concentration camps that killed millions of Jewish people.

History rightly teaches the latter, documenting all the atrocities, but I bet you didn't know this:

Many LGBT people remained in prison. Being gay was illegal in Germany, and remained so.

The world's first transgender clinic was in the Wiemar Republic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissenschaft

Nazis destroyed it.

Not so fun fact:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/aug/19/uk-school-librarians-asked-remove-lgbtq-books-index-on-censorship

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.

Fun fact for my American readers: Project 2025 training videos were leaked, now hosted on ProPublica's website:

https://www.propublica.org/article/video-project-2025-presidential-training-academy-trump-election

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.

It's called fascism, btw.

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*.

Ever notice how British politics is always at least a few years behind the times?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/aug/13/quitting-x-misinformation-liverpool-mayor-steve-rotheram

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.

Email sucks.

In conclusion

* Erect onshore wind farms everywhere

* Don't install giant solar farms that ruin Britain's countryside

* Install photovoltaic and thermal solar panels on every roof of every building

* Don't install UPS batteries in homes - expensive and also they can explode, and battery manufacturing is extremely bad for the environment

* Build lots of fast nuclear reactors for base load

Everyone having solar on their roof removes bottlenecks in the grid, so expensive re-wiring not needed.

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.