Esme Povirk @madewokherd@computerfairi.es

World leaders swiftly express their solidarity when Israeli civilians are killed.

But when Israel calls Palestinians “human animals,” silence. When Israel cuts off fuel, food, water, and medicine, silence. When the bombs fall on Gaza, silence.

Link: https://www.jphilll.com/p/the-world-ignores-palestinian-civilians

Facebook targeting ads by age, gender violates Calif. anti-discrimination law

"Shocking" ruling could have "devastating effects," tech law expert warns.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/10/facebook-targeting-ads-by-age-gender-violates-calif-anti-discrimination-law/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

i have outright deleted a major patchset i wrote for a project under freedesktop.org stewardship, which someone else is probably going to write again in a year or two, because i realized the project had a real-name policy, and decided it wasn't worth it. i then lost motivation for the cool thing i was working on that needed me to write that patch

this is not the intended effect of a "real-name" policy, but it is the actual effect. and, as the cool kids say, "the system is what it does".

there is no such thing as a "real name". the concept of a "legal name" is fraught, and most certainly is not what you think it is, or what you are looking for, if you are a software developer. many assumptions you have about what a "legal name" is probably are not true.

consider this: the name on my birth certificate is different than the name on my drivers license, and that is different from the names i am called by my friends. those names are all different from what is likely to be on my passport when i get it, and all of those are different than the name i publish my open source projects under. all of these, in different jurisdictions, might or might not be something you could consider a "legal name". which one do you want me to use when i submit a major feature to your library? are you going to turn me away if i try to submit it as "linear cannon"? why? if i have a website and contact information under that name, why does this matter? how is it substantially different than an author of fiction novels publishing under a pen name? does it change if i produce a piece of government-issued documentation with that name on it? why, or why not?

if your real name policy does not answer these questions adequately, then there's a very good chance i'm just going to assume that you're going to turn me away, as has happened to me several times already

getting fired from apple for printing out little pieces of paper that say ".DS_Store" and leaving them everywhere

please boost for reach! 🙏

I'm volunteering at my daughter's elementary school by teaching a "coding club" for 5th graders during their lunch and afternoon recess.

It mostly went great, except I left nearly in tears...

One of the kiddos that joined is blind, and I discovered that the coding programs for kids don't appear to be accessible *at all*.

First we tried Swift Playgrounds, but that didn't seem to work with VoiceOver. Then, he said that he's liked ScratchJr. in the past, and he got frustrated with that because he couldn't get his cat to move.

I'm kinda at a loss for how to help him. He left crying because he thinks that he can't get it, but I'm sure he can. Does anyone have any advice?

Thanks!!

#coding #swiftplayground #blind #accessibility #apple #ipad

We now know how cats purr—why they purr is still up for debate

Studies of excised cat larynxes reveal role of connective tissues embedded in vocal folds

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/10/we-now-know-how-cats-purr-why-they-purr-is-still-up-for-debate/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

Reminder that the Emergency/Presidential Alert everyone in the US got today is easy to spoof because it's part of an unauthenticated cellular broadcast your phone will trust no matter who it comes from.

Here's the paper that details the attack, "This is Your President Speaking: Spoofing Alerts in 4G LTE Networks": https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10150578

Also malicious parties *have* begun taking advantage of this, see the recent attempts at disrupting the federal elections in the Philippines via fake emergency alerts.

Everybody's always like, "I'd tell my 20 year old self to buy bitcoin", or "I'd tell my 20 year old self that she's a trans woman", but honestly I'd try to find my 20 year old self a good therapist and a means to pay for it. Developing a reasonably healthy sense of human relationships and social interaction is like 🤯

Say what you will, but what is really the most optimistic thing about TNG, more so than the poverty-less and money-less utopia, is when somebody goes to the captain and says "this weird, unbelievable thing happened to me" and they believe them.

Reg says he sees a creature in the transporter beam and rather than saying "Reg, you well-known anxiety haver, you're imagining things!", they take the transporter apart, twice, to find out.

Beverly says she hears voices at night and has an overwhelming sense of deja-vu, and the captain doesn't say, "my, what an overactive imagination you have! Sleep more and do yoga!", he instructs the crew to sweep the entire ship with sensors, from top to bottom and starboard to port, until they've figured it out.

THAT is a world I'd like to live in.

#StarTrek #TNG