First reaction of the Southwest captain saying Fuck Biden over the speakers was wow that's a line we didn't want to cross. Then it was pointed out by Matt Taibbi that Robert De Niro said Fuck Trump on national TV and the audience loved it, he got a standing ovation, said it again even.

That gets you thinking. But there's a difference between Biden and Trump. Biden will leave office peacefully, we all knew Trump wouldn't. So Fuck Trump was a cry for help, a plea for unity. We're all cursed by the fucker. Let's say out loud what the news people refuse to say.

People who love Trump have nothing to fear from Biden. To think otherwise is lunacy, and when I think things through other people's lunacy doesn't enter into my reasoning.

Further, you're in a closed locked tube and this asshole is the fucking pilot. And he loves fascism, which is to say he is crazy. I want off the plane when I hear that. You get to turn off the TV show which you probably weren't watching anyway. But the passengers are stuck with a lunatic flying the plane. So it's not the same thing.

The U.S. Copyright Office "is expanding a legal shield for fixing digital devices," reports the Verge, "including cars and medical devices." Earlier this week the office "submitted new exemptions to Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which bars breaking software copy protection. The resulting rules include a revamped section on device repair, reflecting renewed government pressure around 'right to repair' issues." [T]his latest rulemaking adopts repair-related proposals from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, iFixit, and other organizations. The Librarian of Congress adopted the recommendations in a final rule that will take effect [Thursday]. The exemptions replace an itemized list of repairable devices with broad protections for any consumer devices that rely on software to function, as well as land and sea vehicles and medical devices that aren't consumer-focused. The rulemaking doesn't rewrite the exemption to cover all non-consumer devices, and it doesn't cover all "modification," only "diagnosis, maintenance, and repair." For video game consoles specifically, repair only covers repairing the device's optical drives and requires reenabling any technological protection measures that were circumvented afterward. The Verge notes that Acting General Counsel Kevin Amer told reports the exemption should prove useful, adding that their decision had been influenced by an earlier executive order from the Biden administration supporting third-party and consumer repair work. The article also notes other U.S. agencies are also moving on the issue. "The Federal Trade Commission, for instance, has pledged to fight business practices that lock out independent repair shops. "This copyright rulemaking doesn't address those practices, but it helps lift a legal threat hanging over technicians and consumers."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

it was asked on Twitter why people don't like LeBron. My two cents. He's not a friendly looking guy, like Melo for example. Also once you win two championships, you're just showing off. It's like leaving your starters in during garbage time and they do fancy trick plays. After a time you think why not just sit down. That's LeBron. You're right it isn't fair, but that's the way it goes.

Meanwhile the 2021-22 Knicks are the exact opposite of a superteam. Every player either a rookie or a medium-tier mid-career player, and a couple of players in their 30s, on the second squad. A few of the young players are potential stars. All of them achieving far beyond expectations, and are growing together as a team. They are fun to watch and root for. It's a team, not a group of stars. That's the thing to aspire to, people making each other better. Not a balance sheet that's expected to win everything. Where's the fun in that.

Today's song: I never promised you a rose garden.

The agreement between the world's richest economies makes no reference to cutting emissions by 2050.

Scientists from the WMO say global warming is leading the world into "uncharted territory".

The 2021-22 Lakers are the ultimate superteam. LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Russell Westbrook, Rajon Rondo, Carmelo Anthony, Dwight Howard, DeAndre Jordan. So much talent! They all came to be with King James as he surely will win more titles. Now they don't have to retire without a ring. But it's a head-trip. How long will it take to work it all out, to find new roles for all these stars, future Hall of Famers? And will they be patient enough to work it out? Too much entitlement on that team.

Superteams are a bad idea. Sports isn't arithmetic. You can't make the best team by putting all the best players on the court at the same time. Because they were best in a different context. Esp in basketball, teamwork is everything. Chemistry. Feng shui. It's an art.

