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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • Preheat and homogenization were not testing in these processes. Both are steps used in most US milk that would likely inactivate the virus. Moral of the story is still you are an idiot if you are drinking raw milk.

    Fragments of the virus that are being found in about 20% of all milk sampled. These fragments have not been shown to be enough to make anyone sick. The fact that we’re finding fragments and not intact viruses in store bought milk is a good indication that the various processes used for milk in most locations is doing the job it was intended to do.

    And most important of all: This is the current state of evidence gathered on this topic, that state could change with various factors at play and/or the addition of new evidence. Because apparently for some people they have forgotten that “things change as time progresses”.


  • For instance, this includes minerals for battery and other components to produce EVs and wind turbines – such as iron, lithium, and zinc

    I found nothing within the IEA’s announcement that indicates a shortage of those three elements. Iron is like the fourth most abundant thing on the planet.

    In fact, this story literally reports this whole thing all wrong. It’s not that there’s a shortage, it’s that the demand for renewables is vastly larger than what we’re mining for. Which “duh” we knew this already. The thing this report does is quantify it.

    That said, the “human rights abuses” isn’t the IEA report. That comes from the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC).

    Specifically, the BHRRC has tracked these for seven key minerals: bauxite, cobalt, copper, lithium, manganese, nickel and zinc. Companies and countries need these for renewable energy technology, and electrification of transport.

    These aren’t just limited to the renewable industry. Copper specifically, you’ve got a lot of it in your walls and in the device that you are reading this comment on. We have always had issues with copper and it’s whack-a-mole for solutions to this. I’m not dismissing BHRRC’s claim here, it’s completely valid, but it’s valid if we do or do not do renewables. Either way, we still have to tackle this problem. EVs or not.

    Of course, some companies were particularly complicit. Notably, BHRRC found that ten companies were associated with more than 50% of all allegations tracked since 2010

    And these are the usual suspects who routinely look the other way in human right’s abuses. China, Mexico, Canada, and Switzerland this is the list of folks who drive a lot of the human rights abuses, it’s how it has been for quite some time now. That’s not to be dismissive to the other folks out there (because I know everyone is just biting to blame the United States somehow) but these four are usually getting their hand smacked. Now to be fair, it’s really only China and Switzerland that usually does not care one way or the other. Canada and Mexico are just the folks the US convinced to take the fall for their particular appetite.

    For example, Tanzania is extracting manganese and graphite. However, he pointed out that it is producing none of the higher-value green tech items like electric cars or batteries that need these minerals

    Third Congo war incoming. But yeah, seriously, imperialism might have officially ended after World War II, but western nations routinely do this kind of economic fuckening, because “hey at least they get to self-govern”. It’s what first world nations tell themselves to sleep better for what they do.

    Avan also highlighted the IEA’s advice that companies and countries should shift emphasis to mineral recycling to meet the growing demand.

    This really should have happened yesterday. But if they would do something today, that would actually be proactive about the situation. Of course, many first world nations when they see a problem respond with “come back when it’s a catastrophe.”

    OVERALL This article is attempting to highlight that recycling is a very doable thing if governments actually invested in the infrastructure to do so and that if we actually recycled things, we could literally save ⅓ the overall cost for renewables. It’s just long term economic sense to recycle. But of course, that’s not short term economic sense. And so with shortages to meet demand on the horizon, new production is going to be demanded and that will in turn cause human rights violations.

    They really worded the whole thing oddly and used the word shortage, like we’re running out, when they meant shortage as in “we can’t keep up without new production”. They got the right idea here, I just maybe would have worded all of it a bit differently.




  • It does not. The Linux kernel is not a multikernel OS and HarmonyOS is. Now Harmony does indeed implement the ability to bring in a modified ASOP to provide Android app compatibility, but the actual OS that supervises that isn’t Linux based, though it does provide a UNIX environment.

    The reason HarmonyOS works well with the devices is because the OS and the devices are being built by the same person. It’s likely that HarmonyOS would run like ass or not at all on anything not made by Huawei, it’s also why the OS is mostly closed source with some open parts.

    But just because they both present a UNIX environment, does not mean HarmonyOS is or derived from Linux. They are indeed two different OSes with fundamentally different approaches to managing the underlying system.


