Month: October 2018

Read Repair Day: No One Should Be Punished for “Contempt of Business Model” (Electronic Frontier Foundation)

Repair is one of the secret keys to a better life. Repairs keep our gadgets in use longer (saving our pocketbooks) and divert e-waste from landfills or toxic recycling processes (saving our planet). Repair is an engine of community prosperity: when you get your phone screen fixed at your corner…

Great piece by Cory Doctorow on the importance of repair.

“This is the golden age of repairs, a moment made for a renaissance of shade-tree mechanics, electronics tinkerers, jackleg fixit shops, and mom-and-pop service depots. It has to be: our planet, our pocketbooks, and our neighborhoods all benefit when our property lasts longer, works better and does more.”

I was at a discussion about anarchism yesterday. A few questions about the need for leaders. One was "what about if there was a serial killer.. surely you’d need a leader to take control, surely?" Fair question about how does macro organisation occur, but the repetition several times of ‘surely’ was really interesting. Like capitalist realism, but for hierarchy. Seemed ingrained that a need for hierarchy is self-evident, that there is no alternative. Spanish Civil War was the end of history.
So far Pride and Prejudice is full of posh nobs chatting on about women’s appearance and comparing men based on their earnings.

Is it all an elaborate satire? Or is it just shit? Fingers crossed the former.

Anyway one great thing about installing Lineage – my Android security patch level has gone from February 2017 to September 2018.

I figured it as around 100 critical security flaws I was potentially vulnerable to, thanks to Samsung stopping support for a barely 4 year old device.

Not sure I get the permissions in Nougat… a bunch of the apps I installed need network access, but when installing it listed no special permissions needed. Is network access not considered a special permission anymore, it’s just a given? So far Ultrasonic has been the only one to prompt for any extra permissions, and it was for read/write the SD card.