Fahkin' Bahstin Bastahd

@mmaug
34 Followers
118 Following
60 Posts
Free Software 🐃 advocate
GNU/Emacs sql.el maintainer
Boston, MA. (he/him)
Red Sox ⚾, Bruins 🏒, Patriots 🏈
Free Software Foundationhttps://www.fsf.org
Electronic Frontier Foundationhttps://www.eff.org
Software Freedom Conservancyhttps://sfconservancy.org

Years ago, I had written a program that sent randomly generated queries off to Google, Bing, and Yahoo, and then "clicked" on one of the top three results. The search results and link content were thrown away, but the gathered user profiles were wild. (I was a straight middle aged man at the time, but G was convinced I was a 23yo lesbian!)

We need to do the same to AI—generate large essays and computer programs with meaningless content and bogus code to make AI learning useless. #deathToAI

“If I supply you with a tool to remove DRM (like some versions of Calibre), then I commit a felony and Amazon can have me sent to prison for five years for giving you a tool to move my book from the Kindle app to a rival app like Kobo. ... [E]ven though copyright law says you can format shift your books, music, videos, games, [etc.], DMCA 1201 (a ‘paracopyright law’) makes this an imprisonable felony if you have to break DRM first.” – @pluralistic

https://lifehacker.com/tech/you-can-remove-drm-from-your-digital-books-but-its-probably-illegal

You Can Remove DRM From Your Digital Books, but It's Probably Illegal

DRM prevents you from downloading copies of books you've purchased from online storefronts, but is it legal to bypass DRM to create backups? Cory Doctorow, an expert on the DMCA, weighs in on the subject.

Lifehacker

Try this test:

Take a headline, article, or political story from the past 20 years and replace the name of a conservative with the name of a comparable liberal, and vice versa.

If your reaction to the story changes from your reaction to the original version, then congratulations, you are NOT a free thinker and are influenced by politicians and the media to do their bidding.

Thinking about Virginia Tech today; it's been 18 years since the community, students, faculty, graduates, and parents suffered intense trauma. #WeAreVirginiaTech
RIP Kitty Dukakis.
A relatable, vulnerable women who acknowledged her struggles with depression and addiction. While her husband, Mike, would have altered the trajectory of this country, Kitty would have altered the trajectory of First Ladies by being more than an appendix of the President worthy of a cover story in People.
My condolences to Mike, john, Andrea, and Kara. She was a flawed, honest, and triumphant person
https://www.boston.com/news/politics/2025/03/22/kitty-dukakis-dies-obituary-michael-dukakis/
Kitty Dukakis, wife of former Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, dies at 88

Kitty Dukakis spent 12 years as the first lady of Massachusetts, entering the national spotlight when her husband ran for president in 1988.

Boston.com

Britain: "voting for Brexit is the greatest act of national self-harm in a generation"

America: "Hold my beer"

Even before mass protests have really begun, the wannabe dictator is already trying to make protests illegal.

The bully is scared even before the fight begins.

A little photo day BTS 🎥