My boss called me “Tyrone” on accident (My name is Tyrand). She apologized and bought me lunch to make up for it. I didn’t think twice about it, since I’m used to getting called every variant of “Ty-(fill in blank here)”. Then later on I read a quote she keeps in her work area that made me feel kinda special.
“During my second month of nursing school, our professor gave us a pop quiz. I was a conscientious student and had breezed through the questions, until I read the last one: “What is the first name of the woman who cleans the school?” Surely this was some kind of joke. I had seen the cleaning woman several times. She was tall, dark-haired and in her 50s, but how would I know her name? I handed in my paper, leaving the last question blank. Before class ended, one student asked if the last question would count toward our quiz grade. “Absolutely,” said the professor. “In your careers you will meet many people. All are significant. They deserve your attention and care, even if all you do is smile and say ‘Hello’.”
I’ve never forgotten that lesson. I also learned her name was Dorothy.“
Goyim, please take antisemitism seriously and work to actively critique the antisemitism within and around yoi, whether it is implicit or explicit. So many of us are in mourning after Squirrel Hill bcz we’re terrified of stuff like this happening. We need you to be in solidarity, supporting us. There’s a better world out there, and we can build it, but one of the requirements for that is rooting out antisemitism. Z”L
it does bother me when people talk about how they don’t care if humanity gets destroyed because humans brought it on on themselves but they care about the other living beings on the planet because they don’t deserve to get wiped out which is true but i can’t get behind that idea because i just have such a great love and compassion for humanity and i don’t want to see anything get destroyed. i just, i can’t accept the idea that people deserve to die out when i know there are so many people wanting to live and struggling to live and saying that humanity doesn’t deserve to live just has so many unfortunate implications especially when the main problem comes from corporations not caring about people. like people have been able to live with nature for thousands of years and there have been efforts to give back to nature and to preserve nature and to say that people don’t care about nature and so they deserve what’s coming is just really disheartening
In a big victory for hacker, tinkerers, and the right to repair movement, the US Copyright Office
has ruled some major changes to the legal exemption to the DMCA, making
it far easier for owners to build software tools to hack, modify, and
repair their own devices, as explained by iFixit founder Kyle Wiens.
Under section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright
Act (DMCA), it is “unlawful to circumvent technological measures used to
prevent unauthorized access to copyrighted works.” Because software has
become so integral to all the devices we use — everything from phones
to speakers to even trackers — device manufacturers have long used
section 1201 to prevent owners from taking apart or repairing their own
devices, arguing that breaking the software locks as part of replacing
parts or modifying your gadgets is a violation of that statute.
But as part of that law, citizens are allowed to petition
for exemptions to section 1201 every three years, when the Copyright
Office rules what kind of repairs and software tools are and aren’t
allowed by the law. The final ruling for this cycle was just released
(it goes into effect as law on October 28th), and it enacts broad new
protections for repairing devices.
The right to jailbreak and modify voice-assistant devices, like those powered by Amazon’s Alexa or Google Assistant
It’s now legal to unlock new phones, and not just used ones
There’s a general exemption for repairing “smartphones,”
“home appliances,” and “home systems.” Wiens points out that this could
help users legally fix devices like the permanently bricked Revolv home hub by installing new firmware or software.
It’s legal to repair cars, tractors, and other motorized
land vehicles by modifying the software on your own. (This has been an
issue for some time, with tractor company John Deere in particular
making the fairly ludicrous argument that letting users modify software
on the tractors that they own — even in the name of doing legitimate
repair work — could lead to owners hacking the tractors and using them
to pirate music. Yes, really.)
Lastly, it’s legal for other third parties to do these
kinds of repairs on your behalf — so even if you can’t code your way
into fixing a bricked smart home, it’s not illegal to pay someone who
can to do it for you.
There are still some major aspects of 1201 that remain in
place. The Copyright Office didn’t grant exemptions to section 1201 for
game console repairs — meaning you still can’t replace a busted CD
drive on your Xbox or PS4 on your own, since those parts are locked via
software to the specific console for security reasons.
The ruling is also specific for those specific categories
of smartphones, home appliances, home systems, and motorized land
vehicles — so things that don’t fit in those buckets (like planes or
boats) are still protected by the law and can’t be hacked.
Lastly, and most crucially, the Copyright Office’s ruling
still doesn’t allow trafficking in the software tools to circumvent
these kinds of software locks, even in the name of repair. So you can
develop the tools to repair things yourself, and folks can pay you to do
those repairs for them, but you can’t distribute or sell those tools to
others.
Still, it’s a big win for the gadget repair community,
and one that codifies into law the right for you to fix or hack or
repair the things you bought any way you want, regardless of what the
manufacturer says. And as our devices become ever more reliant on
software, that’s a very good thing.
ugh 