A tangential reflection prompted by the #bookstodon discussions today:

Owning a large collection of physical books is a privilege.

It means you didn't have to move around into small living accommodations. It means you have had the spare time and money to build it up over time. It means you didn't have to downsize or lose books for any reason, including accidents and catastrophes. It means you have space to store them and hopefully the time and spoons to organise and enjoy them. And the physical means to enjoy them as they are.

Greetings. Once upon a time long ago, I was sitting alone in the UCLA ARPANET site #1 computer room late one night when the high Santa Ana winds outside started disrupting power. Hit after hit, very dangerous for the minicomputers, disk drives, and other equipment in that room, since we didn't have uninterruptible power supplies back then.

I made some calls and it was decided I should shut everything in the room down. Everything. I phoned the ARPANET NOC (Network Operations Center) at BBN and explained the situation, since I was about to shut down IMP #1 (essentially, a refrigerator-sized router) on ARPANET which sat in a corner of the room, and doing this could cause disruptions if done in an unplanned manner. The IMP was *always* running -- I had never seen it powered down.

I worked my way around the room, powering down terminals and disks, and printers, and the power supplies on the 11/45 (ARPANET Host #1 - UCLA-ATS) and the 11/70 (Host #129 [1+128 on IMP #1] - UCLA-SECURITY. Back then my email addresses were LAUREN@UCLA-ATS and LAUREN@UCLA-SECURITY -- no domains yet.

The usual roar of the many machines' fans and motors gradually got quieter and quieter, until only the IMP was left. I pulled down the power switch. Now there was dead silence except the hum of the lights, a situation I'd never experienced in that room before. Very odd feeling.

Suddenly I heard a click -- the IMP was powering back up by itself. Damn. I pulled down the switch again. Quiet for a time, then click and it came back up yet again. Before I started thinking about screwing around with its power cables or turning off breakers that could have unexpected effects, I called the NOC again to ask them if they had any ideas.

"Oh yeah. We should have told you! There's a little switch that controls auto-restart. Surprise!"

So I found and flipped that little toggle switch, powered down the IMP again, and this time it stayed down. I had turned off the ARPANET -- at least at UCLA. -L

Beautiful timelapse of Earth setting below the Moon's horizon captured by the Japanese lunar orbiter spacecraft Kaguya. ©JAXA/NHK

#moon #earth #japan #timelapse

I spent a good part of this year investigating Google's ad business. Today we published a story about trying to crack open its black box ad network.

Unlike its competitors, Google conceals nearly all publishers it works with and where billions of ad dollars flow. We found that Google's vast ad network contains manga piracy, porn, fraud and disinformation.

Give it a read: https://www.propublica.org/article/google-display-ads-piracy-porn-fraud

OK this is interesting. Mozilla starting a Mastodon instance next year...

"Now is the time, as we’re living through the consequences of 20 years of centralized, corporate-controlled social media, with a small oligopoly of large tech firms tightening their grip on the public square."

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-launch-fediverse-instance-social-media-alternative/

RT @vdupouey
How we came to inextricably equate ‘democracy’ with ‘elections of temporary representatives’ is a fascinating process unpacked nicely in ‘Against Elections’ by @Davidvanrey.

But growing alternative models, no less democratic, are out there, waiting to be tested and implemented! https://twitter.com/demnext_/status/1605470289147531265