Dave Lane @lightweight@mastodon.oeru.org

Yet again I am reminded of how much cost (time, energy, hard cash) is forced upon educational institutions, libraries and scholars by the fact of scholarly publishers locking their articles up - ON TOP of the subscription costs.

The right has long held that homelessness is a symptom - of a lack of self-control, a lack of foresight, of addiction, mental illness, etc - and therefore the solution to it is training, incarceration, rehab, or rigid discipline.

None of this stuff worked.

1/

MS Excel Files Exceeding the Maximum Size Resulted in Nearly 16,000 Covid-19 Cases Go Unreported in England

https://it.slashdot.org/story/20/10/05/199251/ms-excel-data-files-exceeding-the-maximum-size-resulted-in-nearly-16000-covid-19-cases-go-unreported-in-england

🤦‍♂️

Spreadsheets are for finances databases are for datasets. Learn the difference people.

Yet another fluff piece from #Mozilla about how we outta do something about the Internet

Uh, you?
How about you?

> Let’s take back control from those who violate our privacy

You're sponsored by Google

> We’re a non-profit backed organization that exists for the sole purpose of protecting the internet

You laid off 250 employees while your CEO made almost $2.5 million and continue to rake it in

> Big tech has gotten too big

Again, *literally* taking in Google bucks

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/09/30/the-internet-needs-our-love/

"If we're gonna make it through this monopolistic era of evidence-free policy that benefits a tiny, monied minority at the expense of the rest of us, we need to demand democratic accountability for market abuses, demand a pluralistic market where dominant firms are subjected to controls and penalties, where you finally realize birthright of technological self-determination."

eof/

I fully believe that some of the energy for breaking up tech is coming from astroturf campaigns run by ISPs and movie studios and record labels - but they're betting that if we break up Big Tech, that'll be the end of it.

Like trustbusting is Thanksgiving dinner, something that leaves you so satiated that you can't even think about going back for second.

That is so wrong. If history teaches us anything, it's that trustbusting is like potato chips, and once you start, you can't stop.

3/

It's inevitable: whenever I talk about the need to curb concentrated power in the tech sector, someone comes along to ask why I only care about tech - why not do something about concentration in telecoms or entertainment?

That's not wrong, but it's not right either. Yes, telecoms and entertainment are grotesquely concentrated and abuse their monopoly power to the great detriment of the rest of us.

1/

But no, gunning for Big Tech does NOT mean that we're not gunning for Big Content and Big Telco, too.

Bust 'em all!

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/09/bust-em-all-lets-de-monopolize-tech-telecoms-and-entertainment

The idea that these monopolized industries are somehow keeping each other in check - rather than colluding to screw the rest of us - is wrong. Google did an anti-Net Neutrality deal with Verizon. And all the tech and content companies illegally fixed wages between 'em.

2/

We pay to Steam, Netflix, Amazon prime, Spotify. But not to Wikipedia, Archive.org, Librivox, Project Gutenberg, for our favourite Linux distro.

The huge asymmetry between corporate and community has not emerged naturally. It is a product of our choices of not supporting community oriented projects.

The short conveniences vs the long-term good. We always chose the former.

In face of surveillance capitalism, we must and must change.

E-Voting App Maker Voatz Asks The Supreme Court To Let It Punish Security Researchers For Exposing Its Flaws - https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200903/16005645245/e-voting-app-maker-voatz-asks-supreme-court-to-let-it-punish-security-researchers-exposing-flaws.shtml how about no? also: don't use #evoting for anything...

Glorious in Canterbury today. Great way to start the week!

"Just because there is now a multi-billion-dollar industry based on the abject betrayal of our privacy doesn’t mean the sociopaths who built it have any right whatsoever to continue getting away with it"

Great post!

https://daringfireball.net/2020/09/online_privacy_real_world_privacy

Auspicious start to the week here in Canterbury! Spring is arriving...

Spotted (photo by my son) on a recent trip in Christchurch, New Zealand...

I have some great news about Boston Public Schools and free software. You may know that my Co-op has been hosting some Boston Public School courses over the summer using free software.
Assessments of student progress shows that the teachers that stuck with BBB had better assessment scores for their students!! Especially the Math teachers. Scores were SIGNIFICANTLY higher by about 10-15 percentage points and it is believed that is because BBB allowed for student engagement more than Zoom did.