Items for May 2022

How censoring China’s open-source coders might backfire

Many suspect the Chinese state has forced Gitee, the Chinese competitor to GitHub, to censor open-source code in a move developers worry could obstruct innovation.

In all honesty, we should also be worried about MS owning GitHub, and not enough people are.

Tags: china, programming, free speech

Some people talk about digital gardens, linklogs and personal wikis. About how to bring back the Geocities-era web without the baggage. Other people instead speak of profiles, feeds and mentions. Choose wisely.

Tags: internet, updates

Adventures in Fiction: Roger Zelazny and the Chronicles of Amber

Tags: books, games

Why I Quit Google’s WebAssembly Team, And How It Made Me Sick

Tags: big tech, work, health

“Destruction of digital privacy of correspondence”: lawsuit filed against chat control

Tags: internet, law

Toys of a Forgotten Generation

Tags: vintage, toys, photos

The time SUSE, the German Linux company, banned mentioning Jewish holidays.

Tags: business, religion

About those kill-switched Ukrainian tractor

Tags: food, tech, security

Giant Rodents 'Invaded' a Wealthy Gated Community. What Happened Next is a Lesson for Cities in the Climate Change Era

Tags: animals, cities, environment

“Elephant in the room”: Clean energy’s need for unsustainable minerals

Tags: energy, environment

Pop Culture Has Become an Oligopoly

(Via the Dragonfly BSD Digest.) I disagree with the attempted explanations, but the statistics are telling. As for the conclusions... Subsisting entirely on cultural comfort food cannot make us thoughtful, creative, or courageous. Yes, exactly!

Tags: media, business