"NASA scientists have just published a commentary article in Nature calling for a framework for reporting extraterrestrial life to the world," reports Cosmos magazine (in an article shared by Slashdot reader Tesseractic): "Our generation could realistically be the one to discover evidence of life beyond Earth," write NASA Chief Scientist James Green and colleagues. "With this privileged potential comes responsibility. As life-detection objectives become increasingly prominent in space sciences, it is essential to open a community dialogue about how to convey information in a subject matter that is diverse, complicated and has a high potential to be sensationalised..." Green and colleagues argue that...we should reframe such a discovery, so it isn't presented as a single moment when aliens are announced to the world. Instead, it should be seen as a progressive endeavour, reflecting the process of science itself. "If, instead, we recast the search for life as a progressive endeavour, we convey the value of observations that are contextual or suggestive but not definitive and emphasise that false starts and dead ends are an expected part of a healthy scientific process," they write. This will involve scientists, technologists and the media talking to each other to agree firstly on objective standards of evidence for life, and secondly on the best way to communicate that evidence. This, they say, should preferably be done now before a detection of life is made, rather than scramble to put it together in the aftermath. "The team kickstarts the conversation by proposing a 'confidence of life detection' (CoLD) scale, which contains seven steps taking us from first exciting potential detection of life to definitive confirmation," Cosmos points out. (With the stages including the discoveries of unquestionable biosignatures, a habitable environment, and then corroborating evidence.) Cosmos argues that "This is an increasingly important conversation to have — because experts think that the odds aliens exist are high." And they close their article by quoting NASA's team. "Whatever the outcome of the dialogue, what matters is that it occurs. In doing so, we can only become more effective at communicating the results of our work, and the wonder associated with it."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"In a world of inequality, we are well accustomed to rich, powerful, connected people getting preferential treatment..." argues an opinion piece in the Washington Post. "The notable exception is Wikipedia." There, VIPs have been shouting "Do you have any idea who you are dealing with?!" for years, only to be told either, not really, or, don't care, and then instructed...to take their objections to a Talk page where the community can weigh in... One reason the project is different from other digital platforms for VIPs is the absence of a mechanism for "escalating the case to leadership," as one internal Facebook memo, recently published by the Wall Street Journal, euphemistically described the process of Facebook's giving special treatment... The closest approximation to a Wikipedia power player would be Jimmy Wales, the chairman emeritus of the foundation that supports Wikipedias in more than 250 languages and the face of the project for its 20 years of existence. But Wales is not actually in control of anything. When he gets personally involved in helping a petitioner, a crowd of editors track his movements to ensure that he not hold special influence. This tradition began way back in Wikipedia's history, when Wales insisted that the birth date on his own article, and his birth certificate, was wrong. The editors did not take his word for it... With no bigwig to enlist, people who object to what appears on their article page try to navigate Wikipedia on their own, an often-treacherous experience. In the early days of Wikipedia, the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins edited the article about him to correct an error. He confirmed in an email to an editor, Alienus, that "yes, the person who purported to be me is indeed me! But thank you very much for checking. I am bowled over by how good Wikipedia generally is." That same editor followed up, however, by questioning a change Dawkins had made to his article to reduce the number of journals he edits from four to two and to remove any mention of one, Episteme Journal. "Do you have any citations to support this change?" Dawkins was flabbergasted: "It is unreasonable to ask for a positive citation to demonstrate that I did NOT found a journal called Episteme. I am telling you that I never founded a journal called Episteme. I didn't even know that a journal called Episteme existed." Turned out an editor had made an error; the sentence was removed permanently. The article — by Wikipedia editor Noam Cohen — opens with the story of John C. Eastman, a lawyer advising president Trump, and his argument with Wikipedia editors over his biography (an argument still archived on the biography's "Talk" page). Eastman complains that their supporting references — which included the New York Times — were biased against him, and yet rather than allowing him to delete them "I had to ask permission from some unknown twentysomething."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"New Android malware can root infected devices to take complete control and silently tweak system settings, as well as evade detection using code abstraction and anti-emulation checks," reports BleepingComputer. Cybersecurity company Lookout said on its blog that they'd spotted the malware on Google Play "and prominent third-party stores such as the Amazon Appstore and the Samsung Galaxy Store.... To protect Android users, Google promptly removed the app as soon as we notified them of the malware." We named the malware "AbstractEmu" after its use of code abstraction and anti-emulation checks to avoid running while under analysis. A total of 19 related applications were uncovered, seven of which contain rooting functionality, including one on Play that had more than 10,000 downloads... This is a significant discovery because widely-distributed malware with root capabilities have become rare over the past five years. As the Android ecosystem matures there are fewer exploits that affect a large number of devices, making them less useful for threat actors... By using the rooting process to gain privileged access to the Android operating system, the threat actor can silently grant themselves dangerous permissions or install additional malware — steps that would normally require user interaction. Elevated privileges also give the malware access to other apps' sensitive data, something not possible under normal circumstances... AbstractEmu does not have any sophisticated zero-click remote exploit functionality used in advanced APT-style threats, it is activated simply by the user having opened the app. As the malware is disguised as functional apps, most users will likely interact with them shortly after downloading... By rooting the device, the malware is able to silently modify the device in ways that would otherwise require user interaction and access data of other apps on the device. "Apps bundling the malware included password managers and tools like data savers and app launchers," reports BleepingComputer, "all of them providing the functionality they promised to avoid raising suspicions..." Lookout's blog post said they'd spotted people affected by the malware in 17 different countries.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Oracle JDK "is available free of charge for production use again," reports InfoQ, under a new "Oracle No-Fee Terms and Conditions" license. The move, announced in mid-September, "reverses a 2018 decision to charge for Oracle JDK production use and does not affect Oracle's OpenJDK distribution," they write, noting that the new license "applies to the recently released version 17 of Oracle JDK and future versions." Donald Smith, Senior Director of Product Management at Oracle, explained the reason for this decision in a recent blog post, writing: "Providing Oracle OpenJDK builds under the GPL was highly welcomed, but feedback from developers, academia, and enterprises was that they wanted the trusted, rock-solid Oracle JDK under an unambiguously free terms license, too. Oracle appreciates the feedback from the developer ecosystem and are pleased to announce that as of Java 17 we are delivering on exactly that request." Smith explicitly stated that the No-Fee Terms and Conditions license "includes commercial and production use" [although the license does not seem to highlight this fact] and stated that "redistribution is permitted as long as it is not for a fee."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's not about saving the planet, it's about saving ourselves. The planet will be fine. The wounds we create will be healed within a few million years. The planet's lifespan is many tens of millions of years.

We could deliberately start to make an open and distributed Facebook, slowly, one step at a time. It isn't even a hard problem, nor would it be too costly, there's just work that just has to get done.