  • I have a Brother HL-L3230CDW. It has been a horse and has quickly become my most prized possession of all things that I own. It takes anyone’s toner and produces quality without question. It works with my various Linux, Macs, Windows, and Android devices without hesitation and minimal fuss to get setup.

    So that’s what I would recommend. Is a good bit of coin up front but in my opinion, it has paid for itself in cheaper long run TCO and sanity in that it just fucking works.



  • It’s less executive action and more pipeline issues.

    The department related to approval for these things just hired 140 new employees that just got through on-boarding for this specific task. That 140 is literally the max Congress approved for handling applications in all tiers of the program, with a lot of Senators having hoped that somewhere around ½ that number would have been the final tally hired in.

    Those new employees will then need to navigate the 50+ page applications for each bid. With something around 480 bids in the first CHIPs acceptance round. So around 180 people will need to digest as quickly as possible somewhere around 24,000+ pages of applications. That’s not counting any kind of objections that might have been filed by State, private citizen, and also competitors (Samsung and Intel have a few of these already on some of the first tier 1s already).

    And all of this is just the first steps of the program that was written out by Congress. Congressional oversight, because remember all executive agencies established by law have Congressional oversight, has been really clear as mud on some of the finer details of this program. Biggest back and forth is the offshore but American funding, which holy crap I can’t write enough about how complicated that debate has become.

    All of this is happening on the several step process that Congress prescribed for this whole thing. Because, tier 3 and tier 2 funding are good candidates for abuse of funding. Solyndra echos can almost be heard when mentioning this. Or more recent example of what could go wrong when you just open the flood gates, PPP loans.

    Thing is, companies complain money isn’t coming fast enough all the time. The money could be on it’s way next week and they’d still complain that it wasn’t there on Monday. The more important thing is that the money isn’t being wasted too badly and that’s only happening with careful consideration. This is literally the exact same thing I said about Trump’s wall. One, I don’t think it would work anyway. Two, it’s ignoring a lot of commitments we have internationally. But three, if we’re going to do it, at least have a plan for properly spending the money which Trump did not because it basically took military funding and diverted it toward the wall, and thus it fell into one of those “you either spend it or lose it” and it meant that the construction had to be rushed and why a lot of “Trump’s wall” is mostly falling into the Rio Grande or made of metal slats that can easily be sawed through with a hand saw.

    So sure, whatever, but the more important thing… Well let me clarify, the more important thing from my perspective, so totally cool if someone disagrees, is that the money is carefully spent wisely. It doesn’t have to be a homerun, I just would rather the money not be tossed all over the place like PPP was.

    And I get some of the arguments for why PPP was done the way it was, but to put it to scale, I would prefer handing it out like a 3, I understand why people would want it handed out like a 7, but holy fuck we handed it out like a 9.3. Where 1 is being penny up the ass to make copper wire tight about the money and 10 is prolapsed colon flow of money out the ass. It was really indefensible how just loosey goosey we were with that money. And yes, there’s been other times we’ve done that (cough military cough), I didn’t like those either.







  • For those wondering. This substance is regulated by the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), third protocol.

    One attack on the town of Dhayra on 16 October must be investigated as a war crime because it was an indiscriminate attack that injured at least nine civilians and damaged civilian objects

    The highlight is mine but points out their legal objection here. One may refer to Article II of Protocol III, sections 2 and 3.

    • It is prohibited in all circumstances to make any military objective located within a concentration of civilians the object of attack by air-delivered incendiary weapons.
    • It is further prohibited to make any military objective located within a concentration of civilians the object of attack by means of incendiary weapons other than air-delivered incendiary weapons, except when such military objective is clearly separated from the concentration of civilians and all feasible precautions are taken with a view to limiting the incendiary effects to the military objective and to avoiding, and in any event to minimizing, incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects.

    Per Article II section 3, it would be illegal for an indiscriminate attack that did not take all feasible precautions to limit the incendiary effect to military objectives.

    As for anyone wondering, the use of white phosphorus is not a violation per Article I (1)(b)(i).

    (b) Incendiary weapons do not include
    (i) Munitions which may have incidental incendiary effects, such as illuminants, tracers, smoke or signalling systems

    Of which white phosphorus falls into when it is not used solely for it’s incendiary effects. Again, that is if Israel was justifiably using the substance.

    So all of this is to say, that while Amnesty International does indeed bring up a valid point. The international law gives enough wiggle room for Israel to avoid consequences.


  • Wayland development. Tons of folks yelling “X is good enough!” Where they just ignore that no one is actively developing XOrg which is pretty much the biggest X11 implementation.

    Plenty maintaining XOrg but new things aren’t coming to XOrg, there’s just no one there the XOrg devs moved to Wayland.

    So all these people shouting, they’re telling you keep a piece of software that’s very fragile, in a space that hardware makers are progressing at rapid pace, has decades of hot fixes, duct tape, and cruft, and nobody is actively developing for.

    Like I just don’t understand the people yelling that Wayland is raping peoples wives and setting fire to their dogs. The yelling group is screaming for people to use something that nobody wants to work on and nobody is paying enough for people to work on. The code base is horrible and it easily causes burnout in three weeks or less. No one in their right mind is picking it up for shits and giggles.

    So if everyone abandons Wayland, what’s the end goal? Keep riding XOrg till hardware outpaces it completely? Like I don’t understand what the Wayland haters are trying to get at. There’s so little going on in XOrg at this point and everyone seems to universally hate the code base. And a rewrite of the base sounds a whole lot like Wayland but artificially adding in X11 restrictions that make no sense since we all aren’t using PDP-11 to run the clients.

    I get that Wayland has configurations that don’t work yet. All software has bugs, including X11 implementations. But Wayland is arguably a technology that is more in line with how modern hardware works than the X11 protocol will ever be. And Wayland is designed to be easy for devs to work with, not a cobble of archaic limitations due to a protocol that was designed for 1970s era computers.

    That level of hate for Wayland is just this confusing Luddite cry for software that hardware that properly supports it no longer exists. The reason modern video cards do run on X at this point is because of a lot of hacks. I thought everyone understood this when we did the whole AIGLX vs XGL thing.



  • White phosphorus in general is not a war crime.

    General document for covering this is the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, in this particular case Protocol III, Article I §1(b)(i).

    Munitions which may have incidental incendiary effects, such as illuminants, tracers, smoke or signalling systems

    Of which White Phosphorus is typically within that category. It is incendiary and can randomly burn people, homes, and fields but the intended use is usually not to set fire but to provide cover, illumination, tracing, or signalling. There just happens to be a burning side effect that the UN usually shrugs off.

    How it’s used however can become a war crime. Article II of the same Protocol § 2 and 3

    It is prohibited in all circumstances to make any military objective located within a concentration of civilians the object of attack by air-delivered incendiary weapons.

    and

    It is further prohibited to make any military objective located within a concentration of civilians the object of attack by means of incendiary weapons other than air-delivered incendiary weapons, except … and all feasible precautions are taken with a view to limiting the incendiary effects to the military objective…

    So basically, you cannot deliver via aircraft, which video indicates that these were ground launched 155mm white phosphorus artillery projectiles, so check on (2), BUT it’s debatable that Israel followed (3) and took all precautions to minimize civilians getting in the way. But I mean, does anyone really believe the UN holds anyone to any kind of scrutiny?

    So… I hope that answers your question.



  • How about instead of establishing this via the regulatory process we have Congress actually pass law that enshrines fundamental rights online? Don’t get me wrong, I’ll take whatever, but as we’ve seen rule making can change these things based on who the President has selected to seat on the committee and if they seat just the right person, boom, all those rights are now gone again.

    Bringing back NN via the regulatory process is a step, but as has been demonstrated, even long standing precedent before the courts is NOT an indicator of any long standing policy of the United States. That the only means by which any of us can have any kind of long standing right is via legislation (for the simple fact that usually there’s too much confusion to entirely undo anything once passed, but even then every so often the cards come up in just the right combination) and Constitutional Amendment.

    That’s it. That about covers all the means by which the US has long standing position on anything. Which that’s pretty shitty because having a “direction” is slightly important for a nation, but that is where we are now. So great, glad to hear the FCC wants to implement rule making to add regulation that gives us “Net Neutrality”, but that’s going to last all the way up till some former Verizon lawyer becomes chairman of the FCC (Ajit Pai), who will unsurprisingly, dismantle all regulatory process of the FCC. And round and round we